Richard's insight practice

Richard's insight practice Richard Zen 5/15/12 12:10 AM
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 5/15/12 12:10 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 5/15/12 12:10 AM

Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Just organizing what I've done so far and creating a practice thread.

Okay I've been doing many different practices: Noting "arising of thoughts", "gone", staying as "shinkantanza" (do nothing), "viewing all senses at the same time", "jhana jogging", "no-self" 2nd gear KFD concentration practices. They all work in their own way.

I started off with horrible concentration and after months of practice with audiodharma.org audio streams and in 2008 I got a first jhana. I started insight practice after that but it was weak and more like concentration instead. I started noticing that 2nd and 3rd jhanas with piti and sukkha while I was attempting vipassana. Once I got to noting more consistently (after being recommended to this site:grinemoticon, I could just let go of the noting in the later part of the mediation sittings and hook up with the vibrations of the senses. Once that happened there was a shift where I thought my head would explode (probably A & P). Continuing to note I still didn't feel any dark night symptoms until I noted more accurately the 3 characteristics. The noting was too much focused on impermanence and ignoring not-self, and especially dissatisfaction. Once I started noting dissatisfaction after every mental striving a lot of my habitual enjoyments and negative mental habits were appearing obsolete due to the obvious dissatisfaction. This dissatisfaction lasted at least 3 weeks earlier this year. Once I started noting at work more, shifts happened and there was a gradual feeling that I could get relief while noting the most unpleasant emotional arisings. This became more confident even when dealing with difficult people (Cluster B typesemoticon ).

This site helped with understanding no-self along with 2nd gear practices:

Anatta

Once equanimity started appearing it was like bursting for air in a sunny ocean after being down in the murky depths. The feeling of sanity was very encouraging. It was so encouraging that I started getting lazy. The equanimity was literally vibrating in my skull and the reactive part of the mind loved to go dormant giving the senses more vibrancy. The equanimity left me satisfied before, during and after fun activities. Yet this equanimity fades and has to be regenerated. I fell into reobservation which was 10 times worse than the dark-night experiences I had before. Thankfully they only lasted a couple of nights and equanimity would return again and again feeling more natural. Reobservation still happens but it's more like a vague unease or restlessness that reappears but with less force than before.

Now more recently looking at Nick's blog and some of his comments plus Tommy's experiment and I was getting a little confused while using Shinzen Young's instructions for Shinkantanza "just sitting" (which are similar but slightly different in approach) to just staying with all your senses at the same time. Both of these practices have been a help. With Shinkantanza I can let habitual thoughts go where they please and I ended up concentrating up to equanimity instead. I knew that wasn't really the practice because there's still too much habitual concentration intention. Now with applying the same practice but allowing all the senses to appear as they are at the same time it's easier to see the meditative striving for meditative states being similarly stressful as any other mental striving.

So yesterday I decided to return to basic noting (despite wanting to avoid it as too much striving) with the knowledge in the prior paragraph. Before I noted I just easily let go of any striving and stayed with all the senses (including taste) and then started noting. As I started noting I could tell when a new thought was arising but as the thought started it was very weak and then I noticed that the senses were still clear in awareness during this arising. When the thoughts made more thoughts and got more intense then they would start obscuring some of the senses. While noting the arising and the passing away a sense of elation started coming back again. So my practice now will be focused on staying with the senses first and then noting cessations or allowing shinkantanza. The noting nudges me in the right direction despite some interference with awareness.
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Nikolai , modified 11 Years ago at 5/15/12 1:57 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 5/15/12 1:54 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1677 Join Date: 1/23/10 Recent Posts
Richard Zen:

Now more recently looking at Nick's blog and some of his comments plus Tommy's experiment and I was getting a little confused while using Shinzen Young's instructions for Shinkantanza "just sitting" (which are similar but slightly different in approach) to just staying with all your senses at the same time. Both of these practices have been a help. With Shinkantanza I can let habitual thoughts go where they please and I ended up concentrating up to equanimity instead. I knew that wasn't really the practice because there's still too much habitual concentration intention. Now with applying the same practice but allowing all the senses to appear as they are at the same time it's easier to see the meditative striving for meditative states being similarly stressful as any other mental striving.



Nice insight.

Just a clarification. I may have talked using those words before : "staying with the senses'. Although helpful to see it as action of forced 'staying' in the beginning to a degree, but ultimately there may be a linguistic trap here. The word 'staying' can subtly manifest into 'trying' to stay with the senses and that is actually the opposite of what one does when triggering recognition of apperception in my experience. With 'trying', the mind then selectively segregates the field of experience into 'parts' to pay attention to, when apperception has no segregating going on at all. The 'trying' aspect is the mind trying to grasp at some aspect /part of experience. Aaaaaah, apperception, I want to perceive you!

Apperception does not have that grasping quality, so to cultivate recognition of it, pure sense contact as it arises should be simply 'recognised' as it arises, rather than 'stayed' with. This word is less likely to lead the mind into 'trying', although it could....'trying to recognise' may occur. Being aware of the 'trying' overlay is useful as it arises.

Nick
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 5/15/12 12:09 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 5/15/12 12:09 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
I agree. "Stay" would be the wrong word. After last night it's clearer to me that what we normally look at as the self is like you say: a zooming in on phenomena to look for what is to like or dislike. All thoughts feel like they have a wanting behind them and it's clear how pervasive habituation really is and how impersonal many decisions are and how foreign some reactivity is when you're clearly looking at it. emoticon Just allowing the reactivity to subside and let the senses (which are already working) come to the foreground on their own illuminates the remaining tension that's there. That remaining tension just feels like wanting without any particular object which is quite dangerous in the wrong environment. I have more respect for how much of a dark veil strong emotions are. Just thinking about a hateful person in my past and exacting revenge is a perfect way to blow mindfulness out of the water. That book by Thich Nhat Hanh "Understanding our mind" and how he uses gardening as a metaphor for developing new habits is the key. Developing a habit of a peaceful mind and making choices and actions based on a clear mind over and over again will atrophy the old habits (probably not completely) and strengthen the new habits. There are only two ways I can see now. You have to either develop a strong desire to change habits (which is exhausting mentally) or conserve energy from wasted mental movements and use them towards those same worthwhile goals.

There's still enjoyment in noting and it's important to note with more subtlety so one is not in a "meditation practice" but just getting on with life. Relax the body fabrications and then relax the mind fabrications to allow the clear seeing. At this point I don't see wanting disappearing so it makes sense to then find something that's worth wanting:

Yogi toolbox Good Practice

* Noticing the difference between superficial feelings and core drives.


Venerable Ayya Khema

Since each one (feelings-pleasant, painful and neutral) disappears to give room to another one, could we then say that each time one disappears and gives rise to another one that the “me” has disappeared as certain entity and arises as new one? It never occurs to us to say a thing like that but that would be logical, wouldn't it?


Yogi toolbox Lifestyle Approach

"This is where the Buddha ran into the central paradox of becoming, because the craving and clinging that provide the moisture do not have to delight in the field or the resultant becoming in order to bear fruit. If the mind fastens on a particular set of possibilities with the aim of changing or obliterating them, that acts as moisture for a state of becoming as well. Thus the desire to put an end to becoming produces a new state of becoming. Because any desire that produces becoming also produces suffering, the Buddha was faced with a strategic challenge: how to put an end to suffering when the desire to put an end to suffering would lead to renewed suffering.
His solution to this problem involved a paradoxical strategy, creating a state of becoming in the mind from which he could watch the potentials of kamma as they come into being, but without fueling the desire to do anything with regard to those potentials at all. In the terms of the field analogy, this solution would deprive the seed of moisture. Eventually, when all other states of becoming had been allowed to pass away, the state of becoming that had acted as the strategic vantage point would have to be deprived of moisture as well. Because the moisture of craving and clinging would have seeped into the seed even of this strategic becoming, this would eventually mean the destruction of the seed, as that moisture and any conditioned aspects of consciousness the seed might contain were allowed to pass away. But any unconditioned aspects of consciousness—if they existed—wouldn’t be touched at all." Thanissaro Bhikkhu: The Paradox Of Becoming.


Never mind! That answered my question. emoticon Wow what an embarrassment of riches.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 5/16/12 5:32 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 5/16/12 5:32 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Shinkantanza 1 hour: Allowed all the senses to be as they are. It seems to work in a reduction of mental stress. The trick is to avoid intending or trying to stop automatic thoughts. The only weird thing was that in a diffuse focus I couldn't feel my hands. Once you focus on them they come back. emoticon I'm noting all day. Noting is improving by staying with the vibrations of experience (95%) and then noting 1Hz (5%).
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 5/17/12 10:09 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 5/17/12 10:09 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Noting Vanishings 1 hour: Getting used to this is difficult but I can see the value of it. I used the breath as an anchor to note "gone" when the breath changes from in to the out breath and if sounds like traffic subside I note that as well. When thoughts pass away I note the vanishing. The challenge is not to note arisings and allow them to be in the background. I find this practice is better at showing no-self vs self for me. When a thought arises or a scenario is imagined (like conversations with others) the sense of self is quite strong. When thoughts are gone it's back to the senses. There's a sense of clinging to thoughts when focusing on noting vanishings. It's like I'm impatient to wait for the thoughts to vanish but the Papanca is addictive and forceful. As I got used to it there was a powerful jhana and plenty of tranquilizing restfulness. The thought interruptions still had a agitated quality like they were interfering with the pleasing restfulness. With more practice this will get smoother.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 5/18/12 5:53 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 5/18/12 5:53 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Noting Vanishings 1.5 hours: Trying to note "vanishings" from fine vibrations in the body and vision. Had to note "frustration", and "dissatisfaction" along the way. The thoughts intervened regularly but were noted and abandoned. There were some drop outs 1/2 an hour into the meditation. That was rough. The vibrations were so fast I tried too hard. The face was tense and had to be relaxed a couple of times to reduce strain.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 5/19/12 12:31 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 5/19/12 12:19 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Did a little bit of retooling.

1 hour Great perfection (let senses appear in foreground)/Shinkantanza (let go of intentional noting)/HAIETMOBA (only note total experience):

Big relief. As I started with the above instructions in order the jhanas started appearing on their own with no object other than awareness. My brain likes to talk about the dharma and describe the experience so mental noting was replaced with HAIETMOBA which is like noting all sensations at the same time and that pure equanimity that first blew my mind a month ago came again except with little effort necessary and a feeling of normality like I'm getting used to it. The only concentration necessary is to ask "How Am I Experiencing This Moment Of Being Alive?" when the mind wants to describe the experience. The beauty of HAIETMOBA is the computation power needed to do it is less than basic noting. Of course when noting is done properly then I expect all the practices lead to the same result. My vision was a little distorted like having doors warp and melt. I was blinking but it happened even then because the concentration was so spot on. Once attention is allowed to include all senses the vision returned to normal. HAIETMOBA sends you into the senses much like quick noting so the brain feels a little bit of concentration tension but much less than with individual noting. The sense of self is still there but it feels like it's erroding. I'm just going to do this all day and as much as possible to see if there is any tiredness.

EDIT: This was a help also:

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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 5/20/12 4:21 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 5/20/12 4:21 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Yesterday the HAIETMOBA practice worked well but it must be constantly applied to keep the relief going. Anger disappears faster than when using mindfulness but it can also return fairly quick when the practice stops. There isn't much tiredness in this practice but when returning to conceptualization for conversations one has to remember to recultivate the practice to avoid more papanca.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 5/23/12 11:53 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 5/23/12 11:53 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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1 hour cessation noting practice: Just allowed the natural senses to be in the foreground. I inclined the mind towards all vibrations and inclined the mind towards the gaps between vibrations and felt very restful throughout the day. There's still a little bit of addictiveness to the waves which may have to do with dopamine. The withdrawal symptoms are still less than in the past and despite feeling a little like...



...the mind lets go into tranquillity.emoticon
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 5/28/12 12:18 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 5/28/12 12:18 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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HAIETMOBA during hiking: I'm starting to understand how to equate thoughts as automatic along with the 5 senses. When thoughts and emotions arise there's less of a sense of trying to stop them. Once I'm rooted in the present moment the question HAIETMOBA isn't needed but just the answer. As emotions and thoughts happen automatically they quickly vanish and I don't identify with them as a self. Sometimes it's funny when an old mental habit or rumination appears. By feeling like those automatic thoughts are just fine there's no need manipulate anything. You don't add fuel but you don't stop thoughts.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 6/1/12 5:17 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 6/1/12 5:17 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Noting cessation practice this past week: The only difference now is that I can notice strong waves all over my body and especially in my head. They are pleasant but one almost feels like one's face is warping in and out.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 6/11/12 2:56 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 6/11/12 2:30 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Great perfection/Shikantaza/HAIETMOBA daily practice:

I find I get tired of this mindfulness a little less now and I can see the value of continuing to plow through the tired parts of the day with the same acceptance. It makes you reverent towards the power of habitual tendencies and to develop more dispassion for them. When doing this as a sitting practice I find that sitting with the vibrations as they get thicker and thicker the hindrances pull me in physical tension but let go almost like some external force is nudging me one way or another and I'm just looking at it instead of reacting to it. The labeling part of the noting is feeling more coarse now and I just want to drop it now and just see clearly with the senses what's there. I suppose "riding the wave" is a good metaphor.

When looking at thoughts it's like investigating the automatic senses and looking from that vantage point at thought habit tendencies. The feeling of "I" is very related to the thoughts for me. The practice relieves the stress via acceptance over anything that is there but the dispassion comes from finding the repetitive tensions annoying. If I eat enough but still get some cravings to eat more than I need to, I can also enjoy the pleasantness of feeling lighter and knowing that more fat will be burnt over night because I didn't indulge. I will notice at any uncomfortable sensations when I do fall off the wagon which is much better than judgment and guilt. It's always good to look at the pleasant ignored from the unpleasant and unpleasant ignored in the pleasant. There's more to the reality and desire and aversion is just zooming in on aspects and ignoring others.

I'm also losing a little weight because drinking water in place of just eating is often enough to kill the craving. When you're thirsty sometimes you can think you're hungry as well. This tactic is similar to the book The Power of Habit involving the habit cue. I learned to control nail biting by simply clipping my nails as soon as possible before I start gnawing on them. The habit tendency isn't gone but a healthy replacement ends the problem. If I drink water before I eat more carbs then the need to consume more carbs is greatly reduced.

There's also a subtle stress when the mindfulness lapses so getting in touch with the senses ASAP ends any papanca tendencies with mapping and meditation striving.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 6/15/12 6:44 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 6/15/12 6:44 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Shikantanza "do nothing" 1 hour: This is the practice I needed now. I think I have been repressing the thought process still too much with noting. By allowing all automatic thoughts and all natural senses without trying to add or subtract from anything from the experience was greatest relief for me so far. It was like watching a a kaleidescope of phenomena arise and passaway on its own. There is still a little bit of clinging left but that's because I haven't mastered this practice yet. The sense of self is retreating from the whole back of my head to just my top of the spine connected to my head.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 6/16/12 9:03 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 6/16/12 9:03 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Feeling great all day to day. The entire Shikantanza process is pervading my life. Aversion is down. Sanity is up. Thoughts (even bad ones) are okay. Everything seems okay. Tonight did another 1 hour of it. There was a pop in the back of the top part of my skull where time very briefly disappeared but I didn't get any bliss wave and I feel pretty good just like yesterday and today. My brain revved up some major 3rd eye pressure without any attempt to concentrate. Otherwise just more of the same which is just fine by me.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 6/22/12 11:12 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 6/22/12 11:12 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Shikantanza "Do nothing" practice: Allowing thoughts to naturally pass away along with everything else has been very powerful for me. I was house sitting recently and had nothing to do so I played a video game. You know when you suck at a level and you have to redo the entire level again and again? Normally that would cause agitation but by not repressing any thoughts (negative or positive) I could feel the tension like a muscle start to tense up but then I found it easy to get out of the way and let it let go automatically. There's nothing that needs to be "done". I've been allowing this to happen all day everyday and it feels like there's nothing for "me" to do. Desire seems so obvious now. I can just bring up images of something desirable and thinking about desirable details just creates increased desire. Then I think of some responsibility I'm procrastinating on and bring the desirable details of positive benefits of dealing with this responsibility and a new healthy desire replaces it. All that's left of the dukkka nanas is some chest anxiety or fear but it's much more attenuated now. Much of it is from thinking if there is anything more I should be doing. It's just more stuff that arises and passes away naturally.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 6/24/12 11:26 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 6/24/12 11:23 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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2 hour vipassana noting: Trying to note and not stop thoughts was the goal for today. I got intermittent jhanas along with bright results in the retina, and the noting naturally dismantled the jhanas. The self definitely feels like thoughts. I will see an image of a future self and it feels totally fake. The self feels more like a dream than reality. I'm finding that gentler noting is the way to go and sometimes slower noting (like every 3-4 seconds) to really soak in the experience is helpful. I've also been doing some concentration practice on the sensations of the spine/neck/back of skull to zero in on the location of the self. It seems to loosen things up in that I'm able to notice my experience shake and vibrate with every heart beat, but I got strong 3rd eye pressures in the forehead that really distracted the practice. I need to relax the facial muscles a little more. Still the result is a nice warm vibrating feeling the mind with little stickiness.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 6/26/12 11:11 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 6/26/12 11:11 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I'm just walking around letting experience (including thoughts) arise and pass away. There's no real meditation. The only doing is making sure to pay attention to the senses while not stopping thoughts I'm also not allowing thoughts to proliferate so much that I check out of the present moment.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 6/27/12 11:23 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 6/27/12 11:23 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Just for fun I decided to do pure samadhi practice for an hour. I found that it was easy to stay with the breath and any cognitive interruptions didn't last long. It was like a teflon brain. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I got no jhana factors at all and I could tell the brain felt like it didn't need the practice and it just hurt my head with large 3rd eye pressure in the forehead. Even relaxing the tension while still practicing was painful (hello 3 characteristics!). The closest thing to a "jhana" now is simply doing the Shikantanza/Great perfection/HAIETMOBA (whatever you want to call it) practice and enjoying the vibrations in the senses. I can get the same results with quick light noting practice. Even those nice feelings are not something to attach to. They are starting to feel a little crude. It's almost like your brain likes basic table wine, but then when you try above average wine the basic won't do. I'm assuming when I try outstanding wine then the above average won't do either. emoticon

The next step is to keep presence in the senses all day and especially when on the computer, reading, working, and talking to people. I can still "checkout" and attach to thoughts in those activities so more clear seeing is needed to get back to reality.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 7/1/12 10:14 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 7/1/12 10:14 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Reading test with Shikantanza: I had a novel that I started some time ago that I didn't get very far into. I decided to pick it up again. There was a little avoidance but I just remembered how the present moment is just that, whether I'm reading or doing anything else and the aversion naturally came and went. Then I started. In the past I would use concentration practice to repress thoughts and try and read but of course repressing thoughts makes the reading very sterile and lifeless. At the time it seemed necessary to block out thoughts because the mind could go on a tangent which would also reduce the quality of the reading.

This time I just allowed thoughts to gently arise and pass away. This allowed more depth of understanding and more patience to look up unheard of vocabulary (I was reading a Patrick O'Brian novel with lots of nautical terms). When I did get caught up in thoughts it was usually when I read something that reminded me of myself or people I know (self-referencing). I allowed those thoughts to come and go but I didn't add to them so I was able to get back to it pretty quickly. Some aversion sometimes comes in because the mind likes to start something but not to finish it. Just letting that aversion come and go on its own relieves it. After about 1 1/2 hours I could feel the tiredness coming in. The aversion picks up and here I can see taking a break makes sense and then returning replenished I'm able to continue. The aversion I think comes from not accepting limitations but also not testing the limitations to see how much further one can go before one is truly tired. If one is throughly engrossed in an easy reading novel I can see them go on for hours reading but at the same time some difficult books can reward patience if one is willing to stick with it.

Next I want to apply the Shikantanza practice to actual intense studying and memorizing. In the past I would probably have to syke myself up and power through it despite the reactivity (very painful). Or study with no breaks and bash the self-image if I didn't continue farther. It'll be fund to try/not try while studying. To study without a goal would be valuable.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 7/5/12 9:34 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 7/5/12 9:34 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Note on old habits: I used feel sorry for myself a lot in the past and just recently I tried going in that same direction again. This time my tears were a lot less, the pain was less and the clouding of experience reduced. It lasted maybe 30 seconds and then I'm back to normal again. It seems freakish but at the same time quite healthy. This makes getting into a positive mood much easier. For those just starting on the practice after around 4-5 years (sooner if you do retreats) it really does get better. emoticon
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 7/11/12 10:55 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 7/11/12 10:55 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Shikantanza: It's getting easier and easier to dwell in the senses. Some recent troubles with family members that recur regularly are now feeling less of a bother. I get less worked up. The drama is less engaging. I'm also noticing that fear and inhibition is starting to weaken in a more noticable way. I seem to care less and less what people think of me, and (even better) I care less and less what "I" think others think of me. emoticon In the past I could feel a harsh reactivity in the chest when thinking about the judgments of others and now I'm identifying less and less with it. The rest and elation is becoming less explosive and more normal. When I think about things I would like to achieve in the future, I'm more interested in what I'm doing about it now. I need less instant gratification.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 7/13/12 11:03 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 7/13/12 10:44 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Shikantanza: I think I had a turning point last night. I continued the practice as usual but I noticed that letting go is becoming much easier. I saw non-conceptually that 99% of my internal thinking and talk is about likes and dislikes even in indirect ways. By letting go of having to like or dislike anything it led to a jhana like experience except with no effort. The experience was so beautiful I was crying tears of joy with gratitude and relief. It was like the best clear indication of the three characterisitcs except with this practice there was nothing to do and nothing to achieve. Just let go. Unfortunately the experience was so overwhelmingly good that my brain wanted to conceptualize it and rehearse the results. Of course I let that go to and I want to keep letting go all day. I have to be careful because this letting go wasn't something that had to be done it was done all by itself simply by clear seeing. This was just a beautiful taste but the new habit has to take time to settle. The only real effort in this practice is to use willpower to keep seeing just for the sake of it. The concentration object (if I can even call it that) is just awareness or nothing. I didn't have to "concentrate" on it. It just happens on it's own. The last layers of fear and inhibition are starting to crack.

The experience is like AUTOMATICALLY letting go of something painful simply because it isn't necessary to function normally. The letting go also has a refreshing feeling of "there is nothing to need". Of course the "I" wants to feel like this all day but the "I" must be reminded that it is not needed to do this. emoticon There is also something deathlike in that I feel more and more accepting of death and imperfection in life. The near feeling before this nice experience is "I'm okay in just dying right here" except it's not suicidal but just deep acceptance that death is a natural part of life.

EDIT: This might be 4.2/4.3/4.4 Equanimity according to Daniel's Jhana/Nana table. At least the descriptions feel right.
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Tommy M, modified 11 Years ago at 7/14/12 7:58 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 7/14/12 7:58 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Richard, your thread is excellent and packed with good information and insights. Your descriptions are spot-on, and your practice looks really strong.

Try just turning that lens of investigation back on that sense of "I", see how it's not present in that instant of clarity, how it only happens after the fact and how it can be seen to go into cessation the same as anything else.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 7/14/12 9:28 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 7/14/12 9:22 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I'm probably still enjoying the equanimity to the point of distraction. Scanning the entire skull makes the location of the self move but not really dissolve, but with that clarity in a higher equanimity it's hard to "do" anything like looking at the self behind the eyes when less doing is what gets you to equanimity in the first place. I still have to reconcile this with what AEN's book states regarding realization versus experience. Also that post above from Thanissaro Bhikkhu on how to not let desire to eliminate desire and aversion also become a point of moisture of craving. It leaves me to do nothing but on the other hand there is still a doing in just paying attention.
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Tommy M, modified 11 Years ago at 7/14/12 10:26 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 7/14/12 10:26 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Scanning the entire skull makes the location of the self move but not really dissolve, but with that clarity in a higher equanimity it's hard to "do" anything like looking at the self behind the eyes when less doing is what gets you to equanimity in the first place. I still have to reconcile this with what AEN's book states regarding realization versus experience.

Try the self-enquiry method and, rather than "scanning" just observe, in the cool ease of Equanimity, how the mind seems to bring all these different sensations together to create this idea of a self; there's no such thing as a self to be found anywhere, it's just the aggregates coming together to create an imagined, continuous and permanent "I". Rather than looking for it to "dissolve", see how there's nothing solid to it in the first place, just more of the same transient dance of sensation as everything else seems to be made from. As you're already aware, there's no "doing" as such but don't get complacent while in Equanimity 'cause what you need to see clearly is already happening with spacious, crystal clarity 'in front' of you right here and now. Use it to your advantage!
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 7/24/12 10:01 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 7/24/12 10:01 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I've been really busy with work but what you said is how I'm slowly progressing. I find that when I get caught up in thoughts now the senses can be even more of an anchor and the thoughts are passing away now and I feel more identified with the senses as opposed to identified with the thoughts. It's like I think a series of thoughts (including mildly negative self referencing) and I just let it run out of it's own steam and and my senses return to the foreground. Sometimes I return to the senses with a smile at what was being thought. I even returned to a bit of noting as a reminder to let the senses be the foreground.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 8/4/12 2:07 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 8/4/12 2:06 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Current practice is still developing more dispassion and disenchantment. I'm starting to get to what Nick was talking about in not zooming in to subjects. I feel like the 2 modes of "self" are credulity and incredulity. I'm incredulous to a "self" when I allow all the senses to be the foreground, and credulous to a self when I'm describing my experience or being lost in thoughts. The best description I can give is that when I notice the granular structure of my vision I feel more hemmed in like slightly 2 dimensional, and reality doesn't seem so real. The reality is hitting my senses in the present moment and is not distant at all and the feeling of expansiveness and reaching out in distance to the 3 dimensional sensual world is my conceptual self doing it's usual dwelling and searching for likes and dislikes. I'll just keep on with this Shikantanza practice because it's still yielding more insights. There's still a little more pain left when I start enjoying the present moment and the self wants to dwell on likes and dislikes as I try to reach out via projections. Of course I just let it go on it's own steam. I'm not sure if my practice is still too repressive. I feel less repressive than before though, which is encouraging. When I go for a jog and just be with my automatic senses my experience is a little "strobing" and "movie like" in my vision. There's also a feeling that I can just stay closer to thoughtless for longer periods of time. The elation of being just in the senses is getting more normal but still quite exquisite.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 8/29/12 6:07 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 8/27/12 9:08 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I went on vacation recently and it helped a lot. Getting out into nature helps to atrophy old day to day habits so when you come back you start making some changes. During long drives I listened to the Happiness Advantage by Achor and it helped out with one problem I had with the depletion of willpower for changing habits. I've been wanting to exercise more but always fail to do so. The example to change that scenario by Achor was to sleep in your gym clothes. The problem with willpower is that it drains but what I got from that famous willpower book was that you were supposed to strengthen it. The problem with that is while you're doing it what are you supposed to do in the meantime?

By sleeping in my gym clothes the path of least resistance is to go exercise as opposed to changing into other clothes. The author wanted to learn guitar but in order to do that he had to use his 20 second rule by removing the TV controller batteries and moving them 20 seconds away to make it painful to watch TV and then by putting the guitar and stand in the living room the path of least resistance was to practice guitar playing. I currently have added an RSS feeder program to news so I just open the program and quickly see the headlines and only read what I want to and it's saved a lot of time. I used to be addicted to reading tons of news I didn't need to. Make it easier to do the new habits by removing obstacles and add obstacles to old habits. One shouldn't have to rely on willpower alone.

On the meditation front I found a larger realization that the I really am just the senses and that the sense of I in the past was just concepts arising and passing away. It feels more natural and normal now to just be in the senses and then to pick and choose which arising thoughts are worth following and letting the rest just drop away. It's almost like my skull is feeling hollow of self while still feeling okay. The less "I" do about it the better.

EDIT: Shinzen Young's explanation on how the sense of self behind the eyes in equanimity is also conceptual is starting to make more sense now.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 9/5/12 8:08 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 9/2/12 4:08 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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2 hours of Shikantanza/some noting "gones": Some of the last realization (which happened more with presence during daily life) is filtering into my meditation practice. Equanimity is starting to get boring. Even if mental interruptions and dispassion is handled easily my brain is seeking out more clarity by looking at the endings of thoughts in particular. When the thought ends I'm back into the senses with lots of presence. This is similar to what Eckhart Tolle says about viewing the pauses between thoughts. Yet it's better if the brain finds this true because it desires to relieve pain than to simply follow a meditation practice. Any prior mental talk about meditation gets dropped as well. The suffering is still there in equanimity but because it's much less than before it requires more consistent comparision between being lost in thoughts and being here now with all my senses. The constant comparison shows the brain the subtle pain that's there that should be let go of. Even though I feel damn good the small dark night reminders (old weakened mental habits returning etc.) tell the brain that more refinement is possible. It really is that question that Tarin used for his AF chart. "Do I want to think about this or be in the present moment?" Except this question is asked without words or concepts. It's just feeling subtle agitation while lost in thoughts and letting go into the senses over and over again and getting that little bit of relief over and over again.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 9/5/12 6:14 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 9/5/12 6:14 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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There's definitely more of a shift that's becoming habit and being introduced into work. I find that dependent origination is easier to notice. When my brain is thinking about something really interesting the addictive part of the amygdala starts up and the mental talk/clinging gets revved up and the attention focus feels solid. Now that it's easier to let go more often my work patience has gone up a lot. The self referencing feels ridiculous and the brain can now see it isn't necessary to do that constantly. Rote work is becoming less boring. By being in the senses more the separation between me and the atmosphere feels a lot less. Sometimes when driving home it feels like I'm watching someone else's hand on the wheel. As soon as the brain starts getting caught up in thoughts I can detect the slight pain of likes or dislikes and it makes more sense to just come back to the natural senses. The most important part of this is that it's feeling more normal and not a mind state.
Adam , modified 11 Years ago at 9/5/12 6:32 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 9/5/12 6:32 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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well said
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 9/18/12 12:21 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 9/18/12 12:20 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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This particular quote from AEN's book is really helping me to get away from subtly manipulating thoughts. There's more room to allow thoughts without feeling guilt if there's a lot of thoughts. Less pain is good. emoticon

11 th December 2010
We often think that thought is obscuring our 'experience of Nowness' or 'experience of
Presence'...
As if the present moment is what is actually present in the absence of thought.
But have we actually look at thought itself... the actuality of thought.
Isn't thought itself an arising happening now? If we look nakedly at the manifestation of
thought... we discover it to be of the similar vivid intense presence as that which is
experienced in the absence of conceptual thoughts.
Thought too is Presence, is Nowness, is Awareness, whatever you want to call it (they
aren't an inherent substance but merely words pointing to the vivid and insubstantial
arisings of the moment)... it is vivid, bright, clear, though insubstantial (like anything
else). It is non-dual: there is no separation of a thinker and thought... there is just the
vivid appearance of thought.
Maintaining awareness, 'living in the now', presence, and so on, therefore does not
require getting rid of thought or 'remaining in the gap of no-thought' like what many
teachers teach.

Maintaining presence can be done 'within' thought itself... by dropping all striving (to
maintain any particular state of presence), resistance and clinging, and simply and
mindfully letting all experiences including thoughts to arise and subside in its own
luminous and empty nature.
Remember as I said before: thoughts aren't the problem, clinging is.
By being awake 'within' thoughts, we stop ourselves from getting lost in our thought
stories... we are present to the entire field of experience rather than narrowing our
focus on our mental chatter. Whatever arises is allowed to unfold and then subside on
its own without clinging or rejecting.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 9/18/12 10:45 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 9/18/12 10:45 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Also instead of asking myself "Who am I?" I find it better to watch my mind get lost in thoughts, then let go of clinging and then ask "was that a me?"
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 9/20/12 7:37 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 9/20/12 7:37 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Richard Zen:
Also instead of asking myself "Who am I?" I find it better to watch my mind get lost in thoughts, then let go of clinging and then ask "was that a me?"


This is really working. Today I felt just present and coreless for most of the day. I can let go of my "self" as just being more thoughts while feeling completely normal and not in any state. If there's clinging it's easier to let go now. Staying with people and their conversations is easier and when my mind does get lost there's no guilt because it just arises and passes away because of conditioning, and also it isn't a me. Thoughts aren't an interference. Concentration is vastly superior this way.

Awakening to reality quote:

Also, the fact that you know you were distracted means awareness is present in the
distraction, otherwise you will never know it.
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Brian Eleven, modified 11 Years ago at 9/20/12 8:18 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 9/20/12 8:18 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 221 Join Date: 9/14/10 Recent Posts
Richard,
Sounds Great!
I think I've had similar experiences by the sound of your descriptions. AEN pointed me to a Shinzen Young video which has been helpful:Do Nothing meditation
I can really relate to the feeling of no guilt when the mind wanders, since starting with the "do nothing" meditation I've been shocked at how much I try to manipulate my experience and suppress thought. When it works and I "do nothing" I feel incredibly open, light, energetic, and free, experiencing what AEN refers to as "I Am".
Unfortunately it's been peaks and valleys with this. I really "let go" and feel great then I try to re-create it and the mental constriction returns trying to force an experience. The longer I meditate the more aware I become that I'm really uptight! lol! Whatever you're doing, keep it up!
My only suggestion would be to keep it relaxed and fun.

Metta,

Brian.

And thanks for the updates, it's nice to know someone else is in a similar spot.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 9/21/12 8:34 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 9/21/12 8:34 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Brian Eleven:
Richard,
Sounds Great!
I think I've had similar experiences by the sound of your descriptions. AEN pointed me to a Shinzen Young video which has been helpful:Do Nothing meditation
I can really relate to the feeling of no guilt when the mind wanders, since starting with the "do nothing" meditation I've been shocked at how much I try to manipulate my experience and suppress thought. When it works and I "do nothing" I feel incredibly open, light, energetic, and free, experiencing what AEN refers to as "I Am".
Unfortunately it's been peaks and valleys with this. I really "let go" and feel great then I try to re-create it and the mental constriction returns trying to force an experience. The longer I meditate the more aware I become that I'm really uptight! lol! Whatever you're doing, keep it up!
My only suggestion would be to keep it relaxed and fun.

Metta,

Brian.

And thanks for the updates, it's nice to know someone else is in a similar spot.


Once that's done it's all about continued self-inquiry mixed with consistent mindfulness and letting go when clinging arises. The self-inquiry reminds you that there's no non-conceptual self and mindfulness lets you see the wisdom of letting go.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 9/22/12 10:07 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 9/22/12 10:07 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Where I am now with no self is that experiences and thoughts are known. This knowing doesn't have a substance or location. You can't grasp at it or conceptualize it. It just is. It's not solid. A thought of a "thinker" is just another thought. The "thinker" thought doesn't conceptualize other separate thoughts. It's just another thought. This is pretty fun, though there are deeper realizations. emoticon
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 9/30/12 10:40 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 9/30/12 10:40 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I've finished An Eternal Now's book. I'm definitely impressed. Reminding myself to look at the self concept as only a thought has got me to look at my Shikantanza practice further. Focusing on experience can be tiring and does require more realization to make the practice more effective. I feel that there's still a little too much aversion to thoughts, but less so than before. Reminding myself during the day there's no self by actually viewing the self-referencing as simply more thoughts kind of hems you into the present moment while allowing thoughts in. It's comfortable without being disconcerting. There's of course still clinging but there's more temptation to let go of it to get the relief. I'm still a little worried about rashly pursuing "letting go" involving a self-concept. If realization of dependent origination (DO) (basically everything including yourself breaks down into smaller objects ad infinitum) is what is necessary to remove clinging then reminding myself of this throughout the day will be necessary. When clinging arises I'll have to remind myself of DO to see how the realization unfurls the clinging to then avoid repressing the clinging with a fabricated "letting go". Reminding myself about DO during aversion will be an interesting experience. To be disatisfied with activities or scenarios because of DO is more natural than to feel guilt and repress desire/aversion.

Awakening to reality:

They may cling to an awareness even without engaging in labels or conceptualization, due to a subtle belief in an inherent awareness, for example. Telling these people to cease conceptualizing isn't going to help as they already had ample non conceptual experiences of reality and yet
are unable to overcome their inherent view. Therefore it is not non conceptuality in and
of itself that liberates... It is realization that liberates you from extreme views... And in
fact all views, hence called the viewless view.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 10/2/12 8:35 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 10/2/12 8:35 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Okay my Shikantanza practice has been changed with ruthless dependent origination reminders thoughout the day and during meditation. When sitting and doing nothing it's easier to get a handle on the vibrations in the senses and especially on the skin. When clinging/stress appears I just look at that as a sign that deep down the body believes in an inherent self. By understanding universal impermanence and letting go it's almost like instant relief and jhana factors start to rev up. The body sense appears to focus here and there while other parts of the body seem to disappear while the focus is somewhere else. In my sittings I'm feeling tingling sensations deeper in the throat and the back of the head. The sense of self appears to be a little version of me mimicking meditation while I meditate and is mimicking what I do throughout the day. This is definitely like the Wizard of Oz and pulling back the curtain. Similar to stories of the Buddha the brain assulted me with violent and super lusty female sexual images and movements doing it to me every which way and I just barely saw through them and didn't get lost in them. Psycho people were trying to shoot me with ridiculously scary smiles. Wow that was hard! You have to let go of everything. The Amygdala is packed with shit, lust, and over the top fears. That was almost overwhelming at times emoticon What's cool though is that there's more hope now that sexual desire and paranoid fears can be overcome with more practice. I can also see that with diligent mindfulness dieting might be more doable. You have to feel the aversion and craving and start letting go ASAP before the action takes place.

There was a point where the mind felt like it went into overdrive and the sense of self started to shrink like a collapsing star. Unfortunately there was some fear residue and the self narrowed to a singularity but didn't completely collapse. Seems like a near miss. Still I feel like I have replaced my butter knife with an exacto knife so I'll be continuing with this practice.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 10/2/12 7:26 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 10/2/12 7:26 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Day practice: After yesterday I've continued with the viewing of dependent origination on everything. Even viewing how my computer screen is made up of small parts helps with the letting go. As soon as any clinging starts appearing I remind myself of the impermanent nature of the object and it's easy to let go. Letting go repeatedly eventually leads to strong concentration and a peak experience but when the experience returns to normal a few hours later it's still a good experience. I can see how it can normalize. When I ran out of work I was given some extra work and coworkers were shocked at my lack of complaining. emoticon It's been the smoothest normal day in my life so far. No reason to stop letting go.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 10/3/12 11:22 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 10/3/12 11:17 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Similar smooth day today. The difference is that when old mental habits wanted to come back they weren't as powerful and I actually caught some wrong speech developing in my mind and some quick compassion came out that was unexpected and beautiful that prevented me from saying something unskillful. It's almost like even the thinking of it was unpleasant and it needed to be dropped. A couple of days ago my normal equanimity felt more like driving on a good solid road but with a few bumps and potholes. Now it's like driving on a newly paved road. Less sticky in DhO parlance.

I definitely recommend introducing dependent origination reminders before letting go of clinging. It smooths it out with small doses of dispassion. It works pretty quickly. Just think about the impermanence of everything in you and around you and see how everything is built from tiny particles and realize that clinging to anything that isn't permanently solid leads to the same result. I'll still have to see how this plays out at work. Right now people are projecting stress on my facial expressions that I don't feel. emoticon I'm also trying to fabricate some smiles which I can see (like Shinzen's focus on the positive) magnifies the enjoyment so I can savour the results of letting go of clinging. This is definitely a nice shift. The confidence comes from knowing that I know what to do if old negative habits come back. I can see there's still more room for dispassion to continue. Staring out of the window at work and it was natural to feel more non-dual. The scalp and facial muscles are relaxed.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 10/5/12 11:42 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 10/5/12 11:42 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I've definitely seen why the realization is necessary to be used as a reminder. As the peak experiences of concentration and mindfulness fade it's necessary to remind the mind when it clings that the impermanent nature hasn't suddenly gotten solid. It's like a little check that can be done that throws you back into a effortless mindfulness. As this is done the thoughts arise and pass away and can be clearly seen to not be a self. Also today I noticed that clinging is like layers. As you let go of different kinds of clinging the experience improves. I noticed that clinging to thoughts about meditation was something I could let go of and the ease and the effort to keep mindfulness during work improved. The senses get a little quiet or sleepy when it happens so I can see how the lights can go out when you let go of everything.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 10/7/12 11:55 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 10/7/12 11:55 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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When practicing Shikantanza it's clear the impermanence side of things and letting go when there's clinging is also clear. The problem is no self. I find that there is endless commentary even in a subtle ninja creeping way. I'm good at mindfulness for the most part but the weakness is THOUGHTS. So I found some more techniques that will help me parse out the ME inside into more dependent origination.

This talk was very helpful in shining a light into the murkiness of thoughts. They are so fast and there are so many types.

Andrea Fella - Working with thinking and thoughts in meditation

Basically I will focus on this foundation of mindfulness to hopefully penetrate further. The preliminary step is to just count the thoughts as they occur (including thinking about the practice or thinking there are no thoughts) and as the clarity of which type of thoughts appear I'm going to label them. Eg. Sub-vocal (talking to myself or other repetitive commentary on anything, seeing (for projections), hearing (audio thoughts). If there are any rememberances of taste or smells (quite rare for me) I'll note them too. I also want to note my emotional reactions to the thoughts because that's often how they manifest for me and locate them on the body. Some craving or aversion starts up and quickly thoughts move around them but sometimes it's so quick that it's only the thoughts I'm noticing first.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 10/8/12 3:18 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 10/8/12 3:18 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I did about three hours of noting practice. It was still like Shikantanza but I started off looking at thoughts. Throughout the day yesterday I became more aware of the different kinds of thoughts specifically with counting and then noting the different types. Areas of weakness were very clear. I like to be "right" in mental arguments with people almost as a rehearsal and you can see a fake "me" projection practicing and rehearsing. Lots of angry results there but now I can note thoughts without stopping them. I just stop adding to them. This is a much better result. The clarity I've developed from previous vipassana practices make it easier. This morning during my longer sit I was actually just laying bed and started with the body vibrations even to the point of losing feeling in some body parts. Strangely the hands felt like a body "self" in that my mind could invent different locations for the hands to rest than they actually were. It's just another mental "self" that mimics reality but after some meditation time can do other things. I quickly moved up jhanas. The vibrations were nice because the letting go just makes it easier. It got to the point where the vibrations were so fast that it seemed solid. I was paying attention to thoughts of wanting results and thoughts of frustration but it was easy to let go. I can tell that I need to let go further. As I did it I got to a kind of equanimity that's a little "meh". It's very restful but the annoyance comes from expecting something to happen. Reminding myself of the Bahiya Sutta where senses are what they are and thoughts are what they are can show you how impersonal senses are and noting thoughts can vividly show how you can narrate your experience with a sub-vocal "self" which wraps around the senses. This is what I'm looking for. I could let that go and just try and let go of everything to develop a deeper rest.

Much more to come I'm sure. Letting go towards you-know-what isn't easy and requires time to get used to.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 10/11/12 6:52 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 10/11/12 6:52 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I think I'm getting back to normal again. I'm finding it hard to get more meditation in because I'm changing jobs and things are getting busy. The best part of the last few days is that reactivity is being seen more clearly. It's like dependent origination but basically the amygdala is blowing air into a thought bubble balloon that checks you out of reality. So I let go but I'm not in any mental state. I'm just normal. I just keep letting go and getting on with my day and activities. The mental desire and aversion is feeling more obsolete like it is just getting in the way with fear or useless distractions related to desire. If the reactivity is not intellegent enough to make good decisions it's because it's more equipped to a different lifestyle than in the concrete jungle. If I need to take risks then too much fear is just getting in the way.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 10/15/12 4:21 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 10/15/12 4:21 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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The only change recently is that when reading my mind was very quiet on its own. Like "graveyeard quiet". It coincides with letting go. With attachment the brain is noisy and with letting go it's less noisy.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 10/15/12 11:35 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 10/15/12 11:35 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Just re-reading an article on the AEN blog which I didn't fully understand before but I do now, in regards to thoughts. BTW I recommend reading all of it:

Dialectic of reflection and presence

The ultimate practice here is learning to remain fully present and awake in the middle of whatever thoughts, feelings, perceptions, or sensations are occurring and to appreciate them, in Mahamudra/Dzogchen terms, as Dharmakaya -- as an ornamental display of the empty, luminous essence of awareness. Like waves on the ocean, thoughts are not separate from awareness. They are the radiant clarity of awareness in motion. In remaining awake in the middle of thoughts -- and recognizing them as the luminous energy of awareness -- the practitioner maintains presence and can rest within their movement. As Namkhai Norbu (1986) suggests:

"The essential principle is to ... maintain presence in the state of the moving wave of thought itself ... If one considers the calm state as something positive to be attained, and the wave of thought as something negative to be abandoned, and one remains caught up in the duality of grasping and rejecting, there is no way of overcoming the ordinary state of the mind.”


It is a dualistic fixation, the tension between "me" -- as self -- and "my thoughts" -- as other -- that makes thinking problematic, tormenting, "sticky," like the tarbaby to which Brer Rabbit becomes affixed by trying to push it away. Thoughts become thick, solid, and heavy only when we react to them. Each reaction triggers further thought, so that the thoughts become chained together in what appears to be a continuous mind-state. These thought-chains are like a relay race, where each new thought picks up the baton from the previous thought and runs with it for a moment, passing it on again to a subsequent thought. But if the meditator can maintain presence in the middle of thinking, free of grasping or rejecting, then the thought has nothing to pass the baton on to, and naturally subsides. Although this sounds simple, it is advanced practice, usually requiring much preliminary training and commitment.


"It's possible to make thought itself meditation... How do we go into that state? The moment you try to separate yourself from thought, you are dealing with a duality, a subject-object relationship. You lose the state of awareness because you reject your experience and become separate from it.... But if our awareness is in the center of thought, the thought itself dissolves... At the very beginning... stay in the thoughts. Just be there... You become the center of the thought. But there is not really any center -- the center becomes balance. There's no 'being,' no 'subject-object relationships': none of these categories exist. Yet at the same time, there is... complete openness... So we kind of crack each thought, like cracking nuts. If we can do this, any thought becomes meditation... Any moment, wherever you are, driving a car, sitting around, working, talking, any activities you have -- even if you are very disturbed emotionally, very passionate, or even if your mind has become very strong, raging, overcome with the worst possible things and you cannot control yourself, or you feel depressed... if you really go into it, there's nothing there. Whatever comes up becomes your meditation. Even if you become extremely tense, if you go into your thought and your awareness comes alive, that moment can be more powerful than working a long time in meditation practice.


My experience of the above even while typing and thinking is that it's like the thought bubble fills in the gap of a lack of mindfulness. That's why it's hard to do because it's about maintaining it all the time but at the same time not blowing tons of energy with noting or fabricated concentration. Thinking while mindful feels so different than thinking without mindfulness.

So this connects the noters and non-noters with the same prescription to be present to all phenomena. As soon as the practice is objectified and attached to it's just another divide being created.

I would like to close with a few final considerations for Western students of the further reaches of contemplative awareness. From anecdotal evidence, stabilizing the pure presence of rigpa in the ongoing realization of self-liberation appears to be quite rare, even among dedicated students of Dzogchen/Mahamudra. This tradition flowered in Tibet, a far simpler and more grounded culture than ours, which also provide a social mandala, or cohesive cultural context, that supported thousands of monasteries and hermitages where meditation practice and realization could flourish. Yet even there, years of preliminary practice and solitary retreat were usually recommended as the groundwork for full nondual realization which was sometimes described as the golden roof that crowns the entire spiritual enterprise.


In the meantime if it's hard to keep being present during thoughts because of the speed of mental activity in work or other emotionally turbulent situations then proceed as follows:

The question for modern Westerners, who lack the cultural support found in traditional Asia and who often find it hard to spend years in retreat or even to complete the traditional Tibetan preliminary practise, is how to build a strong enough base on which this golden roof can rest. What kind of preliminary practices or inner work are most relevant and useful for modern people as a groundwork for nondual realization? What special conditions may be necessary to nurture and sustain nondual presence outside of retreat situations? And how can this spacious, relaxed quality of presence be integrated into everyday functioning in a speedy, complex technological society like ours, which requires such high levels of mental activity and mental abstraction?

Since unresolved psychological issues and developmental deficiencies often present major hurdles to integrating spiritual realizations into daily life, spiritual aspirants in the West may also need to engage in some degree of psychological work, as a useful adjunct to their spiritual work, and perhaps as a preliminary practice in its own right. (Welwood, 1984, 2000). Perhaps for Westerners genuine nondoing and letting-be can only be fully embodied in a healthy, integrated way once one has learned to attend to bodily feelings and grapple with one’s personal experience in a Focusing-style reflective manner.[Link] That is why it is important to understand the uses and limitations of psychological reflection, and to study its role as a stepping-stone both toward and “back” from nondual presence – as a bridge, in other words, that can begin to unlock deeper qualities of being and help to integrate them more fully into everyday life.


Yet cognitive therapy will still have a sense of separation so one should keep going in the practice while not avoiding responsibilities:

While psychotherapy and meditation both led to a freeing of mental and emotional fixations, the meditative approach struck me as the more profound and compelling of the two, because it was more direct, more radical, more faithful to the essential nature of awareness as an open presence intrinsically free of grasping, strategizing, and the subject-object split altogether. At the same time, the reflective dialogical process of psychotherapy provided a more effective and accessible way to work on the issues, concerns, and problems of personal and worldly life – which meditators often tend to avoid dealing with. Yet I had doubts about the ultimate merits of an approach that did not address, and was not designed to overcome, the subject-object struggle that lay at the root of most human alienation and suffering.


And I can stay present in all this typing. I don't have to "own" the knowledge. The confidence comes from doing which is similar to the jhana factors in dealing with laziness & doubt. emoticon
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 10/21/12 11:36 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 10/21/12 11:36 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Okay so I tried the new approach to let go of the past thoughts, future thoughts and even the present projections in a 2 hour meditation. I felt very good after this. Whatever negative mood I was in vanished. By squeezing myself down to the present moment as close as I could the mental formations were very jumpy and obvious to note. The jhanas didn't really appear and could barely start but that was okay. The concentration was enormous anyways. I could see how my mind was quickly (and quietly) moving into subtle thoughts on progress and analysis along with the usual interruptions. My eyes were open and some of my senses like vision and hearing were very clear. Any ear worms (which I get lots) vanished during this practice. To expand on the practice I started noting the aggregates I understand and I did this at a much slower pace. Just allowing the commentary to be there and to remind myself that the thoughts aren't a "me" which removes the stickiness of clinging.

With Tommy's suggestion I'll look into dependent origination in further detail and Greg Goode's Direct Path user guide which looks really meaty. emoticon
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 10/22/12 4:22 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 10/22/12 4:22 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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This current practice is changing already. I'm starting to get some fading with the letting go so some of the clarity is reducing. I remind myself wordlessly if what's happening is a "me" and the stickiness disappears. Also when adding the letting go I sometimes go up the jhanas but they don't last long because I don't lock into them. The letting go also creates a strange reaction with my eyes like they want to reverse with my skull and then a new jhana starts up and then fades.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 10/27/12 2:16 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 10/27/12 2:16 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I haven't been doing much meditation recently. I have lots of projects on the go. Reading The Direct Path by Greg Goode just keeps pointing back to the same consciousness that knows the senses and thinking. The clinging is going away more naturally. Watching Cloud Atlas just hammered in the point of interdependence and conceptual barriers but a movie only goes to the surface. Just the questioning of enlightenment and most phenomenal questions lead to that they are known. This creates a sense of wanting to abandon the questions (clinging). emoticon
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 11/12/12 10:30 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 11/12/12 10:29 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I'm still continuing with the above practice and just switching between methods when I need to. Basically I just let go of mental preoccupation over unimportant thoughts and relax in awareness. When I get caught up I remind myself whether being caught is a "self", which of course it isn't. I try to see how my sense of time decreases as I let go. I sometimes go back to noting but I don't do it out loud and often don't use subvocalization or pictures of words. As soon as I feel any clinging or squeezing I just let go and surrender. I also let go faster because during meditation the body likes to move lots and the senses and desire/aversion components quickly want to zoom in on something.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 11/14/12 7:57 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 11/14/12 7:57 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Yesterday for the first time I meditated all evening. There were other things I could do but I just didn't want to do anything. When my brain is not zooming on anything my facial and cranial muscles are relaxed with no object to focus on. It's just relief. I didn't even get any jhanas but that was just dandy.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 11/18/12 10:43 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 11/18/12 10:43 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Okay my practice is still refining. I find when I lose mindfulness it's not just the lack of letting go but also the lack of concentration and metta. I've separated them for too long. When I meld the three together like under the Vimalaramsi method it can seem to include great anger and other dark emotions and flip it on it's head. I don't feel guilt when there's anger. I just let go because there is always some task that needs to be done. It's so practical it should be used constantly. When clinging just pay attention to emptiness and the let go. After that one should concentrate on a task and if there is enough relief one should smile and develop some basic metta. I'm so thankful. emoticon I still use the Gendlin Focusing method here and there when I feel there's a some procrastination going on. The subtle bits of clinging are so deep. They are like brain imprints that are waiting to manifest when mindfulness and concentration end.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 11/19/12 11:02 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 11/19/12 10:55 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Well I've changed from what I was like only a few months ago. I've just tried a basic concentration practice and found it easy to follow the instructions but I can't seem to get beyond the 1st jhana and even when that happens it's very light and my chest feels yucky and irritated. My arms can feel this way as well. With mindfulness I find that I just don't need jhanas and this means any attempt at classical cessation will have to be let go of since it needs deep samadhi to fade the senses. Even this 1st jhana I cultivated today, the left overs of this is slightly unpleasant and even remind me of when I loved the 4th jhana but could tell that I wasn't benefiting from it as much as I should have. It feels like the opposite of letting go. I just want to let go further and make it the only practice. I just want to sit there and do nothing.

