Hi everyone,

A few years ago I had my first MDMA-therapy session for CPTSD. Everything was perfectly satisfactory, I was home in the most profound way, I felt I would be ok deep inside even if everyone I love died, I was ok without the need to do or be anything, I had infinite compassion for all the hurt in the world and people hurting others, the trees around me were beautiful, my mind wasn't craving or avoiding things (after the session I started feeling like all the normal craving and avoidance was horrible, then went through a period of deep despair about it being unescapable). After that I did 20 more sessions over 3 years; each session sinking into a different fear and watching it dissolve and never return. At that point I realized any time I felt some sort of trauma reactivity I could dissolve it just be recalling the feeling from my first session and holding it in my mind while it creates dissonance (technically prediction error) with the trauma reaction. Over the following year I did that for about 1000 hours. Then a week ago I was doing that like normal when my mind suddenly shifted into what felt like a less intense version of my original MDMA experience. It's waxed and waned with my energy levels and level of emotional activation I'm feeling, but a significant baseline is always present. It's a lot easier for me to introspect (my emotions often feel more in my body and not-me) and express present curiosity toward other's in a kind and non-judgmental way now that I'm not getting caught up in my stuff all the time. Things are satisfactory. All my psychological problems are still there and I'm still working on dissolving them, but I feel like I'm a step back and can see them more clearly for what they are. I'm home (though there is still significant amounts of self-dissonance which I don't like).

In hindsight I suspect my MDMA experience was nondualism, and my dissolving practice was 1) reinforcing nondualist awareness and 2) dissolving a wide variety of fears and depression about the nature of existence. I had some sense that I might be in the stages and going through an existential crisis, but I was mostly focused on unlearning my debilitating trauma reactions. I've read some of the maps and think I could be at equinimity, but I wasn't following any established practice that I'm aware of. The maps seem focused on traditional concentration and insight practices and I've always had a hard time applying them to my experience. Those practices are also not available to me at my current levels of depression.

There's a bunch more details that I can't think of at the moment and aren't sure are necessary. I thought I'd post my experience in case anyone has advice or comments they feel called to give. It's a bit hard to go through this without any teachers, a practice community, or maps and guides that make sense to me. I made one previous post where I was presumably somewhere in the Dark Nights.

Mark

Weird, I'm getting deja vu writing this... huh.

Anyway, I just wanted to mention that I think you're right that states that are free from problematic worldviews and trauma have a spiritual quality to them. That frictionless feeling feels very nondual-ish for sure. 

But I also wanted to throw out the idea that "basic human sanity" can also be seen as the point of spiritual practices. Humans have a funny way of holding on to problems and creating elaborate spiritual solutions... but in the end, most practioners realize that most of the path is 1) accepting the actual experience they are having, 2) letting that experience be as it is when it arises, and 3) letting it go when it naturally goes without clinging to old experiences, problems, or views.

A basically sane human life will still have problems, but not the constant mood that's a blend of dread and depression... Living a life where there isn't a constant mood of "there is a problem" feels a bit like heaven or nirvana or nonduality.

Hope you continue to work with professionals on the CPSTD as appropriate. Just on a hunch, you might like this idea: Embracing Emotions as the Path - Aro gTér Lineage

(I like this teaching/idea but I should say that I'm not endorsing the tradition. I'm not a member or supporter.)

One caution: the world of buddhism, nonduality, spirituality is such a trap. People will try to sell you the right philosophy, practice, tradition, cult, etc. etc. etc.  But all they are doing is helping you find the basic sanity you have already but which might be covered up by a lot of problems/trauma. So always be cautious about the potential co-dependency of this stuff.  Of course the world of psychology can be like that too. It can be a tricky world to navigate.

(If your life is getting better and you are becoming more independent and self-sufficient, great! That's good stuff. But if you are becoming more timid and codependent on a practice or tradition --- and especially if they want your time, money, skills, etc., then get out and stay away. Unfortunately, the spiritual world kind of preys on people by initially helping them, but then making them weaker and dependent. )


On a happy note, I'm glad you're doing better!   May you continue to develop insights into your experience and become more resilient and a benefit to yourself and others!!

