Hello guys,

While working on 4th path, I wrote a brief summary about how to meditate and reach enlightenment in a practical, no bullshit, no woo-woo type way since I was discussing this with an acquittance from university and I wanted to have a text wall that I could share with anyone and have it make sense. I actually ended up almost losing it since I almost bricked my PC so I decided to post it here even if it's not perfect. But the short summary is, focus on being in expansion mode. I can't stress the importance of understanding this concept directly. It matters more than the 3C. It's the mechanism of enlightenment, and is the only thing that truly matters.  

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Part 1 - Theory 

Consciousness

You have a consciousness. You can think of consciousness as a space that everything occurs in. The building blocks of consciousness are called sensations. For example, thoughts, vision, hearing, awareness, time and space are sensations. 

We can use a few descriptors or adjectives to describe how sensations, and therefore, consciousness, works. 

The first is - 

Impermanence -

All sensations are impermanent. This means that as soon as a sensation occurs, it immediately is gone and replaced by a new sensation, which immediately is gone and so on. This is true for everything. You create constructs out of these sensations, for example, if you are reading a book, it's useful to assume that when you close your eyes, the book will still be there when you open it. But objectively speaking, as soon as you close your eyes, the book is gone. You might say, I remember that the book is there. But that's just a thought, a different sensation. They are not the same thing. 

Unsatisfactoriness - 

Because all sensations are impermanent, they are unsatisfactory. That means that no matter how hard you try to make something feel permanent and stable, it will never satisfy. Let's take an easy example, an orgasm. How many times have you wanted to orgasm but sometime later you want to achieve it again? Have you ever had a moment where after an orgasm, you never wanted to do it again? Of course not, you will perpetually crave this thing even if you achieve it infinity times over. Same thing goes for food, drink etc. No one has ever said "This food tasted so good, I will never eat it again." It will never satisfy you permanently. 

No self -

The most important idea of it all. Because everything can be observed, there is no self. What do I mean by this? Let's take a book for example. The book has no self. You know that there is no individual in the book that decides to do anything in the book. It's just a bunch of atoms rearranged in a pattern to create a book. If you break the book, nothing gets "destroyed" or goes anywhere. This is true for you too. You might think, I am in a body that is looking from there to the outside. But what is "I"? What is looking? You might say, I am the body. But if you cut off a fingernail, or even a finger, "you" will still be here. Therefore, you are not the body. What about thoughts? Thoughts, just like all sensations, are always changing. You might say I am one thought or the other, but how many different thoughts have you ever had? It's unreasonable to say that you are those thoughts, because those thoughts are always changing. Indeed, saying that you are a permanent self in the changing thoughts doesn't make sense. So, you are not thoughts. What about awareness? In fact, the same argument holds for awareness as well. Do you always feel like you are aware? How many times have you ignored what someone was saying to you and were thinking about something else? Awareness is not always present. Therefore, you are not awareness. Same thing goes for anticipation, and even the feeling of a "self" itself. The feeling of a self is itself just a tension in your upper body/neck area that feels like it's always present but in actual fact is changing just like everything else.

So, what is left? Everything can be observed, and sensations are constantly changing. The idea of a separate, stable, permanent watcher, doer, observer, subject observing objects, thing in your head that is in there looking at things out there, just doesn't hold to scrutiny. This false idea is called duality. Reality is non-dual. A stable, permanent self doesn't exist.

Ok, so you know that there is no self, but I still feel like there is a self, how do I make it so that I don't feel a self, and what's the point of that?
​​​​​​​
Part 2 - Practice

To create a stable reality out of sensations, and make them feel permanent, satisfying and a part of “self”, your brain has evolved to ignore most of these sensations and amplify others.

Despite popular belief, consciousness has two modes of operation, as opposed to one. This may be a surprise to many who have never heard or thought about these ways of operation. These are called contraction and expansion. When you’re in contraction mode, things feel loud, stable, and since you’re ignoring the changing reality, permanent and a part of self. When you’re in expansion mode, reality is the way it is, changing, quiet, unsatisfying. These concepts are key to understanding how meditation works.

Contraction is what most people are familiar with. It is associated with thinking about the past, future, worrying about something, arguing with someone in your head, playing a song that you liked, “ear worms”, mental noise etc., that is, contracting into thoughts (hence the name). From a neurophysiological perspective, it is when the Default Mode Network (DMN) turns on. Turning on your DMN and being in contraction mode are one in the same. When you are not in contraction mode, you are in expansion mode.

Meditation is the process of turning off your DMN and staying in expansion mode by continuously noticing the changing sensations of the present. When you eventually ignore a sensation, that is, don’t notice it, you contract. After you realise you contracted, return to expansion mode by noticing the present. When you can stay in expansion mode indefinitely, you will reach enlightenment, that is, the realisation that there is no-self (though you will reach permanent transformations of consciousness much earlier than this, more on that later).

To illustrate what I am talking about, a popular beginner technique can be used. This is called noting. This is when after you notice a sensation, you mentally (or even out loud) label what you noticing. For example, let’s say you notice your finger. After this happens, you label the sensation with the word “finger” (doesn’t matter what you technically label it with, whatever works for you).

When you notice your hand, label “hand”.
When you feel your tongue, label “tongue”.
When you feel your toes, label “toes”. When you feel pain label “pain”.
When you feeling craving, label “craving”.
When you start had a thought and contracted, label “thinking” and continue noticing.
When you feel cold, label “cold”.
When you feel nervous label “nervous”
When an intention arises to do something, label “intending”.
When you move, label “moving”. Etc.

However, it is important to understand that the present is perfectly fine the way it is, and you don’t need to notice anything in particular. That is, you can notice anything, as long as you are in expansion mode and noticing the present. This is the mechanism by which meditation works. This means that you can pick an object to notice the sensations of and stick with it forever. You don’t have to note sensations at all, you can just use an object that can help you stay in expansion mode. In practice, this means that you just use the breath, specifically each inhalation and exhalation as a feedback mechanism to notice the present and stay in expansion mode. However, technically speaking everything is fine to use. Unlike basically everything else, the breath always with you, feels loud and you can breathe fast or slow depending on which rate of breathing maintains your consciousness in expansion mode, as depending on where you are on the journey, trying to breathe too fast or too slow will result in contraction, so maintaining an appropriate speed is necessary. I will demonstrate an example of how I breathe when meditating later.
It’s important to understand, that mediation and what is called “the path’ is not random. It’s not the wild west and you will feel more or less the same feelings, emotions and things as everyone else on earth as long as you are meditating and noticing more and more sensations. These are called the stages of insight, and are as follows:

1. Mind and Body
2. Cause and Effect
3. Three Characteristics
4. Arising and Passing Away
5. Dissolution
6. Fear
7. Misery
8. Disgust
9. Desire for Deliverance
10. Re-Observation
11. Equanimity
12. Cessation
13. Fruition

After meditating you will eventually enter the first, second and third stages, and if you are lucky, you will reach the Arising and Passing Away stage for the first time. This is accompanied by what is called the “A&P Event”, a single, defining moment, when you finally “get it” and realise in real time that sensations are, in fact, constantly changing. This stage is accompanied by a significant feeling of happiness, euphoria, bliss and general good feeling. This is the point of no-return and you must understand that you should at least complete the full cycle once as if you don’t, you will eventually progress into the further stages of insight, known as the “Dark Night of the Soul”, or simply, the “Dark Night” These are Dissolution, Fear, Misery, Disgust, Desire for Deliverance and the infamous and most painful stage, Re-Observation. These are extremely painful stages that you will enter regardless, and trying to cling to the feeling of happiness experienced earlier will only lead to more suffering. If you don’t continue meditating (a grave mistake), you will eventually cycle back to the Dissolution stage once more until Re-Observation and will cycle the Dark Night indefinitely. It’s unfortune to realise that many cases of what people consider to be chronic depression are simply people accidentally entering these stages due to experiencing some event that triggered the A&P stage and therefore pushed them into these stages without them even knowing. If you manage to break through the Dark Night, you will reach equanimity. Here things feel not good and not bad either.

