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? 

Meditating this last week has given me an odd realization, one that I should have seen coming based on the insights I've recieved up to this point. Even 'meditating' is in itself an attempt at rigging the game. Which is funny, as meditating  is very obviously needed to sort this whole mess out, but when one sits and says, "I will percieve the three characteristics in each moment." THAT is also an attempt at rigging this process.

The funny thing is there's a natural burning up of the energies that try and force anything into this or that framework, and instead I see the mind slowly go into meditating on it's own, slowly contract into stories on it's own, and slowly become distracted on it's own, and so on. I still get lost frequently in the mess, trying to put more effort than needed or too little. The factors of enlightenment for the first time are really feeling more important. There is something creepy about it, as Bahiya pointed out, it feels like I'm dismantling the house I'm still living in.

The sadness is still there when I sit, but I realize that sadness is just a natural part of this process, and then it usually points to something in the heart and I relax and open wider, and let it flow until my timer goes off. I stand up and go throughout my day, and watch that flow too.

Right your noticing that there's a constant "position taking" happening and then each position fires off a series of mind activities and meditation is as much a part of that as anything else. Once emptiness arises the house really starts to vanish around you and that's quite freeing or atleast it frees you up to start the deep work of unravelling the fundamental need for identity, which is the end game. 

Whew, I know I promised weekly updates, and then suddenly I remember it's been a month and I haven't posted. Let's rectify that -

The story has been... pretty much the same over the last month. Meditate when you can daily, relax as much as possible,  and focus on position taking and the 'rigging' of the situation, then relax again. There have been two interesting results from this.

1. I had a fruition probably two weeks ago, where I felt a rapid back and forth in the center of the field of sensation, and then it began to wobble, all of sensation turned to the right side, and then it sorta... pittered.. out. All well and good, I thought. When I opened my eyes there were a few hours where I could, for the first time, know that there's no 'other side' to a sensation. When the sensation came in all it's vibratey-ness, all it's mundane-ness, all it's painful-ness, that was it. I 'know' this now intellectually, but most of the time there's still a feeling that there's gotta be something else. Sadly this sensation faded after just a few short hours, but now when I really relax in meditation I can 'feel' it begin to become more obvious. 'it' arises the less 'I' am interested in taking positions, the less I rig the game. It's so clear and there's really nothing going on that's special, but it feels special regardless. Most of the day this isn't happening, to be fair, and it's frustrating as trying to get it to happen is more position taking, more rigging, and so then it doesn't show up. This circling oroborous of a problem has easily been the most frustrating part of the entire meditative path to date. I know I mention it often but man, it's really something else.

Another note on this. It's awesome how you sometimes get 'tastes' for how things are, and I appreciate the Dharma for that. Sometimes it feels like you're being ushered in the correct direction, that there are goalposts there if you listen.

2.

There's a lot of body-related stuff going on. There's a keen sense that the body has to relax, that I've been walking around with chronic tension and pain in the body for a decade now and it's just gotten worse day after day, and it feels like for the mind to figure out it's dharma adventure the body has to relax as well. I have had insights like this before, but I've always been able to vipassana my way out of the problem. This feels like a, "dude, you need to relax the body, or there's no going forward." A lot of my mental unease has been held in the body I now realize, and this is mostly a psychological thing, but it feels very important for insight progression as well.

I'm reminded of something Shargrol said which I'm going to paraphrase as, "You can lie to the mind, but you can't lie to the body." I think I get what he's talking about now.

That's about it. Thank you to all that post on this forum! May you be well, happy, and peaceful! May I be better at weekly posting even if nothing noteworthy happened!

I woke up just a few days ago with the following thought as my very first waking perception, eyes still closed:

"The original sin of Christianity is about identifying things as seperate or other. The original sin being the projection of the  self onto the world, and then wrapping every concept into this body/the other body. This is why the immediate thing God asks of the duo is where they are, and they now see themselves as something seperate and naked, and are ashamed.

In this way the  sacrifice of Christ is not just a wise individual coming and teaching this good news of returnal to god but a metaphorical rejoining to the whole. Christ comes and teaches, the man dies for it, and is reborn as the Son of God! Re-united, finally, with the divine father."