Thanks. I think you feel Deja vu because you also replied to my previous post.&nbsp;<br /><br />I think I'm pretty resistant against getting dependent on some group. One of the reasons that hasn't happened so far is I find 98% of the spirituality scene to be caught up in a lot of unpleasant and distracting rituals/ego/implausible beliefs and worldviews that I have a lot of skepticism about.&nbsp;<br /><br />All my trauma is actually still there, it's just less "me". It's more like feelings in the body now.&nbsp;

Aha! Okay, and I even recommended the 5 elements last time, too.

Any particular buddhist stuff that has proven to be useful over the last few months? Or has it mostly been a secular kind of dissolving practice?

The MCTB maps help a little bit. But my practice is 100% my invented dissolving technique. Though I suspect people with nondual experiences also do it but I haven’t heard about it or it goes by a different name. Or people are doing it without calling it anything. I figured it out by trying Coherence Therapy on myself, and of course chose the MDMA/nondual experience as my juxtaposition. 

MDMA is a very powerful tool that is currently being explored by the therapeutic community. So I've gone ahead and generated a ChatGPT essay to explore that aspect of it as spiritual practice.

The Therapeutic Value of MDMA in Trauma Processing

MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine) has emerged as a groundbreaking therapeutic tool, particularly for individuals suffering from severe trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) has been at the forefront of this research, spearheading a series of clinical trials to evaluate MDMA's efficacy and safety in therapy. As these studies progress, they are shedding light on the transformative potential of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy.
The Nature of Trauma and Its Challenges

Trauma can deeply embed itself in the psyche, creating rigid mental and emotional patterns that resist traditional therapeutic interventions. Individuals with PTSD often experience symptoms such as hyperarousal, emotional numbing, and intrusive memories, which can disrupt daily life and relationships. Many therapies, including cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and exposure therapy, prove effective for some but fall short for others, especially those with treatment-resistant PTSD.

MDMA: A Unique Pharmacological Ally

MDMA stands apart from traditional pharmacological treatments for trauma. As a psychoactive compound, it fosters a heightened state of empathy, openness, and emotional connectivity while reducing fear responses in the brain’s amygdala. This unique combination allows individuals to revisit traumatic memories in a safe and constructive manner, without becoming overwhelmed by fear or emotional distress.

Under the influence of MDMA, patients often report experiencing a deep sense of self-compassion, which facilitates the processing of painful memories. Unlike medications that aim to suppress symptoms, MDMA works synergistically with therapy to address the root causes of trauma.

MAPS and Stage 3 Clinical Trials

The nonprofit organization MAPS has been instrumental in advancing MDMA-assisted therapy. Since its founding in 1986, MAPS has championed rigorous scientific research to establish the therapeutic potential of psychedelics. Its Phase 3 clinical trials, conducted under FDA oversight, mark a critical step toward potential approval of MDMA as a prescription treatment for PTSD.

The results from these trials have been promising. A 2021 study published in Nature Medicine reported that 67% of participants who received MDMA-assisted therapy no longer met the diagnostic criteria for PTSD after the trial, compared to 32% in the placebo group. These outcomes are particularly notable given that the participants had severe, long-standing PTSD and had not responded to other treatments.

Trauma Processing in MDMA-Assisted Therapy

MDMA creates an optimal psychological environment for trauma processing. By diminishing fear and enhancing trust, the compound allows patients to confront and reframe traumatic experiences. Therapists guide patients through this journey, encouraging exploration and integration of their emotions and memories. This process can lead to profound insights, emotional release, and a renewed sense of agency.

For many, MDMA-assisted therapy represents a turning point, enabling healing that felt inaccessible through traditional methods. The experience often catalyzes shifts in self-perception, interpersonal relationships, and life outlook, providing a foundation for long-term recovery.
Future Directions and Ethical Considerations

As MAPS continues to publish compelling evidence, MDMA-assisted therapy is poised to revolutionize the treatment of PTSD and related conditions. However, ethical considerations remain crucial. The therapy requires skilled facilitators to ensure safety, and accessibility must be prioritized to prevent disparities in treatment availability.