Yet paradoxally I feel better than I have before. Even when dealing with difficult people and their judgmentalness I can tolerate it better than before. My presence sometimes softens their stance when I just take the instructions or corrections and just get on with the work. I sometimes feel like giving up on work but I just let that thought go and by the end of the day I feel totally different as my learning at work continues. emoticon Much of my improvement comes from disidentifying from any experience as a self and letting go to the point where the zooming in of my craving and aversion functions retreats back into my skull like a turtle back into it's shell. It's like I'm getting on with the day but brow is relaxed and there's no object to leap towards. This allows me to create more dispassion that I can continue to develop. I still have some food cravings that I indulge in but when I'm sitting in the restaurant I feel like "what the fuck I'm I doing here? Enough already! All you can eat is stupid!" emoticon

My experience is telling me "fuck cessation" and "direct path all the way baby!" emoticon

I guess if I keep declinging from all experiences as "self" that's all that matters. Even questions like HAIETMOBA and "Who am I?" felt overly compounded sometime ago. Real concentration to me feels like thoughts have to be allowed in and any manipulation or solidfying is terrible. I'm also enjoying having normal sleep without jhana after affects keeping me awake.

I don't know if anyone has gone through this and feels this is bad practice or good practice. I would appreciate some feedback.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 11/21/12 8:01 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 11/21/12 8:01 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I think the last post is an example of enlightenment attachment. I really do need to let go of everything. There's going to be habit blowback and that's just a part of the ride.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 11/21/12 9:32 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 11/21/12 9:32 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I really tested my willpower on food today. I don't believe in low carb diets etc but just to have less snacks. Basically the craving hits on cue about an hour after dinner. It is often triggered by watching TV or just a sense of comfort. The craving arises and then it passes away and you feel like "great that's all I need to do." But then it comes back again and then it goes away, BUT THEN IT COMES BACK AGAIN and so on for hours. There's no special trick. One has to tolerate cravings until they become less strong. If anything. Food cravings will be a good test of letting go.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 11/22/12 8:06 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 11/22/12 8:06 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Okay that experiment worked well. I didn't cave and was perfectly okay. The cravings stopped and you just get on with some other task. I want to do this everyday.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 11/22/12 6:54 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 11/22/12 6:52 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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With a little help from The Direct Path from Greg Goode (Mind chapter) I got back to the "I AM" stage but this time it's more of a habit and less disassociative. It feels really good. I just basically brought the answers to the HAIETMOBA and "Who am I?" questions back but I didn't ask them. I just move to the answers. Throughout the day I found myself wanting to listen to people more and dig into the details without craving or aversion. The elation wasn't as big as in the past because it feels more normal and even more restful and nonchalant. I'm going to have to dig into this and keep being in my body and senses and letting go as the days go on. There's of course a tendency to attribute consciousness (the thing that stuff happens to that you can't detect :grinemoticon as a big self and I want to avoid pushing expectations on the "Self" to make arisings better. Choices/attention/mindstates are all known to the consciousness.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 11/24/12 1:08 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 11/24/12 1:07 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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How this "I AM" stage is helping me is when I have mental interruptions I already know it's not a self and let go. So when I do work or other activities those hindrances do arise but they fall off quickly and there is no need to assess anything or feel bad that it arose but just to continue on with whatever activities are going on. Much better result than trying to stop thoughts. Any analysis like I'm doing now with this post is treated the same way. It is not a thinker or analyzer. It's just thinking or analysis. Clinging isn't necessary. So many of these problems don't need to be solved or will be dealt with in the future so large mental plans don't have to be outlined here and now.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 12/10/12 6:43 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/10/12 6:38 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Richard Zen:
How this "I AM" stage is helping me is when I have mental interruptions I already know it's not a self and let go. So when I do work or other activities those hindrances do arise but they fall off quickly and there is no need to assess anything or feel bad that it arose but just to continue on with whatever activities are going on. Much better result than trying to stop thoughts. Any analysis like I'm doing now with this post is treated the same way. It is not a thinker or analyzer. It's just thinking or analysis. Clinging isn't necessary. So many of these problems don't need to be solved or will be dealt with in the future so large mental plans don't have to be outlined here and now.


I've gotten back to the above post today. It's getting easier. Just let the thoughts do what they do and don't stop them but don't cling to them. As it passes away there's a feeling that you're back to reality with quietude and basic vision, tactile sensations and sound and there's a corelessness that seems effortless. I think what Fitter Stroke said in another post is good. "What would an enlightened person do?" It's a good reminder to bring back mindfulness when it's lost.

I'm also being very aware of any sense of I and realizing I'm already clinging and need to let go.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 11/29/12 8:26 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 11/29/12 8:26 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Desire test: For the past few days I've eaten mainly fruits at lunch to improve my diet. The result was the usual cravings for fat and carbs. The feeling of desire has the way of taking you into thought bubbles and your body is already starting to move to the restaurant. Smells at work from other people's lunch pull you away again. By basically forcing myself to eat my lunch required some effort but once I got into it I felt full and perfecly okay because I wasn't bloated with greasy foods. I also brought a book along so I could get into something else.

Aversion test: Because I have to get up earlier to work my morning exercise routine got smashed to pieces. I forced myself to get back in the saddle by not using lack of time as an excuse. Even 20 min of exercise is better than nothing. I focussed on the aversion which appeared as cringing in the face and body. I relaxed it and continued noticing the exercise and tired feelings in the body change and move. In the end I can see how jhana factors are similar in mindfulness except it only took a few seconds to get rid of laziness and doubt. When trying to finish books that you have abandoned due to laziness. I also just stay with reading the words (no matter how slow) with no skipping until the story starts grabbing me again. It results in the same jhana factors. The speed of the reading starts increasing and you are in there again. If you finish a chapter and feel the laziness to start another one, you continue doing the same thing.

I'm going to focus on aversion now and add more aversive (but useful activities) to the day.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 12/2/12 7:44 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/2/12 7:44 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Exercise was fun this morning. I can see how something like exercise could be done without a self image or pride boosting. You have more energy to do work but it's more about the result. The ego doesn't get the reward but it's okay.emoticon Interesting...
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 12/7/12 8:22 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/7/12 8:22 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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The day before yesterday was great in that I could see myself disliking craving and aversion and letting go of both. It required constant mindfulness with an attitude of being ready for the next reaction. When the thought bubbles drop it's like it wasn't a self and then I can just enjoy the senses. Then yesterday it was more of the dark night and old habits returning. I'm really having trouble with aversion. I still like to stay comfortable in old habits even if it isn't the right thing.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 12/8/12 12:03 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/8/12 12:03 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Yes there is definitely a residual fear of what people think of me that is still quite strong despite the practice. It's improved a lot but I'm going to focus on noting it where possible. It's really limited my life for too long.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 12/9/12 2:19 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/9/12 2:19 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Currently facing the above fear and I had some dreams (I don't get them too often) that include being on small thin flat plateaus jutting out of a mountain and seeing some of them crumble killing some friends (faceless non-entities). Then the dream turned to my teeth reverting to before they were straightened.

Dream moods - places

To dream that you are standing at the edge of a cliff, indicates that you have reached an increased level of understanding, new awareness, and a fresh point of view. You have reached a critical point in your life and are afraid of losing control. Alternatively, it suggests that you are pondering a life-altering decision.

To dream that you or someone falls off a cliff, suggests that you are going through some difficult times and are afraid of what is ahead for you. You fear that you may not be up for the challenge or that you cannot meet the expectations of others.


To dream that your teeth has fallen out and you try to refit them back into the mouth signifies a lack of self-confidence and embarrassment. You are afraid that others will know of your short-comings. If you acted calmly in your dream, then it may point to how can make the best out of any situation. You are able to rise above unfavorable circumstances.


Thanks dreams...for stating the obvious. emoticon
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 12/19/12 10:34 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/19/12 10:34 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Okay after an unexpected flu (despite getting the flu shot) I've gotten back at it. As per usual my practice is mainly a daily life version of Shikatanza. To deal with the above fear I was feeling I continued to not worry about it and just let it go. I've noticed that by just dropping all thoughts during these fear moments (what do people think of me, etc?) the hum of sounds, present moment visuals, and skin sensations put the lie to mental notions. It's also VERY helpful to do this when there is aversion. Just to not analyze it at all. To do this almost to the point of being just an animal curiously moving forward. If I don't feel like taking out the trash in the cold or do that extra errand I just let go ALL thoughts and don't add to them when they stop and just carry on with it. The experience is never as bad as the thoughts make them out to be. Just checking in with experience when I'm really lost in a "self" is enough to pop me out of it and the mild suffering drops.

It's really hard to gauge my practice at this point but I feel like I'm becoming more normal but at the same time, old frustrations and angry memories seem to have less hold than ever before. Sometimes I'm lost in thoughts but any anger has so little heat to it. Any doubts are just doubting thoughts and any questions of enlightenment are just more questions. Daily life goals are more in the forefront now.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 12/24/12 8:17 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/24/12 8:17 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I decided to try some noting for a couple of hours. It got to the point that when anger on thinking about the past or possible future could just be noted and let go of. The relief is paying attention to the senses. I think I went into the first jhana but I didn't add anything to it. The more mindfulness and concentration the more the mental assertions and possible scenarios seem ridiculous and neurotic.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 12/26/12 9:47 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/26/12 9:47 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Nice reminder of the three characteristics:

3 Characteristics Guided Meditation
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 12/30/12 12:04 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/30/12 12:03 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I'm reading Namkhai Norbu's Cycle of Day and night and it's helping my Shikatanza practice greatly. With Rigpa I feel I'm tampering with thoughts not at all. I just let them drop and enjoy the presence. When I look at a commercial with an interesting useless product I just let it go and look at the senses as reality and the thoughts as illusion and also not a self. The seeing without a seer (etc) is becoming more possible. It's easier to distinguish thinking based on likes and dislikes versus straight thinking. One doesn't have to prevent likes or dislikes but just understand them based on the 3 characteristics. Also practice related thoughts can be treated the same way.

(27) As for progressing in the practice (which is the third topic to be considered): in an uncorrected, spontaneously selfperfected state, this initial instantaneous awareness remains present and unmodified. It is a nondiscursive pure presence which is lucid and vivid. Thus our continuity of awareness remains stable and undistracted. (28) While continuing in a period of contemplation, neither influenced by drowsiness nor by agitation, everything manifests itself as emptiness, which is the real condition of existence. Then, after having concluded a period of contemplation, without being conditioned by thoughts, we should continue in the state of the nature of mind, just as it is in itself.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 1/3/13 8:12 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 1/3/13 8:12 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Okay I finished the book and am applying it. It's a great manual that focusses on that extra subtlety needed to liberate. In some ways it's like noting except without labels but in other senses it points you right where you need to go. The book helps me understand what Nikolai has been talking about on his site. When I wake up I try to let go into apperception (if this is the right term). I have some anger I have been dealing with and this basic practice has helped me let go of it faster and for the first time the sense of self with the anger is weakening. It's again the focus of just being aware of the reality in the senses and doubting the reality of the imagination but also feeling zero guilt for getting lost in thoughts. It's easier to let go this way. I still need to make dependent origination a project for deeper study because what I've read on forums and some books I have is not doing it for me.
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Nikolai , modified 11 Years ago at 1/3/13 9:25 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 1/3/13 9:25 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Richard Zen:
Okay I finished the book and am applying it. It's a great manual that focusses on that extra subtlety needed to liberate. In some ways it's like noting except without labels but in other senses it points you right where you need to go. The book helps me understand what Nikolai has been talking about on his site. When I wake up I try to let go into apperception (if this is the right term). I have some anger I have been dealing with and this basic practice has helped me let go of it faster and for the first time the sense of self with the anger is weakening. It's again the focus of just being aware of the reality in the senses and doubting the reality of the imagination but also feeling zero guilt for getting lost in thoughts. It's easier to let go this way. I still need to make dependent origination a project for deeper study because what I've read on forums and some books I have is not doing it for me.


Best not to equate it to what richard calls apperception. I will eventually get round to updating or deleting past opinions, but if you are interested in apperception/pce as defined by the aft and richard, best to go to the source for instruction.


http://actualfreedom.com.au/richard/articles/thismomentofbeingalive.htm


Best to stick to one or the other and use the advertised approaches rather than try and see them as the same thing. Waste of time in my experience. Though whatever works for ya.

My current subject to change 2cents
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 1/3/13 11:18 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 1/3/13 11:18 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I guess I'm thinking more of the Great Perfection. What you said about not zooming in certainly helps with letting go. A perfect example would be riding a bus and not getting caught in tons of interests and just letting the senses be. Relaxing your facial muscles and body muscles is a reminder of how quick the tension appears. Of course with practice it's easier now than when I started trying it.

It is easy mixing up terms and I can see what Ian And means by getting things from the horses mouth. I think the dabbling is necessary for beginners and at some point you pick a focus.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 1/3/13 11:21 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 1/3/13 11:21 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Double post
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 1/6/13 11:22 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 1/6/13 11:21 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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The Cycle of Day and Night has a good quote I think is quite helpful:

It is important to understand what we mean by not being distracted' in the Dzogchen teaching. It does not involve a mental policeman who keeps coming up inside one, saying, 'Pay attention!'


This helps by allowing the mind to wander but when the mind understands that it's wandered off you're already back. No need to fabricate a "pay attention" meme. Just keep looking at the 3 characteristics and let go.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 1/8/13 10:46 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 1/8/13 10:46 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I'm starting to clear up my sense of "I". Ironically with Dzogchen practice, the subtlety of awareness makes it easier to drop it quickly, but has now tempted me with renewed noting practice. Nick's post on the Khemaka Sutta is just what I need. With letting the sense of self arise and pass away I was still looking for no-self (which doesn't make any sense) and manipulating my experience to suss out insight. By using the basic noting "urge", "aversion", "desire" I could start breaking down what feels like the self. What surprised me was that some of the feelings of self often didn't have a self involved. For example I would see a person flashed in a mental projection and it wasn't me or anyone I knew. Other times it was obviously vedana related things like desire or aversion. Sometimes that desire or aversion would be covered up by quick mental stories, scenarios and especially rehearsing to protect the self in future conversations that might never happen. By zeroing in on the self and breaking it down I could see that sweeping around like spotlight with intention on finding a self that vibrates has it's downside. The mere search or intention to pay attention could solidify a self due to aversion or desire related to insight outcomes. By doing this practice I could tell I still needed concentration because it took quite a bit to keep at it and the third eye pressure would come up again. I was probably going up the nanas but without that interest I had in the past. In truth I feel better than I did when I was playing with equanimity of formations and thought it was so fantastic.

By also reading some more of Strength to Awaken by Rob McNamara and his insight into how the ego wants to keep you in the comfort zone I can now see how to break that. By finding something aversive (exercise:grinemoticon I can keep the noting from the meditation session and bring it out during the day. Basically if the ego doesn't want to do something but you are noting anything that feels like a self and you let the desire or aversion pass away on it's own the relief is enough for you to get on the wagon again as long as you are paying attention to details of what's going on. During exercise you just keep attention on the details of the burn and pain like an interested scientist as opposed to an ego that just wants comfort. I remember what exercise used to be with lots of highs and crashes with pride falling. It ruins the experience yet if I tune into exercise as it is and less as a goal oriented thing where I imagine a fitter self in futuristic projections, the mental stress is far less.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 1/13/13 2:10 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 1/13/13 2:10 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I'm in the middle of The Direct Path of Realization by Analayo and mulling some helpful quotes:

Clearly, for the Buddha the mere absence of concepts does not constitute the final goal of meditation practice. Concepts are not the problem, the problem is how concepts are used. An arahant still employs concepts, yet without being bound by them.


[Labels] should be kept to an absolute minimum, only "to the extent necessary for bare knowledge and continuous mindfulness". Labelling is not an end in itself, only a means to an end. Once knowledge and awareness are well established, labelling can be dispensed with.


...sati operates in combination with clearly knowing. The same presence of knowledge also underlies the expression "he knows", which occurs frequently in the individual satipatthana contemplations. Thus to "know", or to contemplate "clearly knowing", can be taken to represent the conceptual input needed for taking clear cognizance of the observed phenomena, based on mindful observation.


This re-cognizing aspect inherent in the quality of clearly knowing or in the expression "he knows" can be further developed and strengthened through the practice of mental noting. It is this "knowing" quality of the mind that brings about understanding.


The fact that [noting] undertaken in ths manner has the sole purpose of enhancing mindfulness and understanding points to an important shift away from goal-oriented practice. At this comparitively advanced stage, satipatthana is practised for it's own sake. The practice...becomes an "effortless effort", divested of goal-orientation and expectation.


...the arising of consciousness "in dependence" on sense organ and sense object, with contact being the coming "together" of the three...Thus realization of dependent co-arising can take place simply by witnessing the operation of conditionality in the present moment, within one's own subjective experience.


Volition itself is under the influence of other conditions such as one's habits, character traits, and past experiences, which influence the way one experiences a particular situation. Nevertheless, in as much as each volition involves a decision between alternatives, one's volitional decision in the present moment is to a considerable degree amenable to personal intervention and control. Each decision in turn shapes the habits, character traits, experiences, and perceputal mechanisms that form the context of future decisions. It is precisely for this reason that systematic training of the mind is imperative.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 1/15/13 11:28 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 1/15/13 11:26 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Had a good exercise this morning. The complacency stops when I stop thinking about complacency and stop thinking about results. emoticon

I have been mulling throughout the day on how dependent my consciousness is to objects and sense perceptions. It's still sinking in as I plow through my Great discourse on causation book.

I continued my meditation tonight (2 hours) and decided to merge Rigpa with noting but without labels. I guess this would be like bare attention with noting. I started hitting jhanas again (I haven't done this since last summer) and didn't feel the nausea or extreme boredom as I have recently. I shot up to the 3rd jhana with noting and slammed hard into the 4th jhana. I saw strong circular colourful objects like Christmas ornaments in front of me (pretty interesting and useless)emoticon. The noting wasn't entirely consistent but it didn't stop for too long either. I never really got lost in absorption. In the 4th jhana my clarity of senses was all pervasive. Quiet mind and clear senses. This seems to be a wall for me as vibrations thin out and are hard to penetrate but I did manage to let go more than I have before. As soon as stories appeared regarding enlightenment or any neurotic analysis I started labeling again and more importantly LETTING GO!emoticon Noting to me is just more of reminding the mind "Do I KNOW what is happening now?" I started feeling better and got more out of this equanimity. Chasing desires and stories about enlightenment is annoying. LOL! What I also noted is disatisfaction with my mastery of thoughts. The thinking part of my mind doesn't seem as mastered as all other phenomena. The sense of self is still tied to thoughts and I can tell I haven't had any experiences like others have had where the self is just gone. I also need to revisit labeling different thought forms as Fella describes in my older posts. Just break it down. My next goal is to do just that when I get to equanimity. I may have to go beyond 2 hours though.

Still I'm pretty happy.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 1/17/13 8:24 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 1/17/13 8:24 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I only managed 2 hours again this sit. I focused on thought formations and also the sense of "I" as it manifested. I was probably in the 2nd jhana most of the sit but the clarity was good. I remembered earlier posts from Tommy M and a talk by Andrea Fella in this thread and just noted how the thoughts appeared and the sense of "I". The sense of "I" seems to appear only when lost in stories and especially about likes and dislikes. The fact that all this happens and is known by consciousness means there can't be two selves (consciousness and thinking). The feeling of separation is the difficult knot to untie because I think it's based on not letting go enough. Clinging seems to be the sense of self, therefore this clinging is repeatedly going on even when I don't think it is. Treating it like just another sensation is something I'll have to continually work on all day to make it sink in. "One sensation cannot sense another". Taking a shower this morning I was annoyed with mental stories and I just let go and took in all the details of the water on my skin and sounds and still keep letting go. Now I know why this sense of self feels permanent. It's because in weak concentration it keeps coming back like a bad horror movie ending. emoticon
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 1/19/13 12:19 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 1/19/13 12:15 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I had a strange 3 hour sit yesterday. I continued noting without labels (though I did some where it felt necessary) and I just stayed noticing the 3 characteristics during thinking and anything else. I would get lost in thoughts but come back with no jolt or analysis and the relief was a little better than what I'm used to. I didn't even go into a jhana of any kind I could tell. The only difference is the noting I'm doing I'm emphasizing the consciousness knowing aspect of each experience.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 1/20/13 7:29 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 1/20/13 7:15 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I did another 3 hour sit this morning. I went up through the jhanas I can do. I think touched on infinite space briefly but I'm still analyzing the 3Cs too much to absorb in them. By letting the thoughts go without fanfare or manipulation I'm starting to enjoy noting with only occasional labels. By sticking with my consciousness (knowing) as the guide I can see the small bits of striving and chasing that intensive labeling might conceal. The attempts to do MORE than just note are seen. By reminding myself of Bhante Gunaratana's instructions to be aware of when hinderances aren't present helps you to enjoy what can be ignored right now. He seems to concur that likes and dislikes are where the strength of the sense of self is from, so I could extrapolate that letting go is the only way to shrink interruptions. I still get lost in thoughts but it's less often. I also have more appreciation for concentration practice and how it supports good mind states. There is also a sense of wanting to let go of everything and just be like this.

Just keep going.

EDIT: I'm also keeping in mind not to make Dzogchen practice into a concentration practice. The impermanence has to be looked at.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 1/23/13 11:12 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 1/23/13 11:12 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Throughout the day I'm feeling good even when I normally should be frustrated (work related). By depersonalizing reactive thoughts it's like I'm "doing" even less. emoticon When I get caught up in thoughts and then turn to it as a sensation and watch it pass away it's like not-self. emoticon

I agree with Jake. Live life fully engaged.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 1/28/13 8:13 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 1/28/13 8:12 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Finished Analayo's Direct Path to Realization. (Thanks Ian!) This book was helpful in pointing out the 7 factors of awakening with good descriptions. I found that joy was something I wasn't getting into as much. It was more about letting hindrances go but these factors are a lot like jhana factors as follows:

Mindfulness leading to investigation leading to energy leading to joy leading to relaxation leading to concentration leading to equanimity. The joy is in noting when hindrances aren't there. The concentration helps to keep them at bay and calm the mind. It was also interesting in that the Buddha mentions these factors as to why people can forget well remembered information and remember other information with less effort.

The investigation is of the 5 aggregates: Matter, cognition, feeling, volition, consciousness.

With practice in daily life I can feel how manipulated volition is by pleasant and unpleasant sensations so I can definitely understand that aggregate as not self. Cognition needs to be tested by observation to avoid misinterpretation. It happens quickly after the memory is used to compare experiences so it can label objects. It's definitely more about experience and habit than a "me". Matter is obvious to me. Feeling is definitely out of control for me if it's based on external objects I can't control. Internally the mind throws all kinds of thoughts that create unwanted feeling (no self again). The difficulty for me is consciousness. I know that consciouness relies on an object but other than knocking myself out with cessation I'm not sure what a direct path version of experiencing impermanace of consciousness would be. Do I have to get into the ring with a boxer and get beaten unconscious? emoticon

My recent practice was pretty intense. I quickly moved up and down jhanas 1 to 4 and felt the letting go more deeply but also in a more violating way (probably a good sign). I had the dream of going towards a suffocating void. Hahahah! Resistance.emoticon
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 1/29/13 8:28 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 1/29/13 8:28 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Yesterday morning on the bus I kept thinking about consciousness and it made sense to me to see what is "mine" in consciousness and what is "mine" in senses and of course they just work on their own. Some more relief came just from attention to what can't be controlled with senses and consciousness. There was also a slight move to let go of senses when I did this but just briefly, kind of like a dry heave.

1 hour meditation yesterday: I made a resolution to do as little as possible and to not even "let go" as Daniel would say in MCTB. The letting go happens on it's own, just get out of the way. Whatever emotions (positive or negative) I would just watch arise and pass away and it was like everything was just happening on it's own and it didn't matter what arose. Such a relief. The thought sensations that created any emotion just came and went like waves and any normal blocking of these experiences with analysis was not used so the experience was smooth instead of bumpy.

God it seems so good but it seems so far from being like this all the time.emoticon
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 2/2/13 11:09 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 2/2/13 11:09 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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1 1/2 hour meditation: Really sticking with the same practice as last time. Just see things as they are and when daydreams start just note them and watch them go and continue looking at the 3 Cs. This was a more painful result and I relaxed my facial muscles as the 3rd eye was getting too tight. I noticed that whenever any big problem arose in my mind to interfere with the concentration the mind went through dissatisfaction. It's pretty clear when thinking about likes and dislikes that there's nothing that I can obsessively think about and get permanent satisfaction. Nothing satisfies permanently. Mental arguments (even good ones) can leave an annoying residue in the mind. It's important to look at core values and to pick your battles. There was definitely some more dark night symptoms, though I've seen them before and they pose less of a problem than they did the first time. I was mainly looking at the changes in the visual field with eyes closed and noticing hearing at the same time (this is getting easier) and I would ask the question when an obsessive thought arose: Is this going to permanently make me happy? Of course NO is the answer and the thought would drop and I was back paying attention to the senses. It's almost like the senses are irritating white noise to the clinging aspect of mind but when that aspect is let go of there is peace. I would crack a smile when that happened.

Towards the end of the practice I started looking more at the aggregates (especially consciousness) and really trying to find a self in any of it. I can start to see the mind imputing a self onto vision yet vision by itself is just vision. I can see how this practice is helpful in that when you don't find a self it's a little bit of a realization but at the same time fleeting so repetition is necessary. My next practice will be to look for self in 5 aggregates with more detail.

1. Is this aggregate a self?
2. Does the self own this aggregate?
3. Is this aggregate inside a self?
4. Is the self inside the aggregate?


5 aggregates x 4 types of attachments = 20 forms of attachment (no wonder it's so hard).emoticon
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 2/3/13 10:54 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 2/3/13 10:54 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Continued this morning with investigation of aggregates. I looked at consciousness. It is definitely in need objects to be conscious of. By looking at all my senses I asked:

1. Is this aggregate a self?
2. Does the self own this aggregate?
3. Is this aggregate inside a self?
4. Is the self inside the aggregate?

The only answer I get is sensing. No self. The result of that is it plunges you right into the senses and going up jhanas seemed faster. Because consciousness is intertwined with perception it's easier to see how nama-rupa is dependent on consciousness and consciousness needs something to be conscious about. This is really reminiscent of Heidgger's "Being-in-the-world" concept (except hundreds of years before him emoticon ).

Being-in-the-world

Being-in-the-world is Heidegger's replacement for terms such as subject, object, consciousness, and world. For him, the split of things into subject/object, as we find in the Western tradition and even in our language, must be overcome, as is indicated by the root structure of Husserl and Brentano's concept of intentionality, i.e., that all consciousness is consciousness of something, that there is no consciousness, as such, cut off from an object (be it the matter of a thought, or of a perception). Nor are there objects without some consciousness beholding or being involved with them.emoticon

At the most basic level of being-in-the-world, Heidegger notes that there is always a mood, a mood that "assails us" in our unreflecting devotion to the world. A mood comes neither from the "outside" nor from the "inside," but arises from being-in-the-world. One may turn away from a mood, but that is only to another mood; it is part of our facticity.emoticon Only with a mood are we permitted to encounter things in the world. Dasein (a co-term for being-in-the-world) has an openness to the world that is constituted by the attunement of a mood or state of mind. As such, Dasein is a "thrown" "projection" (geworfen Entwurf), projecting itself onto the possibilities that lie before it or may be hidden, and interpreting and understanding the world in terms of possibilities. Such projecting has nothing to do with comporting oneself toward a plan that has been thought out. It is not a plan, since Dasein has, as Dasein, already projected itself. Dasein always understands itself in terms of possibilities. As projecting, the understanding of Dasein is its possibilities as possibilities. One can take up the possibilities of "The They" self and merely follow along or make some more authentic understanding. (See Hubert Dreyfus' book Being-in-the-World.)


Unfortunately there are some hindrances with other aggregates so I'll look into those next.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 2/4/13 10:43 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 2/4/13 10:41 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I was going through dukkha nanas (probably desire for deliverance) all this morning. Really shitty. It affected my work and memory and it felt like nothing satisfies. By the end of the day I felt better, go figure (anicca). I continued looking at thoughts and again the answer is shimmering senses and thoughts that naturally lose centre stage. On a more personal note I find that sexual stimulation is more like a choice now and much easier to control. Some women at work are SO enticing and until recently it was easy to get caught up in sexual papanca (mental proliferation). It was a perfect example of craving tying consciousness and object together. I walk past this woman and she's got PERFECT skin! Beautiful raven hair! My neck turned instantly like I discovered a long thought extinct species. She looked at me like this has happened to her 50 times a day.emoticon You just let go and get on with your life. It's pretty simple. If you think about something enjoyable or something fearful both craving and aversion increase intensity. I think what did it for me was disatisfaction in the lack of thinking about a more wholesome (I don't know if it's a good word) form of love. Just simply noting lust with total acceptance that it's there can prevent it from escalating. Also some of the really attractive women are so attuned to their attractiveness that their conceit ruins it. Attractive people don't have to be nice and are often imbeciles so all they have to do is say something totally stupid or politically correct to shatter the illusion.emoticon Also the fear of letting go of sexual arousal and turning impotent is just superstition. All I have to do is think....and it's back.emoticon Whoops there goes the mental clarity.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 2/6/13 7:37 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 2/6/13 7:35 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I felt coreless today. Really smooth experience. It's easy to see how a good portion of thoughts can be let go of. Looking at thoughts as "Is that a me?" helps loosen the clinging grip.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 2/8/13 6:44 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 2/8/13 6:43 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Today was interesting. Just paying attention to everything at once and life looks like a hologram including thoughts. The feeling of the continuity of mindfulness was delicious and has that similar thawing of tension I had when I first got equanimity.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 2/24/13 9:41 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 2/24/13 9:41 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I've been going through a big move recently and practice has suffered somewhat from it. I'm also getting into the samsara of the dating world. It's already throwing me for a loop. Some women are so smart and attractive I don't want to let them down. I always feel like I need more money and more status. Stuff like this will probably always test me. I've gotten some massive dark night symptoms where I want to crawl into bed and just die. As soon as I start noting everything I get better. It's seesawing back and forth. I just feel like shit part of the day and then feel better later on wondering why the fuss. Each time it happens though I feel the need to note what's happening in my senses and I'm being convinced that noting in intervals is more useful to me in reducing stress.

Most importantly: Once an emotional mood catches hold it takes a longer period of noting to reduce clinging.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 2/25/13 8:19 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 2/25/13 8:19 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I got much better results with consistent noting today. Even small reminders like "did I notice that?" or "did I truly see that?" for thoughts and senses can bring you back to reality. Noting thoughts is getting easier. It's like I'm okay being how I am and noting is just impassively seeing what that is. No more no less. Relief.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 2/27/13 6:28 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 2/27/13 6:28 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Something seems to be changing in me. As I note I find basically every daydream to be some small form of torture. The brain is naturally inclining to bare attention to the senses. There are times when noting thoughts there seems to be a flattening and tightness in the location of the self in the back of the head and it then disappears. Noting throughout the day seems to be weakening anger in a major way and it needs this acknowledgement of what's here. "Yes that's here." Self-pity and mild irritation are now noted with ease and even thinking about the practice doesn't cause pain either. It's like the brain just wants to get back to what's happening now even if it's mundane. The big test is when there's a big issue but otherwise it's okay.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 3/2/13 11:02 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 3/2/13 10:58 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I tried noting while listening to some exquisite classical music (Bach Gamba Sonatas - Casals) and the experience was extremely relaxing. When the mind wants to wander onto different topics the consistent noting keeps you on track. I haven't fallen in love with noting like I am now. emoticon Every note needs a dose of acceptance of what is to really soften negative mindstates. Noting while talking about the practice in my mind or just thinking about practice is like a reinforcement that demolishes doubt.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 3/11/13 6:36 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 3/10/13 12:58 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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My latest meditation has been very different. By focusing on sanna and seeing how the mind Recognizes things I can zero in on suffering more accurately. It's like I don't do much with the meditation except pay attention to what's happening and just sit there and when stress comes in it's because of some memory of something good or bad and I can see how there's not enough wisdom and I have to deliberately think of the 3 Characteristics and it let's go on it's own. There's also an understanding now that I should be purposely seeing what causes stress for me and start seeing the obsession over details and how more detailed you go the more stress is created.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 3/11/13 6:40 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 3/11/13 6:40 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Today was very light and blissful. Because I'm looking at perception/recognition I'm seeing stress start up and I'm able to let go of it before it gets full blown. Instead of paying attention to the body everything is normal like I'm not meditating and I'm not in any state. I just notice stress and start looking at what perception caused it. It's like diffusing a bomb before it goes off. Very cool.
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Ian And, modified 11 Years ago at 3/11/13 7:15 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 3/11/13 7:15 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Richard Zen:
I just notice stress and start looking at what perception caused it. It's like diffusing a bomb before it goes off. Very cool.

Very cool, indeed! Way to go, Richard.

Richard Zen:
Because I'm looking at perception/recognition I'm seeing stress start up and I'm able to let go of it before it gets full blown.

Are you able to see how your affective response (vedana) plays a part in helping you to recognize the stress? Especially if it is unpleasant vedana. If so, then you're seeing more and more of the mental process (dependent co-arising).
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 3/11/13 7:55 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 3/11/13 7:53 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Ian And:
Richard Zen:
I just notice stress and start looking at what perception caused it. It's like diffusing a bomb before it goes off. Very cool.

Very cool, indeed! Way to go, Richard.

Richard Zen:
Because I'm looking at perception/recognition I'm seeing stress start up and I'm able to let go of it before it gets full blown.

Are you able to see how your affective response (vedana) plays a part in helping you to recognize the stress? Especially if it is unpleasant vedana. If so, then you're seeing more and more of the mental process (dependent co-arising).


Yes vedena is something I didn't see too well before because of how fast it is. It's REALLY fast! In the past it would be feeling tone and then action right away. emoticon Willpower was dominated by feeling tone. What I found with noting is that my willpower is heavily affected by feeling tone, however I realized that accepting the feeling tone with noting I can see it pass away. I knew I was starting to get somewhere when I could do the same thing with lust. It feels more like a choice. I could also note disatisfaction with practice or just about anything. I understand now what Shinzen Young was talking about when he says to let go when there's stress but knowing that perception colours feeling tone and how perception is also heavily affected by memories of past experiences I can look at the reductionist and simplistic labeling of perception and how narrow it is.

What I felt today was a different kind of freedom. It was like I was getting closer to being "done" like the meditation may seem too ritualistic and isn't needed as much but I want to just use this freedom to act in a more conscious way, if that makes any sense. Lightness and normality at the same time is what I didn't expect. The speed bumps are when the perception goes off but now I actually KNOW what's happening. emoticon It's not just something to let go of but something to understand. I sometimes laugh when a speed bump happens. Even when I write this there is some tension to grasp at the practice but it's just another perception that can be seen.

I'll just keep looking at the aggregates and steady myself kind of like walking a tight rope wire. "Oh here comes some more stress. What perception happened before it?" I think noting feeling tone more consistently is the next step. Noting thoughts and treating them like sensations was very helpful.
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PP, modified 11 Years ago at 3/13/13 7:56 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 3/13/13 7:56 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Richard Zen:
Yes vedena is something I didn't see too well before because of how fast it is. It's REALLY fast! In the past it would be feeling tone and then action right away. emoticon Willpower was dominated by feeling tone. What I found with noting is that my willpower is heavily affected by feeling tone, however I realized that accepting the feeling tone with noting I can see it pass away.

I think noting feeling tone more consistently is the next step. Noting thoughts and treating them like sensations was very helpful.



That's my practice nowadays. Noting only body sensations for the first 10-15 minutes, and the switch to note feeling-tones only, while noticing the body sensations and thoughts. By noting endlessly feeling-tones, not only I see body sensations and thoughts arise and pass away, but also triggering (pre) jhana. I noticed aversion whenever I feel solidity of body sensations or stream of thoughts. My mind wants a break! (The thing I don't get is that this is like the opposite of steadiness of jhanas). And when noting attraction to the body sensation, I noticed unpleasant sensations at the periphery.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 3/14/13 6:33 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 3/14/13 6:33 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Pablo . P:
Richard Zen:
Yes vedena is something I didn't see too well before because of how fast it is. It's REALLY fast! In the past it would be feeling tone and then action right away. emoticon Willpower was dominated by feeling tone. What I found with noting is that my willpower is heavily affected by feeling tone, however I realized that accepting the feeling tone with noting I can see it pass away.

I think noting feeling tone more consistently is the next step. Noting thoughts and treating them like sensations was very helpful.



That's my practice nowadays. Noting only body sensations for the first 10-15 minutes, and the switch to note feeling-tones only, while noticing the body sensations and thoughts. By noting endlessly feeling-tones, not only I see body sensations and thoughts arise and pass away, but also triggering (pre) jhana. I noticed aversion whenever I feel solidity of body sensations or stream of thoughts. My mind wants a break! (The thing I don't get is that this is like the opposite of steadiness of jhanas). And when noting attraction to the body sensation, I noticed unpleasant sensations at the periphery.


I think feeling tone will be a tough nut to crack. How do you get disenchanted with pleasant and painful feeling tones? More withdrawal symptoms on the horizon I'm sure. emoticon
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PP, modified 11 Years ago at 3/15/13 9:30 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 3/15/13 9:27 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Richard Zen:
I think feeling tone will be a tough nut to crack. How do you get disenchanted with pleasant and painful feeling tones? More withdrawal symptoms on the horizon I'm sure. emoticon


Quick answer: you cannot get disenchanted pointing at them BUT you do get disenchanted by pairs (feeling-tones + body sensations, or feeling-tones + thoughts) or triplets (feeling-tones + body sensations + thoughts). Those two drag the feeling-tone away, its a co-dependent arising & passing.

Later today I'll try to explain in a one or two paragraphs the method I "discovered".
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PP, modified 11 Years ago at 3/15/13 4:05 PM
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RE: Richard's insight practice

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I don't try to get disenchanted from feeling-tones right away, but indirectly. First I let my mind to be full on body sensations, say 10 to 20 minutes noting them only. Out-loud or whispered, as needed. Then I switch to note feeling-tones only. As my mind have already been focusing in body sensations, both of them will appear together (arise co-dependently). Sort of a Yin-Yang thing. Before, when I focus in a particular body sensation noting it repeatedly, it loses solidity and starts to vibrate, sometimes fading others with bigger gaps in the wave. When I note repeatedly a feeling-tone, it happens the same as with body sensations. So, they arise together and pass together as well.

As body sensations are on the background, noticed but not noted, you/I need to be aware of this background thing in order to see it. Otherwise, it just happens and you/I don't know why.

This same thing happens with thoughts. In my case, thoughts arise when doing the feeling-tone/body-sensation noting. These thoughts are not complex (planning, remembering, fantasizing, etc) but simple (a word, a short sentence, a non-sense string of syllables that are form by coping outside sounds, etc). It's easy to see them as not-self, they are just phenomena, like body sensations in some way. And when something is seen as unpleasant & not-self, it passes away too.

As you may see, the 3C's are at display, by pairs. And the funny thing is that when you connect two of them, the third is implied ( as Daniel wrote in MCTB ). I like to think of feeling-tones as the pivot which connect them three. (*)

How that third Characteristic happen, I can't say. I'm still exploring it. But what I found so far is that when noting feeling-tones repeatedly, there's a "seeing" or "hearing" that must be acknowledge. When this happens, the body sensation + feeling-tone, or thought + feeling-tone just vanished. This may be is reinforcing the body-sensation noting, or reinforcing the not-self noting, what is applicable.

What do you think?


(*) So far, I have nothing to say about mental-states. Perhaps, this may come later in High Equanimity, when noting is sparse, and there's room enough for them to show up. I'm not there yet.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 3/16/13 11:03 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 3/16/13 10:57 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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To be perfectly honest I'm still enjoying paying attention to sanna which has recently improved my standard of living to the point of mass gratitude. It's like equanimity without meditation. That Boisvert book is highly recommended. As Ian And points out it's vedana (especially negative vedana) that pushes you to bad sanna (recognition) then obsessive thoughts (papanca). Like Boisvert says recognition recognizes details of an object like color or other properties but it also recognizes "this is worth craving", and "this is worth hating". LOL! Looking at the 3 Cs to correct distorted or reductionist recognition is just that and you can't rush the dispassion because it comes eventually. His description of panna is similar to how the Dalai Lama queries perception. He wants you to see if you noticed what is unpleasant in what is superficially pleasant and what is pleasant in what is superfcially unpleasant. It's seems simple but it's hard because we avoid doing this to our favorite things.

I'm probably going to keep it simple for now but yes the co-dependent arising of things will probably become more apparent as I go along since there always is a feeling tone happening at all times. I'll use this for now:


Vedana

A) One dwells observing the phenomenon of arising.
B ) One dwells observing the phenomenon of passing away.
C) One dwells observing the phenomenon of arising-and-passing-away.



Unless these three levels of anicca are experienced, we will not develop panna (wisdom) - the equanimity based on the experience of impermanence - which leads to detachment, to liberation. Therefore to establish awareness and for our observation to be total and holistic we have to develop (effortlessly-choicelessly) the constant thorough understanding of impermanence which in pali is known as sampajanna (Sampragyan in sanskrit or hindi)


Sampajanna has been often misunderstood. In the colloquial language of the day it also had the meaning of "knowingly." For example, the Buddha has spoken of sampajanamusa bhasita, (9) and sampajana musavada (10) which means "consciously, or knowingly, to speak falsely." This superficial meaning of the term is sufficient in an ordinary context. But whenever the Buddha speaks of Vipassana leading to purification, to nibbana, as here in the Mahasatipatthana Sutta, the sampajanna has a specific, technical significance.


To remain sampajano (the adjective form of sampajanna) , one must meditate on the arising and passing away of phenomena (anicca-bodha), objectively observing mind-matter without reaction. The realization of samudaya-vaya-Dhamma (impermanence) cannot be by contemplation, which is merely a process of thinking, or by imagination or even by believing; it must be performed with paccanubhoti. (11) (direct experience), which is yathabhuta-nana-dassana (experiential knowledge of the reality as it is) (12). Here the observation of vedana plays its vital role, because with vedana a meditator very clearly and tangibly realizes samudaya-vaya (arising and passing away). Sampajanna, in fact, is directly perceiving the arising and passing away of vedana, wherein all four facets of our being are included.


It is for this reason that the three essential qualities - to remain atapi (ardent), sampajano, and satima (aware) - are invariably repeated for each of the four satipatthanas. And as the Buddha explained, sampajanna is observing the arising and passing away of vedana. (13) Hence the part played by vedana in the practice of satipatthana should not be ignored or this practice of satipatthana will not be complete.


My advice for you if you want to see "suffering" (I prefer to call it stress) then look at this site:

Dhamma Sukha - Anatta

"Clinging" yet another word with a variety of definitions that seem kind of unclear. Many teachers stress that we must let go of "clinging" [meaning to hold on to] because that is where our attachment is, and everyone knows we don't want to be attached. However, I found that the word "clinging" actually referred to all of the thoughts about why we like or dislike the "craving". So "clinging" is the thoughts about... or the mind that makes up the story about why we like or dislike the "craving".


As I began experimenting with this new/old form of meditation I began to see that every thought or feeling [no matter what kind of thought it was - wholesome or unwholesome] caused tightness to arise in my head, it was a subtle tightness that 20 years of "Vipassana" had never addressed or even noticed.
Seeing this I began to relax that tightness in my head and body as well. Then I began to see that even when there was no tightness in my body or head I could still relax even more.


When the "craving" arises in the mediator's head [as tension or tightness] it also arises in their mind [as tension or tightness], and this tightness is the subtle way our false idea in a "self" or "ego" arises. It is "the I like it or I don't like it mind"! Then the "clinging" mind arises full of thoughts about the like or dislike, but even that doesn't explain it very well. Let's go back to the 3 characteristics and change the definition of some words. Anicca - change... Dukkha - unsatisfactoriness... Anatta - the impersonal nature of whatever arises. The tightness or craving or the " I like it or I don't like it mind" has this idea that it is "mine" or "me". When the meditator lets go of this tightness, what happens in mind?

As with the letting go of any tension or tightness in body, it relaxes. Mind becomes open, as opposed to tight and closed, and body becomes loose and tranquilized. There is a feeling of expansion and openness. There is a very clear observation of the present moment and this is where mind is free from that personal belief that all of the thoughts, feelings and sensations that arise are ours. So the impersonal nature of all existence is seen for what it is, just a passing show or part of a process that isn't personal. The meditator doesn't ask for thoughts or feelings to arise, they arise by themselves, so it really is an impersonal process . What we do in the present moment dictates whether we suffer or not.


Hopefully that helps! The stress or tension you feel in the body or skull is based on clinging/thinking about likes or dislikes. It's hard to see because people are so conditioned to be used to it that when they get the different levels of relief from meditation practice it's like discovering a new planet because they've never experienced it before. Concentration states relive tension up to a point and vipassana (when done properly) can relive tension even further.

EDIT: Oh BTW if you want to note mind states a good experiment is to note moods throughout the day.
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PP, modified 11 Years ago at 3/16/13 2:46 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 3/16/13 2:44 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Richard Zen:
To be perfectly honest I'm still enjoying paying attention to sanna which has recently improved my standard of living to the point of mass gratitude. It's like equanimity without meditation. That Boisvert book is highly recommended. As Ian And points out it's vedana (especially negative vedana) that pushes you to bad sanna (recognition) then obsessive thoughts (papanca). Like Boisvert says recognition recognizes details of an object like color or other properties but it also recognizes "this is worth craving", and "this is worth hating". LOL! Looking at the 3 Cs to correct distorted or reductionist recognition is just that and you can't rush the dispassion because it comes eventually. His description of panna is similar to how the Dalai Lama queries perception. He wants you to see if you noticed what is unpleasant in what is superficially pleasant and what is pleasant in what is superfcially unpleasant. It's seems simple but it's hard because we avoid doing this to our favorite things.

I'm probably going to keep it simple for now but yes the co-dependent arising of things will probably become more apparent as I go along since there always is a feeling tone happening at all times.


Hey, thanks for your thoughtful response. I read a few pages of the Boisvert book, hopefully I'll have more time to read it when my move to another flat ends. I can relate my practice with what you wrote above. It's hard to know between superficial and deep layers of (un)-pleasantness. It's probably like tension in the jhanas progression. So far, I can only explore pleasantness in unpleasantness in the same level: center vs periphery.

Hopefully that helps! The stress or tension you feel in the body or skull is based on clinging/thinking about likes or dislikes. It's hard to see because people are so conditioned to be used to it that when they get the different levels of relief from meditation practice it's like discovering a new planet because they've never experienced it before. Concentration states relive tension up to a point and vipassana (when done properly) can relive tension even further.


Before starting with Mahasi Noting, I did 6 months of Bhante Vimalaramsi's 6Rs and Metta practice. I noticed the tension at the skull linked to thoughts, and found some relief of tensions. Nevertheless, this method with minimal pointers is not for me. I already come from a Taoist background were there's minimal references, and I hate it. Instead, the Four Foundation Noting I'm doing right know, let me easily be aware of the 3Cs and their co-dependence.


EDIT: Oh BTW if you want to note mind states a good experiment is to note moods throughout the day.


Yes, that's what I need to add! emoticon Also, I'm planning to do 10' noting rounds of body sensations, feeling-tones and thoughts in my daily activities.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 3/16/13 6:27 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 3/16/13 6:27 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Pablo . P:
Before starting with Mahasi Noting, I did 6 months of Bhante Vimalaramsi's 6Rs and Metta practice. I noticed the tension at the skull linked to thoughts, and found some relief of tensions. Nevertheless, this method with minimal pointers is not for me. I already come from a Taoist background were there's minimal references, and I hate it. Instead, the Four Foundation Noting I'm doing right know, let me easily be aware of the 3Cs and their co-dependence.


Then you know the suffering characteristic. If you're not attached to any aggregate while you're practicing then you're okay. That's why meditation when you're in daily life helps because a lot of the time you're okay when you sit and meditate but during life when you get hit with attachment and pain it's because we are on automatic pilot off the cushion. Practicing during daily life (especially during challenging times) can be like a radar for when suffering is likely to happen. As I pointed out before, noting moods during the day helps a lot but after awhile you want to see that perception/recognition before the mood even starts. emoticon

If you look at my earlier part of the thread I mixed it up with HAIETMOBA/Rigpa/Shikatanza to relieve the mechanical noting I was doing before because striving for concentration states or any state was just another form of pain I was ignoring. I came back to noting after that and started up concentration again because I wasn't addicted to it anymore so it could support me instead of being a false refuge. The period of just sitting non-dual with what was happening was still noting but without too much labelling covering up the actual experience. That's why I like the instruction make sure that what is looked at is really looked at and comprehended before I label it. Noting can be very mechanical. Sticking to the 4 foundations of mindfulness/3 characteristics/5 aggregates/7 factors of awakening should be sufficient, I hope! LOL!
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PP, modified 11 Years ago at 3/16/13 11:10 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 3/16/13 11:10 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Ha Ha! I hope so!! emoticon I'll read your early reports, it's interesting what you say because things are not straight forward, there are many things to be address before one can jump to stream-entry. And yes, noting can be mechanical sometimes, or even disturbing when done out-loud (my voice do like ripples in the body or are felt like harsh), so I have to periodically change how sensations are noted and which should I focus on.

Best!
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 3/20/13 9:45 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 3/20/13 9:45 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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1 hour feeling tone practice: It definitely feels like hitting close to home. It's also very ephemeral. It also can help with the dark night in my opinion. When getting dukkha nanas, noting feeling tone brings you back to which recognitions/perceptions/thoughts that get you off track. I'm going to be continuing this for quite a while.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 3/23/13 5:26 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 3/23/13 5:23 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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More feeling tone meditation 3 hours: Noted any discomfort in body and thoughts. Noted pleasant thoughts and sensations. Suffering disappears on its own as expected but understanding the perceptions that rest on feeling tone helps to keep the pleasant tones from running away with thoughts and the same for unpleasant thoughts. Watching feeling tones arise and pass away on their own without interruption is really important. Willpower is heavily affected by feeling tone when you're clinging to any of it. A good reminder that really illustrates no-self and the three characteristics:

Everything is an experience including meditation and thinking about meditation or thinking about anything or doing anything or craving anything or wanting to change anything on ad infinitum is just more ephemeral experiences.

Consistently reminding myself of this really hits home in an uncomfortable way. There is no self. It's as clear as it could possibly be. No self is not a thing it's the absence of finding something permanent let alone a permanent self. The search itself is empty of permanence and attachment to the search hurts as bad as any attachment. There is no searcher. It's just searching. Feeling a little discombobulated. Anatta is unsettling and freeing at the same time.

Questions for myself: "When I'm asking a question is it a questioner?" (Most likely it's anxiety.)

"Can I stop searching now?""Can I stop chasing my tail?" (Waves white flag)emoticon

I don't feel like doing anything, which means I'm not clinging.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 3/26/13 8:14 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 3/26/13 8:14 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Okay back to work. I paid attention to vedana throughout the evening and can see this is an area that noting with labels is not helping. It's preferrable for me to just watch it arise and pass away and just recognize that it's pleasant, neutral and unpleasant. It's also important to pay attention to how the skin feels because that's where most of the feeling tone is. The other senses seem to affect thought more and that goes back to sanna again which I've already looked at. When I started doing this I could see so many embryonic thoughts arise and pass away quickly because the recognition is so tied to the feeling tone.
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Ian And, modified 11 Years ago at 3/27/13 12:41 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 3/27/13 12:41 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 785 Join Date: 8/22/09 Recent Posts
Richard Zen:
Okay back to work. I paid attention to vedana throughout the evening and can see this is an area that noting with labels is not helping. . . .

The other senses seem to affect thought more and that goes back to sanna again which I've already looked at. When I started doing this I could see so many embryonic thoughts arise and pass away quickly because the recognition is so tied to the feeling tone.

Richard,

Has it not yet occurred to you to connect vedana and sanna up with paticca samuppada? To see how the impression of self arises in connection with feeling and perception according to various sense base consciousnesses? To be mindful of this process throughout the day in order to preempt any false views of self? Has the import of this not yet occurred to you? And how you can use this mindfulness to capture the beginnings of dukkha arising so that it can be stopped in its tracks before it has opportunity to bloom and blossom?

As in being aware (mindful) of the arising of body phenomena, feeling phenomena, mind state phenomena, and mind object phenomena in order to see these as they actually are?

In peace,
Ian
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 3/27/13 8:32 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 3/27/13 8:32 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Ian And:
Richard Zen:
Okay back to work. I paid attention to vedana throughout the evening and can see this is an area that noting with labels is not helping. . . .