I do not claim to be a biblical scholar, and my interpretation of that is very likely wrong to a proper theologist but for some reason it made so much sense to me. It is  such a cool metaphor that popped into my mind as a dude that grew up in the bible-belt, and struggled my entire youth trying to figure out what in the world they're talking about in that book in a way that struck through to me.  Those thoughts came in with a racing intensity, like nothing else was more obvious from an intellectual sense.

Later in that same day I was lightly meditating in the passenger seat of the car, playing with Jhana four. I was really attempting to focus on that quality of the fourth jhana where sensations are still arising but they're in the broadness of the sky (jhana 4), and you're soaking in that open quality of sky-ness but letting the clouds (sensations) still be there but move through. As this was happening I felt a sharp uptick in concentration, and noticed a warbling quality in the sound of the music that was playing. Intensely I focused on this music, feeling the raw sensations move in relation to the center of attention (i have described this before as warbling, or wobbling)  like things sometimes do for me before fruition. I got excited, as I figured a fruition was about to come along, and I began to will myself to focus on it. Look at the thing, Jim! Look at it! This is totally cool!

As I was doing this the mind caught the amount of pain that made. How the very act of trying to get something out of that sensation was literally painful. It felt like the hot coal of the suttas. I got my fruition, but in a way that I wasn't expecting. I saw the mind try and 'rig' the game in the opposite direction of that pain, and  I then had the most intense fruition of my life. The mind noticed the pain, noticed the rigging of the situation, and most importantly noticed how each of the moments in that field had nothing 'behind' them.

Nowhere to go, asshole!

Then the mind threw the switch. Each little mind moment must have been a fraction of a fraction of a second, each one firing off as if someone was throwing a massive breaker in my head, before all of that space was sucked 'away'.

I took a deep breath and smiled, and I have been  smiling almost non-stop the last few days. The first thing that I noticed is that things feel so quiet, like the thinking and planning mind is taking up 1/3 of the space that it did just a few days ago. Most sensations feel like there is nothing to get from them, they're coming and going with no stakes in the insight game any longer, and even the little dude trying to rig this game towards some end-goal that is 'over there' feels like he took a baseball bat to the knees.

A few more things:
1. Some things around the heart and some thoughts still feels very 'sticky' even still.
2. SO much physical pain in the body has been released. It feels like I have been trying to "GRRRRRRR" my way into or out of something for so long that I now no longer have to do. This had been happening in small releases prior to this, but it feels like someone pulled the stick I had up my ass out (mentally and physically)
3. There's some process that is now noticing when things have become 'sticky' in the sense field, and then it bring me back to... here!
4. Here is so so so quiet. Which is funny, because it's just as loud in a mundane sense.

The relief in suffering and the symptoms seem to tie to third, but more importantly something in my  bones tells me this is third. Who knows, though! Tomorrow I might have totally changed my mind, and that will be okay.  For now I will enjoy it, and continue to play with this right here.

P.S. Thanks, Bruno Loff. You probably saved me years of meditation with 'From Seeing to Knowing the Dharma', as the techniques I have been doing for the last few months were ripped right out of that book.

It was my experience that the big "GRRR" ended with third. There was a change in the fundamental experiential pattern such that I went from having a wide open, bright, "non-dual" experience, that I was obsessively identified with, to being nobody at all really, a simple passenger, in a vast empty and unknowable world. 

In short, third was humbling to an extreme and the resolution of all the early path manic meditator energy meant that I could, slowly, return to being a regular guy who did regular guy things. 

I think your biblical scholarship is fine and while it would likely have been rejected by the early church fathers it is rather in keeping with the philosophical concerns of the gnostics and neoplatonists before them. 

For me also there was a very physical component to it. I had all this tension and physical pain that had strangely been building since first. I suspect this has something to do with over using attentional process with all the new found mind power SE brings. A lot of stuff fell away with third and more continues to fall away as it ripens.

Sounds really good Jim Jam!

This is the real change for me, and you've put it very well. It feels as if this whole time I had been trying to get meditation to 'work out' a certain way. I was really hunting very specific meditation experiences that I thought was 'it' or would get me 'over there' and now it's incredibly obvious it doesn't work that way. The mania that you mention has been me for five years now, and that mania feels greatly relieved. Not gone, I don't think. Something still feels weird(? time will tell what that actually is) but greatly alleviated. The greatest alleviation I have had so far on this journey.