Conclusion

The therapeutic value of MDMA lies in its ability to unlock the human capacity for healing, particularly in those burdened by severe trauma. With MAPS’ rigorous research and the success of Phase 3 trials, MDMA-assisted therapy may soon become a standard treatment, offering hope to countless individuals worldwide. Beyond its clinical potential, this approach underscores the importance of integrating science, compassion, and innovation in addressing humanity’s most profound psychological wounds.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01336-3

And this is worth repeating!

I suspected you were a robot posting AI spam and tried to report you, but there appears to be no reporting functionality. On the chance that you are a human, please stop spamming my post with AI content (the content of which I am already deeply familiar with and is irrelevant to my post). 

You might be familiar with a lot of subtleties of MDMA, but I'm trying to leave resources here for others who are considering their options and find this thread.

Ah ok. Thanks for wishing me well then! And I hope I can be more of service to others too. 

In case anyone else is looking for info on MDMA therapy, here is a manual my coauthor and I are writing on the topic: "Open MDMA: A Broad Narrative Review and Practical
Guide for the Therapeutic use of MDMA" I think we provide a good evidence based assessment of risks, benefits, and mechanisms.  https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/aps5g

oh this is super cool. Thanks for doing this! I bet @oliviers would enjoy taking a look at this!

I've only done MDMA once, about a year and a half ago, but it was a pretty hefty dose, under the guidance of a pair of meditation-oriented therapists. It precipitated an event the next morning that a year and a half later I'm still fairly confident was stream entry.

I'm not sure I know what people mean by non duality. I get the concept, and I've been in states that maybe correspond, but I have no confidence that I've either had or correctly understood the experience other people label this way. That said, most of what you describe in the first post sounds very familiar.

The way it felt to me was, the MDMA experience gave me the confidence to finally surrender the self as an entity that required protection and defense. It sounds like I had only a fraction of the trauma you've been dealing with, but there was still a hefty dose of fear, anxiety and shame, rooted in loneliness and helplessness. So much constant effort, poured over the course of years into fruitless defensive exercises variations of deception (self- and other-) and play-acting.

The MDMA experience was I think pretty textbook: a feeling of being loved and secure, and knowing that all was well. The next morning a wall broke, and I melted into this flood of relief and well-being.

Maybe it wasn't stream entry, but instead a massive breakthrough on pre-meditative emotional issues, but if so I'll take it (and hey, that's one bonus life-changing event, I've still got four more in the hopper). But experiences since then seem to line up pretty well with the diagnostics, so I'm still in the 70%+ confident territory.

Is that what people call non-duality? I'm not sure.

I fee similarly in that I also wonder whether I'm in Equanimity or if I just had some major shift in trauma reaction, but I think the the diagnostics line up better woth the former. They're also the same underlying mechanism though: shifts in important priors in our internal predictive model. 

Had you had a long or strong meditation practice prior to that trip/stream entry?

At that point I'd been meditating seriously for about five years. 45 minutes or an hour a half a day, no retreats. I'd been in meditation-flavored therapy for a couple of years, ostensibly for alcoholism but it was very based in mindfulness. I'd done a lot of sitting in preparation for the trip, and arrived feeling sort of "meditatively pregnant", like I was dragging around this gently humming cloud of presence. I was ready to pop! We started things off with a fair amount of ritual this and that, which part of my mind insisted on thinking was corny, but it really did help to further that sensation of gathering and precipitation. When the MDMA kicked in I was very, very ready for a deep plunge.

The next morning when I was half awake, I reviewed everything I'd gone through the day before, and then boom, tears and surrender. I don't remember one way or other whether there was a cessation, which contributes to the uncertainty about what this actually was. In general I've had a hard time lining my experiences up with the maps. I had a very dramatic, very identifiable A&P event in my late teens, but everything afterwards seems to have been a bit of this, bit of that.

I didn’t have any regular practice prior to that initial trip (which I think was A&P for me, though there might have been other A&P-ish events earlier in life too). I had done a week-long retreat years before but didn’t keep up practice afterwards. 

It sounds like you're practicing steadily now, right? Though it sounds like depression is still keeping you from a more by-the-book vipassana practice?