The other senses seem to affect thought more and that goes back to sanna again which I've already looked at. When I started doing this I could see so many embryonic thoughts arise and pass away quickly because the recognition is so tied to the feeling tone.

Richard,

Has it not yet occurred to you to connect vedana and sanna up with paticca samuppada? To see how the impression of self arises in connection with feeling and perception according to various sense base consciousnesses? To be mindful of this process throughout the day in order to preempt any false views of self? Has the import of this not yet occurred to you? And how you can use this mindfulness to capture the beginnings of dukkha arising so that it can be stopped in its tracks before it has opportunity to bloom and blossom?

As in being aware (mindful) of the arising of body phenomena, feeling phenomena, mind state phenomena, and mind object phenomena in order to see these as they actually are?

In peace,
Ian


It has occurred to be me but I think I may need more concentration. The great discourses of causation says that you need all 8 jhanas. Daniel Ingram's mind map has fruition after the 8th jhana.

Even KFD points this out:

Meditating with a Kasina

I can access 4 jhanas but have never attained the immaterial jhanas. I'm a householder and have too many responsibilities to have long retreats so I do the next best which is meditating at home and daily mindfulness.

In your opinion should I cultivate all 8 jhanas and develop dispassion for them or is that not really necessary? I just need to cultivate dispassion for all five aggregates? Yet consciousness to be seen impermanent from understanding it's leaning on objects may need strong concentration to fade the senses enough so consciousness stops briefly (stream-entry?)?

Thanks for your input

Richard
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Ian And, modified 11 Years ago at 3/28/13 1:32 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 3/28/13 1:32 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 785 Join Date: 8/22/09 Recent Posts
Hi Richard,
Richard Zen:

It has occurred to be me but I think I may need more concentration. The great discourses of causation says that you need all 8 jhanas. Daniel Ingram's mind map has fruition after the 8th jhana.

Even KFD points this out:

Meditating with a Kasina

You may be right (for the approach you have in mind). Only you really know for sure. No one else can take that decision for you. (That is, if you gather what I mean by implication.)

Yet, who knows if the Mahanidana Sutta was an accurate portrayal of Gotama's instruction, or whether the compilers took some liberty and inserted the standard formula for jhana thinking, "Well, this is probably what the Buddha meant to say." Or whether it was inserted for ease of memorization's sake. (For clarification here, I'm just speculating about that comment, so don't take it too seriously.)

What I do know from my own direct experience is that even though I had attained the eight and then the ninth level of dhyana, that that wasn't necessarily the basis for the realization moments I experienced outside of meditation practice. Yes, I had accomplished all that, but it was during my reading and contemplation of Katukurunde Nanananda's book Concept and Reality that I experience some really useful breakthroughs. Realizations that helped me personally to see things that I had not seen before about how the mind works. In the end, that is really all a person can ask for of the teaching, in whatever manner it manifests itself.

What I was mainly referring to with regard to the reference to dependent co-arising was following the middle eight factors in one's experience of the twelve factored paticca samuppada in regard to any experience you may have. That means: consciousness makes > contact with one of the > six sense bases > and recognizes name and form > conditioning volitional formations > from which feeling arises > giving rise to craving > and clinging. Seeing the last four factors in this series provides one with the opportunity to develop dispassion toward them. Does that make any sense to you?

Richard Zen:

I can access 4 jhanas but have never attained the immaterial jhanas. I'm a householder and have too many responsibilities to have long retreats so I do the next best which is meditating at home and daily mindfulness.

In your opinion should I cultivate all 8 jhanas and develop dispassion for them or is that not really necessary?
I just need to cultivate dispassion for all five aggregates? Yet consciousness to be seen impermanent from understanding it's leaning on objects may need strong concentration to fade the senses enough so consciousness stops briefly (stream-entry?)?

My opinion (which may change; but as it stands right now...) is that what is very helpful, if not outright necessary, is at least the first four dhyanas and a good insight practice, whether or not that insight happens during meditation or outside of meditation (as in my case). On the other hand, what I gained from having experienced sanna-vedayita nirodha (or the cessation of perception and feeling) was the direct realization that the processes of mind really can be shut completely down. It was kind of a corroboration all its own. Although it was not a state that I wanted to enter very often. In other words, I didn't develop any clinging to it.

I somewhat agree with Ajahn Chah in the following quotation, which obviously is saying that developing the 8 dhyanas is not necessary for awakening. And to that extent, he may be correct. However, after awakening occurs, there is the problem of maintaining it through mindfulness, which dhyana attainment can help assist and condition the mind in cultivating an ongoing state of mindfulness.

"The renowned meditation master, Achaan Chah, was asked during a Questions and Answers Session: 'Is it necessary to be able to enter Absorption in our practice?'

"The Master replied: 'No, Absorption is not necessary. You must establish a modicum of tranquillity and one pointedness of mind. Then use this to examine yourself. Nothing special is needed. If Absorption comes in your practice this is OK. Just don't hold onto it. Some people get hung up with Absorption. It can be great fun to play with. You must know proper limits. If you are wise then you will know the uses and limitations of Absorption, just as you know the limitations of children versus grown men."
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 3/28/13 8:25 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 3/28/13 8:25 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Ian And:
Hi Richard,

Yet, who knows if the Mahanidana Sutta was an accurate portrayal of Gotama's instruction, or whether the compilers took some liberty and inserted the standard formula for jhana thinking, "Well, this is probably what the Buddha meant to say." Or whether it was inserted for ease of memorization's sake. (For clarification here, I'm just speculating about that comment, so don't take it too seriously.)

What I do know from my own direct experience is that even though I had attained the eight and then the ninth level of dhyana, that that wasn't necessarily the basis for the realization moments I experienced outside of meditation practice. Yes, I had accomplished all that, but it was during my reading and contemplation of Katukurunde Nanananda's book Concept and Reality that I experience some really useful breakthroughs. Realizations that helped me personally to see things that I had not seen before about how the mind works. In the end, that is really all a person can ask for of the teaching, in whatever manner it manifests itself.

What I was mainly referring to with regard to the reference to dependent co-arising was following the middle eight factors in one's experience of the twelve factored paticca samuppada in regard to any experience you may have. That means: consciousness makes > contact with one of the > six sense bases > and recognizes name and form > conditioning volitional formations > from which feeling arises > giving rise to craving > and clinging. Seeing the last four factors in this series provides one with the opportunity to develop dispassion toward them. Does that make any sense to you?

Richard Zen:

I can access 4 jhanas but have never attained the immaterial jhanas. I'm a householder and have too many responsibilities to have long retreats so I do the next best which is meditating at home and daily mindfulness.

In your opinion should I cultivate all 8 jhanas and develop dispassion for them or is that not really necessary?
I just need to cultivate dispassion for all five aggregates? Yet consciousness to be seen impermanent from understanding it's leaning on objects may need strong concentration to fade the senses enough so consciousness stops briefly (stream-entry?)?

My opinion (which may change; but as it stands right now...) is that what is very helpful, if not outright necessary, is at least the first four dhyanas and a good insight practice, whether or not that insight happens during meditation or outside of meditation (as in my case). On the other hand, what I gained from having experienced sanna-vedayita nirodha (or the cessation of perception and feeling) was the direct realization that the processes of mind really can be shut completely down. It was kind of a corroboration all its own. Although it was not a state that I wanted to enter very often. In other words, I didn't develop any clinging to it.

I somewhat agree with Ajahn Chah in the following quotation, which obviously is saying that developing the 8 dhyanas is not necessary for awakening. And to that extent, he may be correct. However, after awakening occurs, there is the problem of maintaining it through mindfulness, which dhyana attainment can help assist and condition the mind in cultivating an ongoing state of mindfulness.

"The renowned meditation master, Achaan Chah, was asked during a Questions and Answers Session: 'Is it necessary to be able to enter Absorption in our practice?'

"The Master replied: 'No, Absorption is not necessary. You must establish a modicum of tranquillity and one pointedness of mind. Then use this to examine yourself. Nothing special is needed. If Absorption comes in your practice this is OK. Just don't hold onto it. Some people get hung up with Absorption. It can be great fun to play with. You must know proper limits. If you are wise then you will know the uses and limitations of Absorption, just as you know the limitations of children versus grown men."


Yes I want to read concept and reality next since your book recommendations do help. It's nice to know that dependent origination is what a person needs to see and dispassion from consistent investigation. I've seen so many posts from people where they talk about how they are able to disembed from "space" and are able to note everything it can be hard to understand at times yet this idea of being disenchanted from ALL the jhanas is the direction so many choose because they find it less painful. Though I know you're point of view on that. emoticon Certainly looking at sanna versus panna gave me the same flavour of equanimity without a concentration state. I look at things as just more experiences now. The 1st jhana feels that way now. Just another ho-hum experience.

I'll continue with the investigation of vedana in daily life (because you can get a lot of hours out of the day just for that) and add some concentration to my practice to help with consistent mindfulness (which is the crux of the problem).

One question. When you put consciousness leading to volitional formations, what you mean is that you can't have volitional formations without consciousness? This is to mean that craving and clinging affect volitional formations but you're trying to point out what leans on what?

BTW that's cool you could let go of vedana in that way but I can understand how you may not want to get into that state because from what I read in Boisvert's book is that it's death like and not awakening.
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Ian And, modified 11 Years ago at 3/29/13 7:39 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 3/28/13 12:05 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 785 Join Date: 8/22/09 Recent Posts
Richard Zen:

One question. When you put consciousness leading to volitional formations, what you mean is that you can't have volitional formations without consciousness?

Yes. That is only common sense, when you stop to think of it, yes? Do you see that?

Richard Zen:

This is to mean that craving and clinging affect volitional formations but you're trying to point out what leans on what?

Okay. Let's go through this progression the way I came to see it. I goofed up last night (tired and sleepy) in going through this in my mind. I switched around vedana and sankhara in the example below to correct my mistake.

[indent]Ian And:
What I was mainly referring to with regard to the reference to dependent co-arising was following the middle eight factors in one's experience of the twelve factored paticca samuppada in regard to any experience you may have. That means: consciousness makes > contact with one of the > six sense bases > and recognizes name and form > conditioning feeling > from which volitional formations arise > giving rise to craving > and clinging. Seeing the last four factors in this series provides one with the opportunity to develop dispassion toward them.[/indent]

Let's look at a practical example from reality, okay. You are walking along and suddenly you come upon an orange tree. Consciousness (in the form of grabbing an object, which is vinnana, and recognizing the object, which is sanna) makes contact with the orange through the sense base of vision (eye-consciousness). It recognizes namarupa (name and form of the object) which conditions vedana (feeling) about the object which conditions sankhara (volitional formations) with regard to the object, giving rise to tanha (craving) and upadana (clinging). Is this making any more sense?

Now, notice how sankhara (a volitional idea – "I must have this orange right away") is conditioned by vedana (a pleasant affectation, lets say, with regard to the orange in the present example). Having noticed this sequence up to this point in the process, the owner of the mind now has a decision to take: either grab the orange and eat it, or not grab to eat it. In Pavlovian conditioned response scenarios, the conditioned mind will do whatever it has been conditioned in the past to do, which if the owner is an untrained child, let's say, he might grab the orange and eat it to satisfy a sudden urge or craving. See?

Let's further say that the social situation in which this particular mind finds itself in is one where grabbing the orange would be seen as self-serving and a social faux pas. He then circumvents his own conditioning by becoming dispassionate about the orange, and does not grab it, understanding the social consequences of not doing so.

Don't over-read things into this. It is just a simple example from a practical, hypothetical life situation that serves to illustrate the points I'm endeavoring to get across.

Richard Zen:

BTW that's cool you could let go of vedana in that way . . .

but I can understand how you may not want to get into that state because from what I read in Boisvert's book is that it's death like and not awakening.

But I didn't do anything (let go of anything). The mind went there all on its own. I may have put forth a resolution (to enter the cessation of perception and feeling), but that is all. All I did was set up the condition for it to occur. Having been there once, I've never had the desire to return, for the very reason that Boisvert states, "it is not awakening."

In other words, when a person experiences awakening, they still have the remainder of their life to live out (unless they are considering committing suicide – heaven forbid)! So sanna-vedayita nirodha is a useless achievement as it has no practical use in living one's life (other than as a state, for example, that one might enter as an anesthesia during a medical procedure or operation).

Yet, even so, it is still comforting to realize that the mind can be shut down, that it is possible to shut down perception and feeling so that no sankhara can be executed (or rather, be suppressed via dispassion toward formations). But, please, don't conflate (or mistake) from this statement that shutting down perception and feeling is equal to dispassion toward formations. That's not the point I intend to make. Dispassion is something to be DEVELOPED and CULTIVATED consciously, not unconsciously. It's just plain common sense.
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Richard Zen, modified 11 Years ago at 3/29/13 1:30 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 3/29/13 1:30 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Yes that is very clear. I'm going to focus on vedana on unpleasant sensations in particular. It's been good in the past when doing work outs. It's painful but it's not permanently solid.

I'm also reading Concept and Reality. There are similarities between papanca and mindstates. Strong papanca leads to moods. I recently did a meditation where I just noted papanca and when I let go of it I note FREE emoticon to make it even more obvious to my brain.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 4/10/13 11:07 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 4/10/13 11:06 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
I've just finished reading Psycho-Cybernetics and it is definitely going to be my "focus on the positive" practice. The key to it is that desire is often based on what you imagine and dwell on in your mind. If you dwell on successful actions and positive actions (especially in great detail) the desire will propel you along and over time those actions will develop into new habits. Thinking about the negative aspects of responsibilities will only force you to use willpower to achieve goals but if positive details are dwelled upon in the mind until the desire takes over then willpower isn't needed.

Eg. If you're shopping for something you want it doesn't take willpower to buy it (even if the weather is inclimate or there are other obstacles) but if you need to do some responsibility that has unpleasant elements dwelling on the positive results will make you tolerate a lot more the obstacles to your goal because you're not dwelling on the negative aspects. It may be cold outside when taking out the garbage but if I dwell on the pleasant results of a cleaner smelling home and more space and keep dwelling on it at some point I'll get off my seat and start taking out the trash. emoticon

When you add years of meditation the desire is not something that has to be clung to as permanent and it's energy that can be used.

With vedana practice I can see the need to be disenchanted with it. There's a pleasant relief of letting go of typical habits (come home from work and watch TV or surf the net). Then when you pay attention to annoying things but look at the pleasant parts in the main ("It will be nice when the taxes are done") there's no need to note things and let go you just like the results of responsibilities being taken care of being put behind you.

I'm also starting to notice my mind wanting to withdraw more and "do nothing" in an even deeper way than my typical Shikatanza practice. Combining both practices is making life much better and clearing out any repression of normal desires.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 4/15/13 9:26 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 4/15/13 9:26 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Another shift walking home today. Just by letting go of repressing desire I was able to see the vedana connect with stress but it was more like my mind let go into the senses somehow DEEPER. Any repression of the present moment (including subtle things like light daydreams) is let go of because of the small stress that is there. It's hard to explain but it's like your head is inside a car and you stick your head out the window. It feels naked and interdependent with the world and it's more relief again. Everytime I think there can't be more relief I find there is more. Being in the senses is almost like holding a camera and videoing the world with your eyes and you can sense the small vibrations in vision simply from walking.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 4/16/13 11:43 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 4/16/13 11:43 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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To include into the last post. At work before this shift (or maybe it was the shift) the letting go of repressing desire had a distinct insight of an acceptance of failure. The desire was inhibited by a fear of failure. Deep stuff. Being accepting of failure deep in your bones is such a relief. I was interacting with coworkers with more confidence (meaning confidence with no effort because you don't care about their judgments and you're still nice to them).

Also seeing vedana well is like seeing that comfortable feeling before you go on autopilot with some old habit. It's actually possible to be disenchanted by it. I have more work to do but I can see how dependent origination isn't entirely linear but more like parts of your phenomenology leaning against each other. Each insight is just a deeper understanding of what was already going on all along.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 4/17/13 6:59 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 4/17/13 6:59 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Just another note to leave behind, before I forget.

Reality cannot be escaped. Day dreaming about different options in the future is not separate from present moment experience. The feeling of separation is just another feeling.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 4/24/13 8:19 AM
Created 10 Years ago at 4/24/13 8:19 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Just another reminder to myself related to MCTB:

In addition to the categories of sensations mentioned above in
Mindfulness, one could also consider consistent investigation of all
sensations that seem to have to do with the direction and movement of
attention, as well as investigating all sensations that have to do with
questioning, wanting, the application of energy and even the individual
sensations that make up the process of investigation itself. These are
very interesting objects, as are “the hindrances.”


I'm assuming I can categorize this as volitions.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 4/27/13 12:28 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 4/27/13 12:27 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
2 hours meditation this morning plus another 2 while jogging. The latest insight I've noticed is how powerful perception and thinking is. The concentrative practices are really nice because they show how blocking thoughts can create nice warm vibrations of joy all the way up to equanimity, but when thoughts come flooding back in that benefit fades pretty quickly. Now that I have done much more insight practice I can incorporate both insight and concentration to see that mental tension with more clarity. Basically the mind is not just creating pleasing perceptions from what's happening now but much more often based on memories of past experiences.

By continuing the meditation with as similar depth as possible throughout the day the habitual day dreaming (I'm talking about only a few seconds) is enough to bring mental muscle tension into the head. In fact this could lead to headaches if concentration isn't strong enough and the mind is not used to letting go. It was fun letting go of clinging thoughts (which is what needs to be done) and paying attention to the moment by moment changes in experience to get great relief. I realize that I'm getting good at dealing with thoughts but there's more depth I can go.

How I feel about thoughts now is that they are like train tracks in your mind that as you start down any paths that involve likes and dislikes it's like getting caught on those tracks and then when the momentum and speed builds up it feels like the necessity of dropping clinging and then getting back to moment by moment awareness becomes paramount. If you do the right thing, even after you get on the fast train, it takes quite a bit of time to slow it down and stop. It's like the engine is craving pushing the thought formations/volitions sending you on actual actions you will take versus what your willpower wants to do. Even while thinking and typing right now I'm starting to notice an even smaller mental tension like a readiness to cling that's ready to ramp up if I let it. There's actually some small suffering that's hard to see and very subtle but also very necessary that we see it.

When you want to go back to thoughts again (because we need to think to live) you have to be so careful that you don't get caught on the wrong track. That track makes you feel comfortable like sitting in the dining car and reading a paper while you continue on the same old groove (hindrance).

For volition practice I'm also just using positive perceptions to develop desire to direct my actions but also to see if I can treat things like scientific tests. If I don't feel like doing something I should I just experiment by doing the opposite of what I normally do or do something counter to what I normally do. Another way to develop this desire is to think about all the cool things I can do that I normally don't do and make that a resolution to do some of those activities each day.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 5/2/13 11:00 AM
Created 10 Years ago at 5/2/13 11:00 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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The stuff in the above post is working.

This sentence is starting to make more sense related to my thoughts. This includes thoughts about meditation, thoughts about people I don't like (that's a big deal for me), thoughts about having a perfect future. All this stuff is stress.

"This is the Deathless, namely the liberation of the mind through non-clinging.”

Letting go of useless thoughts is getting so enjoyable because having no mindstate is a relief. Meditation to me now is just a way to see subtler and more subtler forms of mental stress. When you start off you deal with big obvious stressors and over the years you keep developing the ability to see smaller stressors that you ignored or couldn't see in the past.

I did another music test. This time Cantus Arcticus by Rautavaara. I tried to immerse myself in the music much like AEN has described (there's no experiencer separate from experience) and paid attention to when the mind wandered and noticed the small stress already starting before I could go any farther. Letting go of those interruptions makes you feel like you're returning to a cocoon of mindfulness like I finally prefer this to a wandering mind (even wandering over likes or wandering over thoughts about meditation).
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 6/16/13 12:17 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 6/15/13 8:26 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
I've just returned from a huge trip to Greece, Turkey, and Egypt. On top of the facinating history (Acropolis, Mycenae, Troy, Gallipoli, Ephesus, Giza, the Nile) there is an obvious reminder of impermanence. There's nothing like seeing a statue of a Pharaoh all cocky and confident and then seeing the desperation of the Valley of the Kings: Dead bodies that can't take their precious possessions with them to a mythical after-life. Seeing these famous people and places still has a bit of unreality to them when you move quickly but it's starting to sink in what I experienced. Staying away from internet for the duration of the trip has also helped atrophy old habits. This is a similar experience to a psychology documentary I saw where they took internet game addicts away from their computers for a month in a house there they can atrophy those old habits. I definitely recommend this even for people who don't have severe addictions.

My current practice is to just see when the stress is appearing and to look at the recognitions and physical pain that preceded them. What I like about this practice is how you can see the physical and mental limitations and acknowledge them instead of treating meditation like some practice that will give you superpowers. I'm still continuing with the focus on positive details to create desire in areas I can often find boring. Being an INFP preference in Myers Briggs, finding meaning in small tasks becomes very important in order to use natural desire for motivation. I'll also add more meditation on the downside of comfortable habits to use natural aversion in the proper direction. This is going back to the Dalai Lama's instruction to look at which details we ignore in what we like or dislike.

EDIT: How I am currently emotionally is in a healthier place because I'm not trying to repress any emotions. They are less painful precisely because there is less tanha (craving) to get rid of them. I'm more interested in why the emotion is there and how to use the energy properly. I'm actually starting to enjoy my emotions for the first time in my life. Acceptance and taking action just makes it better.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 6/17/13 7:08 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 6/17/13 7:08 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I don't know what's happened by since my vacation but my concentration towards insight is getting easier. When I pay attention to my total experience it's like I'm losing the sense of "me" in thoughts even further than before. When I note I don't use labels. I just recognize what's there and it's so smooth and without repression. When the mind does get lost in thoughts it feels like it just lets go on it's own and no "self" is needed to forcibly let go. Best day so far. Any dislike for the present moment (including basic dreams of what I would like to be in the future) feel HEAVY and after those thoughts are let go of it's peaceful and light and there's no sense of self. Even minor meditation analysis has the same heavy feeling and is let go of. Emotional thoughts also have a dramatic gravity to it that seems exagerrated compared to the hum in my ears or normal sensations on my skin. The trick is to consistently bring the mind back to looking at what's happening now without too much "efforting" or strain because anything (including analysis/intention to meditate) is included in the meditation. Nothing is left out. I don't have to force out thoughts to notice sensations. Thoughts are treated like sensations.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 6/19/13 7:20 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 6/19/13 7:15 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Emptiness as viewless view

"Oh Wow got it! The system itself causes the separation and in moving out of the system we see our true nature."

Yes! It is very subtle, like a magical spell. Infact 'ignorance' is also a form of knowing; a very very deep and conditioned form of relative knowing. The subject-object way of seeing things is not the only way, it is just a convenient way but has since then become ultimate. When we are not completely out of the subtle influences, it is advisable to have firm establishment of the right view of dependent origination (a non-dual and non-local view) and practice with this new 'awaken eye of immediacy'. When the non-dual and non-local direct experience dawn, the emptiness view will dissolve itself. It too is a raft. emoticon

Never underestimate the subtlety of these tendencies. They are so strong and subtle that even the antidote introduced can turn around and becomes the virus!


I don't know if this above quote applies but I find it helpful explaining how I feel. Any success the mind gets into by just awareness the thinking mind wants to co-opt and yet when it does the little bit of stress starts up again so letting go of attaching and clinging to meditative attainments is what has recently allowed me to go a little farther. With the acceptance of the mind getting lost in thoughts it becomes clearer how the mental volitions arrive after the perception of what I would like to have or get rid of. It's weird and insightful seeing a part of "me" appear only as mental habits. Free will (as I've known it) is starting to unravel
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 6/20/13 6:58 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 6/20/13 6:58 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Basically how it looks is when your mind gets caught up on a like or especially dislikes it feels like a thought form of a self, plus the related emotions. Then a disassociative self (often developed in meditation) appears to "let go" of those thoughts but then creates new thoughts to cling to about the thoughts that were let go of emoticon and then letting go of this by just not adding to it leaves you in a river of sensation where it should be easier to make different choices than you normally would make. The first "self" is more intense because of a longer time to develop those habits and the second "self" comes from beginner meditation practice. Just let the bubbles burst on their own.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 6/24/13 8:29 AM
Created 10 Years ago at 6/24/13 8:29 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Going on some more dates. Of course the lust factor is HUGE as per usual and some of the prior self-loathing but I'm feeling different now. Feeling sorry for myself is extremely hard for me now to make when I first got equanimity seem not equanamous enough. My letting go of the typical "self" and the "disassociated meditator self" creates more relief to the point that when I'm doing boring chores I don't need to focus on the positive characteristics to get it done. I just do it and feel the same relief. This is so cool! Now to take ThB's advice and change habits.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 7/6/13 9:02 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 7/6/13 8:54 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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When you let go of the disassociated self that wants to comment on the typical self of likes and dislikes there is freedom from procrastination. Even having positive comments can get in the way of action. When there's nothing in the brain that has something to say all there is, is to do. When tasks are completed there isn't a self that has to go "Yay!" or imagine more fantasies about itself. It's just done and the energy expenditure seems much less and you can then do more. It's like a skull that's empty of chatter so it's easier to act.

There are small dark nights that appear but are so small because they need the disassociated self to keep making comments and analysis. It's almost like being a confident person taking action but in reality confidence has nothing to do with it. The ego can't benefit from the choices when they are done in this manner.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 7/8/13 6:50 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 7/8/13 6:49 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Another shift. This morning the mind was very restless I used the breath to try and calm it but the letting go of mental habits and volitions gives you a feeling of an unbearable lightness of being. The brain is just not used to doing things differently. By the afternoon this dark night (not very painful but mentally disruptive) changed and my brain started to let go faster and faster so that experience is more fluid like. I'll be doing work and interrupting thoughts don't interrupt for long and it lets go quickly and there is a mental preference for this that wasn't as strong before. As per usual the relief is deeper than before and it keeps getting deeper each shift. I'm absolutely astounded as to what a 4th pather must have attained.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 7/10/13 7:39 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 7/10/13 7:39 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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More restlessness today and a lack of concentration. I really needed to stay with the breath to calm down. By the afternoon I felt really normal like a cycle completed and the benefits have worn off and now I'm just going to go back and note some more. It's a real see-saw to integrate this to daily life.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 7/17/13 11:39 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 7/17/13 11:39 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Update: I've been going through some more dark night symptoms and a big issue affected me emotionally more than usual (I didn't get selected for a job I wanted). I kept practising since I know that nothing is solid so I still recovered fast but I feel very normal like I've never meditated yet I'm able to see how this selfing works and the skills are there when I tap into them.

I don't know if this is what Daniel also describes in MCTB or not. (The self pretending to be an watcher watching all the different experiences and wanting to interfere to make it better).

Basically experience IS not separate, but thought formations combined with intentions to make the present moment better, make you feel separate very subtly and continuously. Those experiences in the past where I felt out of body but experientially still in the body was just a glimmer of what I see now. It's like I pay extra attention to the cool breeze on my arm but notice the slight pain of the mind intending to make the pleasant experience last longer or to banish an unpleasant experience with aversion. The volitional formations seem to cover up EVERY experience including thoughts. Thinking about thinking could interfere with proper thinking. emoticon It could even be a thin veil but it's always coming and going so my sense of self also comes and goes (which is also exposed to consciousness) and therefore not-self.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 7/21/13 9:36 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 7/21/13 9:36 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I found some old Kenneth Folk posts I copied from 2010 that are starting to resonate with me:

Practice becoming aware of the body sensations that correspond to a thought. Whenever a thought arises, feel the body. How do you know whether you like the thought or not? It's because the body sensations feel either pleasant or unpleasant. Notice that if you dissociate from this moment, i.e., step into the fantasy and leave the body, you will suffer. Suffering is not ordinary pain; ordinary pain is just unpleasant sensation. Suffering is cause by the dissociation, the stepping out of this moment, out of the body. Stay in the body and ride the waves of body sensation. Watch how the body reacts to the thougts and vice versa. See how the looping between body and mind IS the dissociation. Short-circuit this by returning to the body. Stay with the body as continuously as you can. You are stretching the amount of time you can stay in the body without being blown out of it by an event or a thought. To be in the body is to be free. To be in the body all the time is to be free all the time.
¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬_________________________________________________________________________
"While you are practicing just sitting, be clear about everything going on in your mind. Whatever you feel, be aware of it, but never abandon the awareness of your whole body sitting there. Shikantaza is not sitting with nothing to do; it is a very demanding practice, requiring diligence as well as alertness. If your practice goes well, you will experience the 'dropping off' of sensations and thoughts. You need to stay with it and begin to take the whole environment as your body. Whatever enters the door of your senses becomes one totality, extending from your body to the whole environment. This is silent illumination."

-Master Shengyen
_________________________________________________________________________
Kenneth: See how the looping between body and mind IS the dissociation.

Mumuwu: Do you mean the moving out of the body to the mind and back?

I mean the creation of a third "thing," this pseudo-entity that is a composite of body sensations and mental phenomena. Living in this third thing is suffering because it takes you out of what is really happening in this moment; it becomes a proxy for experience. You can train yourself to stop living this proxy life of suffering by coming back to the body sensations in this moment. The body cannot lie. Being in the body is being present in this moment. Being present in this moment does not allow the pseudo-self to form. When the pseudo-self does not form, life is simple and free. It will be pleasant at times and unpleasant at times, but it is always free.

There is no conflict between noting and living in your body, by the way, whether you note silently or aloud. You can note or not note, think, act, talk, love, live; there is very little you can't do; you just can't suffer. If you choose to note, understand that there is nothing magical about the noting itself. The noting is simply a feedback loop to remind you to feel your body and observe your mind in this moment.
_________________________________________________________________________
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Brian Eleven, modified 10 Years ago at 7/22/13 11:20 AM
Created 10 Years ago at 7/22/13 11:20 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 221 Join Date: 9/14/10 Recent Posts
Richard,
Thanks for this post! I'd forgotten that Kenneth went through that on his site. I'll have to take a look and see if I can find it. If you have a handy link to share I'd appreciate it! emoticon

I had, what sounds like, the same experience a couple months ago. It was very pleasant once it became my baseline. Over a couple weeks, however, I became aware of a low level of tension that seemed to be caused by craving/attachment to the physical part of experience. I gave it up, but looking back now I'd say it was a step in the right direction especially compared to how I am now.

It struck me how simple and subtle the change was, but it made a significant difference in my day to day life. I was never really able to put into words the how of the change. It felt like I just relaxed and let my attention/being/awareness slip out of my head and down into my body.

This is exactly why I've cut down drastically on my reading of practice related material. I'm very easily distracted and jump onto the newest thing I read about. emoticon Instead of using one practice for a longer length of time. Live and learn I guess!

Thanks,

Brian.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 7/22/13 9:28 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 7/22/13 9:28 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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This practice he mentions is just Shikatanza but it's one of the better explanations I've had. It gives you the lesson that consistency in practice is most important. Letting go of how you feel in your body should only be when you do high computation. Otherwise you should always see what's there all the time. It's that constant bringing back to the present moment (much like in concentration practice) that will give more results.

The post I copied was from way back so I don't know what the link was and it's probably defunct now but it's nice to see something from 3 years ago that I understand much better than back then. emoticon
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 7/26/13 9:19 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 7/26/13 9:19 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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The above practice is working really well. It brings out all the big issues, (even violently), but also cuts through them quickly. I still feel that noting along with this practice of "what are thoughts doing to the body?" creates a protection much like the metaphor of guards at a gate. Just seeing thoughts create affect and moods at the beginning of remembered images and remembered sounds helps keep the mental house of peace free from assault. When you get to the point where you prefer to stay clear minded and peaceful you'll actually desire to keep noting throughout the day and look at perception being partially dangerous due to past habits. The craving can happen so fast that you can feel an undercurrent of yearning or longing when mindfulness and presence is let go of for any material length of time.

5 sense bases:

I sense something delightful or painful in my sense organs and this creates aversion or delight. This creates a memory (short-term or long-term REALLY IMPORTANT) which then goes into thoughts (recognition/craving/aversion) -->clinging (why I like or dislike something which is the stress we are targeting).

So Consciousness with sense organs contact experience creating feeling tone. These come first. What makes it complicated is the thoughts and memories that swirl around after the fact plus the conditioning associated with them. Much of our stress doesn't come from vedana in actual experiences. Much of our actual experience in the sense organs is more neutral but our memories of what was pleasant and unpleasant have a huge effect on perception, intentions and actions. Once experience is a memory, which is instantaneous, it's all about thoughts and memories for the difficult stuff.

6th sense Thoughts/Memories:

These thoughts are recognitions and all recognitions require memory. The conditioning aspect is how when you do something, the more you do it the easier it is to repeat the pattern because the brain wiring is already there. These conditionings nudge your intentions. So when we meditate we can see the volitional formations but because we are disenchanted with the loop we don't act on them and then we have the choice to do a different action which should make new wiring that's conducive to your goals/values/etc.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 7/29/13 6:34 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 7/29/13 6:34 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Richard Zen:
Daniel M. Ingram:
As to being lost in thoughts, that depends on how you would define that. As before, and using somewhat conventional language for the sake of clarity, attention may tune to this or that, detune from other things, and attend to various objects with more or less emphasis at various times, including thought.


Just thinking about this yesterday and I realized that I was still repressing thoughts just a little bit towards the end of them. By allowing it to pass 100% on its own improved my practice. It made thoughts feel completely like sensations without a meditative concentration or tension on my part. I may not understand what you write at the beginning but when it sinks in with actual practice it all comes together. It's like paying attention without any exertion outwards towards objects. They are already registering in consciousness. I feel like getting lost in thought does still feel like stepping out of the present moment but with enough presence to let go of adding to it or feeling crap about not having perfect presence creates more relief.


The above has helped a lot. It's shocking. My sense of self is going away. I'm not sure if it's stream entry of some direct path kind but I feel like I'm floating on existence with nothing solid and feel great. Some big issues bubble up but they are being let go of even faster than before. The stress just bumps up against reality and lets go on it's own. I feel like I don't need to do anything. Getting lost in thoughts is more like clouds appearing and disappearing and not a problem. All I can do is let it sink in and not do anything. Very grateful right now.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 8/1/13 12:13 AM
Created 10 Years ago at 8/1/13 12:13 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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2 hours Shikantaza:

Continuing as before with just letting the attention go wherever and watch it naturally pass away. My brain seemed to jump around jhanas. Any expectation of results was clearly the opposite of where I needed to go and counter-intuitively I just let whatever happen. The the most interesting jhanas (not sure what they were) relieved tension in the head and gave very pleasurable tingling on the crown. My body and breath felt like silk and the boundaries of my skin got to be lighter and fainter like I was flying in a plane. I had twitches in my knee caps that in the past I would try to repress but by letting them fully do whatever they resolved beautifully on their own. In between jhanas I had plenty of 3rd eye and general skull pressure. Again a lot of it was relieved by not adding anything to the process. After finishing one hour I just wanted to keep going for another. It was refreshing and blissful but strangely, after it was over, there was an extremely small undercurrent of stress there.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 8/6/13 9:33 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 8/6/13 9:32 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Okay I'm feeling fantastic. Even the most violent revenge thoughts or massive lust thoughts or depressive suicidal thoughts are being let go of on it's own. This is awesome! Looking at vedana (especially with thoughts) coupled with perceptions/mental volitions/actions creates a huge freedom. It's like you're on a ride of experience. Just hooking up to consciousness and seeing everything go creates that feeling. This morning there were definite dark night withdrawal symptoms which to me is a sign it's working. When they subsided I was flying. You can follow your old habits and you just stop and are dissatisfied pretty quickly.

One thought flows to the next and to the next or goes away or comes back and it doesn't matter it's not a self and the stickiness is gone. I basically feel now that I just have to let this process happen on it's own and I suspect that mental impulses will just weaken because the clinging isn't there to reinforce it. Time will be necessary for this to fully sink in. Looking at how dopamine and cortisol work as reward and punishments makes the vicious circle seem pointless but trying to stop it in any way is just repression. When the impulses naturally fade the relief is automatic and you are weaning yourself off these chemicals.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 8/11/13 6:49 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 8/11/13 6:41 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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This effect is still sinking in and on going. The Shikantaza practice has improved. When the mind wanders naturally and then that experience passes away the brain goes into jhana and this keeps repeating again and again. I don't hold the jhana so it goes away and more thoughts come and go. I'm starting to see my brain get bored with old habits a little quicker now. I'll stop in the middle of an activity and find a better priority for my time. The belief that I have to see it through with old habit activities that I started no longer makes sense. There's nothing saying I can't stop and just do something else.

This thread is helpful:

After 4th path

Trying to get rid of the stuff is part of what keeps it in its place, and also part of the reason why it's more bothersome than it needs to be.


I'm seeing a connection with CBT and habits/beliefs:

If you attempt to energize the healthy belief with new constructive thoughts and behaviour so that, in time, it radiates healthy feelings, but at the same time continue to entertain (clinging - my inclusion) unhealthy thoughts and behaviours because you are feeling the negative emotions that radiate from them, it's like giving yourself something good with one hand and then throwing it away with the other. This means healthy emotional change is unlikely to happen.

So how do you make this change?

  • You start thinking in a constructive way and challenge the unhealthy negative thoughts.
  • You start behaving in a constructive way and stop behaving in an unhealthy way.
  • You repeat the above over and over again whilst tolerating the unhealthy negative emotions until...
  • Your feelings change...at last.


~ Avy Joseph


The old habit/belief atrophies and the new habit/belief strengthens.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 8/13/13 6:23 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 8/13/13 6:22 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Yesterday at work I found I could concentrate better than before. It was like I had to put a tiny effort to notice the stress in thoughts and I just let it go before it hurts too much. I found the control incredible. It's like letting go of a clenched muscle in the head and feeling like "NO" so you can return to the enjoyable moment. I listened to music driving home as a test and the addictiveness was resisted. I still enjoyed albeit not with the same passion but I didn't care. And even if some big issues broke through later in the day it was like my brain was starting to quickly assess the value of continuing the thought bubble or just dropping it for the now.

Today it went further. When I let go my senses they seemed brighter and peaceful. Mindfulness now truly is a gatekeeper of thoughts. The brain is starting to rest in the moment even though I have to keep renewing the mindfulness. The most interesting thing is that it's the difference between clinging and thoughts is much more pronounced. I'm letting go of clinging but thoughts (including difficult ones) are becoming just fine. The key is to be in the body long enough so that you enjoy the relief and when negative thoughts start arising you can feel it in your body and you let go right away to return to peacefulness. It's like the gaps between negative thoughts are getting smaller and the subtle mental talk (including about practice or anything) is also getting squeezed out if it starts causing any minimal pain. By also staying in the body you can notice stiff parts of your back, or posture and it starts affecting your mood but when you're pay attention you can relax it before you go off mentally about some other thing you can't stand.emoticon
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Eric B, modified 10 Years ago at 8/14/13 12:30 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 8/14/13 12:30 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 187 Join Date: 8/24/09 Recent Posts
You've given us some really awesome stuff here Richard. Thanks!
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 8/14/13 11:30 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 8/14/13 11:30 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Well I hope it helps but without so many others in the community it wouldn't be half as easy. Getting scraps of knowledge from books/posts/guided meditations etc helps give all the different layers so you can try lots of things and hopefully you keep moving forward.

Yes I'm having fun. Yesterday I just felt so much energy from the relief and it's like being an energized kid with a seize the day energy. Super mentally healthy. Going jogging like this is like Julie Andrews running around on the Alps (without the flailing)emoticon. It's a little too exciting but I enjoyed it anyways. By this morning it was all gone again and I was like "NO, it was SO GOOD!" Then I returned to the body and it started up again and feeling about as good as yesterday but more normal. This is something I've seen before. When I get a new shift that is better than before it's like fireworks or "happy to be alive" with childish energy and happiness (yet each shift has more control) but then in the morning I have to remember to be mindful so it isn't lost. It's definitely not permanent.

The one thing to note is as to what kept me back was desire just as much as aversion. Aversion will often push me towards desire to reduce the pain of it, yet letting go of aversion is easier now. How desire is sneaky is that when it grabs a hold of you it lingers even when you're resisting it really well. It's reminds me of a short story by Tolstoy "The Devil" that I read recently and it's an accurate description of one type of desire but it applies to anything. It's like letting go of the desire feels somehow wrong (yet the mind knows it will be disappointing) but when you experiment and let the desire go completely and really stay with the body the control over vedana will show itself in relief that is quite good to say the least. I still tend towards desire but I have more control now and can see how over time I will gain more control.
Tina A, modified 10 Years ago at 8/15/13 12:32 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 8/15/13 12:29 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Richard Zen:
Yes I'm having fun. Yesterday I just felt so much energy from the relief and it's like being an energized kid with a seize the day energy. Super mentally healthy. Going jogging like this is like Julie Andrews running around on the Alps (without the flailing)emoticon.




HI Richard,

I've been lurking around here for quite some time, and I've been regularly checking in on your practice thread because I find it so inspiring.

Reading things like the statement above really affirms the results of a dedicated practice, and I congratulate you on finding so many moments of relief!

Best Wishes,

-Tina
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 8/15/13 10:06 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 8/15/13 10:06 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Tina A:
Richard Zen:
Yes I'm having fun. Yesterday I just felt so much energy from the relief and it's like being an energized kid with a seize the day energy. Super mentally healthy. Going jogging like this is like Julie Andrews running around on the Alps (without the flailing)emoticon.


HI Richard,

I've been lurking around here for quite some time, and I've been regularly checking in on your practice thread because I find it so inspiring.

Reading things like the statement above really affirms the results of a dedicated practice, and I congratulate you on finding so many moments of relief!

Best Wishes,

-Tina


Welcome lurker! I started meditation in 2007 so it's been a while but it was important that I didn't give up. I recommend breaks from the practice if it interferes with life too much. I also advocate more practice during normal life than just a sitting practice. I used to sit and get the 1st two jhanas and the results would fade after I got up off the cushion. Practice threads are also a good reminder to keep practicing. emoticon

Hope your practice is going well.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 8/21/13 6:59 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 8/21/13 6:59 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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First attempt at Forgiveness meditation. It was awkward at the beginning precisely because of all the mindfulness I've been doing but I continued by not trying to bat away thoughts with it. Eventually the things I had to forgive myself for were rapid fire. I was a mess of tears by the end. I reached probably just the first jhana with it and no more. Much of this practice reminded me of the Focusing technique by Gendlin. By accepting what's imperfect in myself it's like the ego's concerns are acknowledged and deep held feelings of loneliness and disappointment with not achieving certain goals came to the forefront.

Interestingly I had a good sleep and the next day had less anger. Of course I'll have to keep on doing this to get deeper.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 8/24/13 1:05 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 8/24/13 1:05 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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At work I got back to that same great feeling again by staying with the body and observing how thoughts affect it. After reading some more of the book The Island the direct path description created a reminder of the goal which is helpful.

...he no longer clings to sensual pleasures, no longer clings to views, longer clings to rules and observances, no longer clings to a doctrine of self. When he does not cling, he is not agitated. When he is not agitated, he personally attains Nibbæna. ~ M 11.17 (Bhikkhu Ñæ¼amoli & Bhikkhu Bodhi trans.)


So basically the ideal is, don't be addicted to anything, including the practice and including this website emoticon. To keep the relief going I often will ask myself "is there addiction here? Is there fixation here?" If I know there's another priority that needs to be done I can just drop the addictive thought or mental volition and drop the activity as well and get on with the priority. This of course dovetails with Thanissaro Bhikkhu's advice in Cutting new paths in the mind:

Cutting new paths in the mind
Thanks Fivebells!



I'm not sure if Thanissaro Bhikkhu is channeling "The Power of Habit" by creating cues when the craving is arising and having as a reward the relief of letting go, but I think that practice can be too compartmentalized so we still do the same habits over and over again. Unless we bring it to daily life and include in that daily life new activities based on our intended values not enough changes occur. We have to wait long enough for the craving to naturally subside and then do the new activity.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 8/28/13 8:01 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 8/28/13 6:56 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I'm currently working on my practice by making it more subtle. Acting without constant self-analysis is the goal. I find that conditioning and habits are based on prior likes and dislikes and it's possible to learn from past forgetting to intentionally forget useless habits.

EDIT: It's a paradoxical situation as detailed by Heidegger:

Non-willing still signifies on the one hand, a willing, in that a No prevails in it, even if it is in a sense of a No that directs itself at willing itself and renounces it. Non-willing in this sense means: to wilfully renounce willing. And then, on the other hand, the expression non-willing also means: that which does not at all pertain to the will.


For example if I play tennis only during warm periods my skills atrophy during winter and I feel like I'm starting over by the next summer. Similarly if I keep avoiding the repression of thoughts over likes and dislikes that are unskillful and rumination over those same likes and dislikes those habits will naturally atrophy much like other conditioning going away from the lack of use. On the same coin we like to talk about conditioned things not worth clinging to but we need conditioning to learn skills so naturally if there are skills I should condition more then I should do so. (Eg. Metta, learning, cooking, whatever)

For dealing with getting things done and doing more I'm using the Pomodoro Technique at home and it's like a night and day difference. Creating goals at home gives you the same attitude adjustment as going to work so home feels more purposeful. Before going to bed there's a nice feeling of having crossed off some things that needed to be done (healthy dopamine). For an INFP MBTI type it's something I should have done years ago. But as usual you do things when you're less ignorant. Also for my type I tend to like things that need to be done on a desk in front of me so I can see it. Out of sight, out of mind. I also prefer the Pomodoro Technique over the Allen's "Getting things done" in that it's less complicated and when coupled with mindfulness I can enjoy the present moment in my body inbetween tasks so I just move from one to another. I could see a future where I could do this without the Pomodoro Technique. Though it might still be good to keep it going precisely because it will give information on what I'm spending my time on and making plans will have better time estimates.

I'm also mining my music collection and finding negative stuff in there to donate (sorry Mr. Bipolar Thom Yorke, and Eternally Disatisfied Trent Reznor). The precious happy moments are rare and if the habits become more happy that shouldn't be taken for granted. Why do I want songs like Closer and How to disappear completely running as earworms in my head at home or at work?
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 9/6/13 7:00 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 9/6/13 7:00 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
At work today I was just tuning into consciousness. For a brief few minutes it felt like consciousness was being assaulted by experience but that went away. It's easier to see more detail of intentions and striving. I get a sense that I could rest there as long as thoughts aren't pretending to be consciousness.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 9/7/13 2:01 AM
Created 10 Years ago at 9/7/13 1:57 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
The consciousness just knows. When you're sad it just knows that. When you're happy etc. I just got back from a sad movie and got a little emotional thinking of all the people with shattered dreams and ruined lives. The sadness was great and tears could not be held back but the consciousness just knows that. I feel like I'm just letting the emotions be as they are. Sure the thoughts are like a hammy actor trying to steal the limelight. The thoughts sometimes look at the knowing mind as a warm caring watcher and at other times as cold and indifferent but it's just more thoughts. The knowing literally just knows and can't be stained or altered (unless your head is injured). If you're embarrassed or awkward it also just knows that too. The fear that this practice will eliminate emotions is gone. Emotions just don't hurt. Trying to repress or ruminate is what causes mental pain.

I can also see how noting could be used up until this point because if done properly it can remind the brain that even rough emotions are seen.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 9/7/13 11:12 AM
Created 10 Years ago at 9/7/13 11:12 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Now that I'm spending less time meditating I'm going to go over my hard habits that haven't been affected enough by meditation. I'm currently reading:

Schema Therapy

And in dealing with others I'll read next:

You being more effective in your MBTI type

I'll probably still be using the Pomodoro Technique because of how used to it I am and I'll be changing my reports now to more functional reports on how my habits are changing and how more in control of my life I'm getting which is the ultimate gold standard. As usual the consciousness will be impassively watching regardless of the outcome and any analysis will not be attributed to it but attributed to thoughts. Clinging or fixating on results is bad but just as bad is not taking action where it makes sense and is reasonable to do so.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 9/8/13 1:06 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 9/8/13 1:06 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Note: MBTI and Schemas are just mental wiring that is long lasting. I don't view it as a self.

I'm tuning into consciousness regularly but there are still habit formations that need to be dealt with by doing differently despite rigid schemas that might takeover. The typical schemas are Abandonment/Instability, Mistrust/Abuse, Emotional Deprivation, Defectiveness/Shame, Social Isolation/Alienation, Dependence/Incompetence, Vulnerability to harm or illness, Enmeshment/Undeveloped self, Failure, Entitlement/Grandiosity, Insufficient Self-Control/Self-Discipline). Failure is the biggest schema I have to deal with, though I'm sure that everyone has a little bit of everything one time or another in their lives. The difficulty is that in the past I would equate Failure = Performance = Self-worth. The correct way I should be thinking is Failure = Performance and no more. There are also other beliefs that I don't believe in but still animate me from habit. That is the fear of success. I've always hated the envy of others and found it so bothersome whenever I succeeded at anything. Even just simply walking home with a pizza box from a restaurant is enough to have some people comment "Oh! Is that pizza? MMMMM" in an addictive almost hostile way, and that used to drive me up the wall. Now other people's envy doesn't bother me as much but the past botherings created a habit of avoidance because I don't want to have to deal with the consequences of showing pleasure/enjoyment/happiness in front of others. I don't want to deal with romantic relationships that will tend in the addictiveness -> envy -> hostility direction either. Yet in order to function properly and not be isolated I have to stoically face these weird, confused, and possibly dangerous people.

I know I haven't achieved stream-entry in the classical sense of fading senses up to the 8th jhana and letting go effort in a Shikantaza mode and losing the consciousness aggregate briefly. I do know that consciousness is impermanent so there are no beliefs that thoughts can glom onto as being "consciousness". I feel there is no self in my entire experience precisely because consciousness just KNOWS (with zero personality characteristics) and that's there all the time when I'm awake. Again I have to make it clear. People should just look at an object to register that the object is being known right now to really see what a mental note should be. This knowing can note anything that hits consciousness and doesn't require verbal word noting which could turn into a disassociated meditator thought concept that is fixated over objects (which means stress). You could be in an embarrassing situation and the consciousness passively knows this. It's the thoughts that create the commentary which will make you feel good or bad depending on whether you like or dislike the thought.

This morning I just laid in bed tuning to what consciousness knows which to me IS meditation and can be done all day. The thoughts rush at you and like Daniel says as they pretend in a child like way to be all the things that consciousness perceives. It's even a little dreamlike and bullshit in the way it does it. In my mind (much like a visual movie projection on a screen of consciousness/knowing) I briefly saw a waiter stare at me in dramatic seriousness in some outdoor bistro environment and say "you need to go do that!". My brain just laughed thinking "what the fuck is that shit?" So one thought formation was able to laugh at another one. The second thought that was laughing was also known to consciousness and even though it seemed to have a gravitas of a self more than the dream like apparition it was still known nonetheless. That gravitas is starting to remind me of what Nick talks about in terms of emotional "weight". That's why tuning into consciousness with as much continuity as possible is so important and an entire day of being with what is known while getting on with your life will do more than small sits each day.

It's true that the mind goes off in thoughts sometimes for an extended period but that's okay. It's the old comfortable habits that cause the problem and that can rear their heads even if you've meditated a lot and have many moments of peace. In order to change behaviours after the stress is gone requires more action to create new wiring to develop useful skills which will be needed no matter how unaddicted a person can get.

Failure Schema:

Behavioural pattern-breaking is the longest, and in some ways, the most crucial part of schema therapy. Without it, relapse is likely. Even if patients have insight into their Early maladaptive Schemas, and even if they have done the cognitive and experiential work, their schemas will reassert themselves if patients do not change their behavioural patterns.


Patients set goals, set graded tasks to meet them, and then carry out the tasks as homework assignments. The therapist helps patients overcome blocks to completing the homework. If it is a skills problem, the therapist helps the patient develop skills. If it is an aptitude problem, the therapist helps the patient switch to more appropriate work. If it is an anxiety problem, the therapist teaches the patient anxiety management. If it is a problem with self-discipline, the therapist helps the patient create a structure to overcome procrastination and to build discipline.


Goals:

The central goal of treatment is to help patients feel and become as successful as their peers (within the limits of their abilities and talents). This usually involves one of three scenarios. The first is increasing their level of success by building skills and confidence.


Strategies:

If patients actually have failed relative to peers, then the most important cognitive strategy is to challenge the view that they are inherently inept and to reattribute their failure to schema perpetuation. These patients have not failed because they are inherently inept, but rather because they have inadvertently acted to defeat their attempts to succeed.


Experiential techniques can be helpful in preparing patients to undertake behavioral change. In imagery, patients relive failure experiences from the past and express anger at the people who discouraged them, or mocked and devalued them for failing. Often, the person was a parent, older sibling, or teacher. Doing this helps patients reattribute the failure to the other person’s criticalness rather than to their own lack of ability.


Experiential techniques help the patient identify this theme and relate to it emotionally. Getting angry with the Undermining Parent helps the patient understand that this was an unhealthy message, and one that the patient need no longer believe. Healthy parents do not punish their children for succeeding. Getting angry can help patients fight the view that people will reject them if they are too successful.