If you continue meditating long enough at the stage of equanimity, you will reach what is called a “cessation”. This is when, just for a moment, your consciousness turns off and back on again. You don’t actually feel the cessation, just what happens before and after. There is literally nothing in the stage, not even darkness as some people may imagine it to be. It’s like someone just edited a part of your timeline away and stuck the opposing two parts together. Imagine you are watching a heroic movie where the prince is on his way on an adventure to save the princesses. And then immediately, he is seen kissing her. There is nothing in between, not even time or space or anything. “External” time may pass, but subjectively it’s as if you teleported into the future.

After a cessation, your brain boots back up and you will feel what is called a fruition, a satisfying feeling before your consciousness boots back up and the illusion of self has not been reconstructed again, which lasts just a brief moment. You will notice that things feel different, and a part of what you consider “self” is no longer present (the number thrown around commonly is around 30%), things feel less in your control, you feel better and now a significant portion of sensations that prompt you contract no longer do so. Congratulations, you have reached what is called “Stream Entry”, or First Path, which is the first of four transformations of consciousness. You will now be back at the Arising and Passing away stage and will now cycle these stages of insight from the A&P stage until Equanimity forever, and unlike the first cycle, which might’ve taken you a few months to a few years (It took me exactly 2 months), these subsequent cycles will take you on average 45 to 60 minutes each.

Soon you will be able to notice a deeper layer of sensations, and the more you notice them the more apparent they get. This is what could be considered second path territory. After meditating in this new area, you will start on new, deeper stages of insight, at the same time as cycling the older stages, and after you complete this deeper cycle, you will achieve Second Path. This path is generally easier to achieve and the prognosis is that most people achieve it within a few months of achieving the first. I achieved it in 2 weeks but this is absolutely not the norm so don’t expect it to happen to you. Now around 50% of “self” is gone. Continuing with the same theme you will reach Third Path. At this stage another 20-30% of self is gone. I’m abstracting most of the details out as otherwise you can write many pages of information on how each of these paths feel but to keep it this short I’ll ignore the details. More detailed information can be found in MCTB2. The forth path and last path is unique in that, unlike the first, the stages of insight are not split into separate territories for each path (etc First and Second path territory after First Path) where you have to complete a new, single insight cycle, but instead you complete smaller 30-45-minute cycles thousands of times, where each insight stage lasts a few minutes As of writing this I still have not reached enlightenment and have actually counted at least 4977 small cycles that I have completed over the last 14 months. After reaching enlightenment, contracting, and therefore the illusion of self, permanently ceases (though you can technically turn it back on and off again if you want, though there is no need). This sounds almost religious in nature, but after enlightenment you basically experience ultimate satisfaction with everything. I have experienced what it feels like to be there temporarily after 3rd Path whereby sometimes after cycling and reaching a cessation you will temporarily feel what it feels like to be enlightened after your consciousness boots back up. It’s basically a much more significant fruition, called a “kundalini experience” or “12’th Path cycle”, as some people mistake these for new paths as they feel so good (more details can be found on that in MCTB2). And I can assure you, reaching enlightenment is completely worth it. Shinzen Young, an American arahant (enlightened person) has said that if he had to choose between one day of having an enlightened person’s consciousness, or having a lifetime of a normal person’s consciousness, he would easily choose 1 day of enlightenment. And I agree with him, the times that I have had kundalini experiences were truly magnificent. And to have that feeling forever is just insane for me to think about.

This is basically all you need to know about this but of course it’s extremely abstract so I will write a more detailed book in the future. However, for now, MCTB2 by Daniel Ingram is considered the go to book for practical meditation advice, and I suggest you read it, despite it having some inaccuracies and some questionable claims about some things to say the least.

thanks for posting - expansion mode is a great way of framing it

Isn't this mindfulness?

It seems to me that you are saying mindfulness is awakening, which is something I agree with.

That is the simplest no b******t summary, in my opinion.

It might be hard to believe, but I think the best way to explain it is that quantity has a quality all its own. A drop of water, a puddle, a stream, a river, a pond, a lake, an ocean are all different things.

And it's consistent with the satipatthana sutta where Buddha taught how to live being mindful where he said being mindful continuously for 7 days would make someone a non returner or an arhat. (Of course, being continuously mindful for 7 days is not easy.)

I understand you are describing the path you followed, but not all paths to awakening involve cessation/frution.

And just to be fair, regarding the use of the term b******t, I think if someone followed anyone around for most of their life remembering everything they said about meditation and mindfulness to hunreds of different people each with their own different points of confusion, and then translated it into a different language several times, then 2500 years later, in a completely different culture with a different mind set, values, worldview, cosmology and technology, it would be helpful to have a no b******t summary of their teachings.

And what constitutes b******t is an opinon. I am more familiar with the term mindfulness vs. mind wandering than expansion vs. contraction or DMN so my opinon of what is b******t is also different.

@jimsmith

I suppose mindfulness and expansion are different words to explain the same idea of the turning off of the DMN. Though technically there is no mind so it's not accurate to say that. The 7 days of expansion to get enlightenment is nonsense. You won't be able to stay in expansion for longer than a few minutes with the best of momentum at most, with on average contraction occuring every 10-15 seconds. You will contract and ignore reality whether you like it or not. It's like saying you can just gain 20kg of muscle in 1 day if you just lift really hard. It's not possible. You will only be able to chip away at a small layer of sensations every time you cycle through the stages of insight and get a cessation, which occurs every 30-45 minutes on average while meditating. So in a sense 4th path is easier because even the worst dark knights only last for a few hours, and daily progress is inevitable unless you really try your best to not meditate. 

Do you accept the phenomena of access concentration is real? It seems to me that what you are saying here would imply access concentration is a myth.

https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-i-the-fundamentals/3-concentration-the-second-training/


https://www.leighb.com/accesscon.htm

@jimsmith

That's if you were trying to do jhana and solidify the object into one. If you are meditating then you don't solidify anything by definition so it doesn't happen. You just use the sensations of the breath as a feedback mechanism to stay in expansion mode.

Are you familiar with Actualism?

For example: https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/23669142

Or Loch Kelly's Shift Into Freedom?

https://lochkelly.org/shift-into-freedom

It sounds like you might be describing something similar.

​​​​​​​Useful stuff!

Actualism is just more nonsense. That's just not how it works. That's just intellectualising.

You need to physically turn off your DMN to progress. Thinking about things differently doesn't matter at all.

Imagine if I made up some random method for bodybuilding and then said "I'm lifting this weight, it's MY weight" and just told you that after you do that the weight magically becomes easy to lift and you will build muscle some magical way.

That's nonsense. What you think doesn't matter. Just lift the weight.