I wish I had more to tell you; I'm pretty muddled myself, at the moment. I'm working off a very vague approach to organizing my practice, where I try to do a mixture of "downward" or releasing practices, which includes bodywork for the release of physical tension, surrender- or acceptance- based shamatha, exhalation, choiceless awareness, etc; and "upward" or gathering practices, higher energy focus, inhalation, vipassana, moment-to-moment filling of the sense perceptions.

"Dissolving" by the sound of it fits the first category, and maybe you're saying that you don't have the energy for the second category. I have this idea that both categories are needed in conjunction in order to get across stream entry. This is raw speculation from someone in the middle of it though, so...

Yep, two hours a day, every day for 14 months now. Maybe emotion-based Vipassana would be a more useful term than dissolving? When I notice some fear, anger, etc. I just bring up my inner well of non-dual awareness to contradict the fear. I sit with the dissonance between the two until the fear dissipates. In that process I've spent a lot of time watching as the fears arise and fade away, feeling how the fear feels in my body, noticing what it's pushing me to do, and how my reactions and beliefs shift when the fear is unlearned. Does that sound like Vipassana to you?

I can do this practice because I'm strongly attached (some part of me thinks it will save me) to it and can do it with almost no effort now (I can actually do it at the same time as, say, watching tv). For Traditional Vipassana I'd have to expend a lot of focus and executive function that I don't really have, or need to spend taking care of day to day things. 

Oh I see, that does make sense. That reminds me of Rob Burbea's Seeing That Frees, which I highly recommend if you haven't read it.

To my mind, you're already doing vipassana. And I'm not sure what your definition of "traditional vipassana" is, but I would be very hesitant to describe any aspect of meditation as requiring an expenditure of executive function. When I don't have the energy to do what I think of as "high energy" practices, it is physical energy I lack.

I could imagine a vipassana practice that starts with your "dissolving" of negative emotions, then bit by bit turns that dissolving power on to other aspects of your thoughts, and your concepts of self. Get to a spot where, for a while at least, there's no active fear or shame in you. Then look at other aspects of your mind, not just the bad feelings, but the ideas of self, any Narrator action going on, your own curiosity, your satisfaction in having dissolved bad emotions, your desire to sit and meditate, your scholarly explorations of MDMA, your expectation that this practice will save you. Each of these things has a flaw, each has its own antidote, or antimatter, where if you find it you can dissolve it, too. Don't just dissolve the bad stuff, dissolve the good stuff, too. And the neither-bad-nor-good stuff.

Assuming that we're describing the same situation, I would think that that practice would be sufficient to "get you there".

Here's where I start hoping Shargrol jumps back in...

I did a practice similar to what your describing a few years before I started doing very serious meditation. I found I could dissolve all these negative emotions and was really mind blown by this, I also noticed some interesting shifts in how I experienced reality but after a few months of it the practice became a bit neurotic and only really served to take me out of a moment in a sort of meta way, it stopped benefitting my life. This practice and a number of others I experimented with over the years really led me toward practicing vipassana because it became so pervasively apparent that I couldn't actually control any of this stuff and that the painful neurosis I was experiencing seemed to be quite tied up in the illusion of control. It was necessary for me to let go of all this meta cognition, through practicing vipassana, such that I could return to a more regular, alive, awake, engaged way of life. 

The difference between a sitting practice and doing something like this throughout the day is in the doing. Vipassana allows one to transcend the doing, to relax beyond the compulsive meta cognitive egoic manipulation of mind activity. The throughout the day type stuff tends to be "let me do this thing such that I can feel this type of way", these are coping mechanisms, can be useful, dependence on them is as neurotic as dependence on anything else. In my experience did not lead to any long term refuction of suffering. 

It might be worthwhile investigating to what extent are these experiences non-dual? Is there really no duality? Or is it just a very pleasurable compelling experience. The insights and approaches to reality that you've derived from it do all sound very typical A&P to me.