The behavioral part of the treatment is usually the most important. No matter how much progress patients make in the other areas, if they do not stop their maladaptive coping behaviors, they are going to keep reinforcing the schema. The therapist helps patients replace behaviors that surrender to, avoid, or overcompensate for the schema, with more adaptive behaviors. Patients set goals, set graded tasks to meet them, and then carry out the tasks as homework assignments. The therapist helps patients overcome blocks to completing the homework. If it is a skills problem, the therapist helps the patient develop skills. If it is an aptitude problem, the therapist helps the patient switch to more appropriate work. If it is an anxiety problem, the therapist teaches the patient anxiety management. If it is a problem with self-discipline, the therapist helps the patient create a structure to overcome procrastination and to build discipline.


The basic idea is that between the impulse and the action, patients must learn to insert thought. They must learn to think through the consequences of giving in to the impulse before acting it out.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 9/9/13 11:09 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 9/9/13 11:08 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Just continuing with any noting of what's hitting consciousness while at work. I just added Nick's advice on familiarity and it definitely did something. As I reinforced the mindfulness every time some familiar ANYTHING appeared in my thoughts the energy built up bit by bit until it was so explosive and feeling slightly dangerous that I thought my head would explode. The happy feelings were so intense and massive like a volcano of happy electricity shooting out of my head it was like one part of my brain (the conceptual part?) had trouble believing what was happening and wanted to continue with the same flat tone/mood/equanimity and it was nudged from that and acquiesced to the energy. The fabrications did subside somewhat (except for the new Arcade Fire song grooving in the background) and after an hour the energy started to subside further. I felt normal but like some wiring changed a little and the extra energy was too much to control with concentration. My speed at work recovered when I calmed down. There was too much restlessness. My feet were tapping like I had 5 cups of coffee most of the morning. I continued this practice all day feeling quite happy for no reason other than mindfulness and only now my brain is tired. My familiarity habits returned slightly at the end of the day but hopefully as I keep at it I'll get relief for longer and push them out further. It's really important to note slower (without labels) and really taste the reality hitting consciousness. I guess brain staleness is the target now after this experience. It was like a happy FUCK YOU! from one side of the brain to the other (amygdala? Not sure)
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 9/10/13 6:54 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 9/10/13 6:54 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
It's disconcerting that when the brain sends out negative thoughts and you can really feel how it will effect your ability to make choices in a very dangerous way. Just one negative thought is enough to make you give up or go into a mood. It's almost like an animal is sabatoging your brain. My brain is in normal energy territory today but I get the elation back by noting longer notes and really tasting the experience in my body fully. Staccato notes is not consistent enough. Adding warnings that there's too much familiarity creates a reminder to continue with the mindfulness. It's very hard at times when doing conceptual work.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 9/12/13 8:00 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 9/12/13 8:00 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
I was able to keep the noting throughout the day today but I got a little tired. The noting I was doing was very subtle and I was able to stick to it throughout a lot of boring work so the time did not drag. Seeing more things hit consciousness just keeps getting better. It becomes obvious when thoughts start appearing like a self when they link together into stories. I have to face my schemas so that my consciousness can see more and disembed from those habitual thoughts. When dealing with any schema those thoughts have enormous affect that if avoided you can get good at your practice but be fooled because you didn't test it in those rough conditions. With a failure schema the brain brings up all the people who got in your way or gave you ultra negative assessments in the form of mental visions and the brain tends to go off into replaying that at a faster rate when you face what will disprove the schema. It especially appears when there are problem solving situations that are difficult. The brain just wants to relieve these periods and then demotivate, when persistence is needed instead.

To start working on this schema I'll keep noting and seeing freshness while using the following memory book:

You can have an amazing memory

It helps deal with primary and recency forgetting which should make all my finance reading something that can be memorized to a certain extent that will be helpful. It'll also take a lot of stress out because my expectations of what I memorize will be realistic over the months necessary to get better.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 9/15/13 10:03 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 9/15/13 10:01 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
I did a meditation run today which really was just running and not much else. emoticon The only thing different I did was add some schema therapy (pros and cons of actions after affect naturally passes away) throughout the day and got some work done but while I was running I added some of Nick's advice on "why". Instead of watching equanimously things arise and pass away I would interrupt the thought stream with "why?" since many of the thought streams still had some affect even if it didn't bother me much, but it was refreshing to return to now instead of letting the mind go off willy nilly. There was a little pressure in the skull when this happened so I'm hoping this is deconditioning rambling thoughts instead of conditioning them. If it feels healthy and good I'll just keep doing it. Some of this reminds me of the AF flowchart Tarin did except it's laughably smaller and probably more efficient but ultimately the same thing.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 9/17/13 11:50 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 9/17/13 11:50 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Today at work I got some more dark night symptoms of crabbiness but I was under control of it. I've seen it before and it's just aversion that is persistent. The asking of "why?" to disrupt repetitive thought habits has been helpful and I'm not asking the question verbally anymore since I can see the thought stream is onto something boring and repetitive and I just return to now to gain relief. It's really helping my insight disease in rehearsing dharma tactics endlessly. It's a reminder to prevent wandering and to enjoy presence. My concentration was quite good today. I'm not hitting as many ticks on my pomodoro technique sheet.

I know now that if I have a problem I'm having trouble solving, then that is precisely where the mind will lose it's composure more than any other time. The anger as usual is directed towards people who did not support me fully or were hostile on purpose to prevent my success. Per schema therapy it's okay to let that anger out but the relationship changes. It's more like I accept that these people treated me this way and that I'm right to be angry but there is no need to ask for redress or forgiveness on their part. I also have had lots of prior negative judgements from people and any closed door meetings in offices can trigger me to think another judgement is upon me. This time I understood what happened and realised that no matter how convincing (how reactive the amygdala was) I was still able to realise that there really was no danger. In the end there wasn't but now I'm not afraid of the reactivity since it's a survival instinct that can read facial expressions and situations for danger and that when it goes off inaccurately it's mainly because of bad past experiences. Self-compassion can now intercede. It means my emotions can be there and be released without a need to repress them or ruminate on them.

The thought formations are clearer than ever in my last sit. Ken's advice to not live a proxy life and Dan's advice that you cannot experience anything other than what is happening now is really getting me to understand the amygdala. Our daydreams are just proxy experiences because they trigger the "experience"/"amygdala" to react based on the thinking. So it's important to use the pre-frontal cortex and other brain areas to stay with the current data in the present moment to prevent the mind from going off into inaccurate amygdala piano-playing which will wreck your life. The amygdala is always running but the continuous attention is regulating it and making it more accurate. Daydreaming of pleasures and pains is just this proxy life just trying to manipulate your amygdala. When it succeeds in making you release dopamine and other pleasant chemicals it just wires the brain to do it more and more. Any kind of PTSD situations is just wiring that is so strong that any reminder of past traumas can trigger the amygdala negatively. Mental rehearsals for possible future conversations will definitely trigger the amygdala and that's something I still do but again the relationship to it is different now that I know why it happens and that I'm probably being too hyper-vigilant. Some rehearsal is necessary since for example you may have to go to court over something traumatic so the pain will be brought up again and again in order to prepare a case. You may have to debate someone or prepare to perform a skill. But if a rehearsal is just repetitive and not of use then it's okay to interrupt it with a query so it stops and the query is passive and inquisitive enough to prevent reactivity over reactivity. emoticon

Who's afraid of the amygdala?

MKB: Is it reasonable to link the amygdala and fear, then? I mean, is any part of the brain really a single-function tool … like a pie-crust crimper you’d buy from Williams Sonoma? Or are they more like, say, a food processor, able to do multiple jobs?

PW: There’s two answers to that. The first is that you have to start somewhere. Nobody believes that fear is the amygdala’s sole function and we know it can’t teach you everything you need to know about being afraid. But we do know it’s an older area of the brain and it’s reactive. It’s picked up on these things like facial expressions and it tells the brain, “the last time we saw that facial expression something bad happened.” It sends that signal to the prefrontal cortex, where decisions get made. The amygdala produces an alarm reaction and the prefrontal cortex is in charge of cancelling or corroborating the alarm.

Say you’re looking at a snake. That shape could mean danger. But it might not. The amygdala sends the same alarm despite the context, whether you’re in a field or in a zoo. The prefrontal cortex can cancel the alarm call in a zoo. [If the communication between the two parts of your brain is happening and the prefrontal cortex is working properly] the same stimulus should give very different outcomes based on context. We believe that circuitry is critical to how well people regulate anxiety and whether they will succumb to an anxiety disorder.

MKB: But what the amygdala does isn’t just about fear and anxiety, right? That seems to be what your research is showing.

PW: That’s the other answer. As you do more research, the next thing you realize is that the amygdala doesn’t just do anxiety. It’s not the fear center of the brain. Instead, it responds to things, and calls up other areas of the brain to pay attention to them. It makes the rest of the brain better at learning.

MKB: Does paying attention come first, or does the amygdala kick in and make you pay attention?

PW: It’s always monitoring on idle. It’s never off, the engine is always warm. It’s very automatic. We’ve used studies with backward masking — we’ll show people fear faces, but really quickly and cover them with a neutral expression face. People report only seeing the neutral face. But their amygdala still activates because of the fear face. So you’re not even consciously always privy to what the amygdala is privy to. It snaps to that attention without your permission. It can automatically react to something that you don’t necessarily “see” in the environment — the look of someone’s eyes, the shape of a snake — and once it goes, the vigilance level across your brain just changes. You might not even be aware of why that is, but now you start searching the environment much more carefully. This can be part of how you end up with panic attacks. But it’s also that healthy sense of wariness that we all have and should have. But the amygdala isn’t the voice in your head asking, “Is everything okay?” It’s the system that gets the voice going.

MKB: How does knowing this help us better understand what’s happening the brains of individual people?

PW: One front to our current research is watching differences in normal levels of anxiety, looking for translation to disorders. Part of what interests me in studying undergrads is that we’re hoping to pick up on something that will help people understand normal fluctuations and disorders. The idea is that people with anxiety disorders don’t recruit the prefrontal cortex as well as they should, and the degree to which they can recruit it predicts their symptom severity. So if you can recruit the prefrontal cortex a little, you’ll have fewer symptoms of PTSD than someone who can’t. We know there are problems with this system [the connections between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex] in kids raised in neglectful situations. Those kids search for threats too often. We know hypervigilance is a key symptom of anxiety. The problem with anxiet disorders isn’t hyper fear. It’s hypervigilance.


My Shikantaza sit today was quite good. Just letting things show themselves and my relationship to vedana is improving. If some uncomfortable twitch from blood movement in the leg appears I can just watch it's impermanence with less reactivity. Small pains in the body are embraced. The brain started getting fast strobing pulses that were pleasant and the whole body was in rapture and pulses. The difference is that it wasn't a concentration state where I was solidifying anything and so the bliss was much better and earworms disappeared (though they come back pretty clearly) but everything feels fine and heavenly. Just even trying to force a jhana was slightly painful and the brain could make a comparison with just letting it be versus holding onto a mindstate.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 9/22/13 11:56 AM
Created 10 Years ago at 9/22/13 11:56 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
I tried out as I promised Fitter Stroke's practice with concentration and intentions. I did this and I didn't get into jhana but it didn't matter as it helped greatly in dealing with negative schemas. I got a lot of work done on my project and can't wait to do this again. Mixing this with metta will be my next step as per Shinzen's focus on the positive. Negative emotions had very little hold. The only way forward for me is to do this while dealing with long-term projects. Positivity is action and negativity is paralysis.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 9/23/13 6:54 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 9/23/13 6:53 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
As I continued this practice I could see how it was about momentum. As the momentum pushes you the distractions are easier to ignore. You concentrate which calms the addictive part of the brain so you can do more but I found a lot more insight than I expected.

My brain likes to imagine a willpower that can study for work plus learn a new language plus clean the house in unrealistic time scales. By the time I got to studying I was so tired and when you're mindful you can feel that intentions are limited and each successful push to complete something else depletes you further. In order to master a new skill, other activities must get out of the way or else the energy will be so depleted that you can't do much even if your force yourself. Intention is like a muscle that gets tired. Being mindful of the body shows you how wrong the expectation/belief was. The imagination really does want to experience things other than what actually happens. This is a really valuable lesson for me.

It reminds me of a comment that AEN mentioned some time past on how you can't just run a marathon but if you keep practicing then eventually you can. There's too much on my plate. I also need to look at my energy levels and see if there's anything I need to do better.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 9/25/13 8:30 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 9/25/13 8:30 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
More thawing is happening again. Coming out of my car from work I was just with the sensations even to how wind feels on my eyes. The sense of self continues to be like the thoughts but the mind or (consciousness) is naturally withdrawing from the mind-stream to what's happening phenomenologically now. It's like a gentle resting in the body with little bits of bliss and beautiful rest. Every time I get caught up in thoughts it's feeling more and more like a shocking waste of time and a neglect in how nice now can feel when you are a healthy human being with no major disabilities or chronic pain. I don't want to take it for granted.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 10/6/13 1:36 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 10/6/13 1:36 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Self-referencing is weakening. It feels so much better.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 10/15/13 7:57 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 10/15/13 7:57 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
I got a little stuck in the past few days. I haven't wanted to do anything except just noting when I started using Ken's app. I talked to Beth to look for more depth in my noticing and I need a little more consistency. Along with noting "attention", and "intention" I can see more "reflecting", "confusion", "equanimity", "planning", "strategizing", and "imagining". Naturally after some imagining happens more stress appears. My mindfulness today was a little tighter now. I don't have to look for vibrations because if you note about once per second they're there. emoticon More detail + more consistency = more relief.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 10/24/13 8:57 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 10/24/13 8:57 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
I'm reading The Method of No-method The Chan Practice of Silent Illumination to improve my Shikantaza. I'm finding the noting method beneficial to keep things going but there's always a little tension or headache that results from it. By switching between the two practices I'm getting good results. The noting can deal with difficult things you have trouble seeing and the Shikantaza can alleviate the tension while still noticing what's happening.

For example if I worry about the practice I could note worry, but I could also do nothing and watch "worrying" thoughts. By noting first and then seeing the same phenomenon and doing nothing I get the same result without the tension. This has further made my self-referencing habits weaken and a newer freedom is appearing. I'm even more normal than before but with a complete acceptance of what is in the thinking department, so even if I'm lost in thoughts just being aware that it's happening is enough and just getting on with life. Thoughts about progress, how to practice, checking if it's working, are just more sensations so the rest is deeper and the letting go is deeper. Sometimes noting "worry", "doubt", "confusion" along with purposefully relaxing the body and then noting "relaxation" can turn you back to where you need to be.

One thing I like to do at work now is just starting the Shikantaza practice by noticing the vibrations in body (in a very light way) and watching the mind move in habitual directions. It's like you can feel a tension in the skull moving in different habitual directions but you don't do anything except be aware. The perceptions and clinging can just relax. The vibrations touch the atmosphere and that's the anchor and the tension of mind has nowhere to feed.

There's more to learn as I find mindfulness disappears when talking to people but now when I finish conversations and I get self-conscious about whether it was a good conversation or not it is helping me to not care if I run out of conversation or if my jokes aren't funny enough. Mindfulness can also disappear when enjoying entertainment. When thoughts go negative, interrupting the thought stream with "why?" can also keep the mind from forgetting how interesting the moment is. Conceptual space is still pretty solid and I'm not sure how to deal with that.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 10/30/13 10:26 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 10/30/13 10:23 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Just continuing the above practice but with completely silent noting but making sure to acknowledge what's happening, including small attention movements and small intentions and small analysis. I'm adding more body relaxation and relaxation of the thoughts. It's greatly helping. I can see that clinging happens just by being conscious. Any little thoughts about practice and stories (even small ones) are just more clinging. It's a challenge to notice when the attention moves around to notice it properly without naming it but I'm getting better at it and more consistent. The result is a very deep relief with no rigid jhanas and a powering down feeling. It's also important to notice feeling tone in sore parts of the body or any physical pain and just let it be. I will have to do this for a long time so the powering down can go all the way. 1 hour went by like nothing. Very delightful nonetheless. Any clinging to progress of any kind will fuck it up.

I'm just reminding myself Ian And's advice on disenchantment with the following:

Sensation, recognition, craving, clinging.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 11/11/13 12:03 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 11/11/13 12:03 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
After about an hour of meditating I finally got to equanimity in a very clear pleasant way that hasn't been felt in a long time. Some power tools used outside were just sounds. Seeing is just seeing, etc. How I usually get stuck here is habitual thoughts appear, including faces of weird people I've never seen before, and weird dream-like scenarios. Along with Ian And's advice and Nick's advice to continue being neutral to all phenomenon (sensation, recognition, craving, clinging) I was able to make the equanimity deeper. That child-like presence is very delightful. Every time a habitual thought or scenario appears I just notice the clinging and go to vedana in the body and just watch it pass away. As I keep doing this the jhana seems to revive again and again and go deeper and deeper. The thoughts versus jhanas are very chunky in that when a thought stream drops the jhana energetically appears from the background. The one hour session seemed to end in a flash and I just continued on. Dependent origination is starting to feel less linear and more like sensation, recognition, craving, and clinging are happening roughly the same time. Clinging happens a lot sooner than I thought it did. In equanimity the mind still wants to wander in thoughts about the practice, views, future and past (though the future and past is more narrow at this point).
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 11/29/13 12:13 AM
Created 10 Years ago at 11/29/13 12:13 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
I've been having more sits and noting much more during life. By focusing on the clinging as the main target for relaxation it zeros in on the problem without manipulating too much of anything else so you feel normal and can be functional while doing work. Self-referencing is the enemy. It's just an extra loop that takes up processing power that can be used elsewhere. It's amazing how many weird loops are there are with fake scenarios/catastrophizing/rehearsal of conversations for a future time. Just relaxing the body and relaxing the thoughts reduces tension because it's a relaxing interruption instead of a mental debate on how that looping shouldn't happen. Just relax and get on with the task. That's a good principle whether you're aiming for jhana or just want to get on with a task.

During difficult situations like dealing with job security or possible meetings with judgemental people noting has been a huge help. Most people believe performance = self-worth which is a trap. Performance should only = performance. Noting just exposes thinking as just thinking.

I'm studying more and find it easier to let go of aversion and following the same patterns. I'm focusing more on realistic ways of studying. Along with the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve I've added some other things that make my studying efforts more like a slow adding to detail and preventing myself from going to new subjects too fast.

Principles of Deep Processing

More chores are getting completed and a key use of noting is improving my beliefs in dealing with the failure schema. The schema creates so much aversion that unless it's interrupted with accurate non-judgemental noting it will create avoidance or procrastination. The simple trick is to notice when you're thinking about the task that you need to do and the aversion starts welling up in your body. There's a fake tiredness that appears that really is aversion and very little tiredness. By applying consistent noting at this point to let go of any aversion or attachment to distracting activities it's easier to stop the conditioning and move on to the necessary task.

It's like creating a space of relief where you can park temporarily and then once the aversion has disappeared I can then go do the task I need to without pushing against aversive thoughts. The reward is still the same as in goal orientation but it's important to like the benefits of what you are doing which then gets the brain to prefer those activities to the short-term gratification that distraction brings.

I'm still in the dark woods with meditation as life improvement and it has to include basic beliefs that failure is okay and a genuine resolve to continue without needing an instant reward or big successes. Mental narratives with failure and success both have to be abandoned. Too much pride and depression fucks everything up. emoticon

My sitting meditation is still a mixture of Shikantaza and noting. Sometimes there is a noticing of how things are gone by understanding that future turns into the past instantly. It's hard to ruminate when everything is past and the present moment is just short-term memory. I also like Cittamatra as a reminder that everything I'm experiencing is just impressions on awareness. Of course awareness is aware of awareness so there's more but even that is good enough to reduce clinging.

Cittamatra

Guided meditation
rein drop, modified 10 Years ago at 12/14/13 7:28 AM
Created 10 Years ago at 12/14/13 7:25 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 9 Join Date: 2/20/12 Recent Posts
richard, just wanted to chime in that as an amateur mediator, watching your progress is quite illuminating

many times i find myself nodding me head as i read these updates... puts a lot of my not fully grasped insights into words

it's inspired me to start my own practice thread... here's to hoping i update it as frequently as yourself

- rein
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 12/14/13 10:49 AM
Created 10 Years ago at 12/14/13 10:49 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Practice threads can be a good reminder that there's always room for improvement and updates. It takes years for most people to get major insights (if they ever get there) so one has to be patient and keep at it. Also if you forget something you learned you can remind yourself just by going back and re-reading.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 12/16/13 10:38 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 12/16/13 10:35 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Okay here again a tidbit from Daniel for someone else is helping my practice.emoticon

Daniel M. Ingram:
bill was coming from a perspective that when doing insight practices, where you looked at the granular nature of things, very digital, very particle, to do that really well required high dose, consistency, and the like, as any subtle solidification can block the fruits of the practice, this being the classic Mahasi perspective


Throughout the day I've been tuning into the vibrations and granular structure of things and whether it is there or not. When it's not, there's already a tension and clinging that has arisen. The thoughts about practice and any narratives already produce a small tension and solidification. With a marker like "vibrations", and "grain" it's easier to let go sooner. Lots of big issue stuff came up today and it was even easier to recognize the beginning of the fabrications and just let them go sooner. Again the normality is increased but the act of the brain to leap out into different times (future/past) can be seen to be slightly stressful and tuning into the vibrations in the sense doors can relax the tensions before they become fullblown. By noticing more and doing less there is ironically more control. The need for verbal noting seems so archaic now because it's not as fast as noticing small rapid changes that are happening all the time. Even thinking about typing the experience can cause a little solidification but just tuning into the bare attention (without a forceful push to do so) relaxes the tension.

Doing a 1 hour sit I can definitely see how a Shikantaza or Rigpa practice can get into jhanas by accident if the solidification progresses into an absorption. Any mental wandering is being disidentified and now flickering attention and intentions to pay attention is now being disidentified. No-self is becoming clearer now that subtle clinging can be seen. Clinging about the practice creates some of this solidification so it's easier to let go of that as well because the same tension is recognized. The brain feels like it has nowhere to go and nothing to do so the relief is there and muscles (especially the head) are more relaxed. It's like a cocoon of vibrations.

If the mind is thinking about a like there's usually a tension because I don't have what I like now, or I enjoyed it and it's gone. That's why the tension is so pervasive.

When I'm like this it feels like a steady equanimity without a jhana. As the senses started fading it took a while for them to come back and sharpen again. In order to fade my senses into a cessation will take a lot longer than 1 hour. LOL!
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 12/19/13 9:38 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 12/19/13 9:38 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Another nice old Burbea talk on awareness:

The Nature of Awareness

It's another reminder to go deeper. My equanimity is getting so smooth but deceptive. It's also interesting how narrow the equanimity is in the beginning when you first get there and when you're about to give up sometime later it's so wide with less push and pull you think you're done. Yet awareness is aware of awareness.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 1/1/14 10:43 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 1/1/14 10:40 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Non-duality and the fading of perception

I've listened to this dharma talk a few times. It's helpful in getting me to understand the "dependent" part of dependent origination and how minute you have to go in seeing all kinds of perceptions (short vs tall/likes vs dislikes/beautiful vs ugly/smart vs stupid). It's interesting how there are also limitations that force people who take meditation seriously to just enjoy likes and dislikes in a reasonable manner (otherwise how would there be any preferences?) while at the same time being ready for the reactivity that will show up if you're not paying attention. Adding perception (from the 5 aggregates) between vedana and tanha, in Dependent Origination) is a good idea.

Just listening to it I flipped through some jhanas (though they are nothing like they used to be). It's effortless non-clinging but also less WOW! at the same time. You can see how the meditation practice itself can be prone to these dualisms (good meditation vs. bad meditation) and just thinking about meditating or intending to pay attention creates these very small tensions that could be conceived of as stress but in equanimity don't appear to be. Subtlety, subtlety, subtlety is what it's all about. So many layers.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 1/7/14 9:39 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 1/7/14 9:39 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Today at work I was at (what should have been a nerve wracking job interview) but I acted strangely non-chalant because of the experience I had just a couple of hours before. For the past few days I've been just enjoying my mindfulness of the body and really feeling what it's like to have a torso, arms, legs, etc. What happened was that I could notice the sensations of thoughts just as effortlessly. Sensing thoughts felt the same way as what sensing an arm feels like. For a brief moment the sense of separation was almost all gone. Even when it returns it's not all that much. After the interview I still did cling a little rehearsing what I could have said different etc and that's where noting can bring you back.

What's allowing this to happen is seeing deeper into perceptions and because I'm self-referencing less about the practice. For a long time I was still self-referencing a lot with practice and when that habit finally starts going is when things get even better.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 1/14/14 7:17 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 1/14/14 7:17 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Another shift today that brought more relief and more dark night reactions. I used to end sensations with thoughts and now that I don't anymore I noticed that I still push slightly the intention to pay attention when the mind wanders. This is just another form of stress because there's an aversion to the mind wandering. When I notice the mind wandering I don't need to intend to pay attention since I'm already back (otherwise I wouldn't have noticed the mind wandering in the first place). Experience is even more smooth now.

The relief was big but then I got some yucky sensations in my chest that have been appearing here and there throughout the day. Any deeper insight seems to trigger more of these sensations, but since I've experienced these many times before I know it will go away.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 1/16/14 8:29 AM
Created 10 Years ago at 1/16/14 8:29 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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This morning is more interesting in that I can just stay with the knowing much more easy because everything is included. There are less gaps. All thinking, muscle movements, reactions, intentions to pay attention, are sensations. Everything gets smoother because any mental loop to analyze the practice is just more of the same. The sense of cause and effect being constant and just one thing after another leaves normality as it is and squeezes any "self of the gaps" out. Any rating of the quality of the practice just looks like more thoughts trying to be a controller.

There are deeper levels of stress but it's like you have to bump into these insights before those stress levels can even be seen. I know there's more because of time and how the present moment is an elongation of experiences by short-term memory and subtle thinking but I have to get there when I get there, otherwise it's just more thinking about the practice.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 1/22/14 6:29 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 1/22/14 6:29 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Boy these withdrawal symptoms have been wicked. Yesterday I felt like I had a hangover + numbness in the jaw and back of neck + burn-out all in one. The numbness doesn't mean I can't feel my hands touching my face but it's the only word I can find. In a few hours it faded and now the numbness and speech impediment is fading but slower. I still feel I can speak well and people understand me but there's a weird mental lack of confidence with speaking now. Not pleasant.

For some context it should be understood that I don't sit much and all this stemmed simply from noticing that aversion after the mind wanders isn't necessary. Just that insight caused all this. It's pretty clear that my brain is adjusting and taking some time to do so. It's pretty shocking that paying attention to reality and just letting go of unnecessary stress can do this.

These kind of experiences are the reason why people will naturally shy away from meditation. Part of me wants to give up now and just focus on changing habits.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 1/22/14 10:58 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 1/22/14 10:58 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
I just went out and grabbed something to eat and I feel much better now. The numbness is greatly reduced but it seemed to start in the jaw, go to the shoulders and then to the chest/arms/hands. There's a slight headache in the skull but things are better. I hope to be completely normal by tomorrow. The brain seems to have learned not to manipulate attention as before.

That was the worst reobservation I've had since I first had reobservation. At least it was only one week instead of 3 weeks. I have no idea how others could go farther than me in 2 years without even worse headaches and withdrawal symptoms. At least I didn't get nausea like some drug addicts do when they go through rehab.
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Jason Snyder, modified 10 Years ago at 1/23/14 12:18 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 1/23/14 12:18 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 186 Join Date: 10/25/13 Recent Posts
noticing that aversion after the mind wanders isn't necessary


Wow, I was just noticing the same thing this morning. My mind was wandering during meditation and I was getting frustrated, and then I realized that in any given moment, I am only responsible for that moment - not past moments when my mind was wandering - hence no reason to be frustrated.
Elijah Smith, modified 10 Years ago at 1/25/14 8:39 AM
Created 10 Years ago at 1/25/14 8:39 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 71 Join Date: 4/14/13 Recent Posts
Hey, I've been reading through some of your posts and also I have an interest in shikantaza. I am wondering what your take is on the difference between Shinzen's description of shikantaza and other descriptions that emphasize more effort.

In addition to Shinzen's style, I have seen the practice taught as simply setting the intention to be here and avoid getting lost in thoughts, but adding no more structure. In my own experience this can actually be a lot higher effort than "doing nothing" but letting going of effort when it is noticed. Alternatively, the way I often have practiced is to apply effort to continuously notice some sensation that is occuring in my awareness, sort of like noting but without the notes. This can be even higher effort.

For some reason, even though I have obtained higher states of awareness using Shinzen's technique in the past, I naturally incline towards the practice styles that are higher effort because I am worried that I am not getting anywhere when I just "do nothing," which is likely a flawed reasoning but hard to get around. In my own experience with Shinzen's technique, a large part of its power is the fact that it goes completely against the grain of the desire to "get somewhere" in the first place. Another issue I run into with it is I haven't really seen any other teacher talk about his style of shinkantaza, as it seems like other sources do advocate more effort.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 1/25/14 6:03 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 1/25/14 6:03 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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It is less effort than noting but sometimes the noting is too conceptual and doing a Shikantaza practice can show a concentration that seems effortless. There's always a doing but I find my jhanas are weak but more pleasant because there's so much less effort. I just wait for them to happen. It's like tuning a radio but effort I think will still be needed. No matter what practice you do there's always a need for consistency of attention to gain clarity. Perception is really difficult because we construct solidity from pointillist experience and seeing the fabricating/building/mountains out of molehills emoticon has to be seen over and over again.

Samatha, Nibbana and the emptiness of perception
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 1/26/14 11:12 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 1/26/14 11:12 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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2 hour meditation: I just put on some meditation music and relaxed my body and maintained equanimity with anything and focused mainly on perception. To see the mind notice sensations and to objectify them as unpleasant you can see the story appear just after. I just relaxed the perception and came back to the vibrations. I find meditation to be weirdly normal and non-explosive. Paying attention to thoughts as sensations is very easy. Many thoughts appeared with images of annoying co-workers and bosses and just relaxing the body and relaxing the thoughts creates relief. Noting to me is just bare sensation. Perceptions really feel like something. Even the attention to see perceptions is a sensation as well and can create a small bit of tightness.

Towards the end it appears clearly that certain preoccupations of the mind are very habitual and have to be relaxed again and again. Yet this knowledge makes you less aversive and fearful of those thoughts coming up. After letting go of aversion to a mind wandering all there is, is noticing that it's wandered and just relaxing it. I went and made a cup of tea and just watched how the mind went quickly back to the thoughts and I just keep relaxing it. It's a relief to know that rehearsing Buddhist practice in the mind is waning.

It's very easy to get caught up with enemies and fantasizing revenge and it is so useless. I don't want to be the customer in Minority Report wishing to imagine killing my boss. It's so easy to let the approval of others be a reason why you like or dislike yourself. It's best to just let go over and over again.

Looking at enemies in your mind as attachments is a good thing. It's possible to remember how other people were in your mind for so long and how the brain just picks up new people to do the same thing and create the same feelings to new faces. The brain is accurate in finding people trying to stop you because those people usually have the power to stop you. As in the book "Meet your happy chemicals", it's true that if you bring mammals together they try and dominate each other for serotonin.

The brain also likes to pick up possible romantic partners and fantasize in a similarly useless way that has no reality whatsoever. Remembering other past environments you were in and how infatuated you got and how easily the brain can replace one face for another and still add gravitas via the emotions towards the next person as if it was "new" and "amazing" shows how quickly the brain shifts allegiances.

I really am developing a desire to wean these mental habits further. Thinking needs to be useful yet some of the wandering mind needs to happen to condition what are useful fabrications and perceptions. Weeding the garden and planting flowers.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 1/27/14 9:50 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 1/27/14 9:50 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I'm finding I'm getting into a habit of talking to myself. It's like I'm trying to get my speech situation under control and it's starting to feel completely normal again. Thank God!
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 2/1/14 1:34 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 2/1/14 1:34 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Now that I have recovered fully from the latest dark night my sense of self is being seen through. Strategizing and analyzing just appear to be things that just happened as opposed to a self that is thinking. When the mind wanders it's just what happened. Most of it is conditioned. If I do something different than what I expected or thought I should do it's just more stuff that happens. This of course could be a trap as it's obvious that habits need to be worked on relentlessly to prevent indifference. One thing to remove the aversion is to mentally dwell on the benefits of a said action to make it desirable (no different than what advertising does). By paying attention to ONLY the pleasant benefits it motivates the brain to move forward. The result is that I'm enjoying to clean the apartment. The habitual aversion does come through but consistently bringing the brain to how enjoyable it is when dishes are clean, the car is clean and the apartment is clean can counter it.

What people like to coin as an "attention bounce" is very clear now. For example, going shopping today my mind, out of habit, wanted to go the same route as going to work but because I'm clearly present I could feel the tug but keep on the correct lane to my true destination. This bounce is from a habit. Another kind of bounce happens when you want to do something you should do but the brain moves away in aversion towards some other option that is less aversive (which is often habit again). You can feel the tug and the lack of motivation afterwards. When you've meditated for so many years this kind of thing is now easy to see, and less powerful but these mental tugs are still dangerous and sneaky. They can control your life because they work so quickly.

The key is noticing how quickly and sapped the desire to do the right thing is when aversion happens. Let go of the thoughts related to it and implant positive beneficial reasoning until the motivation returns. There's something dry and dead when you're forcing yourself to do something you don't want to do.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 2/10/14 11:25 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 2/10/14 11:25 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I'm getting much better at catching mind states. When you purposefully quiet your mind (also out of enjoyment) you can compare the thinking patterns that appear and see clearly how they affect you and create moods (sometimes involving music). The future possibilities that my mind thinks are often completely inaccurate and totally catastrophic. It can be worse when my perceptions are negative but things are actually slightly more negative than I perceived emoticon They move so quickly but because I'm in equanimity (and it's getting deeper) they don't hurt much but still create enough hindrances to repeat old habits. By interrupting it faster and faster by letting go faster and faster it's very clear these unhelpful mindstates are very conditioned and need to be weakened as much as possible and replaced with healthy ones. By relishing a quiet mind (which may be an attachment, who cares?) there's a natural pull to just enjoy ambient sensation and no more.
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Ian And, modified 10 Years ago at 2/11/14 1:41 AM
Created 10 Years ago at 2/11/14 1:27 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 785 Join Date: 8/22/09 Recent Posts
Richard Zen:
I'm getting much better at catching mind states. When you purposefully quiet your mind (also out of enjoyment) you can compare the thinking patterns that appear and see clearly how they affect you and create moods (sometimes involving music).

By interrupting it faster and faster by letting go faster and faster it's very clear these unhelpful mind states are very conditioned and need to be weakened as much as possible and replaced with healthy ones.

By relishing a quiet mind (which may be an attachment, who cares?) there's a natural pull to just enjoy ambient sensation and no more.

Richard, you're right AT the THRESHOLD! Just another step or two, and you will cross it.

BTW, relishing a quiet mind is not an attachment. By relishing a quiet mind, you are able to become aware of what you're thinking (i.e. to hear yourself think!). Ergo, to see the often hidden-from-sight processes of mind. This is a positive thing (accomplishment)!

Consider the following with regard to the ideas of attachment with a quiet mind: there are quite a few suttas in which Gotama is depicted as walking away from an assembly of people who would be arguing (either with one another or with himself) or who would be talking aimlessly with pointless talk. When his point to them was not heard or recognized, he was not above simply walking away, back into the solitude of his own world where things made sense once again. He often sought seclusion from the destructive or mindless thoughts of others. It simply made no sense to him to subject himself to such useless atmospheres.

Once you begin actively seeking quietude and seclusion in everything you do (especially during those times when you are in the midst of outer turmoil being caused by others), you will know nibbana by directly experiencing it. A quiet mind knows what is true and real and does not argue with itself. It is at one with itself. Perhaps that's what the meaning of the word atonement is: at-one-ment.

It's kind of like the poem If by Rudyard Kipling, the first verse of which goes:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs
and blaming it on you; . . . (concentration with equanimity!)
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too; . . . (insight and wisdom!)
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, . . . (equanimity!)
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, . . . (equanimity!)
Or being hated, don't give way to hating, . . . (more equanimity!)
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise; . . . (humility!)

And other salient lines from the poem:

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; . . . (insight and wisdom!)
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same; . . . (equanimity!)

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves
to make a trap for fools, . . . (more equanimity!)
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools; . . . (equanimity and humility!)

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone, . . . (concentration!)
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on"; . . . (more concentration and not giving in!)

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, . . . (nobility is sublime!)

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; . . . (more equanimity!)
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 2/11/14 6:48 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 2/11/14 6:48 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Thanks! That's very clear. As the mental habits get weaker they can be abandoned much faster and I do find that poem very apt for the kinds of "slings and arrows" I have to go through with liars and manipulators. It's easy to abandon yourself when you become a target by another group of individuals.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 2/17/14 10:28 AM
Created 10 Years ago at 2/17/14 10:24 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I did a 1 hour sitting last night and I just focused on the mind-stream and repeatedly interrupted the habitual thoughts. I now see how pervasive these habits are and how much work there still is to be done. This reminds me of how daunted I was when I first enjoyed the jhanas but found insight and noting really difficult. Now that equanimity is more effortless the weeding of the mental garden looks like a brand new project and a brand new destination. It requires more care and consistency because any perception or evaluation of the practice is just more of the same mental landscapes that cause affect that lead you down similar paths.

The mind gets crystal clear when you interrupt old conditioning repeatedly but the habits are so strong that it requires constant deconditioning. Each time the habitual thought appears and is interrupted it returns almost like water cascading down irrigation. It's like a Trojan horse that penetrated your head years ago and was running the town all this time but Priam still thinks he's in control. The challenge is to change the irrigation so that the thought habits go in the healthy direction. The sense of delusion is really clear and it's also unsettling because of how quickly it comes back. It's like the conditioning is waiting for me to stop interrupting so it can continue on it's merry way. I guess you can call that System 1 of Daniel Kahnenman's Thinking Fast and Slow vs. System 2. System 2 needs a nudge to work but System 1 is automatic so what you program into that is paramount.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

We are adapted by nature to receive [virtues] and are made perfect by habit.

Aristotle


The mnemonic for CBT is helpful and just bring it up can point you in the right direction. I will now create some more mnemonics for basic duties and possibly include many, many more for things that are reminders to aim at purposeful actions. Each time it's recalled it gets etched in the brain more permanently.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 2/21/14 7:35 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 2/21/14 7:35 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
I tried to go "perceptionless"/"evaluationless" throughout the day and interrupting old mental habits. Obviously one can't do this while driving but it's more like letting go of perception and clinging faster and then using perception in a more skillful way. It seems to push up all kinds of mental crap that you normally deal with and shows the remaining mental stress conditioning that is yet to be dealt with. It feels like an answer to the subtlety that one searches for in vain in chasing experience.

It is similar to how Rob Burbea looks at those who've achieved stream-entry and view all experiences as impressions in awareness. Instead of pushing things aside it's more like being prepared for when perception starts objectifying and reacting to the likeability or dislikeability of those objects. Perception is like pincers in your brain constantly readying for an object to react to. The pincers act but their "stickiness" is less because you are recoiling from the useless object. It's like a suction-cup that doesn't quite latch on.

Doing this one feels even more normal than before like one has never meditated yet there is less stress because there's sidestepping of the old mental habits.

This practice makes it more subtle than before and eliminates some of the striving that comes from meditation (though albeit not much striving like I had when I first started). After I completely let go I sometimes go into my CBT mnemonic to create a new positive attitude which is perfectly okay to cultivate.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 2/23/14 9:24 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 2/23/14 9:24 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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1 hour meditation: Just letting go of perception seems to spark habitual thoughts to arise so I think this may be a good sign, though it's unpleasant how slippery the mind gets in equanimity. I can kind of see what Rob Burbea means in that weakening perception will weaken consciousness but I'm still a long way from getting to that point and will probably need a lot more hours to do this. I'm still at times talking to myself out loud about some of the habitual mental rehearsing/arguments with people that will probably never happen. I think this is just a residue of the last dark night where mental speech and verbal speech re-synced in a different way. I'll be interrupting that more often because it's one thing to do that when you are alone but I don't want to appear like a mental person if this happens in public. LOL! emoticon

I developed a body mnemonic where each body part represents a daily and weekly task I need to complete. This has been helpful coupled with the CBT mnemonic to reinforce the motivation and to downplay the aversion to get things done. For example I can visualize my forearm splashed with toothpaste and that detailed image can help me to remember to brush my teeth when cycling through this mind-palace. A good chunk of the "Incompletion Trigger List" is in my mind so that if I miss something those basic things will be done at a minimum. I've included enjoyment and recreation to the mnemonic so it won't be too austere. Another benefit is that when you use these mind-palaces over and over again things can become automatic and cycling through the mind-palace will be less needed.

Mnemonics FAQ

This will be a good test of how much free time I actually have when things are getting complete as idle time disappears. It'll test actual fatigue versus simply aversion. I haven't used my toes yet so I can still add more tasks. This practice seems to be opposite of what David Allen (GTD) would recommend (which is to get everything out of your mind) but I think with my personality type if it's not in my mind it probably won't be done.

Letting go of perception is now being a nice part of this strategy to give quick relief if there's any doubt or confusion.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 2/27/14 9:08 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 2/27/14 9:08 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Aversion now just feels like a tension in the skull with a little in the chest but it's impermanent. I can wait and then the usefulness of bringing up the benefits of the right action seems to replace the pain with motivation. Just asking in my mind "where are you aversion?" gets me to stop the old train of thought. The aversion really does pretend to be tiredness but when it's influence dissipates and is replaced with motivation the energy comes back. Very strange but it's fun to manipulate, and matches quite well with what Daniel Kahneman's work on attention and effort is.

F*&k it! If advertisers are so good at manipulating our desires and creating desires we should take charge and create our own desires.

Mnemonics acts as a feedback loop like noting and it gives you that reminder you need to keep going and why you want to keep going. I've been enjoying the benefits of having lunch ready before I leave for work, clean dishes, and laundry when I need it. This may seem obvious but when you have poor habits it can be a revelation. All I'm using from the Willpower guide is feedback loops/developing motivation/disenchantment.

The biggest drain of time and the biggest lure and pull is anything with a screen. I'm sure I'm not the only one. emoticon

When the aversion starts, the feedback loop to remember why I should do what I should do forces the brain to ask "can I be motivated for this?" It's equivalent to having a coach following you except you are your own coach and he/she is always there when you slip up.

This has sparked some inspiration to create a mnemonic for work. I know I still don't follow that "Meet your happy chemicals book" as well as I should so it's time to include reminders that I can bring up at work on how to deal with people. At work it's crystal clear that serotonin is the way that people are motivated. Any little joke or remark will make people lose their serotonin and start thinking negatively about you. If you don't mirror their pain (related to nonsense complaints and fake problems) it will bother them.

My pet peeve of envy is another nut I haven't been able to crack because when you are in close quarters with people, any improvement on your part is instantly noticed by someone and it spreads like a network of Stasi informers. Just BRUTAL! Even cleaning my desk up before other people for an office move was enough to cause envious comments from people. People are hyper accurate and even to the point of paranoia over pecking-order and the most petty differences are evaluated. Many of the managers seem to use cronyism and nepotism to insulate them from this envy. It's like a wolf-pack and you have to be part of the dominant group to survive.

Having this accurate awareness of the craving of serotonin has given me more understanding of my own feelings. One manager made it pretty clear she knows how ostracism works with people even if she doesn't know exactly how. I've been going through some of that ostracism and now I can see it's a need on my part to belong. It's like starving people of oxytocin and serotonin. You can feel it in your body but once you know the game you can let it go because the self-referential thoughts and beliefs are the real problem. It's very easy to get bitter and angry with "the system" but ultimately it's my fault if I let it get to me. As long as there's people watching you there will always be a "the system" to complain about. LOL!

Csikszentmihalyi was right in that people need to find more independent sources of happiness.

“To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments. To achieve such autonomy, a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself. She has to develop the ability to find enjoyment and purpose regardless of external circumstances.”


So what I need to remember at work:

Create my own rewards. (Carrot)
Develop skills that make me more autonomous (skill)
Test perceptions with reality to reduce disappointment (disappointed)
Build pride in something once a day (pride)
If I'm not the top dog I should enjoy the fact that I have less responsibilities and pressures those people have (dog)
Imagine yourself in someone else's shoes (shoes)
Build trust with people in small stages (trust)
Match work with skill-level and increase skill-level before taking on more work (match)
Create legacies even if small (small)
Take satisfaction in small influences I have (satisfaction)
Share pain with others (pain)


Bugs Bunny chases the Carrot with Skill but is Disappointed when a Prideful Dog with nice Shoes, who Bugs doesn't Trust, lights a Match for a Small bomb of revenge for the Pain Bugs caused.
John Wilde, modified 10 Years ago at 2/27/14 9:54 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 2/27/14 9:43 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 501 Join Date: 10/26/10 Recent Posts
Richard Zen:

(...) I know I still don't follow that "Meet your happy chemicals book" as well as I should so it's time to include reminders that I can bring up at work on how to deal with people. At work it's crystal clear that serotonin is the way that people are motivated. Any little joke or remark will make people lose their serotonin and start thinking negatively about you. If you don't mirror their pain (related to nonsense complaints and fake problems) it will bother them.

My pet peeve of envy is another nut I haven't been able to crack because when you are in close quarters with people, any improvement on your part is instantly noticed by someone and it spreads like a network of Stasi informers. Just BRUTAL! Even cleaning my desk up before other people for an office move was enough to cause envious comments from people. People are hyper accurate and even to the point of paranoia over pecking-order and the most petty differences are evaluated. Many of the managers seem to use cronyism and nepotism to insulate them from this envy. It's like a wolf-pack and you have to be part of the dominant group to survive.

Having this accurate awareness of the craving of serotonin has given me more understanding of my own feelings. One manager made it pretty clear she knows how ostracism works with people even if she doesn't know exactly how. I've been going through some of that ostracism and now I can see it's a need on my part to belong. It's like starving people of oxytocin and serotonin. You can feel it in your body but once you know the game you can let it go because the self-referential thoughts and beliefs are the real problem. It's very easy to get bitter and angry with "the system" but ultimately it's my fault if I let it get to me. As long as there's people watching you there will always be a "the system" to complain about. LOL!


Interesting stuff, isn't it? When you see this happening in yourself -- see it clearly and blamelessly instead of just semi-consciously trying to get the best outcome for yourself, or being pissed off about other people doing it while denying that you're essentially the same in this regard -- it gets really interesting, and pretty funny. (The phenomenon itself, that is; the consequences often aren't funny at all).

It makes it easy to see why human societies are so unstable, and why strife and violence can break out so easily, and how networks of alliances can spread the ripples far and wide. (And in the most extreme case, when there's nothing to contain it... a network of alliances can pull literally millions of sane people into a meaningless meat grinder, as in WWI).

Richard Zen:

Csikszentmihalyi was right in that people need to find more independent sources of happiness.

“To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments. To achieve such autonomy, a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself. She has to develop the ability to find enjoyment and purpose regardless of external circumstances.”


Like. Especially if that independent/ autonomous source of happiness is mutually beneficial.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 2/27/14 10:11 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 2/27/14 10:11 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
John Wilde:
Like. Especially if that independent/ autonomous source of happiness is mutually beneficial.


It's easier said than done but it's a good goal. If you can start your own business or be so valuable in a business that you are almost a consultant then it's possible. Other people just save money like crazy and retire as soon as possible. Some become monks and nuns or live like that and spend so little money that they don't need as much of it. There are many choices but I think step one is just to have personal goals that have nothing to do with work. If a hard working parent believes that the goal of seeing their child in a recital is just as important as work, then there's a better chance at a life balance.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 3/2/14 1:08 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 3/2/14 1:06 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I've been doing some meditation for a few hours this weekend. While taking a shower I started getting a sense of being in the body much more completely while still being quite normal. The need to loop into an analyzer and strategizer in the mind has weakened even further. Before it was like the thought loop needed to happen before being with the senses and now it's more I don't need to do anything. It feels so great to cry at a movie and feel full emotions without pain. Love and massive empathy is starting to really come out in a mushy but accepting way. Though I've always had empathy it's now more a beautiful thing I enjoy as opposed to something I want to repress because I don't give two fucks what an "alpha male" is supposed to be, which more and more looks like National Geographic animals ripping each other's flesh and quite possibly deranged and hypocritical. I love my emotions.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 3/14/14 7:37 AM
Created 10 Years ago at 3/14/14 7:37 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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The subtlety of no-self is strange in that the mind wants to find something significant but it finds normality instead.

The self right now just feels like thinking that's deep enough to mask your senses in the present moment. This can't be avoided because deep thinking will happen. It's how you react when that type of thinking relaxes. When there's reactivity it's just what happened. By viewing reactivity as happenings (which they are) it makes everything look like cause and effect.

Looking at thinking this way creates some freedom in not having to react to the reactivity.

This can cause a strange result in that when looking at people they also just look like cause and effect which has a mechanical feel to it not unlike androids. Reflecting about this is just more reflecting.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 3/16/14 6:07 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 3/16/14 6:07 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I'm really benefiting from Analayo's new book. It's interesting in that by improving the context of practical meditation I could benefit from the teachings I've already read. Reading something ancient without context and guidance can be like spinning wheels. Today I've been just following the breath and checking the mind-states. It's like balancing a boat to prevent too much energy or too little energy.

Energy and mental habits are now coming together in that stressful thoughts will lead to sluggish mind-states. Seeing cortisol in real-time messing up my mind-states is a big red flag on how stress does not make us more functional. Letting go of hindrances and increasing investigation improves energy and when there's too much energy the concentration practice calms me down.

I'm also getting a tantalizing preview of a world where I can be mindful and think deeply at the same time. I'll need to develop this further with consistent effort to see if this is really possible. My chest is feeling a little too much excitement and anticipation but that's probably normal.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 3/20/14 1:38 AM
Created 10 Years ago at 3/20/14 1:38 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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The recent added consistency has improved things and allowed my anger to come under control more. There's still work to be done. Just seeing the thinking without a movement to "see" or "notice" the thinking with force makes what feels like a self appear more like just stuff happening. Very subtle.

Sometimes when a executive function thought appears there's a flash of a face like it's a "me" or something familiar but it's just more sensations. All that's left is all there was but without a self.

On the self improvement front I'm finding it easier to just simplify things by quieting the mind as much as possible and getting on with things. This frees things up further and when there's too much analysis just emptying things and just "getting on with it" is a relief. It's counter-intuitive to my typical INFP mode of behaviour but as I've read in another psychology book, feeling types have trouble moving beyond reflection into action. This analysis is so accurate, (and scary), that only action can solve it. Repetitive reconditioning.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 3/25/14 8:04 AM
Created 10 Years ago at 3/25/14 8:04 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Continuing with the 7 factors of awakening and it's obvious that it's about inertia and you have to be on it in the morning and empty the mind of all thoughts (which happily includes the current conditioning) and go about your day. Yesterday was interesting in that it took some time to gain control of the mind. As it gets clearer some outbursts came out in my car driving to work. I started venting about people that did me wrong in the past almost like a Gestalt therapy. It was very angry and loud. When I finished I just shook my head.

I reasserted the 7 factors and gained some control. There was less need to put on some music. I just enjoyed the ambient sights and sounds with a clear mind. When I got to work the control and quietness increased further and everybody at work started looking like animals (which scientifically they are). It's similar to Jill Bolte Taylor's experiences on her TED talk (without the stroke). You can see people lost in their thoughts and looking monkey-like (including myself). I got more work done and felt extremely functional.

What is so uncanny is how things feel when the emotional projections aren't there. Situations feel more like opportunities rather than an affective narrative of your life with a preordained grim destiny. The sense of wonder of existence is amplified. You ask yourself "What I'm I doing here?"

I remembered to view my thinking and I can tell now that thinking and clinging can be separate. It's when the thinking seems to be habitually connected to the addictive chemcials and a loop of separateness appears. When in consistent mindfulness there's plenty of room for deep thinking. I will enjoy practicing this from now on. This is closer to the "thinking without a thinker" ideal. So I would recommend that when people are on the internet or reading something to be completely in the body while doing so. It's possible to be quite functional this way. I still have to experiment with deeper thinking than this. Can I solve more difficult puzzles while still being present?

These are just momentary periods of relief and the practice has to be continually refreshed or it returns to the same old same old.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 3/23/14 11:05 AM
Created 10 Years ago at 3/23/14 11:05 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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While balancing energy with the 7 factors of awakening I'm noticing perceptions more and continuing to relinquish the useless ones. It's starting to become enjoyable to do this as a silent mind has more relief and yes the energy improves with a quiet mind. The habitual perceptions need to weaken. Habitual perceptions also have a feeling tone of boredom, lack of wonder, lack of interest. Those are red-flags to let go of those perceptions.

I still keep coming back to this talk as I understand more and more:

Non-duality and the fading of perception

Letting go of perceptions of Buddhism is also a requirement to have a quiet mind, and so is following what causes unnecessary fear and going towards that while relinquishing those perceptions that are causing the aversion.

