Anyone come across a treatment, traditional or modern, of the stages of insight applied to the relinquishment/release of a specific chain of reaction? For instance, for this intellectual conditioning I've been working with, I just got mind and body, had a nice little A&P where the intellectual activity became an unprivileged component of full-sense awareness for a little while, and then the identification with the performance of the intellectual task took over again, and I experienced Fear.

Did you experience Fear after studying in a way which I had suggested?

Yes. The Bahiya practice started up out of habit after the identity associated with the intellectual activity dropped away for a while. This wasn't the anxiety from before it was something more primal. I ended the meditation because when I hit a live wire like that there is no point in pressing it, but it is always a good sign

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I had some good results with death meditation and also with Citipati visualization.

fivebells,

outta curiosity, based on the other post you linked, how deeply absorbed into the intellectual activity are you getting? or how much exclusion of "background/other" is there?

kinda going off what aman is talking about... i noticed (way before i ever took on any meditation practice) that i sometimes got so deeply absorbed in an activity that the only thing that would be apparent was the activity itself. like all background noise, anything outside that sphere of activity would not be noticed (or so it seemed). so it was like a contained bubble of just the sensations associated with seeing or processing the task at hand. this much exclusion doesn't really occur anymore, likely as a result of practice and so i can't get very deeply absorbed into one segregated thing much.

what types of activities are you talking about? are these tasks that are enjoyable, not enjoyable, something else? what are the processes associated with it, or learning types & cognitive functions involved? lately i've been trying to look more at sensations along those lines.

Just lately not so much, because I've grown increasingly aware of the anxiety and tension it was producing. I'd been wondering for a while why I always had a headache and my teeth hurt after a long bout of work. Turned out I was clenching my jaw.



Has this had any impact on your creativity and problem solving abilities? I must admit, I strongly identify with these capabilities as I see them in my own life. Surely a big part of the problem.



I think those would be good questions to hold while I do this work. Thanks. These are very simple arithmetic exercises. In the previous thread, I was doing multiplication of three-digit numbers by two-digit numbers. In this thread, it was counting the seconds in an hour. (Though in that case, I stopped after 12 minutes when I hit Fear.)

Enjoyable/not enjoyable is complicated. Using Math/programming to help someone solve a problem is still a joy, though at the same time the anxiety about making a mistake or running up against something I don't understand and looking like an idiot is extremely uncomfortable.

There's a broad range of processes involved. Many of them run out of habit for no good reason at odd times. For the counting, it's extremely simple of course. I am thinking I should start with something so simple that I can't get caught up in the intellectual content, then expanding the repertoire gradually as my concentration in this domain improves.

Yea, totally. With heavily mental exercises when there isn't good attentiveness, there is a ton of strain that gets put on the muscles in the face. Like you actually strain your face, scrunch it up in all sorts of ways in an attempt to think things out.



It's had a positive impact on creativity or carrying out what were once perceived as complex processes. Here's one example: I had been taking piano lessons and one of the most difficult aspects of that for me is the independent motion of the left and right hands (as in playing both hands simultaneously on the bass and treble keys at opposite ends of the piano). When there is perceived to be less division between left and right hand as separate entities moving in their own ways and instead including it all as one flow of sensation... the ability to play both hands simultaneously is far more natural and easier. I think the workaround I figured there was instead of trying to analyze "what do I do with my left hand now, as my right hand moves like so?" I looked at it more like "what do all the sensations of both hands feel like when proper placement happens?" Memorization via tactile recognition, if you will... which I initially didn't even realize my teacher was trying to tell me anyways when he said it was a good habit that I automatically don't try to look at my hands while I play.



So then, the answer to your question might be to simply "feel" it out sensate wise, rather than attempt to move towards a "production house" frame of mind whereby you are looking for some internal clue or answer to be created. Like do you find that when you are trying to solve a problem there is a looking "inside" your head for it (this is something I mentioned in my most recent practice post) as if the answer is physically located in your brain somewhere? haha. That might sound weird when I say to feel it out sensate wise cuz I'm not sure how you can physically feel the answer to a math problem arising.. haha.. I don't mean to pay attention to that.. I mean pay attention to the sounds, etc. and mentally felt sensations. The numbers will come up automatically, obviously, so just pay attention to how it feels when there is a perceived attempt to scrounge for an answer and all the sensations related to that (when the math problem is initially read/asked and onwards). See if you can catch that this process is automatic and is just based on rote memory rather than some "effort" "you" are inputing.



Get rid of the need to be right. There's a difference between attention to detail and being a perfectionist! A perfectionist pays attention to details that don't actually matter. LOL.

Thanks for the suggestions. A little insight into the process has developed. It's like there's a hole where the answer/explanation is, and attention collapses to the hole. Meanwhile, a whole bunch of stories start to run about what a worthless, incompetent piece of shit I am, and anger and anxiety start to rise. Sometimes I can release this through insight, sometimes through metta, sometimes through compassion, but it is never long before the pattern suborns the practice and it becomes a "technique" for avoiding the pain and turns into a lens focusing attention on the pain itself. And as for joy, it is really a corruption of joy which started this mess off in the first place.



My first reaction to this is "Yes, the cat needs to be belled, but who's going to do it?" But the capacity to rest in awareness as the fear and shame arises is increasing, and the fear and shame are becoming triggers for the resting. Perhaps the need to be right will diminish as that capacity grows.

[edit] I'm not sure my original advice below is all that good. Upon re-reading it seems like it will possibly lead to self-deprecating/humiliating. I realize there is probably a way to conduct it skillfully and the things surrounding humiliation/self-deprecation can surely be investigated, but I dunno it still seems a bit harsh and in poor taste to me right now. Thoughts?

You're welcome. So here's an experiment. Deliberately do something that you perceive will make you look like a total idiot in front of someone else that kind of intimidates you for whatever reason or who you are generally desiring to impress (don't do anything that would be mean/cruel towards this person, this is about "your" issue, not about pushing anyone else's buttons). Set it up before hand as to what you're going to do, also making note of what your expectations are or what you perceive the results might be. While you are doing whatever is that you think will make you look like an idiot, pay very close attention to every facet of sensation you possibly can. Be as inclusive as possible of yourself, the environmental surroundings, the person you are talking to. Pay very close attention to how what is happening matches or does not match with the expectations you noted beforehand. Pay very close attention to your reaction to whether or not the expectations matched. Then ask the other person about their perception of the thing you did.

I know it might sound scary to do this (and hey, that's the point), but it's well worth a try and I can say this from experience. There have been many times throughout my practice that I deliberately did things I was freaked out about just so I could pay attention to exactly what was happening before, during, and after.

Hi, Steph. I appreciate the though you're putting into this. You're right that it's an advanced practice with significant risks, but I'm at a point where I can do it without spiraling into the pattern it attacks, or at least pull back when the spiraling starts, so it's not bad advice in this case. The intellectual exercises I've been doing are a similar practice, basically the cultivation of mudita, just a little gentler. Looking like an idiot to myself is plenty of trigger for now.

so what you're saying is you're trying to perform a circus when there isn't even an audience? ;)

There's an audience in my head. Tough crowd.