Things like this is why there is so much confusion regarding meditation because people just make up their own religious theories with no logical coherence whatsoever.

So people in the real world think that meditation is just religion with extra steps.

Meditation is a physical practice, not something you contemplate about. 

It's good to know that you know about those other approaches. I guess I just cannot understand what you are pointing to when you describe your approach. That's OK. There are a lot of things that I do not understand. 

I think your no bullshit guide is bullshit and I think, consciously or otherwise, a lot of your communication here is in bad faith. 

Some red flags in your communication. 

You're doing a lot of telling people how it is instead of openly inviting discussion about where you're at. 

You're making very big claims about attaining paths without any communication of the deep insight gained at each of those stages. 

You seem to have an extremely rigid worldview, a goal oriented approach to practice and egoic reasons for participating in the forum.

​​​​​​​All of this stuff together does paint a particular picture. Your posts read like you're trying to sell me something. 

I do not believe you are here to engage in open, authentic, day to day, communication about the reality of practice but instead are serving some egoic agenda. 

If you are inclined to participate here authentically, maybe just a regular, no bullshit, meditation log might make a great start. 

​​​​​​Maybe accept that you don't know where you're at and while you cannot ever really know, humbly submitting yourself to other experienced practicioners may be of some benefit. You won't get much in the way of authentic guidance here until you cut the bullshit yourself.  

​​​​​​​Ultimately the purpose of our meditation practice is to see through delusion.

Hi Andrew,

I actually agree with a lot of what you have written. You seem to have made a lot of progress in a very short time. Well done on that.

Have you investigated the arupa jhanas yet? They provide a very good method and training ground for developing the expansion that you are interested in.

Best regards,

​​​​​​​Conal

@bahiyababy

I literally explained exactly how it works. I'm telling people how it works because it's literally how it works. I don't know what else to tell you.

Calling me egoic is ironic and crazy because if that was so I would write absolutely nothing on this forum and spread more religious quackery under the guise that everything is possible as if it's some sort of religion. Meditation is not religion. If you want to be religious and make up random nonsense about an otherwise extremely logical process then you can go to your local mental asylum and get prescribed meds. 

Expecting me to roll over and have no strong opinion about anything because I'm supposed to be "muh awakened" shows that your entire understanding is built on wishy washy idealistic religion. Being open minded doesn't mean accepting absolutely every single irrational theory about meditation as if this is some sort of wild west. You need to actually provide logical reasoning to what is occuring otherwise it just doesn't make sense.

I experienced, it, the Buddha experienced it, Daniel Ingram experienced it, Frank Yang experienced it. And that's just the people that I read about. The vast majority of theory I didn't even read because I realised that it would be of no use. 

Europeans and East Asians are literally 50,000 years of evolutionary difference. It is clear that this mechanism is quite deep and it's very unlikely that any one individual would've evolved out this entire process out of their brain in one generation. It makes sense that there may be some individual differences that cause different experiences. But there has to be some logical coherence. Otherwise it just spirals down into religion. 

I won't stop pushing back on man-made religious beliefs posed as "meditation" just because you feel threatened by my audacity at destroying religious dogma. 

Engaging in ad hominem and implying I am delusional with no reasoning whatsoever is comical. 

Give a proper argument or stop talking. 


@conal 

I have not tried them, no. I simply don't have interest and don't see the point at the moment. Though I have no doubt they exist so I'll definitely try them in the future. 

The one thing that confused me when I first started reading about this is that it made absolutely no sense why "concentration practice" (jhana) and "insight practice" (meditation) are considered "two sides of the same coin".  It turned out that they do, in fact, have nothing to do with each other and are just grouped arbitrarily. Just like the millions of other things in Buddhism that are just grouped arbitrarily with each other for no reason other than because the Buddha said so, and then people just believe it like a religion because a lot of it is religious.

Same thing goes for the 3 Characteristics. Sure, they describe how sensations and consiousness works, but why would you group them together like that? Why not add other descriptors together? I could definitely add 2 more characteristics that make just as much sense as the rest, namely "observableness" and "emptiness". But again, they're just arbitrary groupings. There is no way that you could verify that it is only those 3 that exist.

This is a shame because otherwise the 4 Paths and the Stages of Insight are very accurate and completely true, and you could verify that they exist even if the Buddha did not find out about them. They were discovered, not invented. 

Just a minor correction,

I referred to '12th path" cycles and "kundalini experience" as the same thing in the guide. I realise what I described is are kundalini experiences, while "12th path" cycles actually refers to the broad waves of good feelings and bad feelings that come and go as you progress towards 4th path. 

What I mean is that despite what stage of insight you are in at anytime after 3rd path, there are these general phases of misery and despair (not to be confused with the stages of insight) that last a few weeks and feel terrifing and you don't want to do anything and then there are phases of feeling okay for a few days where it's stops being as terrifying and meditation feels easy. 

These ups and downs that last a few weeks are definitely a part of my experience but I didn't classify them into anything in particular and did not refer to them as "12th paths" because I never felt or got confused that they were any paths because they never lead to any particular cessation or permanent shift. And what are referred to as "kundalini" experiences are basically fruitions post a stage of insight that feels like enlightenemnt temporarily (that's what I think anyway, I would be surprised if that's not what I feel permanently after, because if enlightenment is anything like that then it's definitely worth it.) These kundalini experiences occur seeminly randomly in place of a normal cessation. In my experience I was having 1 a day when I was meditating 6 hours a day. It was so routine for me to have one at least once a day that I would lay in anticipation at the 4-5 hour mark of my sit thinking "When is this coming already?" lol. But at some point they just stoppped occuring daily and started occuring only once every 1 or 2 weeks as opposed to every day. 

​​​​​​​

The way this forum works is:

Each of us rocks up and says ive got "blah,blah,blah" 

And that blah,blah,blah gets submitted to somewhat rigorous peer review through open, good faith, dialogue. 

You are refusing to do that and are thus engaging in the forum in bad faith. 

The language you are using is not sufficient communication of any attainment. 

Your response to questions has not communicated that you are being earnest or forthright about these matters.

If you are trying to be open and honest, if you are trying to engage with this community in good faith...

You are not doing a particularly good job of it.

It does not seem, for all the posts you are making, that you are interested in engaging in a dialogue about your practice. 

Posting a guide to 4th path on a forum that takes this stuff very seriously and without engaging the community in open dialogue about your practice ...

​​​​​​​Is bullshit 

If you are not willfully deceiving others you are desperately deceiving yourself 

Keep a meditation log for six months. Let's see the truth of you before you start telling people how to practice. 

​​​​​

Huh? I literally invited everyone to ask and critique absolutely anything that I said. You just said it's bullshit and ignored everything. You are projecting so hard it's insane.


Give one example? I am a native English speaker, this is as concise and to the point as I could be. You want me to use jargon like a professor? Meditation is not complex. I don't know who deceived you, but it's literally an on-off switch that you just ram the off button until it stays off. It's not complicated.

It's like trying to ask me to use complex jargon to explain elementary school arithmetic.


​​​​​​​?????????????????????????? wtf


​​​​​​​What do you want me to write about?

I literally logged everything I thought relevant. 

It's like walking 10,000 km and then implying I have to log every step. Dude, I just explained how to walk, why do you need me to prove every step I took? 

You're just trolling. 