Reading books (especially books about self-improvement) is a good way to practice relinquishing bad perceptions. Any skill you want to learn can bring up negative failure schemas and mental scenarios that will lead to anger/revenge/stress. This is a big key for me and will likely be the most important habit to develop which is a quiet mind during stressful situations. Basically bad perceptions limit your life potential because they release cortisol at the wrong time and release happy chemicals at the wrong time.
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Richard Zen, modified 10 Years ago at 3/26/14 7:40 PM
Created 10 Years ago at 3/26/14 7:40 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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As much as the 7 factors of awakening is helping the following post really puts how much farther there still is:

Space between thoughts

The underlying substratum (or gap) that seems to abide apart from thought is actually an illusion created by the supposition that thoughts are relating to each other in time. So thought B is supposing that it follows thought A etc., and then thought B will even suppose it can refer to thought A, but by the time that's occurring it's thought C. None of them ever touch, no two thoughts are ever present together in the immediacy, so a thought isn't referencing anything, but only infers that other thoughts have preceded it, it is an illusion. Even the idea that there is more than one thought. That very idea creates the notion that there is a space between them etc.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 4/3/14 7:34 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 4/3/14 7:34 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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My portable mental seclusion is increasing. It's getting easier with dispassion and disenchantment to have a more quiet mind while still thinking. The struggles I still have are when I quiet the mind with the 7 factors and the mind resists with more mental noise. This is actually a good sign and now I can continue with the cultivation of a quiet mind and continue with the effort to relinquish the mental complaining because it doesn't make things better. Mental complaining doesn't make you more functional.

The mind has a subtle belief that if it's quiet it somehow won't get things done. This is absolutely not the case. A quiet mind can think deeply and taking action will have much more results than just day-dreaming and mentally desiring things. I'm more interested in seeing what happens. The ego has to trust that all there is, is cause and effect. There are applications to day-dreaming when it's aimed at developing motivation but that is targeted and controlled compared to letting the mind free-wheel with every distraction.

I may not have achieved stream-entry but the following shows how being addicted to Buddhist concepts is also another clinging trap:

Gil Fronsdal - Ease and nothing to do

The answer to most questions is to quiet the mind and get on with life. One needs to be at peace while taking action.
Adam , modified 9 Years ago at 4/5/14 5:57 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 4/5/14 5:57 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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thanks for that talk richard, really nice
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 4/5/14 9:43 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 4/5/14 9:43 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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It's a good reminder that ruminating about Buddhism can create stress the same as any desire.
Adam , modified 9 Years ago at 4/5/14 11:04 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 4/5/14 11:03 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 613 Join Date: 3/20/12 Recent Posts
yea, for me it's usually way more lol.

it was also really funny how the talk was like a confessional "guys I hate to break it to you but buddhism is just another attachment"
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 4/6/14 12:23 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 4/6/14 12:23 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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LOL! Rob Burbea even laughs and says that there's a place for letting go of ALL clinging. People will probably get farther that way when there's too much analysis.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 4/6/14 12:27 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 4/6/14 12:27 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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My practice now doesn't even resemble a practice because the 7 factors are quite good and I'm starting to analyze why when my eyes are closed it's easier to pop into light jhanas but harder to do with the eyes open. Understanding perception and letting go needs to go deeper to allow relief with the eyes open.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 4/6/14 8:40 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 4/6/14 8:40 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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My equanimity is getting stronger. I still feel pangs of anxiety when there's persona non grata tactics at work. It just doesn't hurt as much anymore because I'm letting go of needing to be successful. This is a big step for me because it's probably my longest running attachment.

I can see that one manager in particular has glib psychopath tendencies. When she does a faux pas she likes to look at my facial expressions like she needs to know what empaths feel because she can't understand empathy. She constantly talks about how she has no feelings etc like it's a badge of honor. She says she likes Harry Potter but really she's more like Voldemort in ostracism tactics and talking behind people's backs. In the past I used to be scared of these people. Now I find them comical/tragic/stupid/retarded/deranged. By giving Metta to them it's strange like trying to pet Godzilla. "Poor Godzilla..." It works but it also highlights how random, chaotic, and arbitrary pursuing success can be.

We recently had a "Positive Outlook" seminar where she and most of the finance department attended. It was quite good and pretty much listed all the Buddhist understandings (including perception) and Christian views. Despite that you can tell the hypocrisy and how little people will actually do the practice. If Mahasi retreats have a 50% success rate in getting stream-entry then a seminar must be nil. Most of the staff probably wanted this as secret teachings to help them dominate.

By letting go of wanting success you can still pursue excellence but you have to be not expecting anything. Paying attention to the benefits of actions is good enough.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 4/8/14 6:37 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 4/8/14 6:37 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Well after eavesdropping on Daniel's recommendation of "Clarifying the Natural State", I'm reading it and I'm already getting benefits from it.

This morning was quite good in that just letting the thoughts go where they want (something Daniel harps on a lot) it's starting to really work. By the end of the day old mental habits arose but it's clear that I have to switch interrupting the thoughts less and just let them be and die away so that meditation is not used to block the thoughts but to resist adding to them. So right effort now is more like just dropping the addition to habitual thoughts so they just fall away. No blocking or clinging. They fall away on their own and thinking can be freed. Just ordering a sandwich and a coffee and I was in bliss. All kinds of thoughts I normally block arose and just left own their own. It's a normalized kind of bliss very different from jhanas. My chest got a bit of fear and bliss at the same time but I just let it be.

Last night I got a hint of this after some reading and I was brushing my teeth and letting the habitual thoughts be as they are and pass away. I got a glimpse of a "self" that was trying to block this stuff. The mental habits broke through it and it was like the Bahiya Sutta where thinking was just thinking and it never was a self. Thoughts now are more integrated with everything else. It's more like a "suchness" now. That book is razor sharp and I'll be interested what else I can glean from it.

I'm still very aware that I can feel emotionally hurt and feel vulnerable but it's more like stuff happening and lots of equanimity with this. I'm feeling very grateful right now.

The goal now is to see how much I can let go.
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Jean B, modified 9 Years ago at 4/9/14 5:47 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 4/9/14 5:47 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 212 Join Date: 1/7/14 Recent Posts
Nothing much to say, just that your thread is a good read and I'm getting some help with your insights. Keep going and thanks for sharing!
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 4/9/14 7:21 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 4/9/14 7:20 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I hope it shows that if you stick with it there are some goodies that come along.

Today was quite good and the effect from yesterday is still there and it appears to be a new baseline but very normalized. The wow is gone but the relief remains. From experience I know that the old bad habits will continue and there will be consequences to unskillful actions that will cause pain but resisting adding to the impulses and just watching it fall makes it come under control without the aversion to try and block it.

The pain of reactivity to perception is not a problem because there's no clinging to extend it. The head seems to get a nudge or small pressure then subsides because I'm not adding anything to it. Concentration is more like keeping with being, as opposed to stopping anything or pushing anything. I've had experiences like this in the past but I'm not forgetting it like in the past.

The rest of the book just takes those great subtle insights and continues advising to let go of all desires which I think Daniel has mentioned most people won't do all the way. People tend to stop at 2nd path from what I remember he said.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 4/15/14 8:11 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 4/15/14 8:09 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I'm bouncing back and forth between no-self and and self but it's getting clearer that I still have a subtle problem with dualism. The following talk is describing my experience really well. Just walking around in my experience there's an understanding that my senses are creating experience and there's a fragility and fakeness about them. It's hard to explain but when you don't block thinking and don't ruminate the freedom there can reveal a more subtle situation that can veer between waking up in the morning and feeling that things are real and by the end of the day with mindfulness a kind of nihilism where things are built up and fabricated. It's yo-yo-ing back and forth. Not manipulating experience also can highlight impermanence really well.

The Wisdom of Non-duality

Having a view that things are real or not real is another dualism. Trying to "stay" in non-dualism conceals a little bit of aversion.
John M, modified 9 Years ago at 4/20/14 1:40 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 4/20/14 1:40 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 135 Join Date: 2/11/12 Recent Posts
Richard Zen:

I get the impression that this is a talk I'll revisit again and again -- very profound and more than a little challenging. Thanks for sharing.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 4/20/14 5:52 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 4/20/14 5:52 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Development doesn't really stop. Realization is one thing but habits/conditioning takes longer to deal with.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 4/19/14 6:47 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 4/19/14 6:41 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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With getting projects done I'm finding that the cognitive therapy methods of reminding yourself of the benefits is working. This is especially true when one repeats the reminder again and again while doing the activity. "I will really enjoy it when the floor is clean". "I really like it when the dishes are clean", "I'll be so happy when the microwave is clean", etc.

In between tasks there's an aversion to go to the next task so meditation comes in handy at this point. You let go of all thinking and just sit down and wait until the aversion is completely gone and then pay attention to the benefits of what things will be like when the task is completed. Then off you go and do something else. Savour the results.

The harsh aversion in the skull needs to be a warning sign that it's already affecting you and it's already making choices for you. Just sit down and relax until you feel better. When you feel better you're more functional and can do more tasks. Rinse and repeat.

Right effort hits the nail on the head and is quite similar to CBT. We have to let go of unwholesome thinking, prevent unwholesome thinking from arising, cultivate wholesome qualities, and then to strengthen the wholesome qualites after they have arisen. It's like the mind gets some success but quickly wants to dip back down to negativity.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 4/21/14 8:42 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 4/21/14 8:20 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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So this Burbea talk on Nagarjuna and noticing the affect of dualities of any kind (Wisdom of non-duality) has thrown me for a loop today. Basically I start letting go much sooner than before and I can now see how subtle dualities "this is better than that" is affecting me. This morning the letting go created a slight "unbearable lightness of being" feeling that eventually subsided. Other than that today has been incredibly smooth like never before. Doing things is now less painful. The Advaita Vedanta "rest in consciousness", "don't do anything" etc is now seen through as masking more subtle clinging and laziness. By noticing the smallest possible aversion it can be let go sooner and doing tasks is now becoming more effortless. There's still tiredness but the real kind as opposed to aversion masking as tiredness.

When you mix what is learned from the "Clarifying the natural state" book of not repressing anything but also not adding rumination, plus adding the 7 factors of awakening, and then noticing how quick the perception is with dualities of experience things are normal but even more smooth. Notice dualities in liking something vs. not liking something. Notice posting in this forum vs. not posting LOL!. Especially notice doing something with enjoyment as a short-term relief vs. doing something more constructive.

Notice blocking unpleasant sensations vs. allowing them. Notice blocking a wandering mind vs. noticing you're already back. Notice wanting your life to be a certain way vs. accepting all the flaws. Notice disliking what is happening vs. accepting it. Notice being concentrated vs. not being concentrated. Notice disliking the effort in concentration practice vs. not meditating. Notice excluding something from experience vs. including all things in experience. Notice not welcoming experience vs. welcoming all experience. Notice disliking people vs. liking people. Notice over-analysis vs. doing. Notice not accepting the doing vs. accepting the doing. It just goes on and on.

Eg. When driving home I knew I needed to get some milk. The conditioning quickly thought 'na I can just go home and do without it." "I have to pick up some gas, oh I did a wrong turn so maybe I should do that later?" I felt the aversion in that thinking/clinging and quickly let go. I went and got the milk and gas (even if I had to drive a longer way) and felt totally normal and quite bright and relaxed with no clinging. The above description is much slower than how it actually happened. It's more like a minuscule tightening in the head that is let go of right away. This is making the Energy factor of awakening smoother since maintaining this result seems to require only a subtle effort. Forcing with too much concentration could just be more aversion to what's there. There's a quick subtle question underlying things and that is "do I really need this?" "Is that really important?" This question is non-conceptual in that it's more like feeling pain and letting things drop without adding more content. Then you go and non-chalantly do what's needed instead.

I can now see more clinging than I have ever seen before and I think this is probably my new best day. I can see how this can work with internet, home habits etc. I can also see how this can blindside people into thinking they are enlightened. As far as I'm concerned a fully enlightenment person may not entirely exist. It's a gradation between full blown addiction habits on one hand and complete liberation of habits on the other. Ultimately debating this or much of anything has to be done with skill or else it's another clinging. LOL!

Very appreciative!

Metta to all who've provided good information to me FOR FREE! This is what makes this website great. The pointless debates are a waste of time. Oh wait! Is that another duality? As long as I'm not clinging it's okay. The carefulness can't stop.

EDIT: Also notice clinging to the present moment. emoticon
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Superkatze one, modified 9 Years ago at 4/22/14 6:58 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 4/22/14 6:58 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Richard Zen:
Also notice clinging to the present moment. emoticon


What is the "present moment"? Isn't clinging to something just the effect of not having realized the inherent non-existence of the clung-to? If so, which contemplation will lead you to a place of less clinging? The miniscule observation of the cause and effect relationship between object and reactive pattern or the destruction of the view which underlies the reactive pattern?
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 4/22/14 7:51 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 4/22/14 7:51 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Superkatze one:
Richard Zen:
Also notice clinging to the present moment. emoticon


What is the "present moment"? Isn't clinging to something just the effect of not having realized the inherent non-existence of the clung-to? If so, which contemplation will lead you to a place of less clinging? The miniscule observation of the cause and effect relationship between object and reactive pattern or the destruction of the view which underlies the reactive pattern?


Clinging to the present moment has to do with the context in Rob Burbea's talk above "Wisdom of Non-duality". He'll explain it much better than I can.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 4/23/14 8:07 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 4/23/14 8:07 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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More measurements and dualities to relax:

Maya and Nirvana (Beyond Measure of Mind)

A world of "this and that". "Where movements of mind and perceptions of form are cut off this is where the unfabricated is".
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 4/26/14 10:28 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 4/26/14 10:27 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Well I think the practice is yielding more fruits. I'm starting to care less about whether career happens or not. I'm in a "stressful" period where I may have to move to another community and a new job with different people but I'm strangely serene about it. I think it has to do with the fact that happiness to me is not the external things anymore. Things can be good and interesting and should be sought after but they don't have to arrive or stay. The vantage point from the death-bed (like from Viktor Frankl) cures you of that blindness of a belief in immortality.

I'm very confident now that treating people with respect and kindness is an okay track I'm on and it has yielded benefits that are intangible but I can tell a lot of people like me more. This has created ire amongst some in management and I'm being replaced by someone who's more "suitable" which probably means they are more conformist and can be like pals in serotonin domination fetishes. I got very little training at this temporary assignment but this person replacing me got a HUGE amount in a short-period and you can see the unfairness that shows up. Yet I don't see their happiness at all and it does look like delusion. Being rejected still feels unpleasant in the gut but it is so much less than it used to be. The rejection in the past used to be closer to ulcers or irritable bowel syndrome. That's not happening anymore.

The new job I'm interviewing for is a DREAM job with the type of work I want and yet if I don't get it then that's okay too. Ten years ago I never would have been this way. I would be ruminating constantly about "what if this happens or that happens". I feel now that I'm actually lucky to have experienced the suffering I did because if I didn't I wouldn't have seeked Buddhism and I would have gone on with ridiculous habits of excess pride and self-measurement. Those bad habits lead to depression and in some cases suicide.

Mental sanity and physical health are now my favourite hobbies. Co-workers even say that I don't look my age.

I'm at the point now that if I bag groceries for a living that it wouldn't be so bad. I'm not kidding. As long as I have a job that gives me the basic necessities I'm very okay. Ultimately this body will die and that won't be any different no matter what status you develop or not. This gives me a power that is so different. I feel somewhat rebellious by nature and I will continue treating people equally (INFPs) even if it bothers hierarchy types (ESTJs, ISTJs). They are not happy because I can see their complaining and I've already seen workaholics who ignore their spouses and children. They could be smarter than I am but they are not wiser. They are stuck in a rut. Family, love, positive relationships, and environments that support that are a better happiness. It's all about memories. If you cultivate good experiences that create good memories that's what you want on your death-bed. You won't remember the hours of overtime and sacrifice to bosses. If you have some sense of love and higher calling along with the overtime then you'll probably remember that more because it'll include more people. I'm not against working hard but it has to include the right attitude as a foundation or it's pointless like chasing your tail.

Being rejected by cults of personality are blessings in disguise. emoticon
Migration 62 Daemon, modified 9 Years ago at 5/7/14 5:33 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 5/7/14 5:33 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Richard Zen - 2014-04-29 01:01:06 - RE: Richard's insight practice

Recent practice has got me to understand the analyzing and strategizing better.  There's also futurizing and remembering.  Just by watching it arise and pass away it feels like a self at first and then when it passes away it doesn't.  Trying to see this is just another "trying/attention to pay attention" and it starts leaving no room for a "self".  There was a slight tension that relaxed further than before and now there's a small dark night again.

Thinking now feels more like a small pinching or tension in the skull that subsides quickly.  You can see the System 1 acting automatically and the System 2 pushing to see sensations.  Very interesting.

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Richard Zen - 2014-05-01 03:22:10 - RE: Richard's insight practice

I know that mindfulness is the anchor of the 7 factors of awakening but I feel that Energy is just as much important.  It banishes the hindrances and starts to change habits.  Mindfulness by itself is good because it can diminish reactivity to perceptions but the overall habits are slow to change.  With energy you can feel the resistance at the beginning when you're activating it and how you have to abandon the wrong thinking multiple times before the hindrance gives way.  Then you prevent it from coming back by not feeding more negative thinking.  After that you cultivate what is useful and more importantly you make effort to sustain it.  

It reminds me of Bhante G's description of throwing a rock in the air and seeing it lose energy and fall.  Everything in our body is like physics so the constant relinquishing, cultivating and sustaining is needed or the efforts lose energy and old habits return.  It reminds me of impermanence.  It's also a good practice to prove causes and conditions for certain factors.  With practice you can see negative thoughts be replaced by positive mind states in ridiculously short time spans.

Doing this the brightness that I've experienced in the past returns and can be sustained for longer periods of time.  Instead of a brief wondrous A & P you can get a longer duration but it has to be constantly cultivated or it wanes.  Walking around town with this glow it's like there's a lamp in your head.  When getting up in the morning it's the perfect time to start it up again.  Sometimes there's a little too much strain and concentration has to be developed by watching the breath to soothe the excess energy and if there's laziness more investigation and energy is needed.  Trial and error can make it more subtle.

The most fun part of this practice is that you can see the actions you take when you follow the 7 factors compared to cultivating only concentration or open mindfulness.  More skillful actions occur.  Without this effort I can't see any way forward.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 5/10/14 11:12 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 5/10/14 11:08 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I'm practicing with Time to compare how objects and self appear with it.  As I look at the unfindable present moment, all I get is short-term memory in the form of passing sensations.  The time increases in strength when I start looking at objects for their meaning to how it will help or hinder the self.  The sense of time increases and the reality and clarity of perceptions increases.  

When I relax the push and pull of clinging along with searching for the present moment the senses start fading.  My vision when I briefly open my eyes is more faded and the colours are also faded.

Clinging happens very quickly so now I'm able to see this because the quick vibrating is happening while a "solid" self is complaining about some such object or situation to pan out.  The self feels solid but the space doesn't.  It's almost like an empty struggle against impermanent phenomenon.  There is new pain I can see with every conceptualization and objectification.

By not clinging to my job interview, when I didn't get the job, there was less suffering.  Making jobs have a meaning for "my life" to have value and importance is setting up clinging dependencies.

http://buddhism.vipassati.ch/ebooks/paticcasamuppada/4-suffering-in-dependent-origination-always-depends-on-attachment

Suffering in the operation of Paticcasamuppada must always depend on attachment. Take a farmer who works out in the open, exposed to wind and sun, transplanting the young rice plants : he thinks "Oh! I'm so hot!" If no clinging arises in the sense of "I'm so hot!" there is merely suffering of a natural kind and not of the kind associated with Dependent Origination. Suffering according to the law of Paticcasamuppada must have clinging to the point of agitation about the "I" concept. So it happens that the farmer becomes irritated and dissatisfied with being born a farmer. He thinks it's his fate, his karma, that he must bathe in his own sweat. When one thinks this way, suffering according to the Law of Dependent Origination arises.If one is hot and has a backache but nothing more, if one simply feels and knows that he is hot without any clinging to the "I" concept as above, then the suffering of Dependent Origination has not arisen. Please observe this carefully and make clear the distinction between these two kinds of suffering. If there is clinging, it is suffering according to Dependent Origination. Suppose you cut your hand with a sharp knife or razor blade and the blood gushes out. If you simply feel the pain but don't cling to anything, then your suffering is natural and not according to Dependent Origination.Don't confuse the two. Suffering according to Dependent Origination must always follow upon ignorance, formations, consciousness, mentality/materiality, sense bases, contact, feeling, craving, attachment, becoming and birth. It must be complete this way in order to be called Dependently Originated suffering.Now we can put the whole matter briefly.

Someone who has studied the dhamma may understand that the internal sense base (e.g., the eye) comes into contact with the external sense base (e.g., the form) which has a value or meaning and which then becomes the base of ignorance. For example, take your eye. Look about you. You see a variety of things: trees, stones, or whatever. But there is not any suffering because nothing of what you see has any value or meaning for you. But if you see a tiger or a woman, or something that has meaning, it's not the same. One kind of sight has meaning and another kind has no meaning. If, for example, a dog sees a pretty woman, it means nothing to the dog. But if a young man sees a lovely woman, it has a lot of meaning. Seeing a pretty woman has meaning for a man. The dog's seeing is not a matter of Dependent Origination. The young man's vision is a matter of Dependent Origination.
We are speaking about people: people in the act of seeing. Whenever we look about we naturally see whatever is there and, if there is no meaning, it has nothing to do with Paticcasamuppada. We see, perhaps, trees, grass and stones, none of which, normally, have meaning. But maybe there's a diamond or a sacred stone or a tree that will have meaning; there will be mental events occurring and Dependent Origination will become operative. And so it is that we distinguish the internal sense bases (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind) from the external sense bases (form, sound, smell, taste, tactile sensation, and mental objects), and these latter must be meaningful things. In this way they become the base for ignorance or stupidity or delusion. At this point of contact between the internal and external sense bases, sense consciousness arises. The consciousness arises instantaneously and gives rise to mental concocting a kind of power to cause further compounding or brewing up. That is, it brews up mentality/materiality, body and mind of the sort that is crazily stupid because it is prone to suffering.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 5/12/14 7:49 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 5/11/14 11:03 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/20/talk/20798/
Awareness watching Awareness

The above talk has been helpful to describe what it's like to release control of experience.  The no-self aspect increases. 

The next goal is to do work with this awareness to watch the reactivity as it is.

http://www.dharmaseed.org/talks/audio_player/175/23263.html
Am I dreaming?

EDIT: Welcoming what is in experience (especially what you can't change) is another way of increasing equanimity.

http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/210/talk/9813/
Guided Meditation
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 5/12/14 10:49 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 5/12/14 10:44 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/210/talk/11929/
Time and the emptiness of Time

It's pretty clear now that clinging is all over the place.  Just searching for the present moment and finding just vibrations and perceptions gets the brain to let go of thinking about the future or past and there's plenty of resistance to that.  Concentration and jhanas can come quickly doing this practice but that resistance shows how much letting go really still needs to happen.  I like this better than chasing "gone"s but ultimately it's the same practice.  What I like about it is that it brings to light how much actual thinking is still operating in consciousness and how consciousness is all about clinging to some object right at the beginning.  It's leaning to reach out to objects right away.  There is relief in letting awareness be awareness but there's a danger that without the Energy Factor it's a slide back to the same habits.  Welcoming does work with letting go so I'm still using this and finding it helpful.

This is disconcerting but there is potential freedom here to wean the consciousness further.  I'm looking at basic consciousness very differently now.  It's not a quiet placcid mirror.  It has plenty of disturbances going on.  I'm going to continue to let go but also not repress.  The speed of this clinging is daunting.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 5/30/14 7:33 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 5/30/14 7:32 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I'm reading Nagarjuna and find a lot in there to meditate with.  By noticing how the amygdala treates objects as inherently existing you can notice the difference just by looking for vibrations and impermanence in all experiences (including thinking).  When getting irritated at work with something monotonous you can just look at objects with MORE DETAIL to find less solidity and less to be distracted about. (Eg. just by noticing the impermanence of touch in particular to rid the mind of the belief that the object being touched is "out there and permanently real" is a reminder that the brain may be noticing something "out there" but it's really just the brain reconstructing experience in a simplified way and then attaching to it in a simplified way.  This is fun to do with all sensations like when eating something really delicious.

Some blunt quotes that are interesting in how he weaves in the middle path.  All concepts (including a self-concept) can feel separated more than they actually are:
...space is neither an entity, the abscence of an entity, an entity with characteristics, nor indeed the characteristics themselves.  The remaining four elements - earth, water, fire, and air - are to be treated like space.

Identifying the cause with the effect is not appropriate.  But not identifying the cause with the effect is also not appropriate.

Those of little intelligence, who see in terms of the "is-ness" and "not-is-ness" of entities, do not perceive the peaceful stilling of what can be seen.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 6/24/14 11:48 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 6/24/14 11:48 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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A little video that's describing how I feel when I follow Right Energy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXBZRJO5_OU
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 7/2/14 12:37 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 7/1/14 11:42 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Okay I think I've exhausted what I need to work on (including in daily life).  It doesn't mean I'm perfectly purified or some such nonsense but the below is a lot to chew on for some time.  Rob Burbea really lays it out and I've made some notes.  Reading Nagarjuna has really helped in understanding the mistake of inherent existence.  I'm currently still in the Advaita Vedanta acceptance of everything, but the Buddhist additions have made it much better.  

I've benefited the most from the "Clarifying the Natural State" book to learn to welcome the impulses to avoid aversion to aversion.  I've also benefited from Daniel's advice along with Andrea Fella to let go of aversion to a wandering mind.  Currently I'm working on the below to deal with perception and how it's depended on consciousness.  Consciousness is already leaning on past likes and dislikes (sankharas).  Seeing the movements happen this early is relieving more stress but I need much more practice as I'm still new to being (almost) perceptionless on a regular basis.  I want this to be a regular habit that allows functionality and relaxation while doing tasks as opposed to some awkward practice that represses perception.

The following talk is covered more towards the end of the notes.  The starting part is from other talks and I can't find out which ones they were from.

http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/210/talk/9553/
Minds are what glue things together. See "things in vibrations."  There are pleasant and unpleasant frequencies happening all the time.  You can develop tuning into the pleasant.

Just look at things as empty, the mind goes to nothingness and seeing nothingness as another perception you go to NPNYP.

Arhat understands perception/cessation/beyond time

Believing in things and investing in things leads to a time sense.  “How will this thing be for me in the future? How has it been in the past? How is it for me now?”

If time is empty then arising and passing away are also empty.

Consciousness (self), objects and time cannot exist without the other.

No matter how subtle sense of self there is there will always be an investment.  “How will it be for me?”

Conceiving is more important than thinking.

To conceive = to form or devise (a plan or idea) in the mind.

If I have any “thing” for consciousness, wrapped in the perception of the thing the concept is included of “not that thing”.

Perception of stillness includes the possibility of a lack of stillness in the future.  Time is woven into the perception of a thing.

The investment/attachment in a thing makes the future sense gain in significance.  Conceiving is wrapped up with delusion.

Consciousness/Knowing depends on time since knowing needs a present moment.  Present moment is empty so consciousness is leaning on something empty of inherentness.

10 links version of dependent origination:

Nama-rupa: depends on consciousness.  Consciousness depends on Nama-rupa.

Nama-rupa: Nama – Perception, vedana, attention, intention, contact.  Rupa – ancient 4 elements.

Attention: The mind’s movement of attention to a perception/object/experience feels similar to the push and pull of craving/aversion.

Attention: Consciousness + intention directed at this or that whether we are aware of it or not.

Push and pull depends on object and vice versa.
The sense of an object for consciousness depends on attention.  It could be deliberate or not deliberate.  Attention needs objects.

The present moment for consciousness exists because of objects.  Time is dependent on knowing/consciousness.  Knowing depends on time.  Attention needs an experience/moment.  If there are mutually dependent they are mutually empty of inherentness.

Ignorance is being ignorant of what qualities and actions bring suffering or freedom, and forgetting impermanence, and believing in a self that is real.  Self can be anywhere on the spectrum from big self down to just perceiving an object or even perceiving nothing.  Believing in that trinity of subject/object/time is root delusion.  The subject must have an investment.  Intention to pay attention

Sankharas: Neurosis, impressions that carries into the future.  Fabricators, fashions, movements of the mind that fashion or fabricate experience, dukkha and the whole sense of reality.  Out of delusion comes these impulses, intentions, ways of relating, conceiving, and perceiving that fashion and fabricate.

'And why do you call them 'fabrications'? Because they fabricate fabricated things, thus they are called 'fabrications.' What do they fabricate as a fabricated thing? For the sake of form-ness, they fabricate form as a fabricated thing. For the sake of feeling-ness, they fabricate feeling as a fabricated thing. For the sake of perception-hood... For the sake of fabrication-hood... For the sake of consciousness-hood, they fabricate consciousness as a fabricated thing. Because they fabricate fabricated things, they are called fabrications.

The intention to pay attention is a very subtle movement of sankhara.

Intentions require an object to intend to attend to.  I have to believe in this object to intend to pay attention to.  I can’t have an intention without a sense of the next moment and a sense of a subject with an investment.

Time is dependent on knowing, the movement of intention, sankharas, investment and conceiving of an object in the present moment.

I cannot find any aspect of the mind that is not empty.  Delusion is also dependent on the other factors.

In practice you see the mind dependent on empty objects so it is empty as well.  In that platform then time and present moment can be included as empty.  What’s important is seeing the emptiness in experience as opposed to cessation.  Cessation happens with the fading.

Whether there’s a center in the knowing there is dukkha.  Objects are in space and time.  Knowing is not separate from empty perceptions.  The whole of existence is groundless.

Phew! Lots of meditation notes to plug into the practice.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 7/12/14 11:44 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 7/12/14 11:43 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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The above practices are really good.  I'm looking at the nama rupa more closely so that "consciousness" is breaking down into those parts.  Remembering is a part of the knowing which helps with recognizing objects to like and dislike.  

There's more freedom but at the same time there's more consistent mindfulness.  One has to be very aware or the habitual "consciousness -> contact -> recognition/perception/remembering what object "is" -> vedana -> craving -> clinging -> action" mass of reactivity as it starts up like a mental bubble.  Adding to the noting "intention", and "object" helps breakdown the stress to it's root cause of time/object/self attending.

This subtle tanha really does affect a person and moves quickly.  So when relaxing in consciousness (the advaita vedanta enlightenment) there is much less obvious pain that existed before meditation but the subtle attachments are unaffected.

When noting this detail the sense of self reduces as more phenomenon like intentions to pay attention to an object appears to be this impermanent process that can be waited out to gain relief.  As soon as the brain recognizes an "object" the mental stress starts up (albeit not very strong).

I can now see the subtle mental pain in attention:
Attention: The mind’s movement of attention to a perception/object/experience feels similar to the push and pull of craving/aversion.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 7/18/14 10:24 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 7/18/14 10:20 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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When I worry about how I'm doing compared to the past I can see clearly how much better things are.  I'm still dealing with existential issues with career but I'm finding in arguments and debates with people I'm becoming more confident and I don't believe what people say about me.  All I'm doing is hearing the criticism and seeing if it actually makes sense and if I'm able to do something about it.  I can see how people will criticize me no matter what I do and how the amygdala likes to exagerrate problems.  I can also see when I win debates with just plain logic how irritated they can get.  Seeing how people stress over perceptions instead of being naturally tired from normal exertion teaches how one can drain themselves from their thinking habits alone.

I think a lot of bullies and bulldozers get used to just criticizing and having people not have answers or they stay quiet.  To have someone actually analyze what they say to see if it's actually TRUE you can see they aren't prepared for it.  Conflict is starting to become fun because as long as I'm fair to the other person and take true criticism and do something about it I know I'm doing better than many people.  The pangs in the stomach from receiving criticism from others is really low.  I remember some years ago how bad I had IBS.

I'm having much less of those feelings of "oh why isn't my life going this way or that way?"  Those thoughts do arise but the pain and strain is so much less.  Seeing how reifying objects and constantly daydreaming about preferences is the beginning of the stress.  There is no permanent happiness.  The brain will always find perceptions that lack the quality of expectations.

This leads into nice periods where I'm just looking at cause and effect and creating causes instead of just judging and analyzing.  It's a relief.  

The following talk mentions how beneficial letting go of preferences as a deeper understanding of letting go.

http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/210/talk/10832/

A long with letting go of preferences I'm still looking at the 3 characteristics but truly I haven't gotten enough from it beyond equanimity.  Just because things are impermanent doesn't mean I still don't want it.  By targeting preferences while looking at the 3 Cs I can see some improvement like dousing a small fire before it gets too big.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 7/19/14 11:21 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 7/19/14 11:13 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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A good talk that helps clear up the confusion of nama-rupa and consciousness:

http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/169/talk/15836/

I'm zeroing in on unskillful intentions to let go of them more often.  Of course the skillful intentions should be acted upon.

x x, modified 9 Years ago at 7/20/14 6:49 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 7/20/14 6:10 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Richard, I just wanted to thank you for sharing your notes. This last bit of self-conceit is very tricky to notice (so subtle but still very significant) and I'm really appreciating your articulation of it. Best wishes for your practice!

As far as the career life/interpersonal "conflict" goes... one skill I've been working on is "naming the game". Part of the challenge of bullies and bulldozers are kinda on autopilot and they don't really take in factual information, because that's not what is motivating them. They aren't looking for the right answer, they're trying to establish/maintain whatever position or role they have staked out. So sometimes the direct approach doesn't quite work because they manouver around the position, not the facts. Even though with a clearer mind it's possible to chip away at the foundation for their stake... sometimes it's easier just to say "my sense is you are really staked out there." "from my perspective it seems you want X"   Basically simply naming the game they are playing. Then it's up to them to justify it or deny it, and you haven't done anything except name their game. Just one more practical tool. Of course, they might have an insight into our own positoning and call us on our stuff. The appropriate response is "I see what you are saying. Thank you for pointing that out." (and mean it!) emoticon
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 7/20/14 11:20 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 7/20/14 11:19 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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x x:
Richard, I just wanted to thank you for sharing your notes. This last bit of self-conceit is very tricky to notice (so subtle but still very significant) and I'm really appreciating your articulation of it. Best wishes for your practice!

As far as the career life/interpersonal "conflict" goes... one skill I've been working on is "naming the game". Part of the challenge of bullies and bulldozers are kinda on autopilot and they don't really take in factual information, because that's not what is motivating them. They aren't looking for the right answer, they're trying to establish/maintain whatever position or role they have staked out. So sometimes the direct approach doesn't quite work because they manouver around the position, not the facts. Even though with a clearer mind it's possible to chip away at the foundation for their stake... sometimes it's easier just to say "my sense is you are really staked out there." "from my perspective it seems you want X"   Basically simply naming the game they are playing. Then it's up to them to justify it or deny it, and you haven't done anything except name their game. Just one more practical tool. Of course, they might have an insight into our own positoning and call us on our stuff. The appropriate response is "I see what you are saying. Thank you for pointing that out." (and mean it!) emoticon

Thanks for the advice. 

The last bit is difficult (nama-rupa) because it connects to everything else and is not separate.  I have to resist habitual intentions more and more (which to me is truly letting go).  Just last night I was meditating and I really hit no-self.  It was like the self was exhausted and couldn't be bothered so it relinquished on its own.  The vibrations in the skull and everywhere else was just experience but I didn't feel like I was in a jhana or a self was locatable anywhere.  It was very liberating but temporary as of right now I'm continuing to note because that result is gone again.
Andreas Thef, modified 9 Years ago at 7/23/14 2:03 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 7/23/14 2:03 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Hello Richard, just wanted to thank you for the links you shared with me about dependent arising. I've only listened to John Peacock's talk so far. I found very helpful and clear.

Have a nice day,
Andreas
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 7/21/14 10:46 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 7/21/14 10:46 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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A couple of recent dharma talks that I really needed.  They emphasize the need for consistent mindfulness and reduce the complexity.

http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/25/talk/24102/

http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/96/talk/24093/
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 7/23/14 1:44 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 7/23/14 12:07 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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The consistent mindfulness still feels slightly harsh so I've gone back to the Clarifying the natural State instructions and the mindfulness is getting smoother again and even more smooth when I use the below instructions from Lama Kong Ka.  I can start seeing in Daniel's instructions on seeing everything that is considered a self and how both instructions point in different ways to the same thing so there's a smoothness from a lack of aversion to what's happening.  Things are causal or happen on their own.   

I'm still working with intentions and trying to notice and feel them.  This talk goes into more detail:

http://www.audiodharma.org/talks/audio_player/4927.html

Some notes from Maria:
Intention is about motivation.  Eg. Baking a cake for someone to enjoy vs. Showing off.
Using intentions to guide conditions is better than just reacting with default intentions.
Default intentions “I want what I like and I don’t want what I don’t like”.
Motivations determine whether intentions are skillful or unskillful.
Intentions are ethically neutral but motivations are not ethically neutral.

Feel the energy to move your hand.  That is your intention.  The motivation to move your hand or not move your hand is the energy for the action.  Volition is also in the continuing of the action. 

Checking your intentions allows you to stop them.  What you think will be the inclination of the mind.  Letting go of clinging is renunciation (a form of intention).  Make intentions based on what is skillful instead of self-measurement.

Align intentions with deep values. When purposefully cultivating intentions you can at a later time check into your intentions as you go along with your day and have ready made intentions to remind yourself of.

If the intention is good then when there are mistakes there will be less self blame.  
By paying attention to motivation, intentions, action, and the continuance of the action I can see how incredibly quick they are, because they feel one and the same.   Since any Right Effort movement is exercising intention then you can see how intentions are all over the place and habitual intentions have to be countered by the intention to pay attention. Eg. Adjusting intentions to return to the breath.  When paying attention is happening (hopefully as often as possible) this time should not be wasted and the skillful intentions and actions should be put in place.  More paying attention = more freedom. This also means that being tired of pay attention can reduce your freedom from old habits.  By developing better habits when there is more attention hopefully when someone is tired their good habits will kick in.

Seeing things happening on their own feels even more true when trying Lama Kong Pa's instructions.  It's like I can notice more of the sensations when I pursue "naturalness".  I really understand now how there's no self in the experiential level and because of how quiet, peaceful (yet groundbreaking) it's convincing.  I can also see how old habits still have to be dealt with but there's no need to make that project a "self" project full of the typical judgment and aversion.  Just Do, Observe, and Correct intentions. emoticon  I don't know if I fully understand intention in an experiential level yet but this combination is working.  I'll know if I can follow Kong Pa's instructions to deliberately cultivate desire and aversion and not act on them but just observe their nature.  It's clear to me now that having my senses knocked out in classical stream-entry is not necessary to see and understand non-inherency.  Everything happens as causes and conditions and seeing this in more clarity can allow cultivating better intentions/actions/habits.  Because of tiredness and ignorance there will be errors and falling off the wagon but now that isn't a self-judgment anymore.

Lama Kong Pa's instructions point directly but it's very subtle:

https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.abuddhistlibrary.com%2FBuddhism%2FA%2520-%2520Tibetan%2520Buddhism%2FSubjects%2FWisdom%2FMahamudra%2FThe%2520Essentials%2520of%2520Mahamudra%2520Practice%2FThe%2520Essentials%2520of%2520Mahamudra%2520Practice.rtf&ei=5OnPU4XJO4eIjALA9oDIBA&usg=AFQjCNESyy3ec9YoGAgB7iUrnTfxE5uRzw&sig2=89VkM1gKURadVFqzweK5Xw
'Equilibrium' means to balance body, mouth, and mind.
The Mahamudra way of balancing the body is to loosen it,
of balancing the mouth is to slow down the breathing,
and of balancing the mind is not to cling to and rely on anything.
 
"This is the supreme way to tame the body, breath ,
and mind.
 
" 'Relaxation' means to loosen the mind, to let everything go, to strip off all ideas and thoughts.  When one's whole body and mind become loose, one can, without effort, remain in the natural state, which is intrinsically non-dis- criminative and yet without distractions.
 
" 'Naturalness' means not 'taking' or 'leaving' anything:
in other words the yogi does not make the slightest effort of any kind.  He lets the senses and mind stop or flow by themselves without assisting or restricting them. 
To practice naturalness is to make no effort and be spontaneous.

"The above can be summarized thus:
 
   The essence of equilibrium is not to cling.
   The essence of relaxation is not to hold.
   The essence of naturalness is to make no effort."
THE  ERRORS  IN  MAHAMUDRA  PRACTICE
"(1) If one's Mahamudra practice is confined soley to the effort of stabilizing the mind, the activities of all one's six consciousnesses will be halted, or dimmed.  This is called a 'frozen ice' type of practice, and is a very harmful tendency in Mahamudra meditation which must be avoided.

"(2) He who neglects the clear 'Awareness' but abides soley in Non-distinction will see or hear nothing when confronted with sights, sounds, smells, and touches. . . This is an error due to having become sluggish.

"(3) When the last thought has gone, and the next one has not come, this immediate, present moment is a very wonderful thing if one can abide therein; but, if he does so without clear awareness, he still falls into the error of sluggishness.

"(4) he who can hold the bright Awareness but thinks there is nothing more to Mahamudra also falls into error.

"(5) If one only cultivates 'Blissfulness,' 'Illumination,' and Non-distinction' without practicing 'penetrating-observation-into-the-mind,' it still cannot be considered as the correct Mahamudra practice.

"(6) He who develops a dislike to manifestation os most likely to have gone astray.

"(7) He who concentrates on his Awareness and cultivates the illuminating-void Self-mind [I'm assuming non-inherency] is said to practice Mahamudra correctly.  However, this 'concentration- effort' has a tendency to hinder that spontaneity and freedom of spirit, without which it is difficut to unfold the vast and liberating Mind.  One should therefore never forget to practice the 'looseness,' 'vastness,' and 'spontaneity.'"
*   *   *   
"What, then, is the correct Mahamudra practice?

"[Answer:] The ordinary mind [Tib.: Thal.Ma.Ces.Pa] is itself the correct practice.  That is to say, to let the ordinary mind remain in its own natural state.  If to this mind one adds or subtracts anything, it is then not the ordinary mind but the so-called 'mind-object' [Tib.: Yul.]. To make not the slightest intention and effort to practice, and yet to not be distracted for a single moment, is to practice the natural mind correctly.  Therefore, as long as you can keep your Self-awareness, no matter what you do, you are still practicing Mahamudra.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 7/26/14 11:52 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 7/26/14 11:52 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
The no-self freedom makes one just accept things as they are.  It feels like you're just normal without being a meditator but you're a version of you that has less stress.  I had many glimpses of this in the past but until you see more detail (especially intentions) the brain likes to cling to what is not seen throughly.  Now that I have a lot more freedom it's time to DO something with it.  I've decided not to abandon concentration practices completely like some do because dealing with old conditioning requires new conditioning.  Metta is something that I've practiced little with and even doing basic metta practices during the day (without absorption) it can clear the mind of "enemies".  There's a lot more that can be done with the practice to seep into habitual thinking.   

I'm starting to look for new friends which is a good sign for an introvert like me and helps to bring more perspectives in your life.  Mental judgments happen still (feeling that others are superior to oneself) but there's more acceptance because socializing is just another skill.  Also when choosing who to spend time around it necessary to reject and be rejected again and again to get better at this skill and not waste time with people who aren't a good fit.

http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/5556399

1hr Metta practice:  I followed Finch's instructions and they help.  I flipped easily between the 1st two jhanas simply by focusing on just myself.  By switching from "May I be happy" to remembering a happy memory to "May this body be happy" it's possible to fall into jhana quite easily.  There's less strain now that I don't cling to jhanas.  There's an echo in my mind to when I did cling to them and the brain immediately looks at that as danger and the mind quiets down which naturally helps the jhana.

Lots of metta to all those teachers, books, advanced practitioners who helped when I got stuck.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 8/3/14 6:01 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/3/14 6:00 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
In working with intentions it's pretty clear why they are so repetitive and difficult to deal with is because they are underpinned by preferences.  I hear others talking about equanimity towards formations, or specific neutrality towards everything etc. Being aware of preferences and letting them go you can see some of the hidden clinging that was operating all the time.  It's okay to have preferences but letting go of the hold of preferences brings relief.  If it feels a little wrong to let go of a hold on preferences then the clinging can be seen right there.  Practicing this way the sense of self sinks a little further.

http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/39/talk/2043/


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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 8/4/14 2:57 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/4/14 2:57 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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A good test for a "no preferences" practice is to play a competitive video game where the habit is to feel aversion when losing and feeling conceited when winning.  Try not reacting either way.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 8/4/14 10:02 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/4/14 10:02 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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While walking near the river I tried to remember what I was like last year and it's getting better.  When letting go in the past there was an intention to look for a mirror awareness at the back of the head even if I wasn't entirely aware this was happening.  Now when I let go there's no need to search for anything.  The beautiful awareness is already operating.  I think not indulging preferences for extended periods of time helps one see how intentions can be like sensations and as Rob Burbea points out that any intention to pay attention to an object can have some tanha.  Letting go is all that seems to be needed.  This is a far cry from the days I was noting the shit out of everything but with too much clinging to results and trying to find "stream entry" and creating a "noter" that's noting.  It's much less of a quest now.

Right now it's mostly smooth with some little bits of clinging here and there.  As I continue to let go without doing anything more it will smooth out further.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 8/6/14 10:31 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/6/14 10:31 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
With letting go I'm reminded of Nagarjuna's examination of time.  When we let go a lot of the thoughts that are let go of have to do with the past or the future.  Even the present is gone very quickly.If the present and the future
Depend on the past,
Then the present and the future
Would have existed in the past.

If the present and future
Did not exist there,
How could the present and the
Future be dependent on it?

Without depending on the past,
Neither of the two could be established.
Therefore neither the present nor
The future could exist.

By this very method, without substitution,
The remaining two; as well as …
Superior, inferior, average, etc.; and
Unity, etc., should be understood.

A nonenduring time is not grasped
Nothing one could grasp as time
Could exist as enduring.
If time is not grasped, how it is known?

If time depends on a entity
Then without an entity how could time exist?
Since there are no entities at all,
How could time exist?

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Karalee Peltomaa, modified 9 Years ago at 8/14/14 5:28 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/14/14 5:28 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 401 Join Date: 6/19/14 Recent Posts
Wow!  You could afford liquor?  Doing good, Richard, and I see everything working out perfectly for you.  emoticon
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 8/17/14 10:45 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/17/14 10:13 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Okay so after my vulnerable post I've since deleted I decided to focus on the cessation of experience more and especially looking at thoughts.

http://www.dharmaseed.org/talks/audio_player/179/10999.html

http://www.dharmaseed.org/talks/audio_player/186/3239.html



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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 8/18/14 12:51 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/18/14 12:51 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
It's pretty clear that thoughts just arise on their own.  There's no do-er-ship involved.  I mediated for three hours just following the breath and it was interrupted by thought after thought after thought.  I treated the thoughts with equanimity and let them drop on their own.  Each time it dropped samadhi would re-engage.  Sometimes the samadhi doesn't re-engage so quickly and that's due to angry thoughts, but I just continue on regardless.
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Karalee Peltomaa, modified 9 Years ago at 8/18/14 2:33 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/18/14 2:33 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 401 Join Date: 6/19/14 Recent Posts
Your consistency of practice is a good model for me.   I admire also how you seem to be keeping your practice a "hard simple" way.   I used to be a weight lifter, so I can appreciate that  :-))

When I get stuck on a thought or scene or emotion (the other day I got stuck on love and joy) I will jog it loose by employing the 6-directions which I learned from some ancient practice; or if a thought I will repeat that thought and let the shift occur until nothing further occurs.

I agree about the automaticity of the mind; however conscious creative visualization helps me to do what my mind is doing compulsively and doing it self-determinedly, consciously.  I select an importance my mind is popping up with.  Very zen, eh!   I'm pretty sure you know this :-))  You seem to me like one who is aware of how one can get lost in identification with one's mind/thoughts/emotions.

best wishes for you and your practice,
colleen
 
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 8/21/14 10:41 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/21/14 10:28 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
I've been returning to An Eternal Now's e-book and I can tell I didn't really understand it the first time I read it.  It makes more sense now that I discovered other explanations from countless other sources so I can understand what he means. LOL! I feel that he's correct that the neti, neti practice does create benefits but can create a dissassociated "noter" that is noting.  Letting go of aversion to a wandering mind is what helped a lot and his description I think is even better.  It's more like everything is already letting go and that "trying to let go" is more clinging.  This brings that clarity I've seen in the past but I notice more when I'm seeing things as they are WITH the thinking and the intention to pay attention.  Noting is intending to pay attention and if those activities are excluded you can't see any further.  As you would expect the repressed material (including some really angry violent revenge stuff) comes out but as usual I'm not acting on it and choosing to let go is more like not adding to it or not adding an aversion before letting go happens.

While running I realized that I've been neglecting vedana again and I think I have been for about a year now.  While the metta practice is (slowly) helpful I need to be more aware of habitual aversion (that doesn't hurt much but is still making choices for me) and practice taking actions that are needed but aren't preferences.  This is the only way to change habits.  You can use whatever techniques to make things fun but there is always going to be a natural resistance in the brain to pushing yourself.  I didn't run all that much this summer and now that I'm doing it again I can feel the resistance.  By just noting "unpleasant" and to keep going eventually the body lets go of the aversion and you continue until you actually are tired.  The first couple of kilometres seemed like such a drag and after a couple more kilometres I wasn't thinking about the aversion because it was gone.

Seeing emptiness in all experiences still means the habits return and I like attending to the breath (but without huge force).  It's more like Right Effort towards the breath.  
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 9/17/14 6:55 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 9/17/14 6:55 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
The past month has been difficult in dealing with aversion.  It's like a brick wall at times even though it doesn't hurt much at all anymore.  Using Rob Burbea's noting strategy I can see why. Perception and consciousness are essentially the same and perception affects clinging.  I'm noting now a little deeper and after a couple of hours of meditation I'm noting more detail.  When arisings and passings do their thing towards the mirror of knowing I start noting "space" and everything else "perception".  A couple of hours doesn't seem like enough so I'll have to take more time.  The benefit of this noting (more bare awareness than noting) is that perceptions do start to fade a bit and 3D subject/object experience at times goes into 2D which creates more relief.  I'm not sure how successful this will be but I'll just keep at it.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 9/19/14 9:48 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 9/19/14 9:48 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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For noting throughout the day I returned to the Mahamudra Moonlight book I read years ago.  I'm pretty sure I didn't understand it then but it's much more understandable now.

The complexity in these books can be difficult to do in practice so I tried to simplify the 4 yogas down:

1. Welcome all experiences (including obstacles) - This seems to relax the body instantly when it's tried.  This is best used when you put yourself in situations that will test your equanimity. Consistency in mindfulness needs to be there for it to work. Returning to the breath time and time again can restart the process.
2. Don't examine the meditation - This keeps you noting and makes the consistency improve.  There's naturally less self-referencing which can only be of help.
3. Don't look at experiences as deficient - If you're welcoming the experience you need to feel it's good enough (especially if it's a difficult situation).
4. There is no inherent meditator or meditation - When the above steps are followed this step is more inferred because it feels like this. Also the first step is all that's needed and the steps afterward simply support it further when the mind goes off.

The obstacle I introduced myself to is Toastmasters.  My first meeting was quite good (it's a supportive environment) but It'll be challenging public speaking fears.  You can see the reactive embarassed looks on people's faces when they get up there. emoticon  The practice is meaningless unless it's used in new, uncomfortable, challenging situations.

I made a mnemonic to remember the steps which when repeated often can condition the right habit so you eventually don't need the mnemonic anymore.

The Buddha welcomed the examiner and found no deficiency in his/her meditation.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 9/26/14 8:02 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 9/26/14 8:00 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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It's pretty clear now the difference between intentions that are habitual vs. intentions that go against preferences. Intentions that are habitual are so fast (you can see this when noting while driving or doing any automatic work) that they look like they arise at the same speed as actions. The 1 second notes are so slow that many actions are already complete before you can note intentions. emoticon 

Any movements to adjust your seating, scratch an itch are clearly happening on their own and without consistent mindfulness the habits perniciously act own their own. Intentions are an "about to" feeling when you have to deliberate and push against your preferences. If it's within your preferences it quickly acts, if you don't stay present consistently and relax the intention/action.

For the most part my equanimity is still improving. Feeling sorry for myself continues to release faster and faster. Everything just appears to be in a space of knowing (which sometimes feels very fabricated.) Consciousness as a separate entity is gone. Consciousness to me is just whatever is happening. It used to feel like consciousness had a location and it's clear it doesn't.

Thoughts aren't a problem precisely because if you don't treat them as a problem then they don't hurt at all. This is the case even if you're not paying attention but that is likely due to past periods of mindfulness practice. Paying attention to thinking will make the thinking (even negative thinking) seem harmless. Use metaphors of the ocean and waves for thinking and consciousness and view them as an inseparable part of the mind. As soon as I think "this shouldn't be there", "this is deficient in some way" the aversion creeps up.

I've also noticed when noticing bare attention that thinking can move more freely but when noting the thinking subsides. For practical reasons we need to switch from one to another being careful that bare attention doesn't turn into inattention.

http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/76/talk/8932/
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 9/30/14 9:15 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 9/30/14 9:15 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I've noticed with noting intentions that much of the habit that arises is rehearsing. After teaching dharma to so many people (including in imagination) the habit is really strong. There's embedded in the rehearsing lots of telling what to do for people that I don't like  emoticon 
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 10/3/14 2:45 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 10/3/14 2:45 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Okay now that I think I'm gaining much more control I've going to push myself everyday to go against useless habits and leave them behind for good. If there's a preference I'm going to think about opportunities to do differently. The goal is to refrain from those habits and to do nothing at the minimum (just to avoid doing the wrong thing) and ideally do more work and expand myself.

