Dear All,

My affinity for sensual enjoyment and music has decreased in the past few days. I'm no longer moved so much by the senses, to enjoy tasty food in inmoderate quantities. Awareness has been developed with persistent mettā practice and that has made all the difference. I don't need to force myself not to enjoy more than I need; awareness is self-regulatory and in control of the senses.

This awareness is beyond the mind. It is alive, beyond the mechanical mind. It's more like water than the mind. It is certainy not easy to cast off the old patterns of the mind and embrace pure awareness. But mettā prepares the ground. It softens the mind, softens the ego so that awareness can come.

I used to enjoy Miles Davis a lot. Now I only play his music in my room as a background sound to suppress the noise from the rest of the house. It helps me to concenctrate on the sound of mettā mantra. It's not that I don't hear the beauty of his trumpet playing but I no longer drown myself in it. Rather, I remain centered and stable within myself, not allowing my state of being to be dictated by some external source of sound.

Although the world--sounds and visuals--certainly look better and deeper, I no longer take pleasure from them. My ego of sensual enjoyment is diminishing. This is certainly the result of practicing mettā for two years straight.

May you be happy on this day!

love,
Marino

"Awareness is self-regulatory." Love it. 



The way I've experienced this is as an insight into the mechanism of enjoyment. Enjoyment is not a sensation, but an absence. The mechanism of enjoyment is a reduction in suffering — in boredom, subtle dissatisfaction, clinging, dualistic suffering, and so on. So I still enjoy music, sex, and the like, but it's obvious that the enjoyment does not come from the sensations. Rather, it's from the intimacy of non-clinging. The greatest enjoyment in the world is right here before us. We do not need to seek it elsewhere.

I made a bunch of mostly drones for the purpose of meditation. I've always been keyed into sound as well. I find listening to music which intends something is difficult for me now. It wasn't always that way. 

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Sensual enjoyment is nice yo!!

Its a function of bodhi.

Why you want to transcend it?

This is usually a sign of people who dont want to do meditation. Try to transcend the need to avoid sensual enjoyment. Eat good food, drink good whiskey, sleep with good sex partners. And do very systematic meditation.

You will attain to the highest goal.

​​​​​​​Best of luck.

Im such a loser! Totally not transcending anything! Music gets me crying, and seeing tasty food gets me drooling! Beer gets me wise, though! 

Do not create an impossible to achieve ideal for yourself. There are moments in the path that feel like what you describe, but they are temporary. You can not transend this, but you can suppress this, which leads to suffering. 

My experience is similar to yours but I would add that, as everything is temporary, as you say, it is not always necessary to view what is going on in terms of permanent goals or ideals. If Marino is transcending them now, Marino is transcending them in the only time at which they can be transcended. Who knows what's next? 

Thank you, Martin, for clarifying.  Good point.

The troubling part of Marino's initial comment, for me at least, was this sentence:
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Keep in mind, awareness can't control anything. Awareness has no agency. So it feels to me, from that comment, that Marino is trying to program (in the sense of training) his reactions. 

Indian philosopher Abhinava Gupta had a whole philosophy about aesthetics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasa_(aesthetics) 

I didn't read self-regulatory as implying agency. The water level in a pond that overflows when it rains is self-regulatory without requiring an agent. I certainly don't think that there is anything troubling about Marino's comment. He is generously reporting his experiences with metta practice that nobody else here does at the level that Marino does it. The results are going to be different but that doesn't make them troubling.  It sounds like Marino is getting the results he wants. 

Thank you for your comments. This experience is still new and I occasionally and temporarily slip back into the old mode of being. I've often heard how awareness is simply a mirror. I don't know if awareness has self-regulatory characteristics, but it definitely came at the same time when senses became somewhat restrained. I'm not trying to program my reactions; actually, mettā is deprogramming my mind from old patterns of behavior and habits that led me to suffering.

​​​​​​​This path of mettā leads to a change in being from conditioned to unconditioned, from suffering to release. But it has to be practiced consistently for a significant period of time.

Interesting. Maybe I don't understand what metta actually is, but in itself has always felt like putting the cart before the horse. Compassion, loving kindness, and good will toward everything seem to me to be byproducts of something else. Maybe though, they are pathways to that something else for some people as well?

Factors of enlightenment:

• Mindfulness (sati)
• Investigation (dhamma-vicaya)
• Energy (vīriya)
• Rapture (pīti)
• Tranquility (passaddhi)
• Concentration (samādhi)
• Equanimity (upekkhā)

It develops most of them almost accidentally, with the exception of investigation in most cases. However you can then use that balancing of factors and increased concentration for whatever practises you'd like, insight or otherwise.

So essentially from nothing (but maybe desire for the path) to fruition sans the inquiry/investigation part, which is then made easier by the other aspects? I mean, I know it's not automatic. You have to actually do the work. 

+1 on what Chris is stating. Lack of insight/s leads to a belief that some of this, or all of this, can be "controlled" by this or that (skill or else).
​​​​​​​The knowing is always late to the party of unfolding!

Hi Papa, I don't understand your statement. If knowing is awareness, doesn't it arise dependent upon the party? And vice versa. There's no party without the knowing/awareness of it. Without awareness/knowing there is nothing, as experienced during cessation.

It's important to understand the reality we live in — our conscious awareness of what we experience arises a bit later than the automatic processing of, and reaction to, stimuli that occurs below the level of awareness. So that, I think, is what Papa was referring to.

Hi Chris, thank you for your post. I wrote a response but it was eaten by the site. In brief, I don't experience the delay as you describe it, but that doesn't mean it's not happening. I may just be ignorant of it, which I am perfectly ok with.

Yes to what Chris said. And to make things more fucked up , (let me repeat myself some more), even if all this seems the way Chris described, we still have no way to verify if any of that is actually "real/not-real". Whatever has arise-passed away is so far away, that it seems like reaching back into a dream to pull facts out of It really is fucked up But its also ok.