Why would somebody read one of these guides and trust any of the information if they're not able to see the work you've done? If they're not able to engage you in dialogue about your practice and what it has done for you? 

I asked you to answer questions from Adi but you didn't do so with any seriousness. 

There is a whole other thread where you ignored questions from a number of the regular users here. 

And as a regular user of this forum and someone who understands some of what it's about I really think you should start a log and report your experiences in dialogue, honestly and earnestly, through time, such that we can determine the quality of your character and the practices your presenting. 

​​​​​​​Look around you dude... No body else here is writing fucking guides. Come off it man. 



​​​​

i think this speaks for itself

Adi's Q's


Your answers

What you have comunicated in the first question does not lead me to believe that you have deep knowledge of the A&P and thus I am led to sincerely doubt all of your claims. 

We take this stuff seriously, we are very rigorous, or try to be, about these kinds of claims. 

There are literally hundreds of other places where you could peddle meditation guiides without facing the kind of rigorous peer review we expect.

This is not cessation. It's not it. 

You can literally verify what I said in 5 seconds. You can't do a quick inhale/exhale and see how it feels?


I'm so confused, I don't know what's not serious about what I replied.

I did not ignore a single question from anyone about anything. If I didn't reply, that's because I wanted to wait till 4th Path. Stop accussing me of this nonsense. (I actually didn't answer his last question but I didn't see it)


This is so comical it's actually insane. His question is whether my worldview has changed after A&P (Event) or not. I said no. What do you expect me to say? It literally did not change. It's just a happy feeling that I get after a cessation. What is there to say? I literally do not know what to tell you. If you are implying that it should be a different answer, then you are literally wrong. You are wrong. Accept it. I am proof that you are wrong. Stop saying otherwise. 

"But but, you can't say that!" Yes I can, you're wrong. I'm not going to acknowledge that other people are right if they are wrong just because you don't like it or you think I can't because I'm awakened. It doesn't change my ability to rebute information.

Disagreeing with you does not mean I am close minded.

Disagreeing with you does not mean I can't be awakened

Disagreeing with you does not mean I don't want other peoples opinions.

Disagreeing with you does not mean I am egoistic.

Disagreeing with you does not mean my experience is invalid.

Disagreeing with you does not mean I didn't not reach permanent transformations of consciousness.

You did not give a single valid critique other than complain that I didn't write a text wall for no fucking reason.

I read MCTB2 and I like the book. But it's Buddhist and doesn't emphasise this basic concept of expansion/contraction.

So I wrote my own guide that would've been more helpful for me.

It's not complicated.


Great, I will be the first. Stop waiting for people to do it for you

Ad hominem is so lame. I don't understand how people with access to the internet could still employ this nonsense. 

I specifically said I would describe my experience of 4th Path after I finish it because I don't want to be trigger happy about my experience and make 50 posts at once everyday. 

I did not answer questions from the other posts precisely because I wanted to answer them after 4th path also. 

Claiming I "ignored" questions is just ragebait. You clearly know it's not true but you're posting for narcisstic supply anyway. It's phychotic, and quite frankly, evil. 

I specifically wrote out how this works, and if based on reading what I said, you completely disregard my entire position despite the fact that I just rewrote basic theory from my own experience, then clearly you don't know what you're talking about. 

I don't want to wait however long it takes to make this guide because by the time I get enlightenment others could already be progressing quickly if I post this today so I don't want to delay making it. You can verify what I am saying has substance in 5 seconds. My own understanding hasn't changed in over 1 year. I won't learn anything new about how to meditate. But my journey isn't finished so the 4th Path post can wait. 

I can't believe people would waste my time like on this forum just for a trollbait.

​​​​​​​This is too exhausting. 

Andrew, if I may --


​​​​​​​What I get when I read your comments here is similar to many other pragmatic dharma books, articles, websites, etc. MCTB, in particular. I get it. We get excited about what we discover in meditation, and we want to share it with everyone we know, even those we don't know. So we end up posting stuff that most folks here have read before or experienced for themselves.

Better than repeating these things, maybe we should post periodically about what we actually experience while meditating - the real guts of how the process unfolds for us. I don't see you doing that, but I'd love to read anything you would post about it. It would be far, far more interesting, educational, and enlightening.



You're missing a huge opportunity to share your personal, direct experiences. Refer people who need the basics to the thousand places online where they can get that stuff. Post the really good stuff. You're throwing us the sow's ear while clutching the silk purse for yourself.

Think about it this way: most people on DhO know the theory behind the path to awakening; they've probably read MCTB, MCTB2, and numerous other versions of the way the path unfolds. What stands out here tends to be unique experiences posted from personal experience on the path. That's the point of fostering meditation logs and diaries. Do you think you might try that? It would also give everyone reason to listen to you as a unique voice, speaking from personal experience. It's one thing to say, "I am <insert path name here>." It's another thing entirely to give us the narrative of how your journey played out over time. Doing this gives what you then post some weight and authority. It also helps avoid the kind of argument you're now having with Bahiya.

@chrismarti
​​​​​​​
Sure, see my new post on different thread.

But you're saying that this is rehashed information, which is not true, I haven't seen this layed out like this anywhere on this forum in an obvious manner.

And my previous claims had lots of personal insight that I shared. I don't see how you suspect that is rehashed information from other sources. It would be obvious that I didn't get anything if there were holes in my logic (which people say there is but don't point out anything).

Sam Harris is an infamous example. He just doesn't get it but thinks he does.

Andrew, your opening post on this topic is, literally, a recasting of the path of insight.

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It's fine to post that, but getting defensive and denying that isn't helping you. I'm really more interested in your experiences as you work your way through your practice, and I'm happy to see you're now doing that on another topic. Since you believe you're close to a major shift, it would be wonderful for you to post about how that plays out, in mediation diary form. Will you?

Bro, I don't know what tell you. What do you mean "personal" insight? This is literally my personal insight. Can you give an example? I am so tired man

I wrote down everything I have ever experienced on this page and saying that the only thing that I think of as personal insight as not personal insight is just lol to me.

​​​​​​​I guess I have nothing to offer to this forum.

Personal experience: what your individual perceptions, emotions, thoughts, and observations are as you practice. Snippets from meditation sessions. Individual insight experiences - not process steps, or an instruction manual. 

Example: what a cessation/fruition acts and feels like and the perceptions/non-perceptions that play out moment to moment just before, during, and after. 

@chrismarti

Sure, but I have to give correct theory alongside it otherwise it makes no sense. You're saying that everyone here understands this theory meanwhile vast majority of posts on here is theory that is completely contradictory to what is well-established so I need to specify that this is the correct theory and everything else is either made up or not relevant to the actual process of meditation and instead relates to something else to do with consciousness as opposed to meditation.

I never said that the theory that I'm posting alongside my experience is mine, absolutely not. I"m saying my own experiences are my own and should be intrepreted within the context of the theory that I view as important. Most people here seem to get it wrong which is a shame because this is not a conventional meditation forum. 
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How am I supposed to explain this? That's like trying to explain green to a colour blind person. I can say the a fruition feels good and satisfying, not as good as kundalini, but you already know this, so what's the point? 

Of course you can do both! But... the personal experience part is, as I said before, the unique and compelling part. It's your story, only yours, and as such it's much more helpful to everyone. Much more.

You can't describe the moments before and after a cessation, Andrew?