I am reminded of Daniel Ingram's insight disease. How the entire meditative path is just an attempt to cure some thing that you've cursed yourself with years ago when you accidently stumbled upon the A&P. With the reduction in that mania the last few days have felt so incredibly normal. I feel the most normal I have in a while, the most sane, the most clear minded.

Also, cheers for the compliments on my biblical literature. Last night I went through and read some of the gnostic and neoplatonist thoughts you mentioned (I had never heard of them in church growing up) and the breadth of Christian literature is really amazing and I wish more people got some more of those ideas.

The mania and search for meditative experience continued for me but was no longer an all consuming facet of my day to day life. 

The work then is identifying the natural state and working towards resting into it more regularly. I think it shows up subtly early on but in my experience "meditative experiences" or views were still very captivating. I spent whole months exploring the subtlety of different views. 

That's kind of the game of being an Anagami, as far as I see it. There's all kinds of views and luminosity and non duality and karma and trauma and drama that we experience and somehow this leads us into the arising of a natural, human experience. It seems somewhere in that humanity awakening emerges, but I don't really know much of anything about that. 

In general my hunger for dharma books basically ended at this point. I don't know if that's the same for others. It'd be a shame not to read Moon in a dewdrop. Dewdrop the eye beams. Mean in the bean stalk. 

As it matures you do get to these slightly unnerving points where it becomes clear that "practice" however it has been occuring just isn't really appropriate anymore. The mental object of the thing has to be let go so the "real practice" or "no practice" as the case may be can arise and that process itself fractals. 

I think and I don't know if this is a contentious topic but I think that the fetters are far more important here than path stuff. And dependent origination too. Really getting to know the identity object and it's activity. But that is something thats understood through a fairly receptive open way of being not really so much through investigative interrogation... Though a little inquiry can go a long way too sometimes. I'm rambling. Good luck. 

And another thing and forgive me for projecting... 

But do yourself a favor (and a bonus favor):

Just give up on the dream of doing 4th "quickly". This kind of game rigging isn't really even possible anymore anyway. When a seed first germinates there's all this rapid activity but eventually your just a tree treeing. The best thing for a tree to do is let nature run its course. 

Said another way: embrace the imperfect undoneness of this moment. That's the thing itself. The paradox of the path. It's all right here. 

And following on from that

Practice metta all the fucking time. 

I don't and I'm a prick. But I try to do it more often these days and it does the world of good. (It does the world some good). 

Yeah anyway, good luck boss. 

Let emptiness arise and dwell in it. Not making any special effort to maintain the experience of emptiness. Nor making any special effort to remain clear or free or absent of thoughts.

At rest in the natural way, mind and body at ease, craving finds no purchase. Free from the constriction of craving heart is unbound.

Being an Anagami is all about learning to look but not stare. 

Can you see a beautiful person from across the street without your entire attentional complex constricting around the sensation of them. Can you walk over and say hello without becoming engulfed in some play of prediction or hypothesis. Can you become engaged in the emotionality of relationship, flirtation, passion and their inevitable descent into mundanity and familiarity without these fleeting sensory complexes becoming the experiences by which we identify and/or validate ourselves. (To round out this metaphor I should add something about just sitting there and basking in heartbreak, discomfort, misery)

It's in the mundanity that the deepest residue of the self hides. 

Checking your phone, going to work, getting a coffee, typing at the keyboard, etc. 

​​​​​​​It takes time. To see it all through and through. 

Not that I have any right to speak about such things. 

Thanks for the legendary dharma triple-post, Bahiya. I mean that seriously. I also appreciate your projection. I've read your logs in the shadows for years and you're a lot like me in many ways (I suspect). I've resonated with your general desire and go-get em attitude you've had, and also with your complete honesty when missing the mark, and with being neurotic or overly intellectual (I am both of those things, and I am not trying to project onto you or knock you in any way, but you are honest about this as well.) So your projections are probably a good read on me as a person. I read through everything and some of it doesn't make sense to me quite yet, but I am sure it will as time passes. The metta practice makes a lot of sense, especially with my background. Every time I've tried metta it has felt like a sip out of a clear and bountiful stream, and I think I need more of that. Not for my insight practice, but for my psyche. Without trying to sound edgy I've seen the worse in humanity, and metta is such a good reminder of our mutual hearts that cuts right to the point, even though it's hard for me at times.