The benefit of getting busy will also create a momentum to not fall into a quick sand of complacency and procrastination. The thread won't be about perfectionism but a record of pushing against complacency, and developing renunciation. The goal will be to have some record keeping of the power of habits and aversion. If any meditative discoveries are made they will be included.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 10/7/14 8:54 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 10/7/14 8:51 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Last night I was doing some noting and I reduced the verbal note from outloud down to mental and then just to consistent bare awareness (because I felt it allowed more detail). I started noticing that my mind was going into a dream like state (but still wide awake) and there were several bits of mental talking from different people with separate identities. A lot of it was incoherent but I could tell it had some kind of affect and without that kind of mindfulness it's running in the background. I'm thinking I may have tapped into an area where views are stored from different people I've met. Whatever mental conditioning a person has is deep inside. It was the deepest not-self experience I've had so far because the sense of agent disappeared and every experience, movement and intention became not-self. I'll try to see if I can do this for more than a few minutes. This may be the first time I could actually note a wandering mind without feeling totally lost in it. I'm eager to see what more can come from bare awareness.

I think Daniel's instructions in MCTB says it right in that if there's distractions there should be MORE noting during this time. Maybe if there's a sensation of any kind it has to be noted consistently enough to be seen for what it is and there seems to be so much embedded in consciousness when you take a deeper look. It also challenges some of the perceptions that sitting down is doing nothing when in fact the mind is constantly doing something.
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Dream Walker, modified 9 Years ago at 10/10/14 11:40 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 10/10/14 11:40 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1657 Join Date: 1/18/12 Recent Posts
Richard Zen:
Last night I was doing some noting and I reduced the verbal note from outloud down to mental and then just to consistent bare awareness (because I felt it allowed more detail). I started noticing that my mind was going into a dream like state (but still wide awake) and there were several bits of mental talking from different people with separate identities. A lot of it was incoherent but I could tell it had some kind of affect and without that kind of mindfulness it's running in the background. I'm thinking I may have tapped into an area where views are stored from different people I've met. Whatever mental conditioning a person has is deep inside. It was the deepest not-self experience I've had so far because the sense of agent disappeared and every experience, movement and intention became not-self. I'll try to see if I can do this for more than a few minutes. This may be the first time I could actually note a wandering mind without feeling totally lost in it. I'm eager to see what more can come from bare awareness.

I think Daniel's instructions in MCTB says it right in that if there's distractions there should be MORE noting during this time. 
during this time. 
The dream like state you describe where thinking takes the backseat is what happens to me right before popping out of that state into the three moments leading to cessation. I do not do any noting at this stage of high eq....I dont "do" anything but let it happen. Maybe make a resolution and see what happens.
good luck,
~D
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 10/11/14 12:59 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 10/11/14 12:59 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Dream Walker:
Richard Zen:
Last night I was doing some noting and I reduced the verbal note from outloud down to mental and then just to consistent bare awareness (because I felt it allowed more detail). I started noticing that my mind was going into a dream like state (but still wide awake) and there were several bits of mental talking from different people with separate identities. A lot of it was incoherent but I could tell it had some kind of affect and without that kind of mindfulness it's running in the background. I'm thinking I may have tapped into an area where views are stored from different people I've met. Whatever mental conditioning a person has is deep inside. It was the deepest not-self experience I've had so far because the sense of agent disappeared and every experience, movement and intention became not-self. I'll try to see if I can do this for more than a few minutes. This may be the first time I could actually note a wandering mind without feeling totally lost in it. I'm eager to see what more can come from bare awareness.

I think Daniel's instructions in MCTB says it right in that if there's distractions there should be MORE noting during this time. 
during this time. 
The dream like state you describe where thinking takes the backseat is what happens to me right before popping out of that state into the three moments leading to cessation. I do not do any noting at this stage of high eq....I dont "do" anything but let it happen. Maybe make a resolution and see what happens.
good luck,
~D

Thanks for the tips.

Ahh the elusive cessation. I have to be careful because I wanted it so badly before and that's exactly what makes sure you don't get it. 
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Not Tao, modified 9 Years ago at 10/11/14 11:59 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 10/11/14 11:59 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 995 Join Date: 4/5/14 Recent Posts
Does it have to though?  Wanting something badly can be seen through as much as anything else. Just let yourself be excited the same way you let your mind wander or you let your emotions arise and pass. emoticon
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 10/10/14 8:14 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 10/10/14 5:01 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Now that I'm making myself busy and making committments, those actions have made it hard to return to procrastination habits and indifference. I recently joined Toastmasters and did my first ice-breaker speech. The meditation practice has made the nervousness much less, yet nervousness is still there at the beginning of a speech. I think it's pretty obvious I have plenty of emotions but they don't seem to hurt much at all. Considering I find the Buddhist texts that believe in eliminating emotions quite scary then I think I've found a happy medium. If you like what you're talking about then you get excited to continue and it all looks natural.

I had little preparation due to other committments and I had too much content but I have found I have a sense of humor and descriptive quality with my wording that got the Toastmasters people less bored. Of course all the praise leads to serotonin and it gets to your head but it was quite healthy and I can disregard it when I compared my current skills to what is expected in business environments that are often demanding and hypercritical. Having a cheering section provides that extra motivation to stick your neck out.

I've also started to talk to professionals to get more information on my career path by creating coffee meetings and I've gotten more information about how things are and challenged some negative beliefs that wouldn't have been challenged if I stayed introverted. Stepping into that extroverted world is a breath of fresh air. More dopamine and serotonin in the right contexts is healthy because it's guilt free and sends you in the right direction.

When going against preferences the results of that are similar to cognitive therapy in that the rewards for going against preferences create new and better preferences/desires. There are times where I relax and just meditate to replace time I might waste online or watching TV or some other pointless endeavour.
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katy steger,thru11615 with thanks, modified 9 Years ago at 10/10/14 7:23 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 10/10/14 7:21 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1740 Join Date: 10/1/11 Recent Posts
I had little preparation due to other committments and I had too much content but I have found I have a sense of humor and descriptive quality with my wording that got the Toastmasters people less bored. Of course all the praise leads to serotonin and it gets to your head but it was quite healthy and I can disregard it when I compared my current skills to what is expected in business environments that are often demanding and hypercritical. Having a cheering section provides that extra motivation to stick your neck out.

This is great to read, especially as you've given the community some great summaries of "good chemistry", like here:

[url=]http://dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/4539340;jsessionid=62105ACD8C9C592F98A68DFFA69846B4?doAsUserId=U4FYRpmIICQ%3D%2F-%2Fmessage_boards%2Fmessage%2F10847%2F-%2Fmessage_boards%2Fmessage%2F95028[url=]
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 10/10/14 8:18 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 10/10/14 8:18 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
katy steger:
I had little preparation due to other committments and I had too much content but I have found I have a sense of humor and descriptive quality with my wording that got the Toastmasters people less bored. Of course all the praise leads to serotonin and it gets to your head but it was quite healthy and I can disregard it when I compared my current skills to what is expected in business environments that are often demanding and hypercritical. Having a cheering section provides that extra motivation to stick your neck out.

This is great to read, especially as you've given the community some great summaries of "good chemistry", like here:

[url=]http://dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/4539340;jsessionid=62105ACD8C9C592F98A68DFFA69846B4?doAsUserId=U4FYRpmIICQ%3D%2F-%2Fmessage_boards%2Fmessage%2F10847%2F-%2Fmessage_boards%2Fmessage%2F95028[url=]

Yeah I noticed that. I find wisdom faster than I can apply it but it's sinking in at whatever pace it's going to LOL!
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 10/23/14 11:21 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 10/23/14 12:37 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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The welcoming makes me feel really light. It's easier to note negative thinking/mind states. When a negative mind starts up and I get aware of it the process of just welcoming it just kills the clinging. The deepest clinging is the self-story and deficiency.

EDIT:

When dealing with preferences it's the meeting with uncomfortable impulses and waiting for them to pass away:

http://www.dharmaseed.org/talks/audio_player/278/21988.html
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Karalee Peltomaa, modified 9 Years ago at 10/23/14 11:28 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 10/23/14 11:28 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 401 Join Date: 6/19/14 Recent Posts
Great ... just the push I needed, thank you.  I was getting tired of the fixed sadness and welcoming it was just too counter-intuitive to grasp and you gave me the nudge, thanks.

colleen
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 10/23/14 7:23 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 10/23/14 7:23 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Welcoming is the opposite of aversion so it's nice to have a target that's better than "acceptance" which holds some aversion if looked at with a negative attitude.
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Karalee Peltomaa, modified 9 Years ago at 10/26/14 9:15 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 10/26/14 9:15 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 401 Join Date: 6/19/14 Recent Posts
Similar to "The Fifth Way", Sedona Method   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT9bhCi2hQI


I went to bliss twice during my Sedona Method Course -- great stuff, welcoming sensations and emotions.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 10/27/14 10:44 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 10/26/14 11:28 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Richard Zen:
Okay I think I've exhausted what I need to work on (including in daily life).  It doesn't mean I'm perfectly purified or some such nonsense but the below is a lot to chew on for some time.  Rob Burbea really lays it out and I've made some notes.  Reading Nagarjuna has really helped in understanding the mistake of inherent existence.  I'm currently still in the Advaita Vedanta acceptance of everything, but the Buddhist additions have made it much better.  

I've benefited the most from the "Clarifying the Natural State" book to learn to welcome the impulses to avoid aversion to aversion.  I've also benefited from Daniel's advice along with Andrea Fella to let go of aversion to a wandering mind.  Currently I'm working on the below to deal with perception and how it's depended on consciousness.  Consciousness is already leaning on past likes and dislikes (sankharas).  Seeing the movements happen this early is relieving more stress but I need much more practice as I'm still new to being (almost) perceptionless on a regular basis.  I want this to be a regular habit that allows functionality and relaxation while doing tasks as opposed to some awkward practice that represses perception.

The following talk is covered more towards the end of the notes.  The starting part is from other talks and I can't find out which ones they were from.

http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/210/talk/9553/
Minds are what glue things together. See "things in vibrations."  There are pleasant and unpleasant frequencies happening all the time.  You can develop tuning into the pleasant.

Just look at things as empty, the mind goes to nothingness and seeing nothingness as another perception you go to NPNYP.

Arhat understands perception/cessation/beyond time

Believing in things and investing in things leads to a time sense.  “How will this thing be for me in the future? How has it been in the past? How is it for me now?”

If time is empty then arising and passing away are also empty.

Consciousness (self), objects and time cannot exist without the other.

No matter how subtle sense of self there is there will always be an investment.  “How will it be for me?”

Conceiving is more important than thinking.

To conceive = to form or devise (a plan or idea) in the mind.

If I have any “thing” for consciousness, wrapped in the perception of the thing the concept is included of “not that thing”.

Perception of stillness includes the possibility of a lack of stillness in the future.  Time is woven into the perception of a thing.

The investment/attachment in a thing makes the future sense gain in significance.  Conceiving is wrapped up with delusion.

Consciousness/Knowing depends on time since knowing needs a present moment.  Present moment is empty so consciousness is leaning on something empty of inherentness.

10 links version of dependent origination:

Nama-rupa: depends on consciousness.  Consciousness depends on Nama-rupa.

Nama-rupa: Nama – Perception, vedana, attention, intention, contact.  Rupa – ancient 4 elements.

Attention: The mind’s movement of attention to a perception/object/experience feels similar to the push and pull of craving/aversion.

Attention: Consciousness + intention directed at this or that whether we are aware of it or not.

Push and pull depends on object and vice versa.
The sense of an object for consciousness depends on attention.  It could be deliberate or not deliberate.  Attention needs objects.

The present moment for consciousness exists because of objects.  Time is dependent on knowing/consciousness.  Knowing depends on time.  Attention needs an experience/moment.  If there are mutually dependent they are mutually empty of inherentness.

Ignorance is being ignorant of what qualities and actions bring suffering or freedom, and forgetting impermanence, and believing in a self that is real.  Self can be anywhere on the spectrum from big self down to just perceiving an object or even perceiving nothing.  Believing in that trinity of subject/object/time is root delusion.  The subject must have an investment.  Intention to pay attention

Sankharas: Neurosis, impressions that carries into the future.  Fabricators, fashions, movements of the mind that fashion or fabricate experience, dukkha and the whole sense of reality.  Out of delusion comes these impulses, intentions, ways of relating, conceiving, and perceiving that fashion and fabricate.

'And why do you call them 'fabrications'? Because they fabricate fabricated things, thus they are called 'fabrications.' What do they fabricate as a fabricated thing? For the sake of form-ness, they fabricate form as a fabricated thing. For the sake of feeling-ness, they fabricate feeling as a fabricated thing. For the sake of perception-hood... For the sake of fabrication-hood... For the sake of consciousness-hood, they fabricate consciousness as a fabricated thing. Because they fabricate fabricated things, they are called fabrications.

The intention to pay attention is a very subtle movement of sankhara.

Intentions require an object to intend to attend to.  I have to believe in this object to intend to pay attention to.  I can’t have an intention without a sense of the next moment and a sense of a subject with an investment.

Time is dependent on knowing, the movement of intention, sankharas, investment and conceiving of an object in the present moment.

I cannot find any aspect of the mind that is not empty.  Delusion is also dependent on the other factors.

In practice you see the mind dependent on empty objects so it is empty as well.  In that platform then time and present moment can be included as empty.  What’s important is seeing the emptiness in experience as opposed to cessation.  Cessation happens with the fading.

Whether there’s a center in the knowing there is dukkha.  Objects are in space and time.  Knowing is not separate from empty perceptions.  The whole of existence is groundless.

Phew! Lots of meditation notes to plug into the practice.
Going back to the above Dharma talk and it's the best post of the bunch regarding emptiness. After looking into intentions to pay attention the danger is much more clear. For example a habit to bite nails is something I've dealt with forever and I dealt with it by clipping my nails as soon as there's any length that can be cut.

Even when I cut my nails I sometimes find my fingers in my mouth. LOL! Attention is like a spotlight and the intention to pay attention is so ingrained and habitual that they are causing actions faster than the mindfulness can attend to.

So this is the limit in that reducing one's stress can lead to a point where stress is reduced even when you're doing the wrong thing. But we can do more.
“Watch your thoughts for they become words.
Watch your words for they become actions.
Watch your actions for they become habits.
Watch your habits for they become your character.
And watch your character for it becomes your destiny.
What we think, we become.”
- Margaret Thatcher
So to add to those mahamudra instructions:

1. Welcome all experiences positive or negative - If you have control over some outcomes then do something about it. If you have no control over some of the outcomes then you might as well welcome them.
2. Don't examine the meditation - Keep consistency and where it flags is where more noting is needed. Habitual intentions are already operating and ready to move.
3. Watch the intention to pay attention - This is where current conditioning is operating and where you can direct your attention to create new conditioning.
4. Go beyond short-term preferences - The only way to grow as a person.
5. Don't look at experiences as deficient - Everything is cause and effect.
6. There is no inherent meditator or meditation - When the above steps are followed this step is more inferred because it feels like this. 
7. What you do is important - Treat things with care and love, including small things.

Of course if I find more good stuff I'll add it to the list.emoticon
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 10/28/14 10:15 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 10/28/14 10:15 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I can't believe I'm still learning more. LOL!

Rob Burbea's talks keep yielding little nuggets I didn't get in the past. I need to keep listening to this stuff over and over again. This technique is similar to interrupting the thought stream with "why?" It's more like saying "fabricated" when the imagination part goes into a story about something or other and it makes it easier to remind the brain..."this is not real." I'll have to see if this is better than welcoming because welcoming feels really good too. Saying "fabricated" for desires does seem to work but more practice is needed.

This is starting to make more sense after reading Nagarjuna:

http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/210/talk/11135/

I definitely reject the nihilsm possibilities of this. Seeing emptiness for me still has to include some kind of caring or importance in what we do. Does this caring cause some stress? Well if we don't do the right thing then maybe it's okay for us to have shame and remorse if it's genuine and not exaggerated.
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Karalee Peltomaa, modified 9 Years ago at 10/29/14 10:20 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 10/29/14 10:20 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Hello Richard, I enjoy reading your posts more than others because you seem so honest and sincere and dedicated.   I like the "conceive" and "fabricated" and I can see why sometimes the usual word needs a change-up to some other word so that it does not become rote.

Have you ever given thought to or do you practice consciously conceiving or fabricating scenes or objects? Doing consciously what the mind does automatically?

You have gotten me to also listening to Robert B., thank you.

colleen
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 10/29/14 11:07 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 10/29/14 11:07 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Thinking about things with mindfulness doesn't cause the problem. It's the automatic intention to pay attention that moves you into stress that is. The habitual intention to pay attention is constantly moving on it's own. Some of it is just fine but when stress is starting up (or a feeling of being stuck) it's important to welcome it and see it as something that the brain is reacting to that isn't actually happening now. One has to use imagination for all kinds of creative pursuits but when the brain is going off on some tangent that leads to the same stress as countless times before it's important to know how useless it is and not feed it further.

Fabrication is just a way to reminding the brain how unreal the imagination part of the mind is because the amygdala doesn't react to just what's happening but is constantly reacting to what might happen and is obsessed with repeated thoughts and mindstates to repeat the same feelings, intentions and actions. This of course is limiting because we want our actions to be flexible with natural change in the universe. Willpower studies show that if you purposefully move the intention to pay attention in different directions from preferences the willpower cost is less.

What I like about Rob Burbea is that he doesn't beat around the bush regarding telling his audience about Buddhist ultimate reality because seeing objects as being consciousness-objects that are interdependent can weaken that consciousness being a "mirror" that you have to clean of bad thoughts. That cleaning has an element of aversion that can keep you stuck there. He talks about how concentration practice is needed to help the insight and seems to move beyond the emptiness of "things in front of ME" style and include the background intentions to pay attention, recognition of objects and such. Consciousness-nama-rupa. Just looking at how fast the intention to pay attention is moving your head to different objects shows the difficulty of what we are dealing with.

Now I haven't had a cessation experience but more of a permanent letting go of much of my self-referencing, and there seems to be a debate over whether you need just the understanding of Consciousness-objects-time or the actual consciousness free of objects experience/non-experience plus the understanding to get the habitual intentions to radically let go of clinging. That's something I'll probably have to explore on my own.
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SeTyR ZeN, modified 9 Years ago at 10/31/14 11:14 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 10/31/14 11:14 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Thank you Richard, your interventions are always precious to me;   
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 11/5/14 6:39 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 11/5/14 6:23 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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While practicing looking at intentions it's clear that is where the sense of self is for me still. They move so rapidly but the often times I catch it and note it "intention", "attention", "action" so there is more control and some relief. It's going to take some more practice to let go of intentions. It feels a little like starting over when I went from concentration practices to insight. This is a deeper insight because consciousness is now not a mirror but only "inferred" as Daniel points out with the Bahiya Sutta. Consciousness is there but only because experience is happening. It doesn't have any location, color, or shape. This means that consciousness is aimed where the habitual intentions are pointing. I'm already starting to feel a little sick noting "consciousness" (which is any experience), "intention", "attention" and "action." As in the past that probably means it's working. Intentions are definitely going towards the papanca as well.

http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/210/talk/9547/

On the conventional front I had an informational interview regarding career options. You basically buy them coffee and interview them. She was so obviously an ESTJ and she admitted she's definitely a J. She ripped apart my resume and any mistreatment I went through she just basically said it was my fault and that there was something wrong with me. It was almost like interviewing the witch from the Lion, the witch and the wardrobe. You can feel the coritsol appear when they coldly rip into you. Her response to my compassion and want to help was "we don't care". She greedily thanked me for the hot chocolate and I think that was the main draw for her more than giving advice. She felt I should keep persisting but if I'm not taken on for full-time work it's because there's something wrong with me. A women with headphones was eavesdropping behind her with a look of fear. LOL! It was a good experience because ESTJ's end up being most people's bosses and to see their thinking habits and how they look at people with aversion like a bug that needs to be stepped on is a reminder of what I'm dealing with. It's hard for an INFP. emoticon I'm currently reading as much as I can about communication with manipulative and aggressive people because you can't be a doormat. The ESTJ bully likes to cut you off and paint a negative perception of you (especially in front of other people). You have to counter with realistic accurate responses to prevent looking weak and put consequences to their beliefs and actions. 
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 11/25/14 10:38 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 11/25/14 10:38 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Just a reminder of cortisol. I did a speech yesterday where I had to speak as a guest at a different Toastmasters location so I was exposed to people I never met before. The levels of cortisol in my chest went through the roof. It messed me up a little but I got back on track. The cortisol lasted through the speech and a few minutes after. It made me forgetful throughout the rest of the session and I forgot a power cable for my iPad. Talking to some others that went through the same thing it's a common experience and it shows that more practice is the only way forward. Welcoming of course worked but I felt like I was stumbling through my opening and then got my second wind through the rest of the speech. This is a reality check. Even if I get to some middle path between reality and a hologram my brain is going to automatically be this way. Nothing beats experience and practice in any skill.
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Karalee Peltomaa, modified 9 Years ago at 11/25/14 11:01 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 11/25/14 11:01 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I enjoyed reading your post about the ESTJ and the INFP interaction. I don't mind being an INFP, just don't want to be compulsively expressing it as the only way to approach life.  In other words, I'd like to be able to go completely voluntarily complementary with other types -- get into their viewpoint and agree.  But that particular ESTJ seemed to be compulsively running a non-life goal on you and getting her own egoic sensation -- at your expense of course.  She won, you lost, oh well, better luck next time.

Like yourself, I'm also enjoying the learning curve I'm putting myself through.   You make me want to join toastmasters  :-)  ToastMs's?

I just heard a relevant quote about how it is the conversations that make us uncomfortable that are the best for our personal development (said by the Branson fella of Virgin Airlines).
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 11/25/14 8:58 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 11/25/14 8:58 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Colleen Karalee Peltomaa:

Like yourself, I'm also enjoying the learning curve I'm putting myself through.   You make me want to join toastmasters  :-)  ToastMs's?

It's fun but you have to have a personal goal of some kind or it will seem aimless.

I just heard a relevant quote about how it is the conversations that make us uncomfortable that are the best for our personal development (said by the Branson fella of Virgin Airlines).
I did learn from her. I'm just not sure I learned what she wanted me to learn ;)
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 11/27/14 12:20 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 11/27/14 12:20 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Well I did a toastmaster speech today and finally won. I didn't even have to vote for myself. I can see incremental improvements on the cortisol front but some people can still detect some nervousness in me at the beginning. I'm enjoying the dopamine and serotonin right now but it's also weird because I'm not clinging to it. I wanted to go have a few beers but I realized I felt much better not doing so.

I'm starting to go through the huge book The Psychology of Action. It's going to take me awhile to get through it but it looks promising.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 11/29/14 10:19 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 11/29/14 10:18 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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For those interested in Rob Burbea's book it's very good. The deepest insight practices in it are similar to his talks. Subject, object, space, and time are 3Cs then add the intention to pay attention, then add attention then add insight practice itself. I especially liked his description of what contracted space feels like. His connect the dots metaphor for the brain stringing likeable and dislikeable experiences together is also good.
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Bill F, modified 9 Years ago at 11/29/14 11:29 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 11/29/14 11:29 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 556 Join Date: 11/17/13 Recent Posts
I have always been fond of Burbaea as a teacher. He seems different for me from much of the IMS Camp, perhaps it is just the absence of the creepily soft accent. Rodney Smith who teaches frequently at IMS seems an exception in terms of depth and accent ha. Is the book more methodology or view, or both? I've again been occasionally looking through Steve Hagen's "Buddhism is Not What You Think". Have you read it?
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 11/29/14 2:33 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 11/29/14 2:32 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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The book is like his talks but with little captions for practice instructions and more explanation. You see layers of instructions going into more depth as you go along plus a recommendation to see samatha as an integral part of the insight practice. It's mainly about dependent origination and how much depth there is in insight so it's an invaluable book for those who don't know how far the practice goes and especially for those who are lost in the practice. I haven't read Hagen but to be honest I'm getting tired of dharma books. I think I know have the best of them. The rest is putting it into practice to develop deeper insights.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 1/11/15 11:45 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 1/11/15 11:27 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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To see the value of passion is to see that when you do more pointless activities like surfing the net or drinking, or pointless entertainment it starts becoming less interesting and the healthy behaviours finally become more desirable. Public speaking and the creative activity of making speeches has become a passion so that I want to devote more of my time to it. As I win more often and take my preparations seriously so that audiences are getting pleasure from them the serotonin and dopamine are finally craving what they should. It feels really healthy because I'm not making an entitlement to win but trying to be creative and have fun so that the speeches convey that. The CBT, REBT is allowing me to enjoy the process instead of obsessing about the outcome. "Do, Observe, Correct". Not "must" and "should".

The meditation has allowed to me to have a different relationship to what is aversive and to thinking itself. To just sit and enjoy a cup of coffee without batting away thoughts or indulging negative thoughts is even better than purposefully emptying my mind. Just let the mind empty when the conditions allow it.

The next goal is to create healthy passion in more areas of life. The biggest challenge is to let go of my fear of other people's envy, and not let it disuade me from improving myself. I even see their envious glares in Toastmasters (though they try to repress it). I'll focus more on the positive facial responses and spend time around positive people (which I didn't do enough of) and support those good people in positive ways (which was never a problem for me in the past). 

The concentration practice is being let go of partly because I have better things to do with my life and don't feel needy towards it. I'll fit it in as it seems skillful.

Love is starting to increase and the fear of vulnerability is going away. The vulnerability is not much different from the character of The Fly in the song by U2. One can become cynical and give up on relationships because the hurt you may experience, but that is more aversion to reality that will lead to more regrets which again is more aversion. emoticon I'm very aware that one can't love a tree or a rock with no response so I'll be more careful but I want to share this with someone else.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 1/24/15 1:09 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 1/24/15 1:09 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Passion is still rippling away and feeling more balanced than in the past. It doesn't hurt much but it does tire in the mind, but that's because of natural tiredness so it isn't a problem. Basic cognitive therapy is working better than in the past. Just reminding myself every so often of the benefits of a said action along with the welcoming can really reduce stress when tackling a difficult task. When talking to strangers they say they can still see stress on my face which is mystifying but I guess projections from others don't exactly explain how I feel. Facial expressions are probably hard-wired. I feel emotions fully but there's less of the "this shouldn't or mustn't be here"...etc. Welcoming, and even better, wanting what is actually happening keeps me on track. If you're going to have a preference then have a preference for what is instead of resisting what is, or yearning for what isn't.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 2/16/15 10:17 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 2/16/15 9:58 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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The current practices are still working well. Welcoming has become more regular and habitual. I'm getting to the belief that CBT practices of reminding oneself of the benefits is a great director for intentions. Yet the CBT didn't work so well without the mindfulness practice. It's like peanut butter and chocolate. When I feel pulled by a habit to some creature comfort I can feel the pull and it seems convincing. Yet if I introduce a pro and con analysis and then insert a new goal with the benefits in mind to create motivation I start moving intentions in the right direction and what seemed so enchanting seems (within a couple of minutes) totally pointless and a waste of time. It's amazing how fast the brain can flip-flop.

I recently enjoyed the Philosophy A Guide to Happiness by Alain Botton. It's a nice reminder to make your preferences match reality more often and welcome what is. Preferences/expectations cause stress when they are based on wish-fullfillment instead of likely scenarios.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA7cgIg4Lfs&list=PL7857933243B7D31B&index=3
7:25 especially

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L3dLWwmDDw&list=PL7857933243B7D31B&index=2
16:36 The value of repetition

Reading Daniel's Part I of MCTB 2 it's nice to see the emphasis on morality which makes it easier than in the old days of the site. In the old days of the culture it was like "you must get to cessation ASAP" which creates an unhealthy attachment. Knowing that this isn't the case and allowing work with intentions to be equal in stature to mindfulness is a relief. This is a very important point for those who practice only mindfulness. If you need the morality practices, at some point that must be engaged for practical improvements to occur.

Adding savoring to the practice has helped even better than AF practices (though there is some similarity). Savoring the experiences and then to be just fine when the experiences vanish is great place to be at. I tend to exude gratitude more often. Even something small like drinking a nice cup of coffee I sometimes say in my mind "thank you God for this nice _______." The trick with savoring is not to force savoring but to recognize more opportunities where savoring can occur that I might repeatedly miss.

Working with Rob Burbea's book I've benefited from focusing on relaxing preferences. Since the 3 characteristics point towards this mind-state of no preferences and it becomes easier to be more self-disciplined. Noting with something like "empty" does fade the senses but I haven't got enough time to fade all the way. It's still really good to partially fade. I do agree with him that noting can have a trap of the label solidifying what you are paying attention to as inherently real. Using the 7 fold reasonings (http://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Sevenfold_reasoning_of_the_chariot) along with the note of "empty" has a power of it's own. Looking at the day-dreaming and noting "empty" and asking "Is there a self in this thinking?" makes the imaginary part drop like a rock. Some of the images even look mischiveous like they are caught with a flashlight and at that point it feels like no-self very starkly. Of course these thoughts come back, and the feeling of the self returns. It's another reminder of the cause and effect relationship of insight practices.
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Richard Zen, modified 8 Years ago at 4/12/15 2:09 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 4/12/15 1:58 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Not too much has changed since the last post. I do notice the intention to pay attention more often and the cause and effect feeling of that squeezes out the sense of a self that floats independently from cause and effect. The intention to pay attention is already being affected by habits and is already looking to like or dislike things. The 7 fold reasonings works similarly but one has to be careful to not think the imagining in the practice is a self doing this.

The practice of looking at unpleasant situations and tracing back the cause and effect of them helps to increase responsibility. It also gets the brain to say "well naturally if these causes are in place then this bad situation should be totally expected." That relieves a lot of stress on its own. This especially works when you feel bad about what you've done in life but looked at your ignorance and the influences of your environment growing up. A lot of acceptance appears with this line of reasoning.

Welcoming has done wonders and created a new baseline shift where I'm again more normal but less stressed at the same time. Any kind of emotion and thought can be allowed as long as it's welcomed. The welcoming can also be welcomed as well. As long as emotions aren't coupled with fixation/rumination/obsession then they are fine. The practice to assess the value of types of thinking and abandoning valueless thinking (Right Effort) is sinking in deeper so the habit to let go is faster.

I'm still in the early stages of CBT imagery practice, and its focus is on imitating real or imagined figures and their virtues coupled with imagining the benefits of actions. With Arnold Lazarus there's also room for thinking of negative consequences in order to demotivate from bad situations. This practice might be limited to people who have vivid imaginations. Those who don't may find it very difficult.

The savouring practice in Positive Psychology has gone really well and enjoying situations like great cuisine becomes more like enjoying in the moment and then collecting the experience in memory to recall later with more savouring. Though coming back from amazing sushi in Japan has tested the clinging now that I don't have access to super fatty tuna belly, and fresh sea urchin (which in Canada tastes like ass).

I found a book on Heidegger that tries to merge Positive Psychology with his thoughts. I also have Heidegger's Mindfulness which might yield some more insights on being. Certainly what I gather from him is his understanding that how we look at the being of things needs to include more possibilities that are available of that thing instead of the one possibility we've focused on. There are other books on Asian thought compared with Heidegger so there might be more insights. He's a difficult read and sometimes the purpose of reading his work is mystifying (on top of him becoming a NAZI) so I'm not sure what, if anything, I'll get that can be added to meditation. Unconcealment/truth becomes more like a cause and effect that becomes clear to the observer on how things are.

I have another book on dealing with resistance in cognitive therapy and the web of beliefs that keeps people from changing even when they go into therapy. Since many people on this forum probably try to sell meditation to the general public, they naturally encounter enormous resistance peeling back the layers of beliefs eg. (Mindfulness is brain washing, mumbo-jumbo, "don't tell me what to do!", too open to vulnerability, "meditation is for wussies, I like football and beer!", "I don't identify with it" etc). It's easy to expect everyone should learn this stuff but easy to get disheartened when the cause and effect says otherwise. I'm good at explaining the practice in a way to show that it's just a skill and very practical, but I also have to warn people that the religious side actually gets in the way which is a relief for many beginners. There are so many trap doors in the practice that it's amazing that people get somewhere with it, let alone that everyone should learn it.

Back to hitting the books!
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Richard Zen, modified 8 Years ago at 4/24/15 7:40 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 4/24/15 7:40 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Nice little talk about extending mindfulness further than usual. 

http://www.audiodharma.org/talks/audio_player/5627.html

I'm starting Jeffrey Hopkins tomes Emptiness Yoga and Meditation on Emptiness. It's all about the battle of inherent existence (the belief that there is a self separate from cause and effect). This goes into more depth of how the interdependence is deeper than what our senses are noticing. With this and Rob Burbea meditations on the emptiness of time my brain notices the thinking habits as another cause and effect and how many subtle cues that are under the radar of mindfulness. This results in the "mind wandering feeling" like it's misperceiving a sense of self, but with no aversion to this happening it's a smoother experience when presence comes back. There seems to be a better integration of thoughts with experience and its sense of emptiness feeling even more normal. This normality is what I'm looking for and is a big bingo for me. To feel emptiness but for it to not be about attaching to an altered state is what makes it seem so normal. 

So when I'm increasing my mindfulness what life looks like is this:
  • Intention in the morning to be more mindful leading to lucidity.
  • Habitual thought co-arises with webs of connecting thoughts. A sense of self appears more strongly. "It's like this" as Heather Sundberg would say.
  • No aversiveness but at the same time no need to add to the experience to build more tension.
  • "Big self" passes away naturally but this time the habitual thoughts look like they just came out of some habit triggers or sense triggers. It's like a quick brainstorm doing its thing, and without being fed, it drops on its own. No judgment.
  • By including any Buddhist analysis, strategizing, thinking etc as not self, the sense of being separate from cause and effect is much less. The sense of a separate self is having a hard time to find places to arise. Mindfulness habits squeeze out old thinking habits.

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Richard Zen, modified 8 Years ago at 4/29/15 1:23 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 4/29/15 1:23 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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After reading Buddhessence it was a nice short reminder that any ruminating of any kind (including about Buddhism) is stress and abandoning it changes the cause and effect of dependent arising away from stress. The translation is fantastic and the psychology quotes about early child development and the beginning of the sense of self juxtaposed with similar quotes from the Buddha really hits it home.

The result of this is I'm enjoying letting go of distractions, and with purposeful visualization I can pursue goals. This is often without a checklist which can be useful but checklists can be ignored so the emphasis becomes more about what you are doing at any given moment. A list of "must do" items can actually cause stress if it's treated as a must.
You're wise, he said, to the extent that you can get yourself to do things you don't like doing but know will result in happiness, and to refrain from things you like doing but know will result in pain and harm.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/integrityofemptiness.html

It really helps to see any strategizing or analyzing about goals (including Buddhist ones) as a hindrance.
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Richard Zen, modified 8 Years ago at 5/1/15 8:42 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 5/1/15 8:42 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Thinking right now is now considered not-self in a very habitual way. The brain is enjoying letting go of thought but most importantly the aversion to thinking is way down. This is a major benefit because any schemas associated with thinking are also disidentified. Even more important is that it's normal and doesn't feel bad in any way.

Personality also feels more like a sensation than a solid "thing". This means that the need for rumination is going down further. Rumination is looking more and more like a useless function that doesn't even think properly.

It's even fun to do things without having a long mental story or session of mental talk. To just do something with mental quiet but at the same time no aversion to thinking when it arises is a relief. It is also a test of integrating thoughts with meditation. To me bare awareness of thinking really did most of the work. One shouldn't bat thoughts away so much as to stop adding them and the story naturally falls away.
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Richard Zen, modified 8 Years ago at 5/9/15 8:56 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 5/9/15 8:56 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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What I'm enjoying now is a deeper emptiness that is more all encompassing. This often happens if some fixated thinking appears and then I'll say "that's empty" but also knowing that the "that's empty" is just as empty, there's more release. Instead of feeling like I'm retrenching in a special awareness (that might include a whole bunch of rumination) the mental clarity deepens further. This is particularly helpful if there's a loud inner criticism. It ends up looking loud and conceited, then just falls away without any pushing, striving or aversion.

Often staying silent is a better argument against judgment than more arguments and reasons.
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Richard Zen, modified 8 Years ago at 7/8/15 8:42 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 7/8/15 8:42 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I had a weird dream where I was looking for plane tickets to go to California, but couldn't find them. I was making myself a long weekend. I bought new tickets and went. Then I was standing on a square boardwalk off the ocean with a drink feeling aimless and the crowd tapered off to nothing. I woke up and instead of most dreams where I haven't a clue, it became obvious to me.

I'm having trouble with goals. They are empty. There are so many choices that it's hard to make one that feels right.
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Richard Zen, modified 8 Years ago at 7/16/15 10:14 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 7/16/15 9:50 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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This worry about emptiness of goals has got me to start understanding motivation better. I'm learning about social cognitive theory, goal setting, intrinsic motivation vs. extrinsic etc and it's starting to work.

At work today I simply refused to look too far ahead in the future and stayed with the small goals and managed to have a flow state throughout the entire day. It was amazing but I could see that it's more causes and conditions but I need to continue making those causes and conditions instead of analyzing them too much and destroying what caused them in the first place. My boss in particular tried to praise me because I was doing things that the prior employee wouldn't do with no complaint. Meditation seems to help flow states in that you can relax trying to contain or control the flow states with too much rumination/obsession/analysis. The pomodoro technique in particular has also helped with the flow state in that if there's a gap in work the line on the paper is demanding that I write another goal down before I get complacent. Again the challenges weren't too challenging or too easy so the main tenet of flow of not biting off more than you can chew is proven correct.

I also did an inventory of goal setting with numerous google searches for goal questions so I can formally start narrowing down what I want:

  • What qualities in you have led to your greatest experiences of joy?
  • What sensitivities in you have led to your deepest suffering?
  • What do you long to create or do in the world?
  • What would I like to be feeling?
  • What am I feeling?
  • What is missing from my life?
  • What do I have too much of?
  • What is there too little of?
  • Is this the life I imagined years ago?
  • What am I longing for?
  • What can I do to change how my life is working?
  • Which passions of yours scare you with their intensity or depth?
  • What are the core gifts within these passions?
  • Who truly loves me?
  • Who sees and treasures me for who I really am?
  • Whom do I trust to have my best interests at heart?
  • What do you like? What do you dislike?
  • What can I do with my time that is important?”
  • Career – What level do you want to reach in your career, or what do you want to achieve?
  • Financial – How much do you want to earn, by what stage? How is this related to your career goals?
  • Education – Is there any knowledge you want to acquire in particular? What information and skills will you need to have in order to achieve other goals?
  • Family – Do you want to be a parent? If so, how are you going to be a good parent? How do you want to be seen by a partner or by members of your extended family?
  • Artistic – Do you want to achieve any artistic goals?
  • Attitude – Is any part of your mindset holding you back? Is there any part of the way that you behave that upsets you? (If so, set a goal to improve your behavior or find a solution to the problem.)
  • Physical – Are there any athletic goals that you want to achieve, or do you want good health deep into old age? What steps are you going to take to achieve this?
  • Pleasure – How do you want to enjoy yourself? (You should ensure that some of your life is for you!)
  • Public Service – Do you want to make the world a better place? If so, how?
 
If I were to be 5% more responsible today, I would ___________.
If I were to be 5% less lazy today, I would ___________.
 
The first part of the statement doesn’t have to change. But every morning when we wake up, we think of something that fills in blank, and then do it! As you can see, 5% is small and harmless enough to let us overcome our fears and procrastination. Being flexible enough to do different things everyday in pursuit of the same goal also keeps us from boredom and routine. Even better, it encourages us to think of new ideas to try (although we can simply do the same activity 5% more each time).

It's nice to see the growth an development in my log book, albeit quite slow progress, but it's moving in the right direction. To me to see agentlessness doesn't mean you can't use an agent in conventional ways that feel healthy. I still remind myself that no sensation in my entire experience of any kind is permanent and therefore cannot permanently satisfy. That reminder is enough to stop me investing too much emotion when I'm pursuing goals. Resilience being the goal is much better than assuming success. Skills have to match goals and when skills aren't there then the goal must be to learn and develop skills instead of meeting goals ill-prepared.
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Richard Zen, modified 8 Years ago at 7/27/15 12:29 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 7/26/15 11:17 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
I'm still working on goals and brain-storming but it's pretty obvious that because they are empty that I have to make sure I don't pin happiness on attaining them. Any achieved goals will be replaced with other goals and any failed goals will be looked at with regret. I think just focusing on achieving Flow at work (which has been very fun) by staying with mindfulness on one chunk of a goal at a time will provide the best experiences so hopefully that I can create passion wherever skills match challenges. Flow seems more skillful than mindfulness at work. Letting go of perceptions and turn into a non-reactive person when dealing with people (not making eye contact/looking disenchanted) is not skillful.

While practicing the sky-gazing practice I was reminded of Nick's post on Atammayata/Apperception. I studyed it up and tried it. It feels different now that I have other experiences of meditation but it's similar to Sky-gazing. Instead of just letting go of attention to objects you try and experience things before the perception label (memory labels) gets going and it definitely feels really good in a similar way. I've tried it before but I can tell I'm much more ready for it now than before. Time with practice often makes you ready for things that you weren't even understanding before.

I then went walking to a restaurant feeling quite good in this mode and when I sat down and looked at the menu the aversion came back again. Reactivity to perceptions is fast, especially when you're really having trouble deciding on crab bisque or the alligator skewer. I was dealing with a waitress that said nice things with such an apathetic glib manner I was wondering if she was doing a better job of being non-reactive than I. She even talked to another waitress about stress and how when she's stacking dishes she gets into a flow but when something interrupts she gets irritated. I almost laughed.

I went back to the flavours and experiences as is, and there was relief again. It was like noting without labels and yet I could see how the ego rebels. Walking back home the analyzing part of the brain went into overdrive and all the old complaints of the past came up. Some of the thoughts could easily be viewed as paranoid or just plain inaccurate. I can see there's still more letting go to do. It's like when mindfulness is done properly the ego overcompensates like a small dog and you end up with more conflict instead. This dog needs some training but it can't be a fox guarding the hen house. That nothing awareness has to lead the way more often. I'll give the dog the flow states and goals but outside of that it needs to switch off.

What a challenge!

I've been diving in to self-regulation and goal setting books. I'm not sure I'll post them here because they only are partly related to imagery practices and little to do with meditation. They've been helping a lot in understanding conventional relationships. It's clear that when people enjoy intrinsic goals it's better than the typical extrinsic (money, fame, status) goals. It's a good way to reduce conflict and a good way to decide on all kinds of relationships. It even shows a non-controlling way to have romantic relationships where you try to make a match where trust and intrinsic motivations are more important than extrinsic coercive controlling demands. When people have choice and volition they are more invested in outcomes. It's changed my way of looking at romantic relationships. Today I ask myself "is she autonomous or authoritarian?" The reminder does two things. The first is literally understanding that everyone is living in their own world. They may seem nice in certain contexts but that's a limited impression. Without glimpsing that world why all the fuss with first perceptions? It's another example of working with perceptions that can only be based on past experiences which won't allow you to take in the new experiences. Then another insight came after that when I noticed that many people will project past experiences with other people on to you up until they have enough experiences to make a new perception of you (eg. when they get to know you). You can even see how people with personality disorders could take traumas in their own lives and get stuck in that aversion and not allow new experiences to add new perceptions so that they can get better (Eg. "I was raped by a man so all men are disgusting" etc). This confirms what many Buddhists and psychologists feel is that perceptions filter experience, and challenging old perceptions is a must to move forward. This is often done with CBT, extinction, or mindfulness.

This rigidity of perceiving and thinking is also in my studies of Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts (UTI) which plagues OCD patients. I've subscribed to some groups in LinkedIn that are for psychologists and I can peek into what they bump into. One guy has more than one OCD patient that thinks they are gay. They are not actually gay but "what you resist persists" and ruminations and obsessions can appear if you fight with thoughts in your mind. OCD people can believe that thoughts = reality but if anyone has ever thought of winning the lottery or just simply made predictions that didn't pan out should be able to see this is not the case. Knowing that many people have thought of sexual perversions like incest, or violence towards a loved one or blasphemy (and of course never acted on it or even took it seriously), it gave me some freedom to welcome my anger/revenge thoughts which I still can resist too much. They now pass away even faster and hopefully decondition further.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrusive_thought

This entire adventure on this website brought a wealth of practices I would not have discovered on my own. It has also given me an appreciation of psychology I didn't have 10 years ago. I know I'm supposed to stop searching but I keep finding cool methods that work.

 
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Richard Zen, modified 8 Years ago at 7/29/15 12:08 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 7/29/15 12:06 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I finished my list of goals with an excel version of a lotus brainstorming setup. You put passions in the centre, and the surrounding squares are the abstract passions and interests. Then you copy those cells and move them far enough away so you can create another eight more specific goals around the abstract ones.

What I liked about the exercise is that I could tell that many goals are not as urgent and can be let go of. Some could even be let go of completely with little bother. The psychology/goal setting/meditation goals appeared to be the highest level of happiness for me. The fact that I'm so passionate towards it explains why I put so much time in it. 

Listing out the goals puts some of my stress to rest because I could see how little time there is for some of them. Some goals related to work could consume everything if I'm not careful. Time management is needed but the best time managment is not putting too much on my plate. 

Recently I've been returning to Thanissaro Bhikkhu's talks and trying to improve my breath meditation during the day. I found it helped my work today. I felt demotivated to add new work after I finished creating a basic accounting control system for my company. With breath meditation, going into flow, letting go of perceptions I could really feel intention for the first time, where it was like "Bingo, that's intention and it kinda hurts!." It's like a push in the head that is stressful and breathing into it and letting go really reduced the pain. It's like before the aversion turns into a full-blown hindrance you have to breath into it and wait for relief and then you can continue on. Eg. My boss could say "hey Richard can you do this for me?" and then the brain goes into aversion, so I breathe into it until my "problem" is solved. Then new activities go from an imposition into just another thing to do. 

As usual the ego resists when there's a lot of success with the practice, and wants to take the driver's seat but I didn't blame that part of my mind. I just experimented with the breath to find what is comfortable to counteract the hindrances. When the hindrance falls I find my energy again and I can get back into flow. I really need this practice to help with goals. Without actually going beyond equanimity and actively controlling these impulses I don't think habits will change much and I'll fail at even the most basic goals. One has to confront those strong impulses to get anywhere in meditation.
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Richard Zen, modified 8 Years ago at 11/1/15 10:07 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 11/1/15 9:45 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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After a whirlwind of reading Albert Bandura and Self-efficacy and learning about guided verbalization, rigid beliefs about traits, and goal orientation I'm now at a point I didn't think I would get to. Less reading and more action. It's all about purification of actions. By using meditation to keep things on track and to let go of old habitual impulses I'm not just stopping at that. I'm actually using the understanding of self-efficacy to put in healthy karma. Talking to yourself in positive tones "you can do that" and "this failure is just temporary just before a whole bunch of successful actions" nudges your brain in the right direction to create a virtuous circle instead of a vicious circle of negative identification.

You see, regardless of religion they point to the unsatisfied part of the brain that always asks "what's next?" Whether it's Adam and Eve eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or whatever symbol/metaphor you want to use it's always "what's next?" Even if you're sitting for a long time it doesn't matter how good you are there are always "what's next?" questions regarding going to the toilet, eating and sleeping at the minimum. Of course without this basic low level of stress, to dislike the present moment, there would be no creative activity whatsoever. For external interests there needs to be some basic guidelines and that would be looking at actions that harm yourself or other people but usually we are good at understanding how not to harm others but ignore if we are harming ourselves with bad diets, no exercise, intoxicants, and bad relationships etc. 

Since intentions condition actions, it's necessary to use meditation as a way of weeding out the useless intentions that create remorse and to just act on the good intentions. Then when the good intentions are followed, a continued mindfulness is needed to let go of bad intentions that keep interrupting your goals in the middle of acting on them.

When I was reading a Tricycle article on intentions and they popped in the advice that intrinsic motivation is needed, (from Deci and Ryan that I have been reading), I just laughed. When you make the choice you are more motivated than if it's coerced by external demands from other people. You can agree with those external demands if they fit your values but otherwise one has to ask "what's the benefit in the long run?" This is where using mindfulness to look at cost vs. benefit analysis can help, and the only mistakes left are related to things that are hard to know (perfect goals, perfect knowledge to attain goals). Just weigh the costs and benefits and know that if you acted in good conscience then no remorse. If we make a choice there has to be a healthy pay-off to make it worth it.
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Noah, modified 8 Years ago at 11/2/15 4:02 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 11/2/15 4:02 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Talking to yourself in positive tones "you can do that" and "this failure is just temporary just before a whole bunch of successful actions" nudges your brain in the right direction to create a virtuous circle instead of a vicious circle of negative identification.

For external interests there needs to be some basic guidelines and that would be looking at actions that harm yourself or other people but usually we are good at understanding how not to harm others but ignore if we are harming ourselves with bad diets, no exercise, intoxicants, and bad relationships etc. 


These lines strike a chord within me since I am on a similar path, as of late (although I suspect you are farther along this track of daily discipline and intentional lifestyle, than I).  My sense is that I must understand the overall effort it takes to string together days, weeks and months of positive habits to actually create a major change externally and carve new pathways in the brain.  I wonder if this idea of foresight is more in line with the traditional definition of mindfulness as a form of 'remembrance' (i.e. avoiding the repetition of past, unwholesome mindstates), rather than as a form of present moment awareness.  Either way, one necessary ingredient for me is the development of positive emotional momentum, which usually comes in the form of a daily pep-talk.  I relate this to your mention of "positive tones."



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Richard Zen, modified 8 Years ago at 11/4/15 6:36 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 11/2/15 8:29 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Noah:
Talking to yourself in positive tones "you can do that" and "this failure is just temporary just before a whole bunch of successful actions" nudges your brain in the right direction to create a virtuous circle instead of a vicious circle of negative identification.

For external interests there needs to be some basic guidelines and that would be looking at actions that harm yourself or other people but usually we are good at understanding how not to harm others but ignore if we are harming ourselves with bad diets, no exercise, intoxicants, and bad relationships etc. 


These lines strike a chord within me since I am on a similar path, as of late (although I suspect you are farther along this track of daily discipline and intentional lifestyle, than I).  My sense is that I must understand the overall effort it takes to string together days, weeks and months of positive habits to actually create a major change externally and carve new pathways in the brain.  I wonder if this idea of foresight is more in line with the traditional definition of mindfulness as a form of 'remembrance' (i.e. avoiding the repetition of past, unwholesome mindstates), rather than as a form of present moment awareness.  Either way, one necessary ingredient for me is the development of positive emotional momentum, which usually comes in the form of a daily pep-talk.  I relate this to your mention of "positive tones."




How I look at it is this:

1. I relax with the breath until stress is soothed.
2. Let go of old intentions (likes and dislikes that nudge your attention span away from the breath).
3. How to create new intentions? Think about the benefits of actions you need to do until it starts nudging you in the right way with desire. Your intentions are based on an intrinsic motivation because of the benefits so it doesn't feel coerced by negative voices. Free choice is more motivating than coercion and with meditation you should be able to feel this. (Deci & Ryan - Self Determination)
4. If those intentions make you a better person and don't hurt you or don't hurt other people then you can act on it. You can use coercion but only against coercion. If the goals are realistic then act on it.
5. Keep letting go of stray intentions that get in the way. Use mindfulness to add finesse and patience to your efforts.
6. Feel pride in a job well done (Bandura - Self Efficacy) and go back to the breath. Rinse and repeat.

A lot of this is like the list earlier in the thread which was good but was missing goal orientation and healthy forms of effort versus unhealthy forms of effort. To see more examples of unhealthy self-talk look at Pamela Butler about the "Driver", the "Stopper", and the "Confuser" plus many forms of negative motivation. Negative motivation is draining and can lead to burn out when you pursue goals. The goal for me is to pursue goals in a way that isn't as draining. Pamela is doing a form of reframing/CBT etc. You want to do something after being motivated by dopamine, not do something after irritating yourself with cortisol. Since cortisol interferes with your short-term memory it is not conducive to good work.

The other thing is looking at envy because as you pursue goals there's rivalry and competition leading to people interfering with your free choices and using coercion against you which means there will always be some form of coercion in life. You don't have to go seeking it but to prevent yourself from being a doormat you have to fight back.
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Richard Zen, modified 8 Years ago at 12/19/15 8:25 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 12/8/15 12:56 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I finally found a system based on many psychologists that I can put together which deals with goals. It's like the above list but more robust. It was like a rubix cube trying to put it together.

You see the problem with goals is failure and in modern goal setting psychology they know that a lot of goal orientation can make things worse. With a background of Buddhism it's easier to tolerate failure but chasing goals with lots of insight still can hurt.