Well it's my personal belief that this just how things work, so it makes sense that the experiences people have would be mostly the same. I can add my own twist to it, but it won't stray far away from the core understanding. That's why my main focus is explainining everything regardless of whether it's personal or not as experience is experience. If one pushes outright made up religion and claims that's meditation and then another pushes actual solid theory then it's in my interest to explain why one is wrong and the other is right. How personal it is doesn't matter to me, since I can't really choose how personal or impersonal something is. It's just experience. Whether other people share the same exeperience as me is up to the person evaluate. 

Andrew - maybe read this thread:

​​​​​​​https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/view_message/26372609#_com_liferay_message_boards_web_portlet_MBPortlet_message_26372609

I think I already said in the past. It feels like a light flash bang in my ear. Like a light bing and everything feels somewant silent before it disappears and things feel back to normal again. 

I thought I explained this but I guess not. Again, it's not personal. I think it's the same for most people, no? Before cessation I don't feel anything. In the past I had sense doors but those stopped occuring after the first week of SE. So I don't know what the story is with that, they were cool while they lasted. 

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Cool thread, but I already know all directly. I just wouldn't explain it like this. To me it's unnecessary intellectualising. It sounds cool to people who don't know about it but it doesn't actually help your understanding in anyway.

It's a bit like using a dictionary definition of a word to explain that word. Sure, it's close, very close, but it's not it. The only true definition of a word is that word itself. 

Same way here, the true definition of a cessation is to experience the fruition of the cessation. Describing it in words isn't accurate, and never will be. 

I think you're sadly mistaken, Andrew. Knowing what to expect, not thinking everyone's experience is the same, and not ssuming the map is the territory, are very helpful to people. This has been a good conversation to have, but it leaves me with the sense that you aren't curious about others' opinions or willing to consider them as potentially helpful for you or anyone else.

Hi Andrew

I dont know you or your practice, I thus cannot comment on whether you actually have attained to what you believe you have attained.
Simply reading your posts and your to and fro with Bahiya here, I think a major communication gap is happening. I am going to presume to share with you some of my understanding of what might be going wrong. I am doing that in order to suggest a way for you to clear the air, simply as a fellow member of the community.

In meditation / awakening practice communities from time to time people show up declaring very high attainments. Sometimes those people may actually have that attainment, but also sometimes those people are actually deluded, worse still sometimes such people are deliberately lying in order to gain some sort of social credit.

People who come to awakening practices and devote a lot of their time and energy to it are very very disapproving of deluded people declaring high attainments, and they just outright hate the liars. Its like a bunch of grizzled mountain climbers gathering together in a bar sharing their experiences and giving climbing tips and in walks a stranger talking about summiting Everest and refusing to get into the nitty gritty details of how they prepared for it and how they actually did it. My guess is that, if you have the money, summiting Everest in today's day and age might be easier than the high attainnments that you are talking about! But I dont know that for sure .... since I am not a mountain climber and have never summitted Everest

I think Chris has given you an excellent suggestion. You can keep a log of your practice in terms of the techniques that you are using and the results that you get from them either sit by sit or week by week as may be convenient for you. Then there will be no conflict.

Another alternative is to check with the custodian/moderator (Chris) and do an AMA type post. This is also a great way of spreading knowledge of your practice and the results you got from it so that it helps inspire, motivate and educate people. Be very generous with your time and energy and sincerely put effort into your answers. Such a thread remains here on DhO and people can search for it and link to it as they interact with others far into the future. It becomes like an entry in a knowledge resource bank. 

Regarding your answers to the questions I had asked, I couldnt really understand much from it. Communication is indeed difficult. Your post explaining the process of choiceless awareness for me is very interesting, I will read it with more care and detail when I have more time at my disposal. Thanks in advance for the write up. Cheers.

@chrismarti

Well all the people that introduced me to this, Daniel Ingram, Frank Yang, Mahasi Sayadaw all identically match my experience. There is literally no deviation whatsoever. Sure, some people emphasise things slightly differently, but I put it what I thought was important.

But the core theory of the four paths and stages of insights have been completely accurate it, its uncanny how accurate they are.

A&P Event? Check.

Stages of Insights? Check.

SE? Check.

2nd Path being smaller, less impressive? Check.

3rd Path having luminostity? Check.

Sense doors? Check.

Cessations? Check.

12th path cycles? Check.

Kundalinis? Check.

Expansion/Contraction? That is literally the mechanism that everything revolves around. Massive check. 

All of this completely is matches my experience, and they're all people from different backgrounds and ethnic groups. So I get the idea that the mechanism is old and therefore, probably innate in all humans. 

Therefore it doesn't sit right with me when someone some "theory" that completely contradicts everything, isn't logical, is presented as leading to awakening but doesn't explain how, just has a logical gap that goes straight to "it works" but without any rational behind it. 

Jhana? Doesn't contract anything. Nirodha Samapatti? No contradictions either. 

I haven't tried but I don't have doubt that they exist.

But other things that are completely incompatible just don't make sense. 

If they explained how but a quick browse through all the main threads leads to no answer so I get the impression that it's not serious.

After all, I realise a lot of the theory presented in Buddhism just isn't correct despite what the Buddha said. At best, they are innaccurate, and should be worded definitely.  

I had a lot of issue with how Ingram worded noticing sensations with the implications that noticing sensations and inclinding consciousness to notice (expansion) is the same and therefore should be done at the same pace. Even though it's clear through months of testing that that just isn't how consciousness works. 

Sure, I still figured it out, but it could've been smoother.

@adivader

Sure. I just have a problem when people accuse me of things I didn't do without evidence or proper argument. 

There is no holes in my argument because it's verified through my own experience and that of everyone else I look up to. It doesn't make sense to me that I can't put forward ideas of at least confirmation that what they were talking about was in fact true.

I feel like seeing if someone is wrong its quite easy to tell because there are holes in their argument and poor emphasis or lack thereof on certain aspects.  I provided lots of examples of my own experiences that make perfect sense to me. 

I said the cessation doesn't have anything in it, just a blimp in time. Nothing. And he said I am wrong about this. How? Even if I had to copy paste information from others on this forum, then this would still be my answer because nobody disagrees with me on this except him. It's literally basic theory. 

Want to know how a cessation feels like? Just get general anasthesia. People start breathing and immediately wake up after. Nothing in between. It's like that. Again, this is just basic theory. It's laid out in MCTB2. I don't need to explain this.

You can explain what happens before or after, but that's a different question. And I already did that in my very first post. Things have not changed since then. 

I'll ask this last question - are Zen, Vajrayana, Sifusm, etc., wrong, or religious "theories?" Keep in mind, people who partake of these traditions awaken, too.

@chrismarti

You can awaken and still have inaccurate or incorrect theories about how it works.

It's not mutually exclusive.

My understanding of what should be emphasised was wrong for a while but I still progressed regardless because it didn't matter.

Doing Strong Determination Sitting isn't wrong but it's not necessary and in my case it just harmed my body for no apparent gain.

Even Daniel Ingram agrees with this that Zen could use more theory on the maps. It's not wrong to omit them but it's not accurate so you will be left in the dark as a result. 
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Katz!

Hey Andrew.

Thanks for writing back. Personally I am glad that you are here on this community and are freely talking about your practice and your experience with practice. I am merely responding to one thing that you said, not in order to debate with you, but in order to share my own experience with you. Purely in the spirit of knowledge sharing. 

"because nobody disagrees with me on this except him. It's literally basic theory." 