It's been about five days since the path moment I wrote about earlier occured, and it's still holding up strong. There are very little changes on the initial reactions. There is a funny thing that is occuring, where this is somehow better than what I wanted, but it's so incredibly sobering. Sobering is a good thing, clearly, but there's such a mundaneness to it that's comical. I don't even know how to wrap my mind around it. Years and years of looking for this level of quiet, and general nervous system relaxation, and now I have the best form of it I've ever had, but.. where do I go from here?

The whole of the path to this point, since I crossed the A&P in 2019 or so and read MCTB in early 2020 has been to relentlessly meditate and 'figure this out'. I've carried this energy through everything Dharma related in a manic way. I've built a library, I severed relationships (eternal gratitude for my wife for sticking with me through all of this), I've gotten in fights. I carried this Dharma through a warzone where it taught me important lessons in a way the libraries never good. I watched a young man die and told myself later that same day that somehow the Dharma would make me feel better about it. I've saught and I've saught. Yet here I am, and it's better than I could've hoped, but what it has shown me in these last few days is who I am. I'm the exact same flawed human critter. I sit and things are quiet, shit, I got damn drunk the other night and things were still quiet, and funnily enough for the first time in my life I was able to stop drinking myself into oblivion, not that it will hold (the morality piece of the Dharma reigns supreme, really). I woke up with a clarity in the hangover I've never had to my sensate reality, but I've realized that all of this seeking is just finding the critter that I am. There's beauty in all of this that I haven't pinned down. I also think it's important to share that while this is the most sanity producing, beautiful thing, that I have ever put a fire in my ass under to do, that I'm kind of... sad.

I hope to the wise people on this forum some of this is understood, but the mania, the seeking, the searching, has pittered out mostly. I know it will come back, but something that I identified myself with wholesale is so unbelievably weakened that I don't even know what to do. Where does one go from here? The plan that I had laid out is in fetters. The scheming, the learning, the meditation retreats. There's another path, something great that everyone talks about, but I don't even know how to begin on that. I told my wife this and she, very wisely, just smiled and said she was proud of me. Wiser than I am, for sure, and without a single path or even caring for one.

Sorry about this rambling, and about the somewhat sad nature of it. I am genuinely eternally happy. The last few days have been so incredible. Shargrol, in his wisdom, at one point said this path is about seeing who you really are. Something about relaxing a grip on a knife. I don't know if I'm going to do so much insight soon, probably metta, and some morality stuff. I think I want to make a little garden, or play music again... I used to be very good at the piano.

May we all be well, happy, and peaceful.

P.S. If you're into video games, I highly recommend Expedition 33. It's one of the best games I've played recently. Really beautiful stuff in that story about death, and trying your best.

Yeah, some of what I said is for later. The only major dharma regret I have is not putting aside more time to do metta and this is thankfully something I can easily remedy in this moment...

Sobering is a good way to put it, this is what I mean when I use the word human, this gritty, human, sober, relaxed and honest experience is what you're capable of now and the path is really just deepening that. It's not so much that the manic stuff comes back, it's more that the remaining layers of self are both very subtle but also really fucking obvious and right there on the surface and basically part of every moment of your experience. So you're just habitually cultivating deep relaxation to allow those patterns to be seen. The general miasma of pre-anagami experience sort of heated up for me at second and became chronically unbearable. Third was(ahem... is Bahiya, third is) much more relaxed and sober and open but I did meet some real deep demons, fundamental insecurities, fear of betrayal, am I actually a psychopath, obsession, whatever, you get the picture... but all of that stuff arises and passes and happens to a much more vulnerable, alive and open person. Which is a blessing and a curse but honestly all I'm trying to say is it will probably suck less than 2nd on a day to day level .

I severed relationships too, uprooted my life... and that kind of sucked but it's also all in the past now and that's ok.

I can't imagine being in a warzone but I'm glad you made it out of there and if you ever need to talk about it feel free to talk to me.  

It's funny to me the differences in peoples communication and emotional quality between 1st-2nd and 3rd-4th. It's sometimes kind of a giveaway.

This realization matures on it's own, clarity and insight come and go, there's no need to worry about losing it. 