Eric Abrahamsen:​​​​​​​
Thanks for the recommendation
I think I hesitated to call it Vipassana because as far as I’m aware I’ve never experienced vibrations or significant imagery or most of the Jhanas. I basically categorized it as “super therapy”.
Also thank you for the meditation suggestions. I still have a lot of intense fear (I highly recommend not acquiring PTSD who’s trigger is the existence of your own body or the existence of an imperfect world ) to unlearn for now but I’m curious if I can turn it toward other things. Though it seem to require a strong negative emotion to activate the process. Curiously though, I often experience the craving of positive experiences as negative enough to focus my practice on. That started with my visceral experience of the Three Characteristics and my revulsion of those in myself.
Bahiya Baby:
The reason I suspect it’s equanimity and not A&P is that I had an A&P a few years ago, went through an evangelical (it will save the world! Everyone needs to do this now!) phase, and despaired a lot about the three characteristics before I entered this recent change. While there is a pleasurable aspect to it like you said, maybe I didn’t mention that I’m still despairing heavily about existence and my psychological problems. They’re two components that are both active.
I’m also lucky in that my practice continues to make me less neurotic and reactive.

It's extremely unlikely someone would get to eq without very committed, regular sitting practice. 

​​​​​​​One can pass through the a&p and into the dark night many times and experience different aspects of each. It's a fluid system, progression isn't fixed. 

​​​​​​​Just from my intuitive understanding of what you are saying there isn't really any EQ data that im seeing here. 

It seems to me that you've already got most of what you need, right here. Jhanas come with shamatha practice, not vipassana, and it wouldn't hurt to do some of that. I would highly recommend metta practice, which would likely do you good in a number of ways.

Otherwise, vipassana is a perfect illustration of how meditative practice can be applied at multiple levels or scales -- from the "gross" (psycho-emotional, conceptual, physical, inter-personal) to the "fine" (meaning subtle, perceptual, neurological, metaphysical, immaterial). Vibrations come from vipassana conducted at a finer level, dissolving sensate perceptions. What you're doing is at a grosser level, dissolving emotions and concepts. In general there's a progression from gross to fine, but it isn't nearly that tidy, and I think you'd be fine with the principle of "dissolve what you've got". So I'd say keep doing what you're doing, with two caveats:

1. I agree with Bahiya Baby that you'd benefit from a little more formality of practice.

2. Lean into the observation that positive can cross over into negative, and vice versa. One of the more enlightening insights from the early stage, in my opinion, is the realization that craving and aversion are really the same thing. Things we feel craving for we grasp and pull closer; things we feel aversion for we grasp and push away. It's the grasping that's the trouble, not the pulling or the pushing. In fact, we are powerless or pull or push! But we cause ourselves a lot of misery in the grasping.

3. [Edit] Oooh, I should absolutely have started with: mental health comes first, don't let anything you do in practice derail your steady progress towards greater mental well-being. If any of it makes you feel shaky, bail early and bail often!

Mark, I have a question for you: why are you trying to map nondual realization and related experiences to the Theravada maps? In my experience, these are two separate and distinct things (this is a gross oversimplification). One can have nondual experience at any time and even be able to call it up at will. Plus, equanimity as an experience is different from nonduality as an experience.

Comments?

FYI - my practice history includes accessing nondual realization and nondual states long before switching to vipassana practice, so I have experience on both sides of the fence, so to speak.

Eric and Bahiya, thank you so much for the comments!

Chris, I made the nondual - maps connection because (here was my train of thought) a) I was unsettled by major and sudden changes to my baseline conscious experience and making sense of it seemed like a good choice. It feels very non-dual to me (self seems diminished, more entranced by surroundings, less reactive, emotions feel less-me and I'm a step back from them
) b)) I had been going through a lot of dark night style emotional material. I had also been doing large amounts of a Vipassana-like practice for a long time c) MCTB's preferred model of awakening is non-duality d) My simplistic understanding of the stages went something like "oh, more nonduality seems like progression according to the non-dual model of the mctb". E) from there, equanimity seemed like a reasonable fit, even though I don't have a great understanding of the maps. 

So TL;DR, I'm trying to make sense of a confusing experience, and some ego is in there too. 

Can you describe the experiences you have that you're calling nondual? 