Cessation being a 'blip' of nothing is not basic theory. I am aware of Dr. Ingram's writing, I am aware of other people's writing here on the DhO. I am also aware that there is a lot of difference in how very accomplished experienced respectable and admirable yogis talk about this one event.
Mahasi Sayadaw in his book - Manual of Insight as well as other articles available on the internet talks a bit about this. You will find that his languaging and description will not match many people that both you and I respect.

If you are curious about my own description of the event then I have written about it here in brief. I wrote about it in response to being 'interrogated' by DreamWalker (May God bless his soul and may he rest in peace)

Link: https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/view_message/28340135#_com_liferay_message_boards_web_portlet_MBPortlet_message_28344726

My objective in sharing this is not to litigate my experience and its description against somebody else's experience and description. My objective in fact is to purely bring out the stark difference between how I talk about the event (and other events) as compared to other people. I believe that the brief to and fro between me and DreamWalker may have been of benefit to someone reading, and we both managed to be 'nice' to each other

Dr John Yates aka Culadasa (May God bless his soul and may he rest in peace) also talks about cessation and how it may be experienced in different ways depending on how different yogis do development/cultivation/'bhavana' in their practice. Dr Yates' theory was that someone who does a lot of work on strengthening Sampajjana or meta cognitive introspective awareness will experience a cessation event the way I tend to describe it whereas someone who doesnt do that will experience is as a 'lights out'.

Two of Mahasi Sayadaw's students recorded typical responses of students in terms of how they describe each and every nana/knowledge in the Progress of Insight. Its available in a booklet called 'A meditator's diary' shared by eudoxos in digitzed pdf format here on this forum a while back. It is a very interesting document.

(A word of caution to anyone to whom it may be applicable - some people tend to script their experience when they read so much theory, so be cautious)

The sense I get from reading your posts is that you are highly motivated, one might say, driven, to explain your recent experiences within a concise and unequivocal framework. I also sense a great deal of frustration and exasperation when readers either do not understand or disagree with your description of the experiences or the framework.

This looks like the dukkha of not getting what you want or being with what you do not want. This is handy because it gives us something to work with. You could describe how you experience this (is it, in fact, dukkha? what does it feel like? how do you know it?) and how that experience is different from your experience of similar things before you started meditating? Then we could work backward and see how those changes fit with the practices and attainments you have described. 

This may sound basic but, if your intention is to teach, then basic can often be helpful. 

Adi sorry to keep referencing the questions you asked but I thought they were really very good questions and I think answering them would go a long way toward proving OP's case. 

Specifically, I can not imagine attaining paths and not being able to, not being thrilled to, discuss the changes in worldview.

Path by path these subtle changes in how we construct a worldview and understand our selves are some of the most significant and positive changes someone can experience.

They also tend to be the area where our route dependence on technical communication can fall away and deep personal, lived experience of a more awake and engaged life can be shared. 

There has been a flat dismissal of that question where I would expect to see some compelling personal anecdotes. Particularly if one has third path, as you claim, there's a lot of stuff you can get into around the lived experience of rebirth moment to moment that's very obvious from that path onward. 

Also simple things like....
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How did it change your relationship to Buddhism, how did it change your relationship to friends and family, how did it change your relationship to and experience of trauma or challenging situations? 

Most importantly how did it change your relationship to suffering? 

Paraphrase "I felt better but it didn't really last" 

That's not a path experience. its certainly not stream entry. You say your experience played out identically to, for example,.Daniel Ingram yet Daniel has spent huge amounts of time laying out the idiosyncracies of his experience of stream entry and the life events that surrounded it. 

We don't necessarily expect novels from people it just seems a bit weird when there's no personal anecdotes. I would expect stream entry is one of the most significant life events for the people who get to experience it. 

Getting third path was so profound for me. I had spent so many years bound up in uncontrollable, suffocating neurosis that third path finally gave me space to breath, to explore the world, to engage with people without the anxieties and mood swings that had plagued me.

If you want to participate here. You should keep a log and read the other logs here. That's kind of how we do things. I think it would give you a great feel for how this stuff can be communicated more authentically. 

Hi Andrew,

This thread has gotten so heated that I am almost afraid to respond to you :-)

Anyway, you wrote (in relation to jhanas):

"I have not tried them, no. I simply don't have interest and don't see the point at the moment. Though I have no doubt they exist so I'll definitely try them in the future. 

The one thing that confused me when I first started reading about this is that it made absolutely no sense why "concentration practice" (jhana) and "insight practice" (meditation) are considered "two sides of the same coin".  It turned out that they do, in fact, have nothing to do with each other and are just grouped arbitrarily. Just like the millions of other things in Buddhism that are just grouped arbitrarily with each other for no reason other than because the Buddha said so, and then people just believe it like a religion because a lot of it is religious."

You have put your finger on a very important topic here.  The word "concentration" when applied to meditation can be understood in a few different ways. Unfortunately it generally is interpreted as "one pointed concentration".  This is where you block everything from your awareness and just concentrate on your meditation object. This does work to get into the jhanas but unfortunately it doesn't progress your meditation because you are only repressing the hindrances that come up and not actually dealing with them. There is therefore no insight occurring and the hindrances eventually come back with added force. The TWIM (Tranquil Wisdom Insight Meditation) approach is to use the brahmaviharas (starting with metta) to attain a spacious expansive awareness. Then, instead of repressing the hindrances (which are basically anything that takes your attention away from the metta that is the object of your meditation) you release and relax them using the 6r steps and then return to the metta. I find that this is a very fast and effective way of getting to the higher jhanas and you learn to drop the ego or sense of self to progress further up the jhanas.  

This kind of concentration which involves a very spacious awareness is called "collectedness" in TWIM to distinguish it from one-pointed concentration.

I shall refrain from commenting on most of the other issues raised in this thread but I will say that keeping a log is not something that suits everyone.  TWIM does seem to result in a very different state of mind than the mindstate that results from the noting practice that is prevalent on this forum.  

With TWIM, the mind generally becomes a lot quieter, so there really isn't a lot to log about, and much of the debate that occurs here begins to seem rather pointless!

Conal

Seeing so much clingung/hatred/delusion from people who claim to have attained at least 3rd Path, I am happy to not even know what "path" really means.

seeing "poisons" spill on the page/screen encourages me to stay away from all "paths".

Andrew, if it is something that you consider worth answering: did you find God somewhere on the "paths"?

Andrew, I appreciate your fervor in posting all this.  And as someone who has started my fair share of these sorts of threads, I don't doubt that your quick and significant meditative progression is possible, but I also know that attempting to share it on the interwebs in "one guide to rule them all" form is generally a losing battle. 

Pushback and questioning is (of course) to be expected, and unless you are possessed of significant grace and tact, flaming dumpster fire threads as ^^ are the inevitable result.  Honestly, gaining insight is one thing, and being able to unpack it in a way that can be effectively communicated is a whole 'nother.

A general tip: even if your experience seemingly perfectly matches descriptions in MCTB or other dharma teachings, this effectively tells us very little unless we all have blanket trust in such a standardized system of progression.  Same goes for anyone using "Path" terminology. 

I used to think these things were all self-explanatory and set in stone as universal linear stages, but over time I have come to realize that god knows what half the people on the internet describing 1st or 2nd or 3rd or 4th path or the Jhanas (God forbid) are even talking about.  Probably mainly just random and diverse things in their variable individual experiences.  I'm sure commonalities exist, but (possible DhO heresy alert) our individual paths and practices are probably often too idiosyncratic to make much broader meaningful cohesive sense of.