It is sad, weirdly and mysteriously sad and humbling and maybe even a little humiliating. Roger's version of the 4 path model is so compelling because that 2nd path "I'm all of this" just kind of falls flat on its face and third becomes this deep, inescapably obvious realization that you're just not, you're not it, it's not you, I'm not there and the whole fucking rigmarole of selfing was just a big fucking game playing out in your mind. (The difficulty of 3rd is that the game is still playing out but ultimately the whole of the thing is seen to be just a sort of trick of the light... but you'll get to that when you're ready)

I'm proud of you too !! I think third is a very significant attainment. It's a great time to go live your life, chill out and just be a big tree. If you sit and get absorbed in reality as will eventually happen all of the insight basically does itself (This is the deeper meaning of the word Jhana I have pointed to in the past). There are times it's useful to investigate fetters or dependent origination but even that sort of vanishes into absorption. Then you're just vibing. But, you also don't have to worry about any of that right now. 

Enjoy yourself, take your time, love the people who're still with you... they're the fucking good ones anyway !! Forgive the people who aren't... for they know not what they do. 

I'm still trying to finish Elden Ring, but never have time to play. Expedition 33 does look cool !! 

Bahiya,

I'm writing this on my phone before I lay down to bed, so apologize for the formatting. I imagine I will respond on my PC later and give something better.

First of all, thanks for all the kindness. I can feel the metra.  A warzone is very.. enlightening.. in a way, and while I appreciate your offer I try and keep those stories for my therapist. Maybe if we share a drink one day. Don't want to put those demons on a stranger.

The advice you have given is excellent. There is certainly a humbling to this, and for me it is somewhat humiliating. I'm not sure why, but it is raw. Not sad like second path was for me as much, but so goddamn raw.

I'm not familiar with Roger's model, feel free to send it if you have the time. It might be useful.

The thought dawned on me, and I want to ask simply because I'm curious. I've heard papa che call you an arahant on these very forums, but you don't seem to think so? I don't mean to force you to answer, I know this is very complicated, I'm just curious, in a certain way, what is the binding condition for you. I still fear I'll wake up tomorrow and I'll be pre stream entry again. Maybe in a few years it will help. Feel free to not respond if you wish.

More thoughts to follow.

Cheers, 
Jim

I'm no Arhat. 

I have cultivated a fairly deep and consistent experience of nyi-med and am exploring lhundrup, the spontaneous arising of experience where intention and action emerge simultaneously, but it comes and goes. When that ripens maybe we'll start talking about Arhatship...

I want to get all the Bhumi's too so... I dunno really. I'm just kinda vibing tbh. I'm letting the heart open up, be bright and at ease. That's just what's natural. 

Salsa has taught me that the universe has rhythm. Adi Da taught me that dancing is compulsory. 

This some beautiful stuff gentlemen.

Human critters are problem-solving machines. Our entire lives, from the moment we are born, revolve around solving problems—and we've become quite good at it, sometimes in a sick way. We’ve been solving problems since the moment we first interacted with the world. There is something amazing about the dharma, and the three characteristics in particular, in that they take that very problem-solving mindset and turn it against itself.
If you're a young person attempting to get a date with a beautiful partner, you're going to pull out all the stops, right? You're going to plan ahead, avoid things you believe are unpleasant for the partner, and pull people into your social sphere that you think the potential partner might appreciate. You try to set the encounter up in a beneficial way for yourself, and problem-solve your way through it.

When you begin insight meditation, you do the same. Some poor bastard stumbles upon the A&P, where they recognize there is a problem. Something is strange here. This doesn’t match the rest of experience. No problem! I can solve this like I’ve solved everything else! Off you go to the races.
You pull out all the stops again. You might’ve gotten that partner, or the job you wanted, or managed to avoid some terrible tragedy with these very strategies. You read the books, you talk to wise people and become close with them, and so on. These wise sources give you such wonderful tools! The three characteristics! Get to work, they say—and so you do. It'll be a quick adventure, after all.

Yet you use these tools for years, never getting a satisfying result. The masters and wise people know what’s happening. They’ve given you the only tools for the job, but the tools show you that you can’t solve this problem. So you work, and work, and work, and work. Sometimes it goes the way you want, and now you’re a sotāpanna or a sakadāgāmi, and you go, “Wow, these are great tools, let’s keep it up.”But as time goes on, the tools begin to eat through the problem itself. You keep trying, and leverage the same strategies you’ve always used—and they don’t work. They set a fire underneath you that can’t be extinguished with the same thing that started it. One day, it might snap, and you get it.