These fluctuate with my level of exhaustion and emotional activation and are never 100%, but there’s a significant baseline always present: A sense of spaciousness. Things are just as they are without layers of judgement clouding things so much. It’s easy to get engrossed in (become one with?) the play of light and shadow on leaves, textures, etc. though I can  put my attention to tasks as well as I used to. I’m less caught up in my reaction and judgements; it’s far easier to sit down and curiously ask someone about how they feel and what they believe on topics that would normally cause a lot of reactivity. Most of my psychological problems are still around, and I notice those fears and angers, but they’re less engrossing. My emotions seem less “me” and more like sensations in my body, unless they’re strong or I’m exhausted, though I can still stay present with and dissolve them when I want. Sometimes it’s easier to notice the chain of activations triggered by something (I notice something, then there is some judgement, then there is a judgement about the judgement, and so on). It’s easy to gaze at photos of people’s faces for a while and feel fondness. I’m ruminating less.

This has been going on for 10 days now without any effort to maintain it other than my usual practice that I’ve previously described. In this period there was span of a few hours one day when these feelings intensified and I felt a somewhat disoriented. It felt exactly like how I felt on MDMA, minus the stimulant effect. I’m not sure why that appeared and then disappeared.

My partner confirmed that I’m more present, so my assessment seems accurate on at least part of this.

What is the feeling of time and causation you have? Where do the phenomena you experience come from? Is there an entity that observes all of this?

 
I have a sense that the past and future "are" in the same way that the present "is" (sorry, the words I know don't seem to suffice).

I feel uncertain on what the observer is. Sometimes I feel like the statement "there is awareness" describes things best, without trying to attribute a self to some part of the process or observer.  I'm noticing confusion as to why "I" am in this brain rather than in everything.

Causation is like external events other people all flowing together in the dance of reality (sometimes this feels nice, sometimes disturbing). My body and thoughts are partly in that dance too, but it's not as easy to see that as it is to see that other people in it. Sometimes I can see that my thoughts are just part of the ongoing machinery of my mind, which isn't me.

Sometimes I try to try to figure out metaphysics, but that mostly leads to agnosticism, though I strongly lean toward non-physicalism.

It's still pretty easy and frequent to get caught up back in me and worry and craving and identification with strong feelings.
 

Congrats!

My experiences with nonduality have led me to describe everything as "IS." Seeing through the nondual lens eliminates time and causality and presents the world as endlessly precious and beautiful, illuminated by something that is undefinably pristine. I believe some people call this Awareness. At first this experience would show up on its own but it became a view I could drop into at will. Stillness and clarity, undisturbed by ownership or agency, all things springing from who knows where.

Based on your descriptions, that's what I suspect you are getting into. It's likely not Theravada-like equanimity, but some of the same attributes overlap. Your practices seem to aim at experiencing nonduality instead of investigating the arising and passing of your experiences on a moment-to-moment basis.

JMHO, of course.

Thanks!

I've been assuming/hoping that this nonduality will keep persisting and deepen as I continue my practice, but I don't really know if it will. Deepening sounds great to me because the reduction of self has reduced both suffering and neuroticism. It would be nice if I keep doing my practice my self will keep diminishing and I'll keep getting less caught up in suffering and become even less neurotic. 

Even if the maps don't line up with my experiences I'd like to still make progress. 

Mark, I supplemented my practice with vipassana. I would argue that nondual and vipassana work well together to get where you want to be, as stated in your last comment.

+1 on the value of presence/non-duality practice plus investigation/vipassana practice. Vipassana can be really well suited for this kind of situation:



But obviously vipassana is one of those life-long practices, and definitely not risk free, so definitely approach it cautiously and consider other more direct approaches (various psychological therapies, etc.) before deciding to go that route.

Shagrol:

I know what you mean about Vipassana having risks. I was staring at the new year's bonfire tonight in my usual non-dual state and noticed discomfort about the transitory nature of the log burning up. Then I realized the discomfort was because my body is like the log. Then I sat with that dissonance until it unfolded more in my mind. Now I'm somewhat overwhelmed and feel like reality/perception are too intense until I integrate that information, which luckily my regular practice has been good for. I feel like I can't turn off the part of my mind that makes these kind of connections. It just goes on and on doing this. 

