Charlie's Practice Log

Charlie B, modified 11 Years ago at 12/20/12 9:46 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/20/12 9:45 AM

Charlie's Practice Log

Posts: 27 Join Date: 8/8/12 Recent Posts
Practice log. Why not?

First Entry:

December 20, 2012

Timewise, this may confuse you a little. Its not exactly in chronological order.

So right now 'm pretty certain im in the dark night, but only after reading hundreds of articles/posts about it. While my mind still doubts that I'm in it, it is also doubting everything else in my life, so give another tally to dark night.

I've been in this muck and crap state for a year and a half now. I had a very nice textbook A & P in from May-June of 2011 and plunged into dissolution swiftly after... but I didn't have the terminology for it until July of 2012 when I found the cheetah house.com and spoke to Willoughby Britton on the phone. Like many accounts I have read, I knew something special had happened, but I think I had read enough dharma to know that being humble and not evangelizing was the right thing to do.

Thank God, being I have been evangelical about things in the past such as eating only organic... and I think I damaged relationships by preaching. I still eat mostly organic.. but what I didnt realize is that just because you do something, doesn't mean you have to preach. But the preaching was so unconscious. I didn't really know I could have done anything to stop it. I was also evangelical about other things, but I'm glad the habit has died out.

Anyway back to the muck and crap. Its really dam awful... but I feel less special about it than when it first hit me. The first time I hit the fear stage I didn't have the terminology, so this is looking back. But it was from September to December of 2011. I had the worst nightmares. I would be driven to go to my computer and read conspiracy theories all night. Couldn't stop myself. Its like my mind wanted to bring out the fears it had been holding in there somewhere.

But having 6 months of really intense interest in meditation and buddhism before that, it was enough to give some context, and I was able to witness here and there that is was just fear, until eventually it moved on to some other stage. I think I was listening to a Hamilton Project podcast on the dark night, and someone said "Its like the fear has no object, it just comes out of no where." Exactly exactly my experience. Yes, I guess the conspiracy theories could be an object... but even when I wasn't thinking about them... this illogical fear arouse... almost like a primal thing... like my mind fears death. It was like... before that in my life... I could usually tell myself some story and have the fear greatly subside, or take a shower and it would go away, or at least go away when I wake up the next morning. But it was the first time in my life that I was totally at the mercy of the fear, and I feel that my mind learned greatly about letting go during that period.

I used to give alot of reasoning to why I felt awful such as oh I have chronic fatigue or anhedonia or underlying anxiety. This may be justified in saying, but samsara has taught me that no labels are helpful, and I have found much release in not categorizing myself as depressed, with chronic fatigue, anhedonia. It is so much less painful then say "oh im depressed, im depressed, I'm super depressed." It was so hard for me to realize that that was being a victim. Imagine trying to tell your miserable mind that its suffering is not real. My mind, at least, fought tooth and nail to hold onto to the "im a broken person" labels, but eventually, it has cracked.

Back to the present. I am not totally sure what part of the dark night I'm in... but I had a whole ton of fear, misery, digust just packed together the past 2 months, alternating between each, so I'm hoping that was reobservation. Fear doesn't really hit me as hard anymore.. so whenever I get that "theme" it will only last 2 days.. probably nowadays.. less than that. Misery stage is getting less sticky as time progresses, but the dark feelings of misery are some of the hardest for me to deal with.

Anyway, crossing my fingers that equinimity is near.
Charlie B, modified 11 Years ago at 12/20/12 5:40 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/20/12 5:38 PM

RE: Charlie's Practice Log

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Dec 20 2012

Discontinuous thoughts...
Meat Eating vs Vegetarianism Thought Stream

-I'm afraid to die

-The thought of death is a mood killer. Why love that which is going to die? I guess this kind of thinking is what got me into buddhism in the first place

-When I had this abyss like experience that turned my A & P into the dark night... it felt like alot of suffering has vanished. But I'm not really sure what vanished, but I'm in this paradox of I'm in abject misery, yet the pain doesn't really feel real. Thank God that other people report this as well.