The characteristics are used to burn you out until you can see something else. But that leaves me with a strange thought: What the hell is happening if that strategy doesn’t work well any longer?

Now I recognize that a lot of this has been “solved" as silly a word as that actually is for the situation. The last few weeks, I’ve barely done any true insight meditation. I’ve been focusing on the other two trainings. I implore anyone who reads this, anyone who is here to really figure this out, to focus on those just as much, if not more. You might be like me—an Anagami who isn’t great at concentrating and has many basic human problems.

I have sat every day, and I focus on a gentle metta, specifically toward myself. It’s hard to direct it to others before I give it to myself, and I’ve realized that every day since this insight journey started, I’ve never really given that to myself. The other important practice right now is physical. I am an absolute mess physically. I’ve known this and even commented on it on this very forum board, but I’ve never addressed it. I’m in shape, run half marathons, people compliment my physique and so on, but my jaw has clenched itself into a permanent grimace, my hips are so tight and unloved they’re out of alignment. I know now that spending gentle, loving time with those tensions is maybe more important than the path itself. There are layers to this.

So I sit and try to love myself. I’ve made an effort to attend to my bodily woes, the traumas I’ve held since I was a young teen, and they come out. It’s cathartic to the point of tears. The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk describes a lot of my problems well. Trauma layered upon trauma.

Something I’ve really been thinking about through this process—this process of insight making your problems manifest—is the emotional purification models.

Before I begin, let me make this abundantly clear: I do not believe you will be emotionally purified, perfect, or any of those things through insight practice. It will not happen. You will be the same critter, with your problems more in your face. If you don't believe me, read anything above that I've written. I'm a strange man that's seen great violence, has enacted  that violence upon others, and has serious addictions. That being said…

There is an emotional honesty to this. A purity, a grace. And that has changed the way I interact with things. I have a boss whom I deeply appreciate—he’s a very good man and has mentored me well. I’m leaving the firm we both work at soon. When I went to thank him for his mentorship, I had this beautiful and very human situation: I went to hug the guy, and he went to shake my hand. Awkward! We ended up with half of each, said our goodbyes, and told each other we’d assist one another if needed. Then I stepped out of the office.

If I hadn’t had the clarity of reality I now have, this would’ve been a much bigger deal. I hate this situation. I hate those little interactions that make me feel like a non-professional, uncharismatic, human critter. I am afraid, in an existential sense, that this fear makes us humans do terrible things. Before I would’ve held this in my mind, run it over time and time again, tried to find what I did wrong, what I could do better. I would’ve been planning—just like in the previous post. Yet this happened. I broke away. I was horrifically embarrassed. I could feel the full weight—the crushing reality—of that awkwardness. But when I thanked him and went on my way, I smiled. I saw it all so clearly. It came, it went. And I was still embarrassed, mind you, but it didn’t possess me as it might’ve before.

Is that emotional purification? Not in the sense that the emotions have run away, are void, are null and forfeit, but those same emotions have been given an incredible clarity and I can take them in their context. I was able to live my day normally, in a way I wouldn’t have before. I understand Bill Hamilton’s quote of “Suffering less, noticing more.”

That’s it for now. It’s boring. It’s not insight-based. It’s a bit frustrating in its own way—but frustrating in a deeply human way. In a “Jim, deal with the problems in front of you” sort of way.

The really interesting thing is that compassion and even fairly complex ethical activity can emerge spontaneously from a body-mind free of craving. In a world where you need to sit down and write out equations, it doesn’t make much sense that this would be the case. But in a world where I can reach out my hand and catch a ball that’s been thrown to me without even the slightest forethought… things start to make a different kind of sense.

It's a different kind of knowing. Not the knowing we're necessarily used to but a kind of knowing that's going on all around in spite of us. 

You’ve probably intuited—or certainly heard—that the subject-object split is illusory and that this illusory situation we've got ourselves in gives rise to all kinds of suffering. Another aspect of this is that because we've habituated the subject-object split, through fixation on the tool using frame of mind, there’s a chronic need to do something about something—a problem solving drive that is an inherent part of a dualistic experience.

Tool use is dependent on having a problem to fix and having a problem to fix is dependent on tool use.