So what I have mixed together comes from many fields with lots of overlapping. It's a mix of Goal Setting, Visualization, Skill-development, Flow, Interest Development, Mental Contrasting, Implementation Intentions:

1. Find meaningful goals (meaningful to you, that is). Emptiness allows a lot of choice here.
2. Rate goals on importance (1 to 10). SMART(E) goals. Here you would make sure it's Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Bound. I added the E for Envy because as you chase goals there's often competition and envy which has to be looked at when your goals are shared or imitated. Putting a lot of effort into other people while improving yourself is the basic way of deflecting envy, but also not savouring or boasting too much in front of others is another way. Working on goals in which you control a lot of the variables versus goals that are totally extrinsic and out of your control is pretty clear on which is more stressful. 
3. Thoughout this it's time for Mental Contrasting where you imagine the benefits of the goal, and then imagine the current obstacles. This teaches the automatic impulsive part of the brain what it needs to deal with in order to get the benefit. If it's too hard then the goal is wrong and different goals must be chosen, like developing your skills to meet challenges or to increase challenges if things are too easy (Flow). You are developing interest in your activities. You want to imagine a healthy self-image like a role model. It could be a fantasy role model but it has to be something to imitate that increases virtue and truth. Just because you use a role model doesn't mean you can't see the emptiness of it. It's just a tool.
4. When dealing with obstacles intentions have to be created with implementation intentions (If X happens I'll do Y). I found that cue cards were so useful in memorizing speeches I eventually realized that they are implementation intentions in a way. These help with impulses and old habits. As you practice with cue cards and recall and remember better and better what you intended to do you can continue on your goal instead of getting sidetracked. I still think Mindfulness and Love are good attitudes to cultivate while taking action on goals. Goals have to be moral and not unnecessarily hurt oneself or others.
5. Chunking - As we look at large goals the brain usually is motivated only by chunks so breaking things down is straightforward for most people. As David Allen would say "what's the next actionable task?" Why contrast too much and ruminate? This is when a lot of intrinsic motivation and Flow is occuring if you chose appropriate goals. What is cool is that if you learn to see the value of some extrinsic motivation goals you can make them intrinsic. If you mentally contrast with no control (called "dwelling") then the motivation is gone. Just act on your goal, because you are not always expecting success. You are feeling out the goal with the actions because sometimes you just need....
6. Feedback - Use it to adjust goals, abandon and replace goals, or information to try again (resilience). Rinse and repeat.
7. If you get success this should give you a sense of self-efficacy because you now know you can do this particular thing you made a goal out of. Time to find another goal and another until the goal is to be mindful at the end of it all.

I think I'm done with the insight thing. I know there are probably more insights but all this Buddhist searching is just "searching" and as impermanent goals are, the big moments of success and happiness can be remembered and savoured which is really what most people are looking for. I'll keep returning to meditation when there's some stress but I have to be careful not to make it into an avoidance which definitely plagued me in the past and I'm sure most posters on this forum.

I'm currently digging into Myers-Briggs books and developing skills I don't have. What I've learned is that Introverted Intuition is being developed just by typing on this forum and writing down ideas as they pop up. This is also true for speeches. Meditation has developed Sensing Extroversion and Sensing Introversion. My weakness (the weaknesses of INFPs) is Thinking Extroversion. I need to plan more, organize more, and measure results to get this function into a habit. As an accountant this is important because my habitual ways of brainstorming with Extroverted Intuition cause mistakes and make things slower. The brain seems to resist when developing a new function so conflict and a fogginess appears but this is normal. Time for a new adventure in purposeful conditioning. emoticon

EDIT: By purposeful conditioning, I mean only action will create the required conditioning.
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Richard Zen, modified 7 Years ago at 4/24/16 1:59 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 4/24/16 1:59 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
I managed to get into a Mental Health Institute to volunteer for crisis phone-line training. During the interview they were very interested in Buddhism but they also emphasized that we do not do advice but crisis counseling. Since much of counseling is dealing with people with trauma and going through crisis and even suicidal people I'll learn a lot of stuff that won't be on this forum. Many people from the forum naturally direct suicidal people to those first responders and it'll be nice to see what they see on the other side and gain insights there. I'm going to be very busy, but happy. emoticon
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Richard Zen, modified 7 Years ago at 1/10/17 12:41 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 1/10/17 12:33 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 40 Join Date: 12/6/16 Recent Posts
The biggest breakthroughs so far in my psychology journey is understanding my co-dependency. Ross Rosenberg calls it SLDD (Self-Love Deficit Disorder). Co-dependents are trained into being like a Dobby from Harry Potter and the bullies (Cluster Bs) can sniff out the house-elf slave so that if they were trained by other bullies the master can change and the relationship is the same.

For me the healing with Therese Lisieux's quotes and using them to develop self-acceptance, self-love and healing makes you feel so normal that you can't remember a time when you felt this good. It's actually scary. Developing self-love is so much faster than insight. Metta is also missing the mark because unless you look at childhood trauma and heal it you are just healing every area but the wound. It's too slow. When developing self-love and understanding you have to start parenting yourself (much like Margaret Paul's work). Self-parenting is rewarding and punishing yourself instead of relying on others to do it for you. All the shaming I got from bullies throughout my life and not defending myself makes you easy to sniff out from other predators. They may have been wounded in the past too, but they learned to just take what they want and also learned how to get away with it with gaslighting, and triangulating other targets. It's rewarding to get away with it so they continue on until it's an anti-skill. Empathic people can't understand them but looking at what gets rewarded and what gets punished brings the clue to how people become this way.

The problem is putting your own approval into the hands of others and that's how you can get stuck YOUR ENTIRE LIFE. Some of this is basic healing by looking at attachment trauma and starting to take care of yourself and to give yourself the love you didn't get when you were younger. The main trap is that doing good things for yourself is selfish and narcissists in particular can shame you constantly for not staying a Dobby. I know there's going to be some rocky periods ahead because many employers want employees to be a Dobby type and that's not going to cut it for me anymore. Family and friends might only like it if you are a loser. I have to abandon any Buddhist attitudes that contribute to co-dependency. Pacifism is extremely unhealthy and unless you are a self-sufficient hermit it's not possible if you want to be happy. Actualism with being "happy and harmless" is either more repression or you are a doormat once more. Jung already showed the archetypes and those keep appearing in your dreams regardless of your practice. Those dreams/impulses are demanding that you develop other skills. Anger has healthy uses and repressing it for so long just leads to illness and releasing a lot of that anger is actually very healing. I recommend Pete Walker's books, especially the Tao of fully feeling.

Meditation has been a great help, don't get me wrong, but the main help is to see inward the mental movements that otherwise you couldn't do. Once you do that you can actually work on your psychology. I know this post seems quite different from the last one but it shows how much I've grown. A gold standard for me is Ross Rosenberg's analogy of improving your vision. You have to be able to see the Cluster B type from a mile away. If not then there's still a little too much co-dependency there. For fuck sakes, I get taken in but it's pretty obvious who these people are. They start triangulating (pointing out what you don't have and imperfections). What I didn't understand is that they try to condition you with rewards and punishments from the very beginning (even just their body language) and then if you don't fight back with boundaries and if you don't take care of your independence you'll be a slave. Most studies show that power makes people myopic and they just look at you as a tool or use for their goals, even if they were the employee before and now got a promotion. Empathy goes out the window. Where there's power differentials in any relationships, watch out!

As I practice with boundaries I'll see how far I can go. Can I weed out the bad people and keep the good? Love has to be the basis of relationships. We need competition but at some area of your life it has to be more cooperative. Meditation will always be there to remind me of what's intrinsically enjoyable with the breath. It won't always be enough but it's the foundation for everything else in psychology.

I'll just leave this post with Marisa Peer who sums it up quite well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw3NyUMLh7Y
I am enough
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Noah D, modified 7 Years ago at 1/14/17 8:35 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 1/14/17 8:35 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1211 Join Date: 9/1/16 Recent Posts
Hi Richard,

Do you find your practice following a spiral pattern?  Meaning, you repeatedly encounter the same themes but at deeper levels?  I ask because I notice this in my own practice and something resonates when I read about yours.
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Richard Zen, modified 7 Years ago at 1/14/17 9:36 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 1/14/17 9:29 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 40 Join Date: 12/6/16 Recent Posts
I'm an eclectic so I take ideas from anywhere. The depth I find comes from trying different practices and angles regardless of tradition. Finding out I was co-dependent came from looking at being bullied in my past (ironcially while I was studying how envy/frustration/scapegoating work and seeing it happen right in front of me). If you lack assertiveness or are into pacifism, and have talent to envy, then you are target #1. Cluster B's have been wounded in competition and start seeing abusers get success so naturally they will imitate them. They look at Co-dependents as weak pathetic worms.

The depth is in seeing people's psychological manipulations in real time. This is partly by staying present and trying to be non-reactive but also be learning how crafty Cluster B types actually are. They are reading nuances in your behaviour and guessing about your life (sometimes accurately or inaccurately) and react with control tactics based on envy of any happiness you display in your body language. They lack empathy and look at you as a thing. They do even small invalidations and sometimes tricks to keep you off guard and fearful of losing your job or losing something else. It matches social psychology to a T. Co-dependency just makes it easier for them.

There's also an understanding that goes more with Rob Burbea in that we have to own up to our emotions and much of meditation is so repressive and dry that having a good cry or yelling at abuse you experienced is more cathartic than more meditation. The brain needs to release emotions to drain toxicity. Unless you are outraged and apply boundaries people can't tell if you are an inanimate object or a person.

The aggressive part of me has to come out or it's back to learning the same doormat mistakes again. I'm seeing how many people don't deserve empathy and I'm learning to enjoy contempt and withdrawing concern. Some people are so fucking irritating (facial expressions, body language, sadistic smiles) that being empathic towards them is actually putting yourself in danger. I know abusers have been wounded in the past but they at some point decided to identify with the abuser so they are at war with morality and basically they become masters of what Bandura calls Moral Disengagement. They make excuses for their bad behaviour to make themselves feel better so their abuse looks justified in their minds.

So it's not really circular. It's more like learning from experience and not being dogmatic about where you get your insights. Meditation is a foundation to allow you to see your mental movements but adding psychology to it greatly removes naivety from the proceedings. People will only change if they want to. Trying to help people who don't want it is a form of smothering and we need to save the energy for ourselves. If they are rewarded enough for bad behaviour it actually turns into a habit they have trouble stopping. A lot of people are walking around unconscious and doing damage unconsciously and then making excuses habitually to feel better so they don't feel shame. Then they repeat the habits again based on further rewards from society. Then they become expert narcissists, psychopaths, borderlines, and histrionics. "The victim deserved it" or "it wasn't that bad" or "it needed to be done for the good of the group" etc. Society doesn't just reward it with monetary and power rewards. Often inaction is a reward in of itself.

The next step for me is developing skills in boundaries. By not tolerating abuse from people and rewarding people for good behaviour I'll have to condition a new lifestyle of positivity and find a use for anger and punishment that protects me from more abuse. Meditation is now moved to areas like facilitating Flow. Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi did a recent paper showing the value of concentration in all aspects of Flow. Yet all this concentration is for naught if we lose concentration from all the abuse we are getting from narco-paths who giggle and refine their art of hippocampus damage.

I don't care how much meditation I do. Giggling, smiling, smirking psychopaths are so irritating it's a reminder that we only have democracy and freedom because we kick their fucking asses or force them into a bunker to take cyanide.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfvLcozLwtE
Gandhi 2

I'm definitely in an angry mood right now. emoticon If we are going to be empaths we have to be "badass empaths"


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2IIsMyFxSQ
How to become a kickass empath?


https://www.amazon.com/Boundaries-Relationships-Knowing-Protecting-Enjoying-ebook/dp/B004GUSDP4/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1484451013&sr=1-2

Boundaries and Relationships

https://www.amazon.com/Psychopath-Free-Expanded-Emotionally-Relationships/dp/0425279995/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1484451341&sr=8-1&keywords=Psychopath+free
Psychopath Free

https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Hidden-Abuse-Recovery-Psychological/dp/0997829087/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1484451620&sr=8-1&keywords=HIdden+abuse
Healing from hidden abuse
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Noah D, modified 7 Years ago at 1/15/17 10:14 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 1/15/17 10:14 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1211 Join Date: 9/1/16 Recent Posts
Very cool, thank you.
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Richard Zen, modified 7 Years ago at 2/11/17 2:34 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 2/11/17 2:30 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 40 Join Date: 12/6/16 Recent Posts
I think I found what I'm looking for. I did this on an Amazon book review for Rene Girard's Deceit, Desire and the Novel:

An illusion peeling book that gets us to see what happiness really is. Even though Girard is not a psychologist this book created Interdividual psychology. By seeing how we imitate our desires and how we are often taught to look for social approval we get caught in endless circles of imitating "cool" people who are the true Gods that all people believe in, regardless if they say they are religious or not. Putting experts on a pedestal of Godliness and ignoring the fallibility of all people is one illusion seen through in this book. Another illusion is how we obsess less on the object of desire and more on the cool person who desires it. When it's a person you are trying to imitate and replace, it's called internal mediation. A metaphysical desire mediated by a 3rd party. It's a self-hatred you are trying to escape by being someone else. Yet any desired object (no matter it's worth) is an object with pros and cons that can get boring after a time. The brain is designed to let go of desire inherently for survival reasons. We cannot be endlessly savouring. That's the illusion, that cool people on advertisements or facebook look like they are eternally savouring like a God. Savouring is a passing phase that can never be permanent. The way desire appears in internal mediation is like a garden where only special people are allowed and they can savour what is barred from you. Yet this garden is full of people getting bored and looking enviously at other gardens to explore elsewhere. Who you envy may in fact be envying someone else precisely because all desires end at some point when the obstacle is superseded or the mystery is solved. Obstacles are necessary for strong passions. Once you explore your desire enough the brain will want to move onto something else. "Everyone in the universe of internal mediation heaves on the chain of desire and dreams of the retirement he will enjoy, not out of the world, but in a world he has finally conquered, a world possessed and still desirable". I would recommend Robert Doran's analysis "Rene Girard's concept of conversion and the via negativa" to gain more depth that leads one to what I think is intrinsic motivation in psychology. Having autonomy over our desires means they are not related to the social climbing of internal mediation. We don't have to eliminate imitation but choose and guide our desires based on our personal skills, interests and actual experiences. We will still imitate but we will consciously look at the actual object or situation without a 3rd party hyping it with their presence. Then when we look back with nostalgia over our enjoyable past experiences with affective memory, there is a gratitude that is a better happiness than the barred garden occupied by the snob-ism of experts. Don't look at me as an expert. Read the book and find out for yourself. emoticon

This way I don't have to eliminate desire but I can look at desire from the stand point of consequences and to extend that becoming, in our thought bubbles of desire, to address negative details of our desires with the same becoming. This way desire can still have a pro and con analysis and discernment so we can stay within the law and not hurt others unconsciously. Like I pointed out before with Csikszentmihalyi's work, Flow has to be regenerated again and again with new obstacles and new skills but with intrinsic motivation it's more like a kid playing rather than external mediation of social approval which is empty and often times quite painful when desire turns predatory. This helps cure Co-depedency because your self-love is not too low or too high, and prevents narcissism because negative consequences of certain desires are addressed. It also means that one can regulate self-love without social approval and then we are free to enjoy experiences and affective memory with gratitude. The next level is to look at others with the same lens. "How do they treat me?" This way sadism and masochism can also be avoided. I don't have to chase people with a cool persona or lifestyle as if that's actual heaven and go through masochistic torture trying to imitate them and tolerate their insults. Having love and sharing love can be protected from envy by pointing out the illusions that envy engenders. Eg. Seeing through illusions of snobbery, permanent satisfaction of desires, and developing instead experiences that can be savoured in memories. This way I can let others pursue their desires and I can pursue mine and any superiority is only related to superior discernment of consequences of desires. I'll definitely anticipate with enjoyment Rob Burbea's next retreat when it comes on audio to see similarities and differences we both have to desire and how it's pursued. We both agree that the elimination of desire is not realistic (unless you are unconscious in nirvana all the time), and both like the skillful use of desire.
shargrol, modified 7 Years ago at 2/12/17 7:16 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 2/12/17 7:15 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 2344 Join Date: 2/8/16 Recent Posts
This is really good stuff.

It seems like there are three level of being empowered:

The first is direct, like the Zen idea of "action" -- that there isn't a separate self that does an action, but rather there is aware action itself. (Not unconscious or trance state, but awake.)

The second is self, where one's own self does an activity as "a self doing an activity", for it's own sake, for it's own exploraiton, taken up and left behind without complication. But this has some suffering in it, the pain of birth and death of an idenity associate with the activity. Make it harder to drop it when the activity isn't needed anymore because it feels like a little death.

The third is the internally mediated approach, were we mimic others/look for their approval --- which must be related to the innate behavior of children imitating adults as a way to learn about the world. This is much more painful, because it's infused with a kind of paranoia. "Amy I doing it right? Do other approve? What if I'm not good enough?" When you are an adult, however, maybe it's time to see through the limitations of that approach, or at least use it consciously rather than unconsciously. 
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Richard Zen, modified 7 Years ago at 2/12/17 12:32 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 2/12/17 12:04 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 40 Join Date: 12/6/16 Recent Posts
To me this is a staging point where you can go in different directions.
  • You can let go of all desire.
  • You can enjoy as many healthy desires and typical attitudes that the brain and genetics will cough up out of your brain (typical self-actualization/Maslow's Pyramid) and get satiated and then if you're still alive you can let go of all desires much easier. Most people will be in this camp if they are having a social life, having sex, enjoying good food, enjoying vacations, and enjoying jobs with good pay. This bucket would also include Csikszentmihalyi's Flow.
  • You can also do individuation and develop all 8 functions to a certain degree so life's challenges can be met with the right cognitive function. This is often created by meditating but instead talking to the unused functions that are sending us dreams all the time to make us use them. You can also develop functions consciously but with a sense of play (Intrinsic motivation, not extrinsic motivation of course). And that can include some of #2 in your quest. 
There are some major obstacles we are all aware of. Without the ability to resist enculturation you can't really make choices because the muscle of intention is so weak. Saying NO takes effort, yet people who say NO more often get more done in their lives. This is why psychological, physical and financial boundaries must be maintained or you won't be able to exert on your environment. Boundaries begin when you stop being so "all is one" and realize how predators can take advantage of that. The general public understands boundaries and they often learn when you punish them, withdraw your support, leave their existence with No Contact. It sends a message. Cluster B types are boundary smashers and experts in doing so. If you need any evidence you can look at self-confessing narcissists pouring out their schadenfreude for everyone to see. It gives me the same feeling as being covered in leeches:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mghO2fDTneY
Exploiting empathy

The other major difficulty is being time bound with health issues and death. Mobility issues and chronic diseases make one want to resort to concentration practices. The more ill you are the more necessary meditation is. Yet general concentration is not needed just in meditation. Consistent attention enhances Flow as the below study shows:

Attentional involvement and intrinsic motivation - Sami Abuhamdeh • Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257623829_Attentional_involvement_and_intrinsic_motivation

The difficulty of extrinsic motivation is pretty clear and as much as people think we can change the environment to make it better, as long as we have connections to others it can easily go into Girard's imitation and envy and Cikara and Fiske's work shows that it's not just narcissists that are capable of causing harm but even the general population. Envy is a taboo so people will feel it and act on it when they are mostly unconscious of it. Then they'll deny it. It's a precursor to the cycle of abuse.

Their pain, our pleasure - Cikara, Fiske 2013
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4472308/


As soon as you look competitive it looks "cold" to others and if you are competent as well then that is the brain's signal for others to go into envy regardless of whether they admit it or not. The sports analogies in this are good because it's socially acceptable to release your hostility (not completely unlike gladatorial games) but these impulses appear in everyday life and places like the workplace require hiding your competitiveness and making your competencies cooperative until such a time you can be competitive and have enough boundaries to offset the envy backlash. This matches really well with Robert Greene's books like Mastery and 48 laws of Power. 

Then once hostility from rumination of obstacles AKA "people" appears in the mind, then there's another step before aggression. Bandura called it Moral Disengagement, which basically are excuses that make people feel justified and better about themselves when they move into aggression. Therefore with these excuses they are more likely to act. That's why it's hard to understand when you are a victim. You may not know what the excuse the perpetrator is using.

https://web.stanford.edu/dept/psychology/bandura/pajares/Bandura1996JPSP.pdf
Mechanisms of Moral Disengagement in the Exercise of Moral Agency

Being able to have adequate boundaries so that people can't get to you is necessary for self-development and success. If we are the guilty one caught in rumination about enemies then understanding Girard's meconnaissance or misrecognition can help. You can ask yourself "Who am I imitating?" This should be easier for meditators because with dependent arising people see intuitive bubbles within their minds and a topic of savouring an object or situation. The sense of self takes ownership of the image when the desire feeling arises with the juicy image and we forget that we imitated someone else. We are not the originators of that desire in most instances. You can see how basic stealing can come with this introjection of desire. It's appropriated.

If that's not enough then visualizing the downsides and the inability of the brain to be permanently satisfied would be the next step. Really seeing the downsides vividly requires intention and effort to direct when the desire takes off in the brain. It takes practice to imagine paying the bill after you enjoy something and then to take pleasure in avoiding damage by choosing not to act on that desire. You have to push that visualization further despite the cravings not to. That can be very hard.

Advertisers know exactly how to get us to imitate other "being's-in-savouring". That's their expertise. Sometimes doing the thing you most want to do and witnessing that feeling "is that all?!!" and seeing how desire has moved onto another object is a form of learning by doing. If that doesn't work one could remember times when a great success occurred. It's still a great memory and worth savouring but the present moment will not stay with that high emotional charge of victory. The brain will return to seeking.

With all this stuff one cannot completely let go of stress because there's always a little stress in handing in assignments to teachers or having bosses review your work or a loved one dies. Grief needs to be processed and accepted. It's healing to cry and having a mindset to improve upon mistakes is crucial to keep from falling into depression and learned helplessness. I think people who can gather multiple sources of income and multiple sources of pleasure and enjoyment can fend off being isolated by bullies, can look more confident ("Don't fuck with me!"), handle losses with more grace because there's many eggs in many baskets, and avoid being addicted. Being isolated, alone and co-dependent is target #1 for predators.


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Richard Zen, modified 7 Years ago at 3/16/17 1:26 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 3/16/17 1:26 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 40 Join Date: 12/6/16 Recent Posts
While doing this self-retreat I've been going back to Dzogchen pointing via Douglas Harding and Ken McLeod. I've been getting more steady non-dual experiences that are resolving in a more consistent way. I just put my hand on the back of my head and notice how location is a concept and that my hand on my head is just sensations and everything is just sensations throughout the entire experience. Life is flowing very smoothly now. 
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ivory, modified 7 Years ago at 3/16/17 2:35 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 3/16/17 2:35 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 199 Join Date: 9/11/14 Recent Posts
Good stuff. Have you heard of Greg Goode? If you like Harding you might like that guy as well. He's a western advaita teacher with an experimential approach like Harding.
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Richard Zen, modified 7 Years ago at 3/16/17 7:56 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 3/16/17 7:56 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 40 Join Date: 12/6/16 Recent Posts
Yes I did do his Advaita practices and they worked somewhat but I think I wasn't ready for them. It was at the time I was getting to the 4th jhana more regularly some years ago and the Advaita practices were a nice way to relieve the meditation striving but I think there was a little too much control on my attention span to get a full benefit. I can remember a time when Daniel was telling posters to stop manipulating their attention and I was getting to that place where I am now but not as strongly. Burbea's talk on the subtlety of dependent origination is still sinking in and pointing out the stress in the moving attention span. That made things easier. It's important to look at all the mental movements as sensations and deepen the understanding of supported dependence that consciousness has with objects. Dwelling in this one-ness makes experience seem more fabricated. Because it's all sensations it has more of a feeling of being created by mind like a Matrix hologram. Created is too strong but I believe it's more a filtered experience with a complex universe that is unfathomable.

I'm an INFP so I'm fairly intuitive so it takes me a little longer to learn this stuff. Plus the C-PTSD from bullying in school and workplace situations have been constantly operating in the subconscious. I'm healing co-dependency fairly well so meditation is less needed because the self-love allows me to dwell in Being for longer. I still have a foodie addiction that repeats once in a while but now I know that it is to fill in social deficits so more self-love is needed so I can sit still in one place and feel good. I have to take more social risks to heal the social brain. Bad social experiences show that the brain will release negative reinforcement when what you like is taken away from you, and social situations are full of punishments, envy, power, and control. We risk these dangers so we can get rewards, sharing, partnership, and protection.

To me this one-ness is much like what Martin Heidegger was talking about from the Western standpoint. There's a wonder that he's aiming at and those in the East with this attainment are in a similar spot of a corelessness where no core self can be found to operate and sensations are just everywhere. The self appears to be more and more conceptual. There's more of course because of cessation but it's a great way to live daily life in. I can cry. I can emote. I can be natural. I can accept my current habits. But this is within an introverted solitary situation. When the chips are down and something is at stake that is the real test. There will always be stress when dealing with Cluster-B types.

Basically the self is like the lower level brain and it leaps out at details and remembers them if there's a reward and then leaps out based on past experiences. It leaps towards concepts and creates mental worlds and reacts emotionally to them.
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ivory, modified 7 Years ago at 3/16/17 8:09 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 3/16/17 8:04 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 199 Join Date: 9/11/14 Recent Posts
Richard Zen:
I'm an INFP so I'm fairly intuitive so it takes me a little longer to learn this stuff.


I've tested as an INFP and an INFJ. It also takes me a while to learn things. However, once I learn something I know it inside and out. I tend to be more mastery driven than goal oriented.

We seem to have similar interests in the personal growth arena and I wonder if that's also a personality thing.

You mentioned Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, do you feel that the term Autotelic describes you?
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Richard Zen, modified 7 Years ago at 3/16/17 8:49 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 3/16/17 8:41 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 40 Join Date: 12/6/16 Recent Posts
Mastery orientation is good but it involves a lot of criteria like Anders Ericsson's Peak Performance with deliberate practice. It's more effortful and boring but yields the best nuances in our habits. It requires 10,000 hours of high quality practice where people concentrate on doing things properly. This is not a lazy practice. It's having clear subskills and practicing them until the total skill is mastered. Each skill has to have a criteria of good performance to practice and compare against. That leads to Flow and when skills become habitual and then they can be employed when the opportunities arise. Appropriate skill + Opportunity = Flow. Flow requires curiosity and interest but there's a lot of discipline to get into it.

Yes I'm an Autotelic personality. INFPs have Feeling Introversion (appraising/personal harmony) as the Heroic function and the Auxiliary of Intuition Extroversion (brainstorming/envisioning/enabling possibilities). The weaker functions of Sensing Introversion (verifying) and Thinking Extraversion (Planning/Enforcing) which allow the ideas generated in the top two functions to be acted on. The desire (Anima/Animus) is to develop these weaker functions which propels an older (middle aged) INFP to get more into self-development and get their ass in gear. Eg. I'm going to Brendon Burchard's High Performance Academy in the fall, and the irony is that I'm becoming more and more relaxed while learning to develop skills.

I think this is the wisdom of older people. Heidegger was more like Nietzsche when he was younger in his "overcoming" attitude, but moved on to "releasement" in later life. To develop functions it's better to learn to like them and relax with a sense of play to develop interest in them. Later as the function becomes improved then something like Deliberate Practice can be used to take it to the next level if it's required. Forcing and striving just burn out the brain and people realize that relaxing and just practicing regularly will do more than stressful cramming.

If the descriptions of the functions don't match you then you might be an INFJ which would be shadow functions for an INFP. Their Heroic function is Intuition Introversion (knowing/predicting), and the Auxiliary is Feeling Extraversion (affirming/social harmony). The weaker functions are Sensing Extraversion (engaging opportunities/gut instinct/learning by doing), and the Anima/Animus is Thinking Introversion (defining/understanding/clear definitions/logical links/frameworks/clear principles). 

If you want to develop your weaker functions you have to look at the function you want to develop and also develop it's shadow function. What becomes conscious can be controlled otherwise the functions are not differentiated enough to help you and will act out in dreams and be a shadowy committee interfering.
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Richard Zen, modified 7 Years ago at 3/18/17 12:48 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 3/18/17 11:47 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 40 Join Date: 12/6/16 Recent Posts
This one-ness is really helping even if it's not enlightenment. Enlightenment is many layers of facets of jewels. Just being with the one-ness allows me to see the thoughts arise and the co-dependent thoughts are a learned helplessness where bullies conditioned a slave mentality. This "jar-like-world" that some people like to call this one-ness allows more disidentification with thoughts and identification looks like self-fullfilling prophecies where labels and recognitions guide our conditioning to repeat. It's time to use more healthy affirmations to interrupt the negative conditioning. Remembering in the past in this thread Nick talking about interrupting the stream is now starting to come back. I would interrupt it but I really need to interrupt and replace with positive imagery. Brendon Burchard of course, who knows Gabrielle Oettingen's work, emphasizes that and like the video before on Marisa Peer. We have to condition ourselves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYQn69Te8OA&t=551s
Stop quitting your goals!

The value is that I can now stop putting narcissists on pedestals and also realize how much I'm imitating. To identify all the things I imitate is really the misrecognition Girard talks about. It leaves a nice relaxing feeling where you can look at jobs as filling unmet needs instead of attaching to a particular job as a form of happiness. As we know putting very few externals as the only happiness will mean a lot of pain when it's taken away from you. We are fighting over identities, which really are resources. emoticon

In terms of mapping, being in the oneness makes the conceptual map appear as it is, conceptual and it can be a nuisance. 

A lot of competition in this world is about having more knowledge than others and berating them into co-dependent low self-esteem beliefs to eliminate competition. A lot of our jobs force us into situations where the people reviewing our work have a conflict of interest on our development. Intrinsic motivation and development has to be independent of malicious supervision, and social undermining. To me this is the beginning of a new economic system. One that isn't socialism or capitalism as it stands. It would have to be some hybrid where people can be the best they can be without constantly over-producing or killing each other over scarcity or having low standards. Unmet needs creates new markets and opportunities so the creative brain is needed to create new opportunities or else the same master and slave conditioning happens with bottlenecking in careers. Moral people of course will be more masochistic and tolerate abuse because they are not willing to have moral disengagement thinking to excuse their predatory behaviour. This is why many people in higher positions are more sadistic, because it gives them an edge by instilling fear into people. 
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Noah D, modified 7 Years ago at 3/16/17 7:44 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 3/16/17 7:44 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1211 Join Date: 9/1/16 Recent Posts
Hey Richard-

Always interested to hear how advanced yogis are still clarifying new aspects of the sensory field.  Regarding this nonduality - are you able to notice which of the 5 senses it is being revealed through?  Or sense sub-aspects (I.e proprioception, parallax).  Also, do you notice degrees of maturity of it?  Meaning, discrete levels of 'openness.'
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Richard Zen, modified 7 Years ago at 3/16/17 8:22 PM
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RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 40 Join Date: 12/6/16 Recent Posts
I think your word choices of proprioception and parallax are accurate to my experience. It's more like the conceptual measuring mind creates locations based on memories. To recognize anything requires comparison and concepts. The mind gets out of the body sensations and labels very quickly. This is why one-ness has to be relieved and tested again and again so that the insight deepens. It's a little claustrophobic in an nice way. It's like scanning the body and being certain that there is nothing but sensations. I've always had this insight but it gets to be in more depth as thoughts are more relaxed and controlled over the years. As long as we have concepts there will always be comparison stress and I'm okay with that. What I like most about it is how the self appears more and more conceptual over time and therefore conditioned. There may be some biological preferences that send people into certain personality types (as per twin studies) but if we have a full brain it's possible to develop more.

I don't know if I can call it a discrete level of openness, because it actually feels like a closedness. Like I'm limited by the brain capacity I have. Reality overflows our perceptions.
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Richard Zen, modified 7 Years ago at 3/19/17 10:27 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 3/19/17 10:27 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I'm using Sensing Extroversion (engaging) to tap into my Sensing Introversion (verifying) of plans of action (Te). It's working now but my INFP habit of being last minute on deadlines is grating on my nerves. I have to resort to the tetrads to relax fabrication while I go back to studying. The value of ESTJ types and their ability to only entertain themselves when important things are done and to stay ahead of the curve is a necessity for self-improvement. When thought fabrications come up, instead of batting them away, I try to relax them and maybe just stay in a meditative state until I feel enough refreshment to continue on.

Just catch the fabrication, relax it, and then continue on engaging (Se).
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Richard Zen, modified 7 Years ago at 3/20/17 10:08 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 3/20/17 9:57 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 40 Join Date: 12/6/16 Recent Posts
Richard Zen:

Just catch the fabrication, relax it, and then continue on engaging (Se).

This is pretty much it. If it doesn't work it's because the relaxation has to be long enough and refreshing enough to continue on working. Short-term pleasures and doing what's easy are seductive but sticking with breath meditation can sublimate those desires and regenerate the energy to go on.

EDIT: Earlier at work I was alone and was enjoying my one-ness experiences and I noticed a kind of slipping-into feeling like I was going to fall into a nothing. It was like the stress keeps me conscious and if I let go enough the solidity of consciousness would go away. Unfortunately I got heart palpitations and returned back to the one-ness. Definitely like falling off a cliff.
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Richard Zen, modified 6 Years ago at 4/7/17 12:32 AM
Created 6 Years ago at 4/7/17 12:32 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td5nEdDOgsQ
Self-Love, Confidence, and Relaxation

This has been quite helpful.
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Richard Zen, modified 6 Years ago at 6/7/17 8:47 AM
Created 6 Years ago at 6/7/17 8:38 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Okay so after all this self-retreat time I was able to find the insight that anything interesting has a hook to it. "Try me or you will miss out" is the hook. This hook is also mediated by being addicted to validation from others. They'll hurt you if you don't like what they like, because it's a slight on their self-image if you find something better. The science of Self-Enhancement and Self-protection shows how important people's reputations and need for validation is. After seeing an inservice showing the benefits of Alcoholics Anonymous and how they try to enjoy sobriety you can see how much abstinence is the main importance. They may get addicted to attention and validation but that is much better than alcohol. 

Seeing this has gotten me to let go of food addiction and now I'm in withdrawal symptoms but it's good in that I'm letting go of internet addiction as well. My brain is looking for hooks everywhere and letting go. I don't look at relationships the same way. Pleasures are more for sharing but ultimately gratitude for what I've enjoyed and experienced is the main goal for pleasures, because of their impermanence. "Try me or you will miss out" is true sometimes for very big healthy pleasures (don't overly repress) but not missing out is missing out on mental peace which is very valuable. It's either mental peace or big pleasures that are worth savouring in memory and gratitude. Just simple breath meditations or HAIETMOBA and relishing the sensation in the healthy body is so much better than what's out there most of the time. The pleasure isn't as big but the peace is much bigger.

So I'm thanking this community and Daniel for getting me on track so many years ago and of course the myriad books and psychologists and philosophers I read (that was probably an addiction as well) for finding sublimation replacements for addictions and co-dependency. Look for the hook and prize mental peace and gratitude instead. Enjoy what adds to gratitude and abstain from what doesn't.

I'm sure I'll let myself get hooked and pop into this site once in a while for some validations emoticon otherwise I'm onto skill development for all the things I didn't develop while growing up.


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Richard Zen, modified 6 Years ago at 12/4/17 11:08 PM
Created 6 Years ago at 12/4/17 11:08 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I've been meditating in daily life like I normally do. I read Thanissaro Bhikkhu's book The Shape of Suffering. Very technical. I hope to have some more books under my belt on dependent arising. It's a real help to have different versions of ignorance to chew on. In The Shape of Suffering we have ignorance as being ignorant of the 4 noble truths. Clinging in particular I honed in on as any clinging whatsoever. 

I woke up in the morning for my stretches and just noticed how intentions and stress were connected and let go of it. It's like letting go of the movement of the attention span, thinking, and the personality all at once. I still need to stay with the breath to do this so it constantly need regenerating, but it's easier to let go now than before because clinging to Buddhist thoughts is just more thoughts and intentions.

Listening to a Jungian analyst podcast also elucidated this illusion that the ego is on the steering wheel. Simply by meditating and seeing the unconscious interrupt the meditation again and again can show how powerful it is in guiding our actions. In order to integrate the unconscious I'll have to do more than meditation, but actually look at healing complexes so that they have less sway over the mind. Meditation by itself has trouble with the different unconscious personalities that are trying to get integrated into the mind.
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Richard Zen, modified 5 Years ago at 4/22/18 9:54 AM
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RE: Richard's insight practice

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Unconscious healing.

I had a recent healing episode that was unplanned for, and unrelated to any spiritual work I was going on. The backstory was my prior experience in Toastmasters, where a major narcissist took Toastmasters speech awards, and through the help of others, used them as intermittent reinforcement on me. Then they continued to shame me for not being married to try and shame me into a marriage with a bully (intermittent reinforcement and the cycle of abuse). I was in a weak point in my life, not knowing which career path to go on, and I got massive PTSD from it that affected my prostate, heart chakra, and the back of my skull. What I learned from abusers is that stress is increased when rewards and hope is offered. The come down is much larger and adrenalizes your glands increases cortisol. This is much more so than being made fun of when you are prepared and have no emotional investment in the abuser. They create the investment first and then kick the sand castle down.

Fast-forward to two years later, I've since dropped alcohol, continued meditating and learning psychology, but a giant form of healing appeared in a dream.

I dreamed I was in a courtyard surrounded by one or two story buildings. The social worker asshole was grinning at me in her typical evil way and asked me if we should play. She basically was acting like a wounded child in an adult body. We went to her place and to a second story and I saw a version of her having sex with some non-descript guy in a long mirror without it actually happening in the room. My unconscious somehow got the notion that she was sexualized early in her life and that because she had NPD she wasn't going to recover. 

I woke up with his massive ugly cry with snot and tears, and the majority of the PTSD disappeared. What was cool was that the unconscious forgiveness was balanced. It wasn't supportive of victimhood. I will be aggressive with NPD and ASPD types, so that the fear is gone of them and at the same time I can accept their awful childhoods.
Mathew Poskus, modified 5 Years ago at 4/22/18 10:42 AM
Created 5 Years ago at 4/22/18 10:40 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Yeah Narcissist are fucking pure evil with sadistic wounded child in them ,shame often they're good looking ,fox-like smart very charming and easily gets in your head,fucking human cancer.
People should get schooled about them in schools or I don't know in some way how to spot them .Like all the time people know about them when a narcissist "fuck" them up like too late.
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Richard Zen, modified 5 Years ago at 4/22/18 11:01 AM
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RE: Richard's insight practice

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Mathew Poskus:
Yeah Narcissist are fucking pure evil with sadistic wounded child in them ,shame often they're good looking ,fox-like smart very charming and easily gets in your head,fucking human cancer.
People should get schooled about them in schools or I don't know in some way how to spot them .Like all the time people know about them when a narcissist "fuck" them up like too late.

Yeah you got it! Human cancer. That's why that movie Annihillation resonated with me so much. That entire movie looked like NPD.
Mathew Poskus, modified 5 Years ago at 4/22/18 12:43 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 4/22/18 11:58 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Offcourse man ,I can sense them from mile ,even from stare ,I've knew one for 5 years ,he was aware who he is btw ,he throwed some hints to me you know ,probably to test me how im gonna react and how much he can tell me because he was former gangster ,poet ,musician and a kyokushin karate europe second prizer ,insane good looking ,insanly strong ,day by day we was best buds ,I seen him with mask ,without it ,at those times I have no fucking clue whats was with him,althought u know we had good times really ,but time went on and I felt his neurotic side more and more ,his lying ,manupulation, hate,paranoid looking for someone to critique him,poisoning emotionally ,sadism, lack of empathy ,self obssesed,envy ,aggression,violence ,judge,controlling  and etc. I was like sick of this shit ,I was hearing at some point his voice in my head judging me. He was calling me to tell my how uselless I am and etc. I blocked him , then his GF wrote me "unblock him he feels miserable without u his old friend,I dont know whats gonna happen" and on an on 
etc.
He told me when we talked about psychopath sociopaths to probably protect me (I guess as his property,I dont think they have any empathy at all) never show any mercy for them never ! 
But I was wondering btw did there was/ is any narcissist who got enlightened ?And how that affected them?And what Dark Night would be for them (OMG) ?
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Richard Zen, modified 5 Years ago at 4/22/18 12:43 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 4/22/18 12:43 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Mathew Poskus:
Offcourse man ,I can sense them from mile ,even from stare ,I've knew one for 5 years ,he was aware who he is btw ,he throwed some hints to me you know ,probably to test me how im gonna react and how much he can tell me because he was former gangster ,poet ,musician and a kyokushin karate europe second prizer ,insane good looking ,insanly strong ,day by day we was best buds ,I seen him with mask ,without it ,at those times I have no fucking clue whats was with him,althought u know we had good times really ,but time went on and I felt his neurotic side more and more ,his lying ,manupulation, hate,paranoid looking for someone to critique him,poisoning emotionally ,sadism, lack of empathy ,self obssesed and etc. He told me when we talked about psychopath sociopaths to probably protect me (I guess as his property,I dont think they have any empathy at all) never show any mercy for them never ! 
But I was wondering btw did there was/ is any narcissist who got enlightened ?And how that affected them?And what Dark Night would be for them (OMG) ?
I haven't studied psychopaths enough yet and I'm working on a series similar to the NPD series I did. 

Right now my view of NPD types is in the video on treating them:

Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disorder


https://youtu.be/a5rk8PrA1sY


I feel that they lack intrinsic motivation and if there is any meaning to their existence for us (thus they are not enlightened as you can see in the book review of Saints and Psychopaths), is that they teach us to become the captain and guide of our own lives and that we need to figure out what our lives are about and what is worth fighting for. They tend to attack people in life transition and those who haven't figured their lives out. Similar to predators that attack the weak animals in a pack, they attack the most vulnerable. 

People who have good boundaries and a purpose in life and fight for it are the most innoculated to Cluster B abuse. People who have many eggs and many baskets will also recover faster because those who put all their emotional investment in something a narcissist has control over will lose "everything" in the sense that they will not have emotional support to replace what has been lost.

Though if there are weak points in a marriage or other areas that show up for a well boundaried person, they will take them down because they will get a greater narcissistic supply of "winning" by attacking a movie star in a scandal for example. To be part of a narrative of someone's disaster gives them great delicious pleasure. They want to feel like they are a "mover and a shaker" and can cause consequences in others and to generate fear in them. Of course the narcissist can lose this power they addictively seek, so those who stay away from narcissists but would not fear taking them down (another narcissist).

I believe that society at the time of founding of democracies believe that the best system is to get the narcissists to compete against each other as a way to spread power, otherwise it is a dictatorship.
Mathew Poskus, modified 5 Years ago at 4/22/18 1:42 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 4/22/18 12:51 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 230 Join Date: 10/24/15 Recent Posts
Yeah it fucked up thing ,I have enough of that in this life emoticon ,I have seen psychopaths ,really cold people ,but yeah after I knew narcissist ,I instantly avoid such people .Psychopaths have those cold dead predator hypnotic eyes,as my friend put it u can just drown in those eyes .They're really cold people.
I've seen gangsters,althought i wasn't involved in it , psychopaths sociopath are there .
I guess narcisism evolves when some of parent rejects child other loves (happened to one I know) ,other cases I dont know expierentally ,spoiling child i read also .Sociopath violence,abuse in early age.Psychopaths are born. 
But yeah they compete each other like look at gangster mafias cartels ,but because they destroy each other do they become exctinct ?I guess no. I think the key is parenting to exctint them ,if sociopath and narcissist really stems out of early childhood trauma ,what I think is true.
I read saint and psychopaths.
What you think if there was narcissist who became enlightened ? Is that possible ?And if they became cured ?Im not talking about sharlatans or frauds like in Saints and psychopaths.
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Richard Zen, modified 5 Years ago at 4/22/18 2:01 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 4/22/18 2:01 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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The closest thing to a cure is to make them cry and accept that how their parents treated them was criminal. Then they have to stop identifying with their predatory super-ego, like you said they get into people's heads. When you have learned helplessness from Narco-path abuse they stay in your mind because the brain wants you to do something about them. Either to fight or get away. 

Then they have to develop a self by developing emotional investments in their own projects and relationships and to be able to like themselves when they are alone. They need a sense of wonder and interest in existence, a kind of reflective attitude that allows self-transformation (making new healthy habits) and the ability to feel for others. As you can see they need to cry for what they went through in a real way, (not fake crying), to show that empathy for themselves is possible and then empathy for others. Very few get better with treatment and that is a smaller number than those who look for treatment. They look for treatment only when at rock bottom.
Mathew Poskus, modified 5 Years ago at 4/22/18 2:26 PM
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RE: Richard's insight practice

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Yeah good point about accepting parents and release those emotions would be cool if that happened and helped.If you watch them closly and in natural enviroment theyre are like a 5 year old child .I think they suffer, alot of them abuse substances,because they feel self hatred of wounds theyre parents caused .They get in heads because I think they start lovebombing and like figure you out what you need and give it to you like being a good friend or being good partner ,they give you at first joy like they understand you ,theyre close to you in "soul" and etc. ,in other words they give your brains good dose of serotonin (thats why its hard to forget them even when in end they harm you ),lure you with things you need then when they feel "your in" they start to spread theyr poison on you from that self hatred side .IMO.Like what a morbid hell creature theyre are but in inside theyre like little crying full of hate imp-like childish creature.And sorry Richard for making a discussion on your practice log about Narcissist emoticon .On your channel I saw u talk about it so I was wondering if your bump it one .
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Richard Zen, modified 5 Years ago at 4/22/18 3:05 PM
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RE: Richard's insight practice

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No it's okay. Narcissism is the opposite of the meditation practices we talk about here so in some ways it's a good contrast on what we want to avoid, similar to the Saints and Psychopaths book list of what Saints are and what Psychopaths are.
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Richard Zen, modified 5 Years ago at 5/22/18 1:16 AM
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RE: Richard's insight practice

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After practicing Inner Bonding for a few days I can see improvements and with longer-term practice I hope the sense of self will be more balanced and secure.

The particular insight I see is how Buddhist meditation needs a foundation of good self-esteem, otherwise the meditation is treated like any other substance or process addiction to evade, escape, avoid dealing with the low self-esteem that is there. Being a recovering co-dependent, I can see meditation attainments will be blocked if the masochism is not dealt with. 

Think of it this way: Is it better to explore existence out of self-loathing and neediness than exploring consciousness out of curiosity and interest? If the Inner Child is screaming for nurturing and protection, it will naturally interrupt the ability to concentrate and maintain mindfulness when aiming for stream entry and further attainments. The lack of self-love, and using mindfulness to dismiss it, feels unhealthy and tragic.

EDIT: If there is Learned-helplessness, like in domestic violence situations, and workplace bullying, meditation and harmlessness will actually lock it in and send a dinner bell to Cluster B types to feed on your helplessness, and IT IS feeding when it comes to those types.

EDIT 2: Right now it looks like meditation can be part of the Inner Adult to guide the Inner Child away from indulgence and austerity.
shargrol, modified 5 Years ago at 5/22/18 5:49 AM
Created 5 Years ago at 5/22/18 5:40 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Really well said. In theory there are buddhist answers to all of those concerns, but your core point is a good one. Doing meditation as an extenstion of repression and/or self-punishment, in the hopes that "if I suffer enough, then I will get what I want", is definitely going to hit walls and hinder progress.

I would say that every modality has a "blind spot" either in the way it is articulated or in the way that the practioner/patient interprets the intent of practice. And every modality faces the same challenge that every "opening" could instead be "retraumatizing", even calm and peaceful states and loving states can be re-traumatizing because that is often the context for trauma (in the context of family/care givers). It's wild to really ponder all of this, both to apprecitate the challenges but also to be humbled and amazed that -somehow, someway- people can find their way through these mindfields and can become saner and wiser in time. 
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Richard Zen, modified 5 Years ago at 5/22/18 8:11 AM
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RE: Richard's insight practice

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shargrol:
Really well said. In theory there are buddhist answers to all of those concerns, but your core point is a good one. Doing meditation as an extenstion of repression and/or self-punishment, in the hopes that "if I suffer enough, then I will get what I want", is definitely going to hit walls and hinder progress.

I would say that every modality has a "blind spot" either in the way it is articulated or in the way that the practioner/patient interprets the intent of practice. And every modality faces the same challenge that every "opening" could instead be "retraumatizing", even calm and peaceful states and loving states can be re-traumatizing because that is often the context for trauma (in the context of family/care givers). It's wild to really ponder all of this, both to apprecitate the challenges but also to be humbled and amazed that -somehow, someway- people can find their way through these mindfields and can become saner and wiser in time. 
Exactly! There is an area of the 3 doors where you can use dukkha as a way into emptiness, but for many I think it's just too much dukkha. For some people (including me) who need MORE love, a Metta practice without this Inner Bonding with the self is next to useless, yet both together can create the bond that creates confidence and allows emotion to use anger in a healthy way for boundaries.

It doesn't help that our society wants to breakdown this Inner Bonding with advertising to make us co-dependent and then parasitic employers who try to do the same with power networks to trap and breakdown people so they can be made into compliant worker bees. It shows that as you become saner you actually are being a threat to the establishment, while at the same time feeling healthier.

I literally work for a person with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Their understanding of human connections is just leverage and an addiction to feeling superior in an unending loop. Just save money and lord over employees for serotonin and dopamine. That's all that's there. Money is important but when you go to the level of a Daniel Plainview or Thorin Oakenshield, it is quite limited when it comes to connections with other human beings. These people also have an underlying need to escape others because they were abused and then took the role of identifying with the abuser to gain autonomy. When you study the latest literature, it's clear that therapy can go awry until the therapist is able to validate the narcissist and then allow them autonomy to explore their mental world without the typical disgust most of us would have. When they start gaining autonomy in that context then the other defense mechanisms they employ for control start to weaken. The need for autonomy and understanding for what is underneath is therapeutic for all people who have some damage to the sense of self. Meditation needs to include some element of autonomy for our feelings and images associated with them. Of course this leads to Rob Burbea and his Imaginal Practice and other modalities like dreamwork and Individuation.
shargrol, modified 5 Years ago at 5/22/18 8:58 AM
Created 5 Years ago at 5/22/18 8:58 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Yes, any awakening (to whatever degree) is a double-edged sword: you become both freer and more aware of the "traps" that are still out there, including remaining internal resistances as well as institutional/social ones. This is really is the heart of the slightly humorous statement "suffering less, but noticing it more"... that's why I like to say that sanity/awakening leads to >better< problems, not no problems.

Could you say more about the Daniel Plainview and T.O. aspect? - I googled them, but unfortunately I don't deeply get the reference. It sounds like that you are saying that therapy might actually be effective with very strong NPD -- that's encouraging!

I agree that at the core, people want clarity and autonomy and this needs to be what is cultivated. Ironically, this is the buddhist path but unfortunately people put the cart before the horse and try to force their mind into a philosophy/conceptual framework, rather that developing seclusion and rest and clarity and then see what philosophy emmerges. Unfortunately this is a natural kind of "jump to the end" thing that happens and is probably inevitable, but that's why there is a role for senior students, teachers, spiritual friends, sangha, etc.
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Richard Zen, modified 5 Years ago at 5/22/18 12:59 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 5/22/18 12:59 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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It's the reason why Margaret Paul says that people meditate for decades and don't get many results. For co-dependents they need enormous amounts of Metta and to develop a solid sense of agency to really improve. Trying to see through agency too soon just adds disconnection, almost like Borderline Personality Disorder, where the identity is weak.

The Plainview character is just an example of a narcissist:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_hFTR6qyEo
shargrol, modified 5 Years ago at 5/22/18 6:54 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 5/22/18 6:53 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I've notice that co-dependents tend to go from meditation tradition to meditation tradition, getting pretty deep in many cases, but never quite getting that all of this stuff is pointing at >your knowing<. The authority for "knowing" is always someone else, some system, some external authority. It does seem that at the heart of it, the person doesn't have "enough self" to rely on --- and the idea that they are seeing through agency too soon makes sense... or maybe the only agency they can see is other's. 
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Richard Zen, modified 5 Years ago at 5/22/18 9:18 PM
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RE: Richard's insight practice

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I agree. Appeal to authority is powerful.

Meditation has it's uses and I still benefit from it, but it's now more relegated to the parent side of the parent-child bond and now it feels so much better.
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Richard Zen, modified 5 Years ago at 5/28/18 1:54 AM
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RE: Richard's insight practice

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Oops. Wrong place!
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Richard Zen, modified 5 Years ago at 7/16/18 10:28 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 7/16/18 9:44 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Today was the first day in a long time that I was mindful of the breath through most of the day, with Culadasa's wide lens approach. It was enjoyable. My brain is starting to choose the breath as a habit vs. thoughts as a habit, but I'm sure strengthening the habit will yield more relief.

https://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/y2001/0109n1b1%20Skillful%20Thinking.mp3


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Richard Zen, modified 5 Years ago at 9/3/18 9:28 PM
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RE: Richard's insight practice

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After reading Daniel's 2nd edition again, and just observing things. I have a question.

Is the connection of cause and effect that eliminates a belief in an autonomous "do-er" just any sensation that is disatisfied with the present moment and wants something to fulfill it?

When there's a sense of desire there's an aliveness of intention that is spiced up with anticipation, and I notice that this is my typical sense of self, and it balloons into a becoming-in-savouring that takes over the sense of the present moment or another way of saying it, I lose presence. This can be triggered by past enjoyments being remembered and triggered by current environmental cues, and also basic libido in the body (hunger, habitual searching, etc). This can also be an intellectual hunger that enjoys the savouring of clarity of understanding.

The deliberation related to choice involves reflection of the outcome of past choices, a hierarchy of desires, an assessment of short-term ("it doesn't really matter so just go do it" vs. long-term ("a future version of yourself would prefer a different choice").