-I keep having this thought that my dark night is so much worse than the average yogi's because I had depression and a bit of social anxiety before starting meditation

-My goal from my journal, only 2 months of meditating, was to become enlightened after 2 years. I'm pretty impressed with myself that I made it from zero to A & P in four months.

-I feel unworthy of saying "I crossed the A &P" I still have alot of sticky self hate that is hard to locate.

-According to sources I have read, the Dalai Llama eats meat... Buddha would eat meat if it was offered to him and so would his monks. I also have read many articles on the necessity of animal fat for health. To combat the fatigue caused from the dark night
I found the paleo diet and cut out processed foods, which have helped immensely. I still find myself an oddity that I lean more towards carnivory than vegetarianism yet, I associate myself as a Buddhist. The best thought I have come up with on the issue is that if your body needs meat for its health, it is compassionate to eat meat.

-I have done alot of reading on the meat eating vs vegetarian argument in terms of how much suffering is caused by each, and I have come to the conclusion that the monocroping of crops such a rice, wheat and soybeans, mainstays of the vegetarian diet, leads to a huge number of animal deaths indadvertedly through tilling, pesticides and habitat destruction. Whereas if beef or poultry are raised deliberately, given a good life, and harvested in a way that caused little stress for the animal, I can only see that as more compassionate. Crops such as wheat destroy the soil over time, whereas grazing animals rebuild the soil if the farmer knows what their doing.

- I should probably think more about practice than diet... but I do believe its important.

-In the end 99% of people eat meat for a large amount of their life (Even if you become a buddhist monk at age 20, your parents probably served alot of meals with meat, therefore nourishing your body's growth. I truley believe pushing veganism on your kids is a form of child abuse, vegetarianism can be OK if the diet has sufficient amounts of milk, butter, eggs, fish, insects, ect. )

-According to Daniel Ingrams reference to steak in a video I saw of him (I think he was talking about stream entry quality of life vs pre-path life.... the difference is like eating a filet mignon or chewing on gravel) I think he's not a vegetarian. My guess is that around 30-50% of Western Buddhists would also consider themselves vegetarian.

-Almost every buddhist/zen retreat I have gone to or read about.... says they only have vegetarian options for mealtime. Which is fine, but this whole crap about how meat will make your concentration heavy because meat is killing and vegetarian food will make your mind light.. is... crap.

-On my paleoish diet I have healed many allergies I used to have, I don't get sick as much, my skin looks better, and my mind works better. Self compassion > Dogma
Charlie B, modified 11 Years ago at 12/22/12 1:44 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/22/12 1:41 PM

Rant on Numbness and Zen

Posts: 27 Join Date: 8/8/12 Recent Posts
A theme that has been with me for the past year is numbness. Incredible numbness. I'd be curious who else has this, it seems like not everyone goes into a super numb state because of their meditation.

For me, its undeniable. I've been feeling so blank, even after a year of almost total emotionlessness, I still don't feel adjusted. My opinion is, this numbness is good, because the emotions I used to feel alot of the time were based on a failure of insight and unskillful reactions (feeling guilty because I didn't do something, being angry at someone for not agreeing with me, ect.) I feel the numbness is like a fast, but instead of not eating food, I'm not consuming or indulging in unreality.

Maybe its just my perspective, but I feel like most people's dark nights are so mild like bunny rabbits and fluffernuter. Haha, ok that's definitely ego speaking, but ffs I just wanted to speak with someone who felt the complete WTF devastation that I feel has happened to me. I think the mind NEEDS to justify some things and work them out, otherwise it just go nuts. That is my gripe with Zen. Zen at times seems to me like a cruel denial of suffering, the Buddha at least admits life is suffering. But Zen teachers are all about the effortlessness. Effortless, yeah, after fucking years of hell on the cushion they put it, then they tell beginning practitioners "Its effortless". That's fucking deception. If you are going to tell practitioners that the whole thing effortless and painless, you are going to deceive alot of people into thinking they failed because their practice is tough.

