Good tidings to everyone who would like to read this. My name is Jim Jam, and I have decided to halt my long-term lurking—posting once a year, or what have you—and begin a proper practice log for two primary reasons:

1. To give myself an opportunity to look back on my own past dharmic ramblings. My memory is poor, and writing these things down properly is the only way I will ever cement my past accomplishments and failures.

2. To allow other people to pick apart my bullshit when it arises and maybe help me avoid wandering through loops that you have already walked through.

I will begin this log by speaking about my past practice to give everyone an idea of the sort of territory I’ve walked and the techniques I’ve used. I will then transition to my current practice in terms of intensity, style, and methods. Finally, I will spend a bit of time discussing the current state of affairs and the cutting edge of my practice. I do this not to blab about myself but to give anyone who reads this a better idea of where I’m at—and to put my notes on this stuff in one place.I began meditating sometime in the middle of 2020, looking for a place of solace in that wild time. I was drinking incredibly heavily throughout the first half of that year, and one night, while drunk, I found a copy of Mindfulness in Plain English that my world religion professor had given me in my first year of college. I already had running as a good habit and drinking as a bad habit, so maybe another good habit would balance it out?I followed the instructions in the text and began a floundering meditation practice. Most of my sessions were done hungover, but Bhante G’s promise at the end of the book—


"You vividly experience the impermanence of life, the suffering nature of human existence, and the truth of no self. You experience these things so graphically that you suddenly awake to the utter futility of craving, grasping, and resistance. In the clarity and purity of this profound moment, our consciousness is transformed."

was inspiring to me. Before I knew it, something weird was happening. I was able to note things! A thought! A feeling! Oh, how joyous! I was still just as much of a drunk as before, but I was becoming an ‘awake’ drunk—or so I thought.]I started reading a lot about religion, feeling like I was really onto something. The intensity of it felt like it was picking up, and soon, I thought I was going to have the whole thing licked! I figure I passed the A&P around this time, and if I thought I had undeveloped problems before, this made it way, way worse. Bhante G didn’t tell me about this. Luckily, at this point, I had ordered Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha (MCBT2), and I dark-nighted hard as hell for about a year.

First Path:

My practice really picked up in the summer of 2021. I was in the Army at the time and found myself with loads of free time. (If there are any other vets here, you’ll know how strange this is—sometimes I had a ton of time, and sometimes I worked 12-hour days for a year straight with no days off.) My responsibilities made it harder for me to self-destructively drink, so I increased my meditation dose dramatically. I went from roughly 20 minutes a day to 2–3 hours every day.For the first time on this journey, I really rocketed up the stages of insight. In 2021, I posted twice on this forum about my experiences: the first being some dark-night stuff, and the second being stream entry, which I still see as the moment I achieved it. I would like to thank Dream Walker for diagnosing me—somehow correctly—(R.I.P.), and Adi Vader for providing incredible advice. After I hit SE, I really stopped meditating for a while. Life was so much better—the big ‘thing’ I had been pushing for over a year and a half, and had spent 2–3 hours a day on for the last six months, happened! I really felt done, like I had done enough. I knew the charts, and I knew the writings on the later paths, but there was a sense of relief that I wouldn’t have to do any of that. I was certainly wrong. Some cool perks of SE for me: I could access some basic jhana stuff if I put the effort in, and I developed a vast textual understanding of the suttas that I didn’t have before. Cool stuff.

Second Path:

Sometime in mid-2022, a sense of uneasiness washed over me—a general feeling that I had to figure this out. There was still something wrong. I would be walking around, not even trying, and fruitions would occasionally happen with just a little tuning into reality—but something about that felt wrong, too. I set off on retreat a few times in 2022 to figure it out, but I couldn’t at the time. To make matters worse, I spent all of 2023 in a combat zone (a story for another time). I learned a lot of dharmic and moral lessons the hard way there. But one positive thing: despite the chaos, during some of the downtime in the summer months, I hit what I believe to be second path by sitting for roughly 7 hours a day. This was another deep cessation, and I got a lot of shit from some of my guys for sitting so long during our downtime—but it worked out.So far, so good, as far as meditation is concerned. My technique for second path was the same as first, with a touch more jhana. But I definitely didn’t dive into the deep end—after all, I could be hit with drones, mortars, or what have you (not a good environment for meditation). Note, note, then notice when you can notice, then note some more. My second path fruition was particularly intense and happened toward the end of my tour. I resolved that when I came back home, I was getting out of the Army ASAP—I couldn’t bear to call myself dharmic and carry weapons anymore. I know there’s some old-school Buddhism about this, and I know that emotionally I am still a strange fellow, but out of nowhere, there was a bone-cutting feeling that if I was part of this, my karma would be ruined forever. I can’t really explain it past that—I simply didn’t have the same conviction before that fruition.

Returning Home:

Upon returning home, I began to meditate some more in the same style for months. The problems began to really arise here. This practice had become incredibly infuriating for me—not in the first-path I can’t see what the hell they’re talking about perspective, but something much deeper . In 2024, I leaned much further into what I would consider mystical teachings, as I find them much more beautiful than I used to. Things like the One-ness of God from the Sufis, the works of Meister Eckhart, the Vimalakirti Sutta, and Moon in a Dewdrop. Despite this sudden mystic bent, my practice remained the same until roughly October of 2024.

Current Practice: The Man Rigging the Table

When I sit now, I notice ‘the man rigging the table’ (a crude metaphor, and I feel there is something better but I haven’t read the sutta, or the Shargrol post that probably explains it). The best way I can describe it is: I sit for an hour, simply ‘noticing’ reality. Yet, when I do so, I see ‘the man rigging the table’ show up. ]This isn’t ‘noting’ in the traditional sense. It’s more like: I am noticing reality, and then I notice something derailingthe simplicity. It’s as if I’m trying to be a dealer at a blackjack table where everyone has played perfectly—they could already win—but the dealer wants nothing more than to fuck it up. This dealer, when noticed, fades quickly into a very broad stream of sensational data, until it finds a new thing to warp reality around. 

Now, for the second part of the practice. I feel as if I am going mad, because when I try to be rid of the dealer, the dealer is dealing. The dealer doesn’t stop dealing whenever input is applied (or not input, for that matter). He is playing his cards, and playing the entirety of the table (sensate reality) against me. Yet whenever I relax, the ‘man rigging the table’ goes away for a bit—it’s very gentle, very nice, and very peaceful (I suspect the bastard is still rigging the game).  There’s an achy-ness to it. A feeling like I am going to lose a little bit of my childhood.It almost feels like the ‘man rigging the table’ is a childlike response to woundedness. This woundedness feels incredibly important, and I’m not sure why. It feels very simple and very sorrowful. Usually, whenever it arises in the sense field, there’s a feeling of an ‘un-rigging of the table’ that happens, but whenever I try to interact and understand that sensation the ‘man rigging the table’ returns. It’s maddening. 

Closing Thoughts

This concept of ‘the man rigging the table’ has mostly shown up within the last month, and I know it is important. I apologize for the crudeness of the metaphor, and I will report back with anything else as I meditate this week, and the weeks after. [Thank you to all the excellent dharma-siblings on this forum! I apologize for the long initial message.

P.S. I had all this nice formatting on a google doc, and then posting it here messed it up. I apologize, the font is way smaller than I wanted.
- Jim Jam

Jim Jam, the problem with the formatting of your post is that you pasted the content here from a word-processing application. Save your comment as text only and try again. That will resolve the tiny font issue.

Thanks, Chris! That worked perfectly. Should be much more readable now.

You're welcome. Folks have no idea just how much formatting foo is in a word processing file. The "bad" part is that they contain a font size command on every line, and that command is interpreted by the DhO post editor as, "Use the smallest font available."

Hey man, excellent log, really happy to have you here. 

Your intuitions are largely correct. The trip of third is that finally you arrive at a situation that you can't game your way out of. You have to just relax and be aware and see the damn thing. Funnily, it is this same mechanism that allows for 1st and 2nd BUT 1st and 2nd allow for more of this agential frame of reference where it seems you're doing all the meditating. 