So instead of simply positing "I have achieved thus and such stage, here's how it all lines up" it is perhaps more useful and functional to describe your progression in practice and experience in relatively detailed terms, give your personal interpretation, and then don't be too offended when other people chime in with their two cents.  It may seem obnoxious, they may be getting you wrong, but that's life.  The real fruits of the path are for yourself, and what others make of your experiences is a crapshoot (although ideally you are able to share in a skillful enough way to benefit and inspire others on the path, etc)..  /end rambling.

Let's look from 30,000 feet at the playing out of 100 individual practices in the Mahasi/MCTB style. Many will fit neatly and easily into the categories folks here know so well - states, stages, paths, specific insights, and all those familiar things. As we get closer to the details, descending to 10,000 feet, or to 5,000 feet, or to 1,000 feet, details will begin to emerge, and the variance between all 100 practices will expand until they no longer resemble each other quite as well, if at all.

The categorizing we do is both accurate and not accurate, depending on how we look at a practice arc.

Perspective.

BTW - I don't think this topic is a dumpster fire at all. It's interesting and educational to hear from so many people—bows to Andrew for having the courage to start it.

I also don't think it's a dumpster fire. Nor do I think I was as poisonous or as ad hominem as I was made out given that this conversation had context in a number of other threads where the politeness of myself and others was largely ignored. 

It's actually ok to show up at the DhO claiming all kinds of shit. It's ok to show up and be a flaming mess of nonsense. I did and it was one of the best things I ever did but, understand, I wasn't writing guides on how to attain 4th path. When I was asked questions or offered practices I invested significant amounts of time into answering them and investigating them. I wanted, most of all, to come to some kind of mutual understanding about what the fuck was going on in my psyche. 

Andrew what your write ups showed me was that you seem to have some basic stage knowledge and no path knowledge. Paths come with, often fairly radical experiences of, the reduction of suffering. Lasting change and I think for a lot of us that change is due to a transformation of one's worldview. The fact that you weren't really willing or frankly interested in talking about either was a massive red flag for me and made me question your motivation for being here at all. 

You have an opportunity to get straight and be real about where your practice is at. I can stay out of that process if you rather but it is an opportunity I hope you take nonetheless. The opportunity provided me by the DhO to be vulnerable and honest about my suffering, to be diligent and committed in my practice and to have a community to support me in that....

It's priceless man and I take it seriously. It sure beats joining a cult. The level of dharma wisdom here is high and much higher that you can easily find most places.

You can clearly meditate. If you are willing to engage in the forum with humility and honesty I think you really could get 4th path, or more importantly, end suffering. 

The most important thing to remember about meditation maps are they are fractal - what looks straightforward has another layer of complexity when you look more closely, which has another layer of complexity when you look more closely, which has another layer of complexity when you look more closely... And because it is a fractal, the language you use to describe the first layer can also apply to the second layer and the third layer...

It can be very difficult to know where you are in the fractal... and let's face of it, all of us want to be deep in the fractal and not on the surface layers, so that tends to skew our self-assessment.

Which is FINE. Pretty much everybody does it. Which is why Daniel's essay on the Isolation of Blowing It is timeless: 

The Isolation of Blowing It - Discussion - www.dharmaoverground.org

On one hand, it can be very disappointing to know that we aren't as far as we originally thought. On the other hand, THIS IS GREAT NEWS because if we have already derived a benefit of getting to where we got, isn't it great news that there is even more benefits to come?

Of course, it's hard to look at it that way at first. 

The major levels that I see time and time again:

The intellectual level, where people can repeat zen stories or maps from MCTB but who don't have a sitting practice or don't sit regularly.

The psychological level, where people can describe how the mind uncovers urges and beliefs, makes connection with primal mind concepts (id, anima/animus, other archetypes)... these folks tend to fetishize psychological insights.

The woo woo level, where people mostly describe energetic experiences and entities... these folks tend to fetishize somatic states and tend to solidify entities rather than doing vipassina on the experience of entities.

FINALLY, we get to your boring vipassina practioner, who actually sits an hour a day and does noting practice and actually goes on multi-day retreats. These folks tend to be humble... sometimes too humble. They also tend to get stuck in equanimity because they don't deconstruct/do vipassina on the experience of being a meditator itself.

Yogi's on the road to second path have their hands full, they're practicing hard.

Yogi's on the way to third path yogis tend to have the snarky attitude of someone who knows they are good... but are suffering. Third path is a kind of dark night of the soul of the four paths...

Yogi's on the way to fourth are frustrated. But usually they are open to advice once you acknowledge how great they are. 

Smart fourth path yogis burn all their meditation books and run away from DhO, never to be heard from again.

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"It is the mark of the mind untrained to take its own processes as valid for all men, and its own judgments for absolute truth."

Aleister Crowley


"Pretty much anybody that I look up to and turn to in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, sociology, politics, climate, biology, the closer they are to experts, the less certain they are of anything. In general, just as an epistemological stance, based on the humility of deep exposure to the complexities, nuances and contradictions.“

Jamie Wheal


"Certitude is seized by some minds, not because there is any philosophical justification for it, but because such minds have an emotional need for certitude."

Robert Anton Wilson

Shargol,
"Smart fourth path yogis (...) run away from DhO, never to be heard from again.
​​​​​​​ "

Yes?

Well, 
first let me tell you that I don't know if that remark was in jest ir in earnest. Also, I don't know if you yourself are 4th path or still aspiring. And in one case, you're 4th path and regret somehow being still here or you're not 4th path and just waiting to be there and leave.

then,
if they were here to begin with, they probably received help from the community.
wouldn't it be nice if they stay & give back.

there is also the bodhisattva ideal that I suppose many 4th people would like to give at least lip service to.

there is also that compassion thing that 4th path people are supposed to gather along the path.

these and similar considerations would weigh in favor of someone here attaining 4th path to stay.

finally, let me say that I don't know how many other people here are already 4th path and what makes them stay or how many did in fact leave upon being 4th path.

there is also the case of Daniel who is a self declared 4th path. Certainly he doesn't seem to get much involved in the discussions although he still posts from time to time. I certainly don't know how much of his lack of involvement is the result of him being 4th path and how much simply results from not having enough time. I certainly do remember a time when he was much more present in the forum and he in fact got in quite a few heated debates. Were you here before the schism that saw Kenneth Folk leave for good?

finally let me tell you that I don't "believe" in the "paths" story, whether there are four of them or twelve. I also don't believe in the "cessation" thing or more accurately no-thing. I also didn't find the 3 characteristics, that Daniel makes central to his way, very helpful. 
What i found helpful after a very long errance is the importance of the 3 poisons and very curiously that they are always already here because they are properties of clear cognizance. I posted something to this effect here quite some time ago and Daniel, if I didn't misconstrue his very concise answer, concurred. He also pointed a way to a practice that I still follow the gist of which is: indeed these are properties of clear congnizance that we don't need to develop, rather what we need to develop is an appreciation of this knowledge.

​​​​​​​thoughts?