When the ego has a sword to its throat in the dark night, it is has a right to defend itself, and sometimes it just wants justification of its suffering. If you tell a really damaged dark night ego; there is no suffering, that's like telling a starving African kid "there is no hunger". In those cases, you better believe suffering is fucking real. That's where I feel Zen lacks humanness. Why are Zen teachers afraid of admitting suffering is real? You could say hunger isn't real, happiness isn't real ect, which is fine if you have achieved that kind of perspective, but for fucks sake some Zen teachers really need to stop playing fucking games and just be human. Show some sympathy.

Why am I pissed off at Zen? Because I started my spiritual path there, and when I entered the dark night unknowingly and without terminology, the Sensei passed it off as clinical anxiety, and depression. Maybe you should practice less, or not at all she said. And guess what, I believed her, so I resigned myself to being not fit for practice, believing I totally fucked it up and stopped practicing for a year, until I finally found out what exactly it was I was going through. This is classical stuff here. A practitioner goes through a stage where he feels super powerful and proud of their practice, which is followed but the utter contrast of depression, despondency and anxiety. But the Sensei acted like I had two fucking heads when I told her that. When I talked with her while I was in the A&P I said "I feel kind of enlightened."

Most people on the DhO would be able to tell me right then in there.. "good, you're not enlightened yet.. but you have made progress. You are most likely in the A&P. The A&P is usually followed by a stage called the dark night where there is usually alot of anxiety and misery, and it could last for a while. Be prepared to encounter that."

Maybe its the Zen tradition and not her. I'll forgive Sensei, but using the maps is soooo much more compassionate than this flailing around believing you are going insane shit. Thank God for MCTB.

Ok that was a bit angry. But if it weren't for a bit of anger, what would change in this world?

If anyone has a point to make about what I said, please leave a comment or something.
Jason , modified 11 Years ago at 12/22/12 2:08 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/22/12 2:08 PM

RE: Rant on Numbness and Zen

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Charlie B:
If anyone has a point to make about what I said, please leave a comment or something.


Very interesting, but what about your practice? What do you do? What do you experience (I see fear, disgust, and misery, but those are aggregate labels)...? Give us the real nitty gritty!
Charlie B, modified 11 Years ago at 12/22/12 2:48 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/22/12 2:39 PM

RE: Rant on Numbness and Zen

Posts: 27 Join Date: 8/8/12 Recent Posts
It varies.

Something are all pervading, like this dry dead numbness that doesn't go away. Nothing seems interesting, im not motivated to do anything. Fine for a week or a month, but I've been living in total emotionlessness for about a year and a half now.

Anyway I have just ended the semester in college, and I haven't really been super committed to mindfulness, although most days I get in 30 minute to an hour. Now I have a month off and I want to sit a good 2 hours a day. But the sits are awful. They're painful. Liike im squirming around trying to sit with these uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. I am super distracted. Can't watch the breath, but I never really liked doing that anyway. What I do most of the time when I sit is just feel the digust and unbearableness, I try to notice what beliefs are causing me to be stressed. I notice alot of the time I'm believing that there something wrong with me (practice, sexuality, morality) and when I notice that I can let it go sometimes.

I think I've recently come out of either the fear stage or reobservation, but either way there was tons of anxiety and I was super paranoid about the dark and terrified about death, the eventual death of my family and me, like every worst fear that still affected me came out.