Such that you end up in a situation where: The fix is dependent on the problem and the problem is dependent on the fix.

What was it Chris said when his wisdom rained... "The seeking obscures the sought"

As I've said recently I've got no beef with the bhumi's and I like high standards, where things get sticky and weird is in the difference between a lived experience of awakening (states, stages and paths) and the neurotic attachment to ideals that so often accompany conversations about maps and models.

There is a beautiful kind of difficulty to mapping the bhumi's to the four path model and today isn't the day I give my take on that but, what I will say, is that I have read and heard claims of "4th path attainment" that put people around bhumi 4-6 which probably doesn't make an Arhat-though who am I to say.

Where people ascribe certain phenomenological shifts to what bhumi can get real messy and often the poetry doesn't help the pragmatist but there is a point at which the probem having mind generally stops arising and the needing to fix it process thus also ceases (and along with it any compulsion to map or model any arising phenomena). Where exactly that is in the Bhumi's can be hard to nail down (probably around the 8th), the Tibetan four yogas I think are probably the cleanest at modeling the phenomenology of it, the four path model I do suspect lends itself to over estimation in those who aren't willing to be hyper critical of their own situation and also because it presumes a certain guru-student relationship that many people no longer have. Perhaps because of this, the four path model, just doesn't cover an awful lot of fairly important stuff that happens. For example there are multiple "shifts" that have occured to me since third that took orders of magnitude more time and practice and are in some respects more potent than the shift between say 1st and 2nd but they're also different kinds of shifts. Often to do with emotions and trauma and compassion though also with emptiness and insight and the fetters and dependent origination and so on. Conversely, the brilliance of the four path model is it is modelling something really fundamental and phenomenological and when you extract that understanding from it you can be sort of free from needing to track all kinds of other complex metrics. 

All of that is really my long winded way of saying that I can appreciate the priority for the spontaneous arising of compassion in some of the other models. As more and more that's certainly what my experience of "progression" reflects. 

In Daniel's writing or communicating he might say something like "We know such and such an awakened person who commited such and such an unsavoury act thus perhaps even Arhats can be bastards" (That's not how Daniel speaks obviously but bare with me)

I find myself understanding more and more that Arhatship for me personally would mean the ceaseless arising of spontaneous compassion. Not that I would be completely without fault and not that my every action would be understood to be compassionate by everyone by default-this is obviously a hugely neurotic and insane way to think about anything-but that there would be a spontaneous almost magical arising of compassionate action as a consequence of my being alive and that this would require no real practice or forethought.  

To clarify, It seems to me, in my experience, that this is possible to attain and seemingly where I'm headed but would that necessarily preclude me from being a bastard?

Ultimately I don't know but I certainly like to think so and this may entirely depend on what you think compassion is and how you define it. Once again, there can be a difference between the lived experience of a thing and how it is conceived in the mind.  

I find it tempting to look at such and such a teacher who did such an such an unsavoury activity and say well... I wouldn't of done that, I don't feel capable of doing that and I certainly don't do that sort of stuff day to day thus that person cannot be more awakened than I am...

It's quite compelling to think things like: "well if they did x that means they can't be enlightened"

I suspect there's people out there who might look at me and say: "well he spent the weekend with a brain full of nose candy so there's no way he knows anything about awakening or compassion" 

It's hard to pin this stuff down, certainly, I arrived at wherever I'm at through increasingly rigorous honesty about craving and clinging and hurt and hurting and all of the rest of it. So, from both a pragmatic and phenomenological point of view baking in a measured amount of emotional purification is really no harm as long as we understand it's not pure as in puritan. Some people don't understand the difference between pure honey and raw honey and thus they are easily duped by imitations of the real thing.

---

It is interesting to consider the pragmatic dharma movement or the work of someone like Daniel in the context of and perhaps arising as a remedy to the obviously massively neurotic Western/Christian puritanical complex. 

Give a white lad(y) some robes, rules and realms and see how quickly you arrive at "work ethic" and "the depravity of man"... what was all that I was saying about the fix being dependent on the problem ??

 This is such good stuff! I rarely get to hear such deep/informed conversations. I love it. 

One way to think of insights and paths is that they are "attunements" not attainments. You become attuned to a dimension of the mind that was not perceptable before. But what comes of that attunement is not a magical healing or curing... it's whatever can be cultivated and developed over time. And it starts from wherever the individuals mind is at. 