I know that the sense of becoming also looks at obstacles as seen in self-regulation psychology. Then there's the "hoping for a good answer" from others, which seems to necessitate constant mindfulness and an acceptance and forgiveness when the mental desire-baloon takes over for periods of time.
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Richard Zen, modified 5 Years ago at 12/29/18 7:39 AM
Created 5 Years ago at 12/29/18 7:39 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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I'm beginning to get the benefits of looking at meditation as a form of feeding, especially concentration. It's sublimation. What's interesting is seeing the mind desire to feed and it brings up an image option of what to feed on, usually something you fed on before. The way to sublimate is to see what's not good about the image option popping up and then feed on the breath instead. Then you can feed on other external activities that are BETTER than the habitual image that was brought up.

An even more important skill is acceptance. You have to accept that there is a little gremlin in the mind that will feed on anything, and to accept that's the case, without recrimination. You have to like  yourself. Then it's easier to switch objects, because you don't have to define yourself as a person who feeds this way or that way and bash yourself. Bashing yourself is a way of putting responsibility on others, though it can be unconscious for a time. 

The goal with a practice like this is to choose better objects to feed on instead, and condition yourself, no matter what influences you had in the past from others.
shargrol, modified 5 Years ago at 12/29/18 9:47 AM
Created 5 Years ago at 12/29/18 9:41 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Yes, one way you could say it is that meditation brings the full picture of feeding into clarity, both the obvious side and the shadow side.

Feeding makes perfect logical sense and so that's the way we are wired. 99% of the path is all about instinctively learning to feed on more and more refined mind objects. We go through increasing levels of seeking from material desires, to psychological desires, to existential desires. But gradually we see how this whole feeding process is never ending. Samsara. This continuous craving and seeking and obtaining and lacking and craving once again loop goes on and on. At some point in practice the mind even jumps to narrow bandwidths of perception -- jhanas. And even the jhanas take on a more and more refined nature, until getting to things like "neither perception nor not-perception". It really is amazing.

In the end, the mind turns around and looks directly at seeking/craving itself, which we have always felt as self, and sees THAT. It's closer than close, but we "blink" it out of awareness all the time. When we see that, that's basically 4th path. You can't be confused by mind nature after seeing the craving self.

And yet life goes on! ... which is shocking to hear, but as 4th path approaches, so much of the false identifications and limiting views have been seen through, so losing a continguous sense of self is no big deal.  emoticon
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ivory, modified 5 Years ago at 12/29/18 2:14 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 12/29/18 1:43 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Richard Zen:
You have to like  yourself. Then it's easier to switch objects, because you don't have to define yourself as a person who feeds this way or that way and bash yourself...The goal with a practice like this is to choose better objects to feed on instead, and condition yourself, no matter what influences you had in the past

Hi Richard, I'm not sure if we're speaking along the same lines but I think I follow. Today I was thinking about value systems and how important it is to actually define one. One can have a healthy value system or an unhealthy value system. Take a selfish right-winger and notice his hatred towards a progressive liberal. A person such as this has an accomplishment based, "me vs. them" value system characterized by exhaustion, judgement, and suffering. To step out of this requires the definition of a new value system, that being love for self and others. The new value system, coupled with self-awareness, can prevent one from being swept away into the old thoughts and behaviors of the previous value system much more easily than mindfulness alone.
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Richard Zen, modified 5 Years ago at 12/29/18 5:56 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 12/29/18 5:56 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Great explanations guys!
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Richard Zen, modified 4 Years ago at 9/12/19 11:35 PM
Created 4 Years ago at 9/12/19 11:18 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Well this meditation practice just keeps on yielding more! The brain is so complex. Since I've been doing the "Shining" Heideggerian practice (which is a practice that looks a lot like Actualism and positive thinking in the early days), I've noticed a shift. I've been a beer and wine drinker for many years. The different flavours (Belgian Beers, Craft Beers, IPAs, French, Italian and Californian wines) were very interesting and enjoyable. Of course the buzz was also enjoyable as it is for 100% of alcohol drinkers. It numbs the boredom and stress of daily life.

As I started this practice and just relished the senses, including enjoying buildings that don't fall down, modern technology and infrastructure, trees and flowers, I was able to add more pleasure than the usual enjoyment of the breath. Allowing impulses to push me habitually, but to welcome them and not act on them yields a lot of relief. You just wait for the impermanent impulses to crash and you feel normal again. Feeling sober and normal is much more enjoyable than I originally thought. Impulses are impermanent so don't do anything. They go away on their own. I know it's harder for people who are on heavy drugs. The recent movie "The Souvenir" showed that vividly. 

At some point while walking down the street, my lower brain decided that it didn't want alcohol anymore. The reasons were selfish, but in a healthy way. I could feel my brain literally shift like a muscle movement. All those flavours and details of drinks suddenly were labelled "just booze." When the mind chooses a higher desire it get's violently irritated with lower forms of desire because they INTERFERE with the good time it's having with the better desire. The dull cloudiness of being even mildly intoxicated interferes with the practice. At this insight it dawned on me how important an enjoyable meditation practice is that enjoys the present moment in every way possible. Those gaps in enjoyment, even in good practices, are an opening to return to old habits, again and again. The safety is consistent appreciation. It fights against the spoiled, bored, and disappointed part of the brain. Developing this further I think will lead to more good results, and there are some psychological studies that support cultivating appreciation.

Talking to other middle aged people, including servers in restaurants, there are a lot of temptations, including leftover alcohol being given away for free or little money. One server talked about saving money and getting ambitious about work and this was after doing lots of yoga and getting off alcohol. He said "those 'wing nights' are old experiences. There's nothing new!"
shargrol, modified 4 Years ago at 9/13/19 5:55 AM
Created 4 Years ago at 9/13/19 5:54 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Nice!

This is how meditation does seem to work. By becoming aware and sensitive, we often become conventionally moral. (The compassion that comes from practice happens the same way: more sensitive and aware of difficulty in our self, we automatically start noticing in others and have compassion.) It's a much more deeper and resilent and mature kind of morality than just following rules. 

And it has less repression and more flexibility: you simply know that a daily habit of added calories, numbing, and energy the body needs to devote to detoxification aren't worth it, but you probably also know that if eventually you have a drink sometime in the future, you're allowed to enjoy it and it isn't the end of the world. 

It really is amazing how meditation evokes all of these changes, but without relying on repression or dogma. 
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Richard Zen, modified 4 Years ago at 9/13/19 8:41 AM
Created 4 Years ago at 9/13/19 8:41 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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shargrol:

It really is amazing how meditation evokes all of these changes, but without relying on repression or dogma. 


Very important point!
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Richard Zen, modified 3 Years ago at 11/1/20 11:59 PM
Created 3 Years ago at 11/1/20 11:13 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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emoticon Well, this is the 1st update in a while. Looking back at this HUGE thread, you can see how creative intellectual minds have such trouble. LOL!

I think my prior practice of getting rid of narcissists, especially in the workplace, but also useless friendships, was what I really needed to do to reduce enough stress so I could practice more in 2019-2020. Childhood bullying, and workplace tyrants, are pretty much the main reasons why I started meditating.

People need to work for themselves or have multiple incomes to relieve stress from these vampires. Hence some big gaps in practice and the need to constantly adjust, reduce, and to make flexible the householder lifestyle. It's their feeding-sadism that provokes anger, almost like they deserve a beating and that it would do them good. "It's so fucking irritating! They're asking for it!" Of course, that's legally not possible, it's a form of baiting to get you in trouble, and it would only provide momentary pleasure. I would say that half my stress in meditation disappeared by doing a social inventory and pruning. Ultimately you have to remove all leverage points and leave. There always has to be some form of an escape plan, much like battered spouses have to prepare for when they find out they are in a pathological relationship.

I'm currently reading Focusing again by Gendlin because it helps with resonating with our emotions and it's badly needed when Metta is useless, and Mindfulness is uselessly repressing anger and not helping. I can also see how some fabrication is healthy as Rob Burbea saw it with his later practices. It's okay to say "YES I hate that MOFO!" [Insert a creative violent form of eternal-dispatch.] I can truthfully say that denying emotions feels pathological and is a counter-intuitive form of clinging. I may need to look into some Gestalt therapy for anger. emoticon The Bahiya Sutta is very important here. "There is anger here and it comes from obvious causes and effects."


Jordan Peterson: How to Handle a Pathological Workplace: https://youtu.be/cg7ZdoDoQuM

My recent "cutting edge" of the 4th Jhana, equanimity, is finally starting to give way to a desire for space at a strange midway point. It took me about an hour tonight.

Beck Stratosphere: https://youtu.be/aFknA30AbFM

Joanna Brouk - Lifting off: https://youtu.be/3mSnqD6XqyQ

Basically, the way for me is to 1st get to equanimity, understanding that you want to be this equanimity-being, and it's through Imitation-Being/Being-Other you can move to successive levels. The difference is WANTING TO BE SPACE. Imitating the characteristics of space. You relax in your skin plus incline the attention to ambient sounds and you realize how not-bothered ambiance is, that it would be better to be outside the body and floating in space/ambiance. The sensation is so important since it gives the thoughts something simple to imitate. Yet it's a complex feedback loop where sensation gives examples for the imagination, and imagery in response creates sensations too.

Inanimate space is just not bothered like the body is, and the tired survival narratives associated with it. This pulls you from the body, and of course, the typical achievement thoughts can get in the way, but I think that as the novelty wears off I'll be able to go further. Immaterial Jhanas require much more letting go of thinking than in the prior stages.

It also helps to keep tabs on the breath as an anchor, and part of moving to the 5th Jhana is not only letting go of as much thinking as possible, by wanting space instead, but also to begin to enjoy shallower breaths. In earlier stages, shallower breaths are scary.

Titmuss's ultimate advise that there's no labeling and pinpointing of the attention span with Nirvana, creates a permanent guide that can get more and more refined. In this situation, it helps to let breaths be what they are. Sometimes a big breath is right and sometimes shallow is right, but the ego can't choose. The ego choosing is problematic all the way through any meditative experiences until Nirvana. The only choice that seems safe with it, is if it can find a more restful place, like space, etc. At this point, Infinite Space is plenty to work with. Infinite Consciousness seems very alien and far away.

The expanding bubble metaphor from Brasington wasn't very helpful for me. The expansion for me is an ever-moving concept of a room ambiance moving to an outdoor ambiance, and then towards a Space ambiance. The attention has too much trouble with a gradual movement. There's too much mental processing. It just says: "The room ambiance is more peaceful than this body. Outside the window is more peaceful. The sky is more peaceful. Outerspace is more peaceful." The attention span relaxes and moves less with each improvement.

This early 5th Jhana is definitely refreshing, much like Gil Fronsdal's correct translation of the meditative experience as refreshment. I'll have to unpack this because it is like feeding and satiation. Holding your breath for a long time and enjoying a deep inhale that was exactly what was needed. Being parched and drinking one's fill, or a feeling of "that hit the spot!" Except it's even better than that because it's really a relief from clinging. Holding one's breath would leave residual stress. Drinking one's fill might be too filling.

The typical movement is to have Mental Talk, even especially disturbing, violently interrupting thought, that naturally gets beat back up to the next level of Jhana. One step back and two steps forward. That's how the movement is. It's a kind of falling or regressing, but the brain FINALLY prefers the new experience over the mental talk and nudges you into a higher realm without ego-force. I look at the breath now as a place to dip the paddle into the river when the boat gets out of control, but it can be pulled out when enjoyment is more stable.
shargrol, modified 3 Years ago at 11/2/20 9:42 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 11/2/20 5:18 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Such a good post! Yes, absolutely nothing wrong with emotions -- they are fast packets of information that are extremely useful and faster than narrative thought. The problem is the embroiling of thought and emotions that gets triggered afterwards due to psychological baggage and immaturity. But without the extra triggered stuff, emotions and urges are very very useful and practical.

A lot of cleaning up and transformation is needed sometimes, but the emotions don't/shouldn't be to be repressed until they have been fully experienced. . (A good video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2Duu9JO6vg on how to think about doing Embodying The Four Immeasurables practice without repression.) 

For what it is worth, you might find the ideas behind 5 elements practice useful. Here's one write up that's online: http://arobuddhism.org/articles/embracing-emotions-as-the-path.html  The best write-up, in my opinion, is in the book Wake Up to Your Life by Ken McLeod.

This practice can be thought of a kind of combination of gestalt and jungian liminal type work. There needs to be a basic sensitivity to seed emotions and how they can be informational or oppressive depending on how they are "held" by awareness. For example, anger and aggression would be considered the water element, because of the way it pushes against and flows away from how things are (and how we get swept away by the flood of it). At the root is a core fear and helplessness that isn't fully able to be experienced. But when mindfulness and maturity is strong enough to experience the fear and helplessness and experience the anger and aggression --- and to see it a true and vivid displays within the space of mind --- then it transforms into _clarity_. Fear and anger creates vivid and useful clarity about the situation. But if mindfulness and maturity is not strong enough, then this collapses into an unconscious/habitual lashing out (or some other form of aggressive defense mechanism). 

These reactive patterns takes place in about 1/4 of a second. After that, the mind is doing it's embroiling thing. But it is definitely able to catch things earlier and earlier and to emphasize the full experiencing of the seed meotions. This can learned to be done in real time with practice.

The way 5 elements is practiced is by using creative imagination to evoke the seed emotion _in_the_body_ . This work is about the kind of sensory clarity and "power" of attention which allows the full experience of an emotion in the body. (Wake Up to Your Life has scripted meditations and there are some bad recordings of 5 Element retreats on unfetteredmind.org) I personally think that these can be modified to use our own emotionally-resonate material, and I've done that in my own practice. It has a feeling of a kind of Jungian exploration of imagination and subconscious.

Lastly, it sounds like you are finding a home in EQ. One thing that is interesting is that the realm of high equanimity is very similar to the imagination space of semi-subscious, so pursuing some 5 element work isn't contrary to "meditation to attain Stream Entry". In fact, with this kind of practce EQ transforms into High EQ. The meditator, through all of their previous work, can enter into daydreamy states without losing the "knowing" of it. It sort of feels like regression, but this kind of loose but consistent monitoring of the mind is what high equanimity is about. The clarity aspect isn't as prominant.

(In otherwards, stream entry doesn't happen by more and more clarity. What happens is beyond a certain point, the mind becomes able to "know" clairity and non-clarity with the same knowing mind. It becomes clear that knowing is beyond conditions and it's somewhat beyond our controlling. Even the internal voice of thought is seen to be it's own input stream, kind of like the body, which has it's own bandwidth and content stream. So the preference for somatic precision and absense of thought also slowly drops away. Thought is just word sounds. Emotions are sensations-urge packets. EQ extends to more and more mental states beyond clarity. It's seen that none of this is wrong experience, only the greed, aversion, and indifference around sensations, urges, emotions, and thoughts create subsequent embroiling and struggle. And so the mind starts becoming very sensitive to very subtle greed, aversion, and indifference and learns to release those corruptions. All it takes is a moment without greed, aversion, or indiffernece -- that's the momentary clarity of the conformity nana. And then the rest of path fruition occurs...)

Anyway, High EQ sits can be very flowing and organic and non-manipulative, which would seem like monkey mind in a less-experienced meditator, but here the meditator knows what is occuring so it is actually a different thing entirely.

Hope this helps in some way!



(edited to clean-up text that was accidentially left at end of post)
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Richard Zen, modified 3 Years ago at 11/2/20 8:14 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 11/2/20 8:14 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Thanks! There's a lot to unpack here. It's becoming clearer that thought-emotions have to be treated with a certain amount of freedom and more development and that clinging is not just negative emotions.
Mathew Poskus, modified 3 Years ago at 2/9/21 8:54 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 2/9/21 8:54 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Hi man cant write u message so I post here can u help I want to ask about narcissistic abuse, I was abused alot by narcissist and if exposing is best solution
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Richard Zen, modified 2 Years ago at 5/13/21 3:06 PM
Created 2 Years ago at 5/13/21 3:06 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Sorry I was focusing on some NSFW articles for the past little while. The best solution to get rid of Narcissists is to remove any need to be around them. They have some leverage on you and you have to slowly find every cord of interdependence you have with them and cut the cords so you become more independent. This is true for people divorcing narcissists, employees work in the wrong jobs, and toxic friendships that only exist out of convenience. Always try and keep money as unaffected by narcissists as much as you can. Then when you don't need them, you certainly don't have to be around them.

​​​​​​​It's not easy to get rid of a parasite. 
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Richard Zen, modified 2 Years ago at 3/9/22 11:57 AM
Created 2 Years ago at 3/9/22 11:51 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Boy time flies! After getting caught in dry practice, for what? for years? LOL, as Stephan Bodian and Loch Kelly talk about here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqUXVRbsKo0&t=2983s

There's a dry crimp of a do-er in meditation at Equanimity and noting now feels a lot better when recognizing the vibrating suchness in the senses and relaxing the do-er that's trying to meditate. Surrendering do-ing, into Right Brain vibration, to reclaim some vibrating freshness from all the dry boredom, is another shift. The noting is already happening and extra noting on top of that is wasted processing.

I remember this being the #1 problem when years ago paying for a session with Ken Folk's partner. The teaching was to keep noting, but I didn't get what that meant until now. The meditator can be whatever you want it to be, including a Mindfulness Manager, and the boredom that naturally occurs with conditioning, or as Rob Burbea calls: pushes and pulls, one can see a normality that rests the do-er and allows normal functioning that doesn't put you to sleep while working. 

Daniel's Vipassana Video is going to make more sense now: https://vimeo.com/250616410

There is a danger of course of ignoring the value of cultivation, because of that dry crimp, and I can tell that Cluster B types will be FAR FAR AWAY from any of this and why there are so many scandals in Sanghas, like you see in Churches or in Psychology environments. There may be people incapable of empathy no matter how much they practice, because if you scanned their brains, it would be clear THEY ARE DIFFERENT. Cultivation may seem like years of wasted time of cartwheels and clowning, but it helps with this Direct Approach and makes pointing much more efficacious.

Now it's back to capturing the raw detail with less of a Manager, but I think that will still be there until some Stream Entry if or when that happens as a non-event event. Reactivity is embedded with perception and perception is already recognizing objects with Avijja and not realizing the immediate unreliability that's in all experience and vibration. So subtle and difficult. Big gulp of humility!
shargrol, modified 2 Years ago at 3/10/22 10:42 AM
Created 2 Years ago at 3/10/22 7:11 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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(ouch, I just lost a long reply... here we go again...)

Yes, yes! This is exactly on the right track.

In EQ, the relationship with experience itself begins to change. All of that past work to maintain presence in the face of personal content starts to pay off. We've developed all the "mindfulness" skills we need to develop and now it becomes sort of like the piano player that has been practicing scales and chords... and now is ready to play music.

Pre EQ, mindfulness has the flavor of "I" is mindful of "it". Developing this skill is essential. We need to be comfortable with the I experience and all the different flavors of "it" experiences (the many types of sensations, urges, emotions, and thoughts). 

But in EQ this basic struggle/tension of "I" and "it" comes to the forefront and we realize that much of the willpower behind mindfulness was necessary for training, but isn't necessary now. The mind already >knows< experience. Aha! 

So what happens in EQ is that we become much less interested in content/meaning of experience. We are less likely to assume that experience is a fact and less likely to have a lot of discursive thinking "what should I do next about that experience?" Instead, we're much more interested in the raw and direct way that experience itself arises.

We truly can see how mind objects are mind objects (sensations are sensations, urges are urges, emotions are emotions, and thoughts are thoughts) and we don't willfully have to shove things into these categories. We have a direct "feel" for why these categories are said to exist. We also start noticing that these things arise not as solid "facts" but as sort of assumptions/hypothesis which may or may not be true. The experience of mind objects is real, but the automatic beliefs about them may not be true. We start having tantric-type insights, where we can see things like "fully experienced anger, without indulgence nor repression, is energetic clarity about a vulnerable sense of self". 

We can also see that this is a very very rare state for a human adult to reside in. It could ONLY have been achieved through the work of psychology and introspection/meditation --- at that's the fetter of "rituals" starting to fall apart. The only way to understand the nature of self and experience is to go >into< the experience itself through some sort of practice. No beliefs or rites or rituals can make it happen. Adult development requires intention and work.

This is when a 10 day vipassina retreat makes a lot of sense. We're much less likely to burn out or blow it off, because we're actually curious and interested in looking closely at how experience arises. We're less likely to get embroilled. We're less likely to have an emotion, then a thought about that emotion, and then an emotion about that thought about that emotion... because we're really interested in the first "how does emotion arise?" 

A renunciate-type attitude can take hold now, too, because we're much less interested in beliefs about identity and achievement and much more interested in the direct experience of how things are. As an aside, I was on a retreat at IMS and it was about 6 days into a 10 day retreat. During group interviews, one meditator was dejected. They said something like "I'm realizing that I really don't know how to meditate. I thought I was meditating for the last five days but it's just that my mind was excited to be on retreat and there was less distractions. But now I see that all that has happened is my normal mind is just thinking a little slower. Nothing has changed. I don't know why I'm on retreat. I'm still just having thoughts about me and my life. All that has changed is that I'm on retreat." The teacher was really masterful. She gradually guided the person to realizing that the mind was becoming disinterested in superficial thinking, which actually was a great step forward. Now they could become interested in >how< the thinking occurs instead of getting wrapped up in the discursive thinking. She pointed out that this was the kind of renunciate attitude that actually supports good practice. So the disenchantment was not with the retreat, but it was a disenchanment in the value of a discursive thinking mind. And she got the meditator to connect with the good experience of being on retreat, that livid experience and sense of challenge that is why staying on retreat for the next four days made good sense... She masterfully helped flip the situation. But of course, it also required the meditator having 5 days to develop the "problem" so that a "solution" was even possible. If the teacher said it on day one, it would have had no effect.

The fundamental orientation of being an "I" that experiences an "it" is now sensed as a fundamental tension/struggle. There is an intuition that this framework needs to soften. Living and meditation practice itself takes on the flavor of intimacy and participation. Rather than needing a thinking-style of mindfulness, we develop an experiential-style of direct _knowing_. We don't need to willfully objectify experience as sensations, urges, emotions, and thoughts --- we've done enough practices that this is mostly automatic. Now we're more interested in our assumptions about the nature of sensations, urges, emotions, and thoughts --- are they as solid as we assume? And the same it true about the "I" --- is it as solid as we assume?

What makes experience so potent? Why is it so prone to being over interpreted and over believed?

There is a vivid and inimate kind of dance happening right at the point of experience. Our practice can't help but explore the nature of that dance. Experience arises, where does it arise? Knowing happens, what is knowing? Assuming meaning about experience seems automatic, but does it occur all at once or does it develop through some process? Imperminance happens, yet it is always now --- how does that work?

Mind never goes away, yet experience changes... is mind a "blank screen" that experience becomes "projected upon"? How could I tell? How would I know?

(It can be really humbling to realize that we might not have any idea of how the mind actually "works". But it's this uncertainty that is the fuel for further investigation...)

EQ is a hybrid of insight and inquiry, investigation and resting. We learn that we can't manipulate what we want to study, so we mostly LET the mind be and gently pay attention, hoping to learn more about the essential nature of it. Sort of like studying a wild animal in the wilderness, we stay still and observe closely. Pretty soon we observe so closely, like watching an engaging movie, that we directly _feel_ the nature of mind. And then we can't be confused about the nature of mind. 

And at some point, the frustrating nature of imperminance, the fundamental tension of "I and it", the sense that the mind must be some kind of blank screen... somehow those "subtle problems" tend to send the mind looking for nibbana. But no one knows how this works or when it will happen.

​​​​​​​The good news is no one knew how to make nibbana happen, when it was going to happen, and only realized it afterwards --- so the pressure is completely off. The do-er can't make it happen, so the do-er doesn't need to even try to make it happen.

Hope this helps in some way!
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Richard Zen, modified 2 Years ago at 3/10/22 11:02 AM
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RE: Richard's insight practice

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It helps but the limits of language are a big impediment because they contain "Subject" "Object" in noun format, and the reality is that many insights (hundreds? Thousands?) congeal to create an overall big picture that people are talking about. Certainly we forget how totally lost we were at the beginning.

It was basically a stupid animal looking for entertainment and distraction, which isn't all bad, but the boredom builds up and we have to look for weird refined forms of pleasure to keep the boredom from showing us emotional emptiness of endless searching. Then there's the stress of taking on challenges that are too challenging. You're going through Csikszentmihalyi's Flow system blindly, without the autotelic knowledge of choosing appropriate challenges. There is value to conventional way, which is what many will go for when they know how to balance challenges and skills. In a way it's a healthy sense of self where you please yourself and mind your own business.

Sadomasochism creeps in when we overstrive to become "an important person" in the subject-object duality and we end up being a slave and this is where psychology is so important to the path.

Going through family and cultural resentment at all the lies and manipulations I think is a prerequisite. A lot of the Super-ego, because that's what we're dealing with, which is an automatic ego, and the Ego is more like a realistic action oriented skill, this automatic ego is paranoid and micro-manages and appears in many descriptions of what people go through when the arising and passing away stage beings to appear. The Super-ego is fed by the Id and that's why it's automatic, whereas the Ego is more like the sense of real time decision making and action.

Like alcohol, the AP unbottles the Super-ego cork and all that negative stuff comes out. Rob Burbea is the closest I've seen in the meditation world to talk about this and address it in a way that's closer to Psychoanalysis. There may be others, but one has to learn the lessons of the Super-ego, and align with it by showing that you have plans for boundaries against evil people and evil influences. If you don't deal with that it will be overactive when a person becomes too passive in the practice. This is why Metta is so hard for people. Giving Metta to a psychopath is stupid and the Super-ego knows that. When you are fine with self-defence then the Super-ego sees you have some ability to survive and it can relax. The Dalai Lama's Compassionate Wrath is a godsend because it takes that psychological understanding to criticize behavior but not the person's identity, which allows people to change, but you can apply violence in the same character. You are not trying to annhilate an identity, but the behavior. The world is a dangerous place and validating the Super-ego with that readiness for assholes allows it to relax.

The Super-ego is also connected to the Id in the sense that the Id needs feeding and creates ideal suggestions for feeding and self-defence. The Super-ego uses mimetics, or imitation, to generate cultural options to feed on. When you let go of feeding in the AP, the built up craving is going into a downer-feeling and depression. You have to have good concentration practices that are done not as a sense of duty, but as a way to feed yourself emotionally. Enjoyment. A good way to look at this is to do rote work and see that the irritation of work, partly from the Subject-Object Do-er that is overstriving, but also partly because you forget to BREATHE. Sometimes connecting breathing to work by taking a deep breath and surrendering the do-er for 5 seconds can create enough refreshment to move onto the next activity without the crimp frying and building up. You are feeding on the breath which shows the difference between emotional feeding and feeding on food, which we obviously can't avoid.

This is the connection with Concentration that I think is important and why Rob Burbea, or his teacher Thanissaro Bhikkhu say that you need Jhana to feed on so you rely less on environmental forms of feeding. It also connects to Rob's understanding that we forget to tend to causes and effects, and fail to notice that irritating people and situations are much more tolerable when there's Flow. The answer to many questions is to be go back to vibratory sensation of the right brain, not more conceptuality. Loch and Stephan are right in that the not knowing part of the mind, and how it's non-symbolic, is how you rest and that connects directly with Daniel Kahneman and Csikszentmihalyi in that mental processing is stressful and only skillful habits can make it feel better. Thanissaro at one point, in his long list of talks, says "let go of what you know about the practice" because it's probably 95% conceptual acquisition for so many.

Vibration is also embodied, and like Marion Milner's view of the open state, which is relaxing the attention like mimicking infinite space, but without the concentration, so that the body is quite solid, there's a bodily intelligence to vibration so that more of the entire experience blends together and the Sesame Street Near and Far are seen to be all a part of concsciousness, which melts Subject and Object duality further.

Where the Arising and Passing away was important for me was how it affected thinking. I remember Daniel saying "don't manipulate thoughts" but I didn't quite get that. It sent me into philosophy and Freud's slips, and the choice versus determinism. The answer is that IT'S BOTH. Surely when you're younger it's more determinism, but growing up is sampling experiences and weighing their emotional valence. Comparison allows you to choose. Then Thanissaro's emphasis on seeing drawbacks helps to balance out choice to make addictions less forceful. That's a BIG ONE for me. Understanding the balance between determinism and choice.

It's Burbea's connection with how impulses peak and crash on their own that helped. You relax the Super-ego's need to pretend to be a Manager of Thinking. Learning to wait for the thoughts to pass away is a less effortful form of control. The manager has trained the employee and can relax some of the monitoring. Some of this of course helps when you believe in the Manager as a concrete entity much less, which is the typical relief of scanning phenomenology and not finding The Self. You find only vibrations and it relaxes conceptuality temporarily, until the conceptuality says "hurray!" and gets carried away.

The scanning itself also has to be looked at to see that it can harbor Subject-Object duality and makes the same mistakes like "I need to hurry to solve this problem or establish this understanding." It also can harbor the Super-ego crimp of perfectionistic standards and you can relax with that trust in visuals, time expanded consequences, and the ability of the Ego to come into its own and not need the Super-ego. Skills are just skills. Even trying to be READY for work has a crimp of "I need to be ready or it's going to be really bad" but in the end the skill just works as it does and fails as it does based on different modes of practice, memory and habit. The Ego always comes into its own when it can non-chalantly perform with skill, and developing skill is a way to relax the Super-ego, which I'm sure many high performers are aware of. It's that deep-down feeling of the present moment sucks and I can only feel better as a Subject if I can move closer to the Object/Skill/Experience. For me that's where that crimp is. Even in meditation. I have to be there spiritually because where I am sucks, and the psychological frying starts to build with the left-brain do-er, doing work, doing striving, doing meditation, symbolizing, processing, and creating a present moment lack. As Daniel points out, the awareness knows itself, "each of the qualities intrisically know themselves," which may not make sense, but from the vantage point that you don't need a Super-ego until the Ego doesn't have enough skill and is floundering. The Super-ego can relax over-processing and just send quick messages that "this is dangerous. Adjust your skill level or drop the challenge." It doesn't need to take over, and that's why a highly functioning Ego is a Flow state, because the Hyper-critical Super-ego manager relaxes. The Ego intrinsically is aware because it's able to operate in the world because you can't be unaware if you're navigating in space. Awareness is already noting and receiving incoming impingements, including Super-ego and Ego impingements, which allows you to keep your personality, so a faster noting can happen, but it's marinating in experience so that the sense of separation (Super-ego) can fade. The Do-er that is noting has to relax to more of Rob's "ways of looking."

It's really cause and effect happening all the time but there's this "Manager" that is using subject and object in ways that ARE the stress, or like Daniel points out as over-processing. I understand Rob's idea of "ways of looking" in that the attention span is limited and "tending to cause and effect" is really directing the mind ever so gently to vibrations, without that "I need to go to vibrations! Ahhhhh! Let's create a sense of lack first!" Conceptuality is fine for Csikszentmihalyi's practices, but a gentle look at vibrations is all the Right Effort needed to realize that "looking in this way is less stressful." There's a time for looking one way with the right brain to rest and a time to look with the left brain to function in the world. Like Daniel points out, the subject moves around so it can be used as a tool, instead of a hyper manager. It can be part of the Super-ego's imitated cultural personality so you don't turn into Spock.

This is partly why many people can't develop long-term skills because they don't breathe and feed emotionally along the way. Chunking with small goals that build to the bigger goal is more sustainable and makes the Flow system make more sense. It helps to understand Cluster B mentalities of extreme repression to achieve goals, extreme sense of lack, and explosions of feeding reactivity and sadomasochism when the repression fails. I met so many professionals who literally have the countenance of a shark and their emotional emptiness and the need to feed with resentment, anger, and envy. Meditation is like carrying snacks with you. Bugs Bunny is so cute and friendly but when you're hungry he magically turns into Chicken.

Now I feel l have the template to do Daniel's Theravadan style of vibration, noting at higher speeds, because the Manager is too slow, and Burbea's Mahayana clinging to form and letting it fade. I understand the fading that Rob was talking about because you're not a Subject > Fading > Object. You can relax with equanimity, relaxing pushes and pulls to ANY experience including the attention span moving, and you can still blink automatically, and the vision gets milky and fades, but it does require much longer meditation times than a typical lay person will afford in order to fade into Nirvana.

As good as this stuff is with direct pointing, there's a sense of time and time like Rob said before he died, was like something where he had one foot in timelessness and one in time. Carl Jung also talks about this when he had a deep illness where the sense of past present and future were the same. The present moment has a sense of beginning, middle, and end, and the end is another form of dukkha. It's another place to avoid. Ego doesn't want to end. We are trying to look at dying closer to a form of painful resting if that makes sense. LOL! The Final Frontier. One of Rob's edits to his book points how that because consciousness and object arise together, not the Subject > Causing > Object, conceptual time falls apart as an annoying narrative. There's still time in the sense that there's movement and change, but the narrative part of it, the time convention, is empty and releases the Super-ego concerns further about narratives. Those faded photographs are highly manipulated memories. When you were living in decades past it wasn't faded. It was bright and shining like it is now. The narrative can project a Golden Age, or a Dark Period, if it wants to. That dissatisfaction with technology at the time was the same as it is now and the feeling of "now is not good enough" was happening in the said Golden Age. The unfindability of inherent time lets go of time related stresses to wanting to Subject > Object move to better forms of time. The subject wants to escape through time like a time machine.

There is value in concept but it's value is keener with the snake eating its tail by using concept to search for its own existence and not finding it, kind of like physics and phenomenology put together. This is why I laugh at Daniel's video where he says about fast noting "eventually one recognizes that speediness of attention is not needed because the phenomenon are speaking for themselves." That eventually can be YEARS LOL. With non-self, the arising of ideas smoothly moves from Id to Super-ego suggestions to Ego skillfullness without the Super-ego parent constantly spanking the Ego. As you can see the Freudian method is just helps. Being includes more than being inert and resting. I think my Mindfulness episode is going to get a little longer ;).
 
shargrol, modified 2 Years ago at 3/10/22 3:00 PM
Created 2 Years ago at 3/10/22 2:41 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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"It's that deep-down feeling of the present moment sucks and I can only feel better as a Subject if I can move closer to the Object/Skill/Experience."

"Ego doesn't want to end."

"This is why I laugh at Daniel's video where he says about fast noting "eventually one recognizes that speediness of attention is not needed because the phenomenon are speaking for themselves.""



Just some initial thoughts...

I really like the recognition in that first quote above. That is exactly the "knot" of self that gets over-applied to baseline experience. So in other words, if "Aaron the Arhat" is learning how to juggle, he is going to have some mind flavor of "I'm not good at this yet, I need to work on this skill". That's totally appropriate for that specific scenario. But when "Aaron the Arhat" is simply experiencing, the "problem solving mode" drops away. This gets seen with greater and greater sensitivity over a meditators career so-to-speak.

For most people, the self-identity over-applies this "problem solving mode" to every experience and if a problem to solve isn't found, then it feels some flavor of anxious. As you said, "the ego doesn't want to end". The subsequent reactivity could be emotionality, aggression, avoidance, etc. but fundamentally when "problem solving mode" ends it can feel like "I" am dying because "I" don't know what to do. (And then some reactive pattern is triggered to fill the void.)

One side comment on fast noting/noticing... For me, I found my entry point for making progress wasn't an emphasis on "fastness". That can often set up the same "problem solving mode" dynamic --- how do I go faster??? how do I know if this is fast enough??? Arggh!!!!

Instead, I simply I paid attention to the vividness and richness of experience --- I describe this as like listening to clean record on speakers with vaccum tubes, rather than listening to digital zeros and ones on earbud speakers, which dates me emoticon  --- and I allowed myself to luxuriate and delight in the richness of the present moment. The whole, rich, vivid, and intimate, body-mind experience of this moment. And after ~20 minutes it naturally will either 1) become more momentary/fast/digital, which is basically the A&P experience happening again (which is great!) or it will 2) become more gently pulsing, flowing, peristaltic, undulatory, slippery, spaceous, confusing or even just normal, which is basically EQ (which is great!).

The mind gets to decide where it goes and there is no preference for A&P type framerates or EQ type spaciousness -- the mind gets to decide. If A&P happens, then it's like learning to lean downslope while skiing, having trust in where the speed of things is going. If EQ happens, then we need to give up the comforting sense of do-er and get used to mind doing its thing and have trust in the almost agorophobic spaciousness of things.

As I got closer to my first cessation, the mind seemed to testing experiences out "do I find relief here? or do I find it here? or here?". I had several big A&Ps again. And I had many long sits of simple pleasure EQ. And I had many sits of vaguely confusing and uncertain spaceous hard-to-say-ness. The mind was slowly figuring out that none of these things could be held as a source of ultimate relief... and so it jumped to the non-experience. It was nothing that "I" did. It was totally up to the mind. (But I had to show up each day to practice and intimately sit and participate with my experience.)
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Richard Zen, modified 2 Years ago at 3/11/22 9:48 AM
Created 2 Years ago at 3/11/22 9:48 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Yeah that matches up with a lot of my experience. For me this has been theoretical, but I believe that the ego can't go into cessation. The Super-ego/Ego has to relax and the lower brain/ID prefers to go "inward" as Daniel puts it, and as you say, it can't find a SPOT in the external world to rely on. The ID is essentially Unconscious in Freudian theory, is an instinct machine, throws up automatic thinking suggestions, and if it goes "inward" then it would go unconscious, or into cessation. The Mahayana way is to look at the unreliability of SPOTS and go inward, while at the same time looking at everything as a snowy village reconstruction fabrication of experience, because the Universe has more detail than our perceptions, as we can see in science. A way of looking would be to look at the joints and connections of things to see their interdependence to interrupt that painful inherent existence tensing. Then looking at time as change and movement vs. a concrete entity, helps to drop rumination further.

I do like the Actualism quality of enjoying sensation, though I have to get better at this, but it's another way to give a temporary SPOT for consciousness to enjoy to stave off fear of cessation when the mind is too scared. The scared part is a survival instinct. "Don't die on me yet!" For Burbea, inclining the mind towards a richess of experience is a "way of looking" which is also all the Nagarjuna stuff. We forget to tend to the cause and effect by forgetting how we are looking at things. I try to repurpose Burbea's Dot-to-dot to be right brain vibrations that are already manifesting vs. left brain tightening of those vibrations. That's part of the reason why the word GRASP is used for understanding. There's a certain amount of grasping needed for memory and thinking.
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Richard Zen, modified 1 Year ago at 4/2/22 1:42 AM
Created 1 Year ago at 4/2/22 1:42 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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The last shift has been the most effective thus far in all these years. It definitely made some of the typical trademark effects related to relinquishing clinging, the mental thobbing/healing, and it shows how all pervasive clinging is, and how subtle a problem it is. You literally have to feel clinging in so many ways so that all the types of doing you can imagine can be felt as a tight muscle, and then making that tension conscious teaches you how to relax. This includes 3D space, and tightening lasers around a sense of Subject > Object > Time/memory towards 3D goals. All empty of inherent existence. All vibrations. When the shift happens at first there is a tension bar, like a Star Wars wipe transition, that permanently relaxes a layer of tension over the entire psycho-physical experience. After that you can make more subtle adjustments. I think I do like a gradual practice. An instant practice I think would be too disorienting.

So yes, the big problem is the survival function, self-consciousness function, which is connected to the doing, and how it over-processes and tightens up areas that are perfectly fine operating automatically, including habitual skills that don't need any interference. The survival function is like a "beep beep beep" except transfer the example of sound into a tension tightening, and it beeps slow all the way up to rapid when there's a tension escalation. Like a rapid morse code, you can learn to read the tension.

When the lower brain learns this it reliquishes clinging when it can find REST in vibrations. This happens in different directions. Like a cat purring in a nice spot, the mind can enjoy the vibrations and relax the doing almost like being in a pseudo-samadhi. There's a part of the mind that wants sleep, but many times the vibrations are enough. As the mind goes between doing the meditation and relaxing doing, the survival reflexes are known much better through awareness, and the knowledge allows one to look at clinging like a muscle, (except now it's the entire physical emotional totality of experience), that can flex and relax.

One of the ways I can trigger this relaxation is to remind the do-ing to "let the meditation, meditate itself." This can be practiced by scanning the body and seeing tensions as attempts from the survival/conceptual/fight or flight, to tense automatic functions that work perfectly on their own. The result is a more natural doing like in a Flow state, but without needing concentration momentum. Concentration momentum is very good and can seem like teflon when it comes to non-reactivity, but the downside is how much time it takes to generate it. To let the meditation meditate itself is like a wind in my sails and gives the doing mind a rest from conditioning like the automatic functions have "got my back." I can feel the two different modes and the confusion is gone about all this. There's no tensing up to try and stop the tensing up, even in subtle ways. 

There's still more integration, but it's basically learning how to do as many things as possible in the "let the meditation meditate itself," "let the skill operate on its own," mode, so that more integration can be learned. I don't have a lobotomy, and regular skills are the same as they were before. Learning by doing is 95%, and book knowledge is 5%, but that is probably how it always is and now my survival-mind GETS that. 

Always expect jolts, frights, surprises, etc., because they are necessary for survival and normal human operation, but the way through for the rest of the time is to let auto functions work where possible without Survival-manipulation or Survival-motivation. This allows me to face more things. When I say to "face" something it's not to tighten up in a tense readiness, but to let the auto biology and auto skills do what they do at whatever level they can do them at, and only more skill development and practice will make them better. Even "practice" has a different connotation. "Let the practicing practice itself" so the survival/super-ego/self-consciousness, can sit on the bench and wait for when it's actually needed. This connects to so much understanding, including sadomasochistic pleasures that were once underground, even in basic needs to breathe deeply, to fabricate concentration, for handling overwhelm and anger. Just let the ________ skill operate on its own. Who cares if it's overwhelming? This helps with paranoia.

My sense of feeling normal, like when I was younger with less conditioning, plus a better understanding of the world, human nature, and even a deep pity for the human trap of OVER-SURVIVAL, and how it can ironically eliminate survival in war, is quietly groundbreaking. As you release the OVER-SURVIVAL there's a residue of throbbing and also a weird sense of seesawing between that survival mechanism feeling compulsory and learning that over-monitoring and self-consciousness can relax and things will operate just fine. The survival mechanism just needs mindful examples where "just let the ______ skill operate naturally" succeeds in operating naturally in real time, so the survival mechanism can rest with actual proof. It really doesn't trust very much, and that's exactly how a Super-ego behaves, like an imaginary person in the mind that doesn't trust your skill level. 

Even trying the HAIETMOBA stuff seems pointless now. Trying to enjoy vibrations can just be reminder to ask, "what does it feel like?" or "let what's enjoyable be enjoyable and vanish without clinging" and how that is somehow superior to clinging and trying to "make vibrations fresh." Trying to "make the vibrations fresh" interferes with new vibrations that can be enjoyed just as they are without adornment or hype. There is a need at times to remind the attention span to look at different sense doors and an appreciation of limited bandwidth and Rob's "ways of looking" makes more sense. I may need to remind myself to "smell the roses" but instead it's just to tune to the way of looking of "let the smelling smell on its own." Outside of that, any forcing, like trying to make a flower perfume in the forest last longer, will make it go away with the familiar dry boredom of pushing and pulling. 

When it comes to extreme forms of presence, reclaiming normal inspiration and excitement is there. I don't need to avoid Becoming. Becoming is just fine as long as there's an assessment of consequences and goals are accessible. This of course is very different from a sadomasochistic fight or flight response that unconsciously seeks scarcity, politics, revenge, and drama with others to try and dominate resources for oneself, and to protect pride. It can be a self-fulfilling prophecy and attract negativity without seeming to. It seems to connect with that belief in inherent existence in that the survival mind doesn't understand interdependence or mass-production. It's all exploitation at the expense of others, there's no abundance anywhere, and that makes sense because it's main operation is to protect territory and mates, but it can overreach into areas and have a tunnel vision where a lack of conflict is treated as "boring" instead of peaceful. This can be seen in sports where empty lives can sublimate in rivalry with hated opponents, and that hate has a relish. "I love hating that team!" That part of the mind likes to fight and longs to obliterate enemies and relish in their downfall like Conan. You want to "Crush enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of the women!" Things like domination and submission make a lot more sense. That part of the mind looks at survival not in a defensive way only, but also offensive. It can develop a taste for rape and pillage like described in historical wars, and probably modern ones too. The survival mechanism can co-opt the practice into dogma and create organizations around these practices and easily turn them into a cult and bastardize the knowledge. It's like Conan pretending to be a monk and wreacking havoc on the congregation.

A healthy life is one with hobbies and interests that are self-satisfying, and where resources can be traded with others. Most of the self-satisfying is to remain in non-doing in an all pervasive way and to drain conditioned stress, boredom-tolerance. It seems to eliminate contradictions of desire and has a healthy acceptance of death. Hobbies in the end are sublimation of the hunting mind, except maybe you take up photography, painting, crafts, etc.

You even let the realization realize itself.
shargrol, modified 1 Year ago at 4/14/22 11:51 AM
Created 1 Year ago at 4/14/22 11:51 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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This is all exactly exactly right. The words that get chosen are really besides the point. The important thing is to notice just how subtle the protection mechanisms are and how over-protection is detectable by resistance or awkwardness. It's almost like "these are the subtle mechanisms which add up to classic psychological defense mechanisms"; this is the microscopic ignoring that could add up and become macroscopic pattern of "denial".

Yes, let the seeing see, the hearing hear, the realizing realize. 

It's pretty much impossible to describe this territory or even give advice about it. But the good thing is that the mind seems to find a fascination in the next knot and the next knot, so everything eventually gets untied. Mostly we just need to hear from others that "yeah, you're on the right track."

There seems to be a tipping point in practice where there really is a desire for freedom. It usually comes after the person has faced a lot of their dark-night stuff and really savored EQ. Suddendly the dark-night fears don't seem so big and the mind can really investigate the little knots that still exist in the vast nana of Equanimity.

This all sounds great.
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Richard Zen, modified 1 Year ago at 4/14/22 10:16 AM
Created 1 Year ago at 4/14/22 10:16 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
Currently I'm feeling mostly relief. My breathing is quite enjoyable and smoother now. I'm more in my body in day to day life. The answer to most questions is tapping into vibrations as a way of looking. There are weird sensations of disgust with some activities. The wear and tear just makes it not worth it, and one ends up getting up to go somewhere and find that going for a walk is just fine. Maybe just basking in body form vibration? Then go back to work. 

Work is different now. I'm more in Flow because the mind is not leaping out at distractions and obsesses less about time, so time does appear to go by faster, even without concentration. There are times when jhanic states appear, but there's a nice smoothness between transitions so that conditions are less needed to be a certain way to feel better.

I'm sure there's more, because the body is impermanent, but it's nice to sense body knowledge and to listen to it. You want to eat healthier. Enjoying well-being is the main goal at this level, if that's much of a goal. 

Just watched Sam Vaknin video of the limits of curing Cluster B types: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN6cZVpST_Y

"They don't have access to positive emotions."

This shows that there has to be a potential in people for positive emotions, and I think this practice won't work on everyone. It helps to explain the scandals in Buddhism and also family patterns. Recovering from co-dependency is a lucky situation. To be special and only wanting to be around special people, ignoring the basic pleasure of well-being, and only being stuck in a dull survival mode, splitting, can only imitate emotions, sounds like hell. With co-dependency, you still have a well-being self you can develop and you can heal CPTSD. 

Took a long time though...

​​​​​​​Onto...Right Concentration now.
shargrol, modified 1 Year ago at 4/14/22 11:57 AM
Created 1 Year ago at 4/14/22 11:57 AM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 2344 Join Date: 2/8/16 Recent Posts
One trick for "right concentration"... although it's invevitable that we'll attempt to concentrate by effort (because of the way concentration is used in english), the best word for this domain is perhaps "centering".

Being in the midst of experience without leaning (physically or mentally) toward or away from experience.

Dwelling in and neither indulging nor denying the experience.

The inital doorway to concentration --- the 15-20 minutes of just staying seated and not jumping to discursive thinking/problem solving while the body slowly settles --- can feel a bit effortful at times. But the cultivation of "centering" is very gentle and ease--full and appreciative and even luxurious. It's letting go and enjoying being. And then the mind will drop on it's own (like the Star Wars screen wipe) into the next level of centering, which can drop into the next level...

​​​​​​​Enjoy!!
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Richard Zen, modified 1 Year ago at 4/14/22 1:53 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 4/14/22 1:53 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Yeah thanks. Definitely I'm at a loss for words for Right Concentration, but certainly just enjoying Be-ing is pretty much it and a doorway to a different mentality. Certainly, music has taken a big hit. I can enjoy it but it eventually becomes so repetitive that it is an irritant. Movies are so dull now. It's like weird people pretending to be other people. The entire imitate-identify thing is dull. Watching the new Batman, I couldn't care less about any of the drama, even if it was well acted. I enjoyed the photography more. I'm normally a person who would enjoy a lot of those things, but existence by itself is more enjoyable now. I have to marinate more and probably there's still some more terror, or whatever, but that's stuff that just happens if it does.

Basically the survival part of the mind, which is like everywhere, is dull and reactivity is dull, and separation is dull. Freshness is nice, but I'm still drinking of clean water right now. It feels weird to be quenched by not doing anything.
shargrol, modified 1 Year ago at 4/14/22 4:10 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 4/14/22 4:03 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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One other quick note:

I think a lot of pre-SE people can get a little too hung up on "I'm not concentrated enough, I'm not jhanic enough". As near as I can tell, the jhanic tendency really does seem to be more present in some people than others, but everyone gets jhanic enough for themselves.

So don't get too worried about right concentration. If you are interested and dwelling in your sensate experience, that's jhanic enough. The mind will naturally dip into soft and hard states, formed and formless states, various unknowning states, and eventually cessation. Jhanic people will stay in those states longer, but everyone will "dip" into them in one way or another. Again, don't have a lot of fears and doubts about "enough concentration".

Your intuitive mind figures this out. It's beyond the ego and cessation is beyond "the mind" --- so really there is no pressure for the "I" do do the "right" thing. 

No one knows how to "make" a cessation happen. No one has ever known a cessation has happened until afterwards. So the pressure is completely off. All we do is sit, get curious and intimate with our experience. As we get centered, the natural tendency is to get curious and intimate with our inner experience. We get drawn closer and closer to where feelings and thoughts "are" in the mind. The more we center on feeling and thoughts the more centered we get and the closer we seem to get to "where" the mind "is". 

It's naturally seductive. If it takes effort, then we're probably using too much effort. But if it seems to pull us in ---- perfect!
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Richard Zen, modified 1 Year ago at 4/15/22 1:36 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 4/15/22 1:36 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

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Things are definitely integrating well. I feel that a lot of my CPTSD is completely cured, or at least massively reduced. Basically the entire nervous system seems like it's purring like a well tuned engine and the steering transmission is smooth. Right now vibrations = nervous system. It helps that it's spring in Canada which takes a lot longer. You get wet snow and melt at the same time with wonderful light and reflections and the right brain is transmitting complete detail with a purring nervous system. It's like a new prescription of glasses, and unadorned suchness, including dirty streets and litter, shines.

The main thing to keep me on track is to reconnect with vibrations and let auto-skills work as is. This keeps it going because it's the manipulation and grind that stopped it before. The sense of wonder was something I always had. I used to joke with friends, "isn't it interesting that you have eyes and there's a brain behind them?" So that wonder of why anything exists and the weird uncanniness of existence is more regular now. There's also a sense of effortless Flow where the brain is naturally dropping Time as another grind, and I think that's the big difference. A time-grind has to weaken or else there's no Flow. Of course I can go look for concrete time and it's not there. To be fooled is to tighten up the search, but one can already feel the tightening begin and rest in vibrations again.
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Richard Zen, modified 1 Year ago at 8/23/22 12:57 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 8/23/22 12:57 PM

RE: Richard's insight practice

Posts: 1665 Join Date: 5/18/10 Recent Posts
After the Right Mindfulness video, and the Otto Rank Part 2 video I've had a lot of integration going on. The venting and release of acknowledging emotions and connecting with WHY those emotions are there leads to more emotional discharge, and what felt as very Psychopathic is now more normal. I speak a little different in that I have authentic emotion with my words more effortlessly, and there's less need for big discharges because there are little ones happening all the time. "I feel this way because..." sounds a lot like Gendlin's Focusing, but it helps. Watching Near Death Experience videos has helped with a lot of integration as well. Certainly the survival brain can feel like it looks forward to death and there are pockets of relief you can feel when this happens, especially when people recount out of body experiences and conversations that Doctor's had that they shouldn't have witnessed. The main healing is seeing how these experiences are all about learning, just like a learning mentality in psychology. Identities can be trapping and moving into a learning mentality allows you to experience a lot more in life and entertain learning new skills. 

In summary:

Mistakes in life are for learning. - Heals shame and relinquishes clinging to identities or circumstances. "I feel bad because.." helps but also "I feel good because..." adds to positive mind states.
Acknowledge your emotions. - Heals pent up emotion and improves authenticity and allows one to be more candid.
Don't make experiences last longer or try to shorten them in your imagination. - Regular letting go of clinging and unnecessary grinding and forcing. Concentration is used for enjoyment, not for blocking anything.

These all integrate with each other and manifest a smooth normality.

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