Now fear is not an issue really, but its more like...
-A feeling of 3000 pounds on top of me
-Feeling like I want to scream in meditation, without actually screaming
-Thoughts about my inferiority that make me squirm for 2 seconds before I get a chance to objectify them, but they seem to hurt
-A feeling of unrest and irritation that causes me to be short, stubborn and angry with my family, despite all my effort to stop bleed through
-No meditation technique really seems to work like in the A&P, where my mind seemed malleable and I was very open to new techniques. I don't care if you're technique is super awesome, my mind isn't really responding to any intellectual techniques right now. I now base my practice off a few key principals such as "The path can be summarized in one word: relaxation" and "Feeling the pain fully is purifying it" and "Don't go into stories, stay with the present moment".

Overal.. if I actually just took things and looked at it at each moment, its kind of bearable. I don't get affected by long thought streams anymore about hating myself or fear of death, they kind of hurt for 10 seconds or less and fizzle down. I also feel lesss and less anxious each time I come out the end of a fear cycle. But everything together, the irritation towards my family and everything, the numbness, the total resistance and misery in practice, makes this pretty tough.

My goal is not to bitch and complain, its just to get my mind's grievances out there so it can rest, and so I can continue to approach my life in a more and more skillful way.
Charlie B, modified 11 Years ago at 12/22/12 2:54 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/22/12 2:54 PM

Account

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Also, this account of the dark night is remarkably similar to how I'm feeling

http://www.wisdomsgoldenrod.org/notebooks/23/3


"With the coming-in of the dark night there is a going-out of confidence in himself, an uncomfortable sense of failure, a pessimistic feeling that he will never again find peace, joy, or happiness."

Just so many good quotes that resonate to help me feel less special about myself.
Charlie B, modified 11 Years ago at 12/23/12 3:24 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/23/12 3:03 PM

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Dec 23 2012

Didn't do any practice today, but I got outside and did alot of garden work I've been meaning to get to. I feel sooo much better than yesterday and less gloomy. i think the sun and the fresh air helps to ... aerate the mind. The yard work was a kind of work practice to me, which I don't do often because I've been in school for 4 months and I've been just too tired to get out and do physical work.

When I can't get outside.. freezing cold showers are my mainstay... they make me feel grounded, stronger, warmer (when you get out), calmer... everything good you can think of.

I noticed for a period today I started feeling particularly good, and my mind came these beliefs how I am not worthy of enjoying myself. I think I'lll notice more often from now on when I sabotage myself.

Feeling I may be close to equinimity.

Note:

I just did a little 3 minute sit, and today I seem to have gained access to the 1st jana (sustained concentration... that's what it feels like. I'm making a guess.) I've had it before, but when my mind goes into misery and fear.. I lose it.

I guess today is my day.

Extra Note:

I noticed a couple days ago in my meditation, I was getting kind of deep into it, and my head kept spontaneously tilting back, as if to look at the stars. I hear spontaneous movements like that in meditation have to do with yoga or something. I wonder if the same thing happens to others.
Charlie B, modified 11 Years ago at 1/2/13 2:23 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 1/2/13 2:23 AM

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I been trying to feel the raw sensations of my experience and noting them with increased effect in the past week. I'm confused with somethings. The lines between practice and nonpractice are getting blurrier and blurrier. If I'm sitting down at my computer and close my eyes for 5 minutes, or when I'm in traffic and start noticing more subtle things about my reality.. does that count as sitting or practice.. because I feel no difference. I think about noting, dharma, ego with such high frequency its basically all the time. Its like I'm tapping myself on the shoulder saying "don't slip into stories, don't slip into stories".

While my suffering is getting hugely less and less as I feel conditioning being worked through and beliefs dissolve, and that does appear to be a sign of progress, I'm still not at rest. I guess that makes sense since I've heard people on this forum speak of Stream Entry as when their mind finally got something it was looking for.

Despite my suffering being relieved.. I feel incredibly barren... I guess a good metaphor would be if you cut down the jungle to grow a garden... its going to be muddy, full of dead animals... a complete mess. When you burn down the jungle to create your garden (as in... meditating to transform an average jumbled mind to an orderly and productive one), there is a period in between the full jungle, which has benefits of its own, and the neat garden that you want. I believe I am in that zone. The zone inbetween kind of sucks.... but it was painfully clearing that space. I think the extent to which the burning of the jungle hurts is related to how dense your jungle is. So in this in between space, there is alot of disorientation... and just alot of nostalgia.