There can be a pull toward silence. Words and concepts all start to seem false, like endless arrows fired at a target that continuously miss the bullseye. Even Shakyamuni Buddha dwelled in silence for a couple of weeks before he began to teach. But I suppose inevitably one re-engages, because it comes naturally, and one lets go of contrived (karma-creating) behavior. The discussion on here, however limited by anonymity and the text-based format, is still more substantive than I've had at any in-person dharma meetup. I'm inclined to believe these internet forums can have some utility, because they've had for me, especially in my early years of practice.

My thought, since you asked for thoughts Todo, is that you took shargrol's joke (obvious joke - note the smileys) too seriously.

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Chris, 
mea culpa, I seem to take jokes more seriously than warranted. I find myself thinking oftentimes that I might be somewhere on the autism spectrum.

Thanking you, I am nevertheless, still interested in your, Shargol's & others thoughts on the (core) issue (jokes aside).

Chris gets my sense of humor. Translation: I'm either not fourth path or not smart enough to leave... perhaps both, who knows? 

Todo, really it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks or says or writes or maps...  we have our own personal experience and our own sense of faith or doubt or both in terms of what is possible through meditation... but no matter what we think or believe it's just a thought or belief unless we practice. 

Everything in the medtiation world seemed pretty suspect to me --- either too religious or too culty. I had done some meditation, 30 minutes here and there, but it didn't seem to lead anywhere. I liked the ideas of dzogchen because I just needed to let the mind self-liberate... but unfortunately, if I was honest with myself, my mind still felt like a prison -- either too boring or too scary a prison But I really didn't know what to do.

For me, it was reading MCTB that made all the variety of meditation concepts/maps come together coherently. (I had been "seeking" for a couple decades and had explored just about everything else available at the time.) But most of all, MCTB got into my head that staying with >sensations< was the way to make progess, staying with the body sensations as close to continuously as possible and noting emotions and thoughts when they got so strong to block out sensations. Very simple, but I could tell this was the practice for me. Feel body sensations directly and continuously and if I got distracted by an emotion I would name the emotion and if I got distracted by a thought-loop I would name the thought-loop. Nothing got in the way of practicing, because any emotion or thought that got in the way would be named and then these emotions or thoughts were no longer distractions -- they were  fuel for practice. 

I went on a seven day retreat at IMS and simply did this practice and on day six or so entered into a very deep concentration state --- and that's what made me convinced that there was something to all of this. It wasn't just philosophy or psychology.

Then the rest was just practicing regularly, talking with teachers/meditation friends, and going on retreats. 

Shargol,
"(...) staying with >sensations< was the way to make progess, staying with the body sensations as close to continuously as possible (...)"

This totally resonates with me.
I remember very well the day I stumbled upon the same idea expressed by Shinzen Young (another of my spiritual heroes with Daniel). In my memory it's formulated as "continuous contact (with reality) with zero interference (resistance, friction)". I am not sure at this point of his exact wording, this was likely some two decades ago, but this is one of my mantras to this day.

Except, from the perspective of Clear Cognizance, all sensations are welcomed without any interference of any kind. This is always already the case. It's effortless. There is no need for anyone to do anything.

As I see it, and I may have gotten you wrong, your perspective is that the practice is to try to stick with sensations while my current perspective is that the practice is to recognize/remember that sensations are always already welcomed unconditionally.

I see it a lot on this forum and in teachings and books of well respected spiritual leaders expressed in different ways like:
Stay more in the present moment,
Let go of attachment,
Be more mindful,
And in your case: stay with the sensations and label emotions.

My take, and I may possibly be expressing it clumsily, is that all this is besides the point. When Clear Cognizance is "realized" one knows that there is no attachment, no resistance, no past, no future, no self, etc.
The practice then becomes to appreciate this reality more and more in one's life in all its its aspects. This is obviously easiest when alone and meditating.

This certainly resonates more with Mahamudra, Dzogchen, Zen, Advaita and even Sufism, much less with other schools.

Makes sense ?

Todo

​​​​​​​You are a good guy no doubt. Do you have a practice?

Thank you for the kind word.Adi Vader,

before answering your questions would it be asking too much of you, could you look at some of my posting on this forum and particularly this thread: https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/28155397
then if you have have something more specific I would be more than glad to oblige.

If that was asking too much of you or that I am being presumptuous that you have either the time or the inclination to read all that BS, my short answer would be that after decades of Seeking that took me from psychology (Jung) to Sufism (Shams Tabriz) and many more roads my current situation is that "I am being meditated" most of the time, including during light sleep and dreams although not during deep sleep. 

 Although the tread is some months old, I wanted to chip in after that partly heated debate.

I think I can understand the viewpoints and basic motivations of both sides, as also others in this thread have described it already:

On the one hand (regularly) some new guy shows up and claims attainments, ideally achieved in no time with hardly effort or a lean method and often hardly any theory overview. Graciously want to tell their lean techniques with individual method hacks, so also others can profit. Also perhaps the motive is, that there are hardly any other people/forums with whom you can meaningful share the believe in your attainments, and it is still a deep routed human trait to get in touch with others, even when you are quite (or even fully?) enlightened. 
But gets quickly frustrated that, instead of curiosity and perhaps even gratitude, people here treat you with suspicion and demand deliverance of many data points as evidence (as it is impossible to deliver proof, only circumstantial evidence by a unique description of a lot of details on the path). Nonetheless, anyone that says "I already made it" (because they pretend, believe or maybe even are) has in any case low motivation to do so: because they real deal people don't need anything of this community, only the fraudsters and deluded might want some approval and/or admiration, that they understand quickly they will not receive, and therefore are also not delivering in depth details. Because retreat from the forum could have any of the motives above, that makes many cases stays open.

On the other hand the long term members, that, often for some years and very diligently, worked hard on their path, have seen a lot around, probably tried out many approaches and know a lot of details. Also, probably a bit unbalanced towards discussion and theory than practice, else why should they hang out here? The possibility of some "lucky child" showing up, not decent and thankful for their grace, but in an arrogant manner, ignorant of their talent and luck claiming everybody just have to follow their random path, or even that all other paths and theory was "bullshit" (sic), is obviously a highly emotional conflicting matter for them. Also, there is the righteous cause, that one wants to keep the reputation of this forum up, and avoid to ennoble (but try hard to disenchant) maniacs and fraudsters, before they might harm people, the forum, or even the whole endeavor of this "secular enlightenment" approach.

If this "testing" makes sense or not, is a general debate, for that I outlined my plea in a separate thread in hopefully the correct category: 
https://www.dharmaoverground.org/de/discussion/-/message_boards/message/34275924

But back to this thread: Exactly that situation seems to be the case here, with you/Andrew:
At least for me it fits to your confusion about what state-details during your path the others want to test you with, when your main point is that you claim you skipped those stages entirely. And it makes sense that from your understanding, you just wanted to share your experience and methodological recommendation, but do not need any further help or even bother to be tested and maybe awarded as legit.

I find the idea just fascinating - and do have probably too high hopes - that someone could just level up with a radically reduced technique on top of basic access concentration, stoically speed-running the insight-paths by staying completely out of jhanas and all other "distractions". Not likely, but impossible?

As I understood from the descriptions, you/Andrew adjusted the speed of breathing moment to moment in order to hold the right balance to anchor with the breath a kind of empty awareness/mindfulness (empty because no clear view on or even investigation of the anchor breath or whatsoever)?
Because the terminology and practical details are not clear to me, I asked some questions in more depth in your purely technical thread and would be very thankful for more guidance:
https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/32298307