So people can conceptually talk about Jung and the Shadow, for example... but post A&P the actual raw non-verbal experience of these forces become much more tangible. There is a big difference people people working at the first level versus at the second level. However, the people working at the post-A&P level aren't going to necessarily have less Shadow, that's all individual. 

Each of the paths seem to center around a particular... center of self. Self as intention, self as experiencer, self as interpreter, self as awareness... something like that. There is a sense of what we "are" and what we "do. An intention that intends, an experiencer that experiences, an interpreter that interprets, an awareness that is aware. But in all of these there is a funny separation between the noun and the verb instead of just this how it already is.

4th Path is probably enough if you are living in a monastery. It's a fairly regulated environment.

What has become clear in the west is that if you are in the world post 4th (regardless of if you have done Pa-auk level jhanas or Kornfield insights or Shingon mantra) there is going to be more non-verbal limitations that show themselves. Basically, our limited computing power of our human mind means that we have a variety of unquestion "shortcuts" or "symbols" that we base our perceptions upon. These are COMPLETELY transparent until life creates enough friction that starts hinting that these imperfect/limited assumptions need revising/updating.  

For me the two frameworks that help me best to understand it are object theory and attachment theory. A lot of the post 4th stuff is from imperfect objects and the residue of attachment styles.

Object relations theory - Wikipedia
Attachment theory - Wikipedia

Again, the interesting thing is that these limitations might not even show up for arhat monastic. They may not encounter the situations where enough life friction occurs to point out these limitations. 

EDIT: Oh, and I actually want to mention that I'm finding that Alan Chapman's Foundation/Magia/Helenistic post 4th Path maps are also making more sense to me these days. (Or I'm retrofitting my thoughts into his model, not sure. I would really value a conversation with him.) But the idea of 4th path, union with the Beloved/Liberation, and One Mind/Self seem to be pointing at these same post 4th development ideas. 

For what it's worth!
 

Thanks for the responses, Bahiya and Shargrol. I am relent and say that I believe most of the “deep” and “informative” part of this is coming from Bahiya. I’m just grappling with this new stratum of mind as it unfolds and shares its secrets.

This entire process on the emotional improvement side seems to be leading to what Bahiya is talking about. I really think the “pure but not puritan” is not only a very clean way to explain it, but it’s sort of quippy and carries a nice literary weight that I think we can all appreciate. On my end, there has been a cleaning up of my act. The purity (but rawness) of the experience helps make this tool-user perform more accurate, helpful, and compassionate decisions. The muck and confusion around the problems have greatly been eliminated, but the problems still exist. The clearing of the bandwidth has helped me recognize and then address problems. This was not nearly as possible at the lower stratums of insight, where I could trick myself into eschewing those issues (that I knew existed—I mean, we all know what our problems are, but facing them is very different) on the basis that the next insight stage would miraculously solve them. Dream Walker used to talk about how addictions take on a very different feel at third path, and I think I get what he was going for now.

Shargrol, attunement is a much better word for it, I think. It’s a better word to the point that attainment seems downright misleading in some ways—but it is nice for people like me to drive toward “attainments,” so maybe that’s the trick that gets some folks moving. To relate back to emotional purity again, all that this shift has done is attune me to the mess that is the concentration and moral parts of this experience. There’s so much room in this sense sphere now, that I can see those sticky, painful things much more clearly.

I can’t comment on anything with the end of third and moving towards fourth path—sadly, a lot of this still seems a touch murky, let alone that. The fallout from this event is taking time to fit into what works, what doesn’t, and so on. I do find it endlessly interesting how everyone describes many shifts after third, further emphasizing space, compassion, emptiness, and so on. Something to look forward to, I guess!

Also, I’ve been re-reading Moon in a Dewdrop (which I’ve read before). Our man Dogen is saying it so clearly, over and over and over. I could facepalm at how obvious what he is saying is. It’s a real treat to re-read something like that and have an utterly different perspective on the work. A real joy of the path. What was once to me so many hundreds of pages of koans are now as simple and obvious as a beautiful dawn.

I will continue to work on emphasizing compassion, physical healing, and gentle concentration. As my parting metta wish... may this forum thread continue to provide Shargrol with stuff he enjoys listening in on! Haha!