Nostalgia. To continue the jungle metaphor... which seems to be working... the jungle, though full of disorder with lots of angry animals, has alot of benefit to it. There are fruits in the jungle... and those fruits can be wildly delicious. There are beautiful singing birds in it. Anyway, that's what I'm totally craving. I'm totally nostalgic for my old jungle, especially the amazing fruits that were available in my childhood. In the absence of any trees or animals at all... the jungle seems amazing and I am romanticizing it.

I am really missing my childhood... I had so much love and trust and wonder... qualities that faded, faded, faded each year after age 6 or 7... I remember being depressed around 9 or 10... just waking up with a heavy feeling, the love and lightness I had were gone, and I had this clear sense of not being good enough. I felt like the love had been taken away from me. I don't know if its just puberty, but I never really recovered a sense of confidence or happiness after that.

It was only until a girl I had met resparked a lost flame of total passion and enjoyment out of life in 2009, followed by an A&P in 2011, that really made me long for this happiness that I know I had basked in at some point in my childhood.

Anyway.... with the risk of sounding even more dramatic.. I feel like a thirsty man in a desert. I don't really know what the water I'm thirsting for is... but it's something like love, happiness, wonder, awe. Something like that.
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Not Important, modified 11 Years ago at 1/2/13 3:10 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 1/2/13 3:08 AM

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Hi Charlie,

Regardless of where you are at the current moment, the practice of Buddhism is essentially to

1) Discern the cause of suffering.
2) Wipe it out of existence.

This process is only stopped by fear of the "end of suffering", so my question to you is:

What's stopping you from wiping out your suffering? Now it could be anything, fear of death, fear of finality, fear of non-existence etc. The practice of Buddhism is to move straight toward the fear and find yourself at the center of a cyclone, then exhaust the fear, at which point, through pure self-expression, the fear runs out, is consummated, satisfied, and can die.

If this process is activated with 100% sincerity, then the goal is guaranteed, and furthermore, nothing can go wrong. However if there is faultering, of any sort, then anything is liable to happen.

My practice mainly consists of activating this sincerity. But I believe the Buddha formulated different sets of faculties for those
with different dispositions, plase check out the Bodhipakkhiya Dhamma and choose a set that invokes the most fear, thrill and excitement.

And then start heading towards your extinction!

Most people here practice the satipatthana, and it works for them. For me it doesn't, so my practice most similarly resembles
the catta sammapadhana, but even it's entirely different. The point is to do what you're afraid of, and man up, do what you believe you need to do. Essentially, striving for this goal, in fact attaining this goal is everyone's duty. To avoid it is only to procrastinate.

Enlightenment should lead to independence, fortitude, calm and satsifaction, it's supposed to be a salubrious win-win concept.

Also you may want to consider taking up a set of morals, as ground rules to organize your life and help you perceive what is skillful or not skillful to do. However if they hinder you then abandon them.

Good luck sir.
Charlie B, modified 11 Years ago at 1/2/13 4:40 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 1/2/13 4:40 PM

RE: Account

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I'm definitely familiar with those principals, but its always good to remember them.

I've done alot of exhausting my fear over the past year. Fear of death, not being loved, fear of the future... I've seen all these and more so many times that I think I've worked through a decent chuck of them, for now. Intense fear hasn't really arose for about a month now. I think I'm in equanimity.

I feel now I'm in a process of release. Alot of tears flowed out while doing sitting and walking meditation today, but I wasn't weeping/bawling, it felt like just a nice sweet release. I feel whenever I have these noiseless cries its a good sign. I can't really tell why I'm releasing tears because I don't feel sad, but its almost certain it has to do with my meditation.

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