If you haven't already consider doing a read of Seeing that frees and working your way through the practices until the sevenfold reasoning. That helped me at that particular time. It may potentially help you, I can't say for certain, but there is a chance. I used it as an opportunity to go back to basics and dial in the fundamentals from a deeper more relaxed more intuitive point of view.  

Alternatively or in tandem just relax, breathe and be and see where that leads. Increasing relaxation and subtlety is the way.

Thanks, Bahiya. The honesty you show in your log is one of the reasons that I've decided to step up and log myself. I went ahead and purchased a copy of seeing that frees and will read through it.

Practice:
Currently continuing with 45mins - 1hr daily, very gentle meditation practice. The plan is mostly the same, relax, hit jhana 3 or 4, and then pivot towards watching how I try to rig the game in each moment, but very gently, without 'trying' to watch, just letting it happen as best I can. This has generally trended towards two results.  The first result is too much interactivity, which just starts the loop all over again. The second result is far more interesting, and I can see the rigging happen, and the rigged mindstate loses a lot of it's 'oomph'.

This feels a lot like when I first noticed thoughts as thoughts years ago, and the thought lost it's 'oomph' but here it is encompassing entire emotional frameworks, feelings, and worldviews. Usually when this happens I can really start to see what I imagine as what i've read about on 'emptiness'. I can really see the way the game is rigged, and the frameworks that develop around that rigging process, are totally empty of intrinsic value. Not that it doesn't exist, but that there's nothing behind that existence, even if at the moment when you are encountering this subject it is twisting your reality towards/away/amplifying something in the sense sphere. In the past week or so I have been working with just seeing these things, as when you try and touch it the act of trying mucks it up.

Another sad realization from this - if the insight that I'm suspecting as true is true, then we really are, as humanity, a lot more insane (and hilarious, in a strange way) then I thought. Framing our realities moment to moment and just now for the first time am I able to see it's all smoke and mirrors. This realization is still cooking though, and I feel like some of my child-like sadness that I had mentioned  is from this now bubbling to the top. All my beautiful little ideas about the world really aren't worth much at all. Luckily, all my bad ones aren't either - but they're both still used daily.

I feel like the squeeze is worth it here, and I will continue my practice like this for the next week or so, and report back. I might up the time period a touch as well, but not too much. Somehow trying harder just doesn't feel like it'll help here. May all of you brilliant meditators be well, happy, and peaceful!

Please be careful - nihilism is just around the corner from that view. Moment to moment does not equal smoke and mirrors. 

Of course, Chris. I think I might've phrased that poorly, I'm not saying there's no value in those moments, but it is beginning to seem to me that there's nothing 'instrinsic' about them. The Buddha talks about morality often, and he often warns us, as I understand, to not give into nihilism. For me I am just recognizing that those sensations that are not particularly any more/less important than 'bad' ones on a phenomeological level, and the worldviews associated with those ideas are not necessarily more or less important on that level. They're of course important on a practical level.

This is birth. Birth is what is really revealed as we progress into the paths. 

At first you saw thoughts as thoughts now you see worlds as worlds-and it is strange, perhaps a little unsettling. We arent really who we think we are in a sense. We aren't the man rigging the table. 

Which is sometimes a beautiful realization and sometimes not to be honest. Sometimes it's like we're deconstructing a house that we're still trying to live in. The post conventional stages of development are a bit off at times. 

The childlike sadness may be a recurring theme. It was for me. Upsetting and kind of healing too.

There is still goodness and it's strange I can't quite put it into words. Something I intend to write a lot about but there is naturally arising goodness beyond the contraction of the self view. 

Which is why this really isn't a nihilistic practice. Somehow by relaxing and letting go we can actually deepen our capacity to be better humans. Something about deep relaxation seems to honor the dynamic complexity of the universe the way neurosis does not. 

I think its closer to "truth" that one can't really verify if ALL these smokes and mirrors are real or unreal I mean ...  just don't know! Is it bad to be uncertain?