It's good that you are aware/cautious. Many people mistake re-traumatizing themselves through meditation (or drugs or risk taking) with spiritual growth. The most important thing is to be honest about what level of challenge leads to growth and what level of challenge is simply too much... and to be honest if something is helps, stagnates, or makes things worse.

That's why therapies can be a really good foundation for future meditation work or in parallel with meditation. It's good to have someone experienced with helping someone grow more resilient, especially when still healing.

A while ago I found this book that gives a very very good overview of the course of treatment for PTSD. I really liked how it pulled together a bunch of different treatment modailities and sequenced them in a way seemed really smart, including initially understanding trauma, then various treatments, then practices for long term growth.  https://www.amazon.com/Complex-PTSD-Workbook-Mind-Body-Regaining/dp/1623158249

By the way, this experience reminds me of a Dogen quote: 
Firewood becomes ash, and it does not become firewood again. Yet, do not suppose that the ash is future and the firewood past. You should understand that firewood abides in the phenomenal expression of firewood, which fully includes past and future and is independent of past and future. Ash abides in the phenomenal expression of ash, which fully includes future and past.

My reading of this is that it's sort of a reminder that unhelpful human worries are always in time, worrying about the future like firewood that is firewood worrying about becoming ash, like an alive human worrying about death while they are still alive. 


That all said, one of the hardest things about healing trauma as well as getting on the path of non-traumatic meditation is that there are some hard truths that we need to be able to hold... this is sort of the "getting real" phase when need to make changes in what we're doing to better take responsibility for being good to ourself in whatever form is required. Usually it means a bit more discipline and maturity and getting feedback from others --- all the stuff most of us would rather not do, at least speaking for myself!

I know you keep recommending therapy. The reason I'm not in it is twofold: I already tried that quite a lot in the past and never got anywhere. Then I developed my current practice, which worked wonderfully and continues to resolve my issues (I'm not done because I just started with like, 1000 issues). All effective psychotherapy is fundamentally a process of memory reconsolidation (the other process, fear extinction, produces more fragile results). In therapy you have to go through a lot of overhead where the therapist attunes to you, you find a piece of contradictory knowledge together that falsifies the target emotional learning, and then the therapists guides you in creating a juxtaposition. My process cuts to that fundamental juxtaposition process directly. Nondualness contradicts all maladaptive learnings; I don't have to search around for specific contradictory knowledge, find a therapist who can attune to me, figure out what the target learning is before I start, etc. 

This book describes the memory reconsolidation process at theoretical and practical levels. I corresponded with the author about my practice and he confirmed that I was doing it the right way and was doing it more effectively than can happen in a therapy office. 
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/i9xyZBS3qzA8nFXNQ/book-summary-unlocking-the-emotional-brain

I think my challenge is more of: With persistent nondualness and Vipassana that seems to run on its own outside of my control, I don't really have a "slow down" or "pause" button on the whole process. Maybe it will turn out ok, but I don't know. 

I don't view the fire-log-self example as retraumatizing. It seems like an important insight to internalize so that I don't spend the rest of my life excessively worrying about dying :-). And the realization and letting go of my view of myself as permanent is difficult but necessary process to go though. 

(We're sort of typing our replies at the same time, so there will probably a disruption in the space time continuum )


Well, I would argue that the number one way to find how to slow down is to... work with someone who knows this territory and can give good advice on how to slow down. There are plenty of teachers these days that have both meditation practice and therapy services.

Unfortunately, this board is full of people who have broken themselves by misguided practice and then are desparate for help while also being paranoid about listening to advice. It's a big mess. It's so much better to build your support network BEFORE you run into challenging situations. If you don't have time to do it now, how are you going to find time to do it later when things are messed up?

​​​​​​​Spoiler alert: meditation practice always gets messed up.

I want to take a moment to agree wholeheartedly with shargrol here.

We humans are really, really good at fooling ourselves into thinking what we're doing is absolutely right. It's clearly better to have some wise, honest counsel available to help guide our human folly.

Advice taken; I will find a teacher :-)