I want this to be a useful reflection on Dreamwalker and the broader consideration of diagnosing and giving advice...

My premise is that, ultimately, there is a lot of sneaky ego pride and vulnerability in spirituality. Seeking enlightenment is sort of the highest and cleverest expression of ego wanting to get rid of the ego and attain the ultimate not-self self, so to speak. People who aren't drawn to spiritual stuff see this right away and look at seekers as being prideful and slightly crazy... and they're not entirely wrong   

​​​​​​​So everyone comes into this space with a lot of secret ambitions and as a result they also have a lot of secret, hmm, _repressions and rationalizations_ about who they want to be versus who they actually are in the moment. And repressions and rationalization on how well they want their practice to be going versus how well it is actually going. The expression "sweep things under the rug" comes to mind. We all will -- at some time or another and probably a dozen or two times a day -- sort of ignore our imperfections or frictions and rather than spend time sweeping things up and putting in the garbage, we just sort of sweep it under the nearest rug and walk away...  There's also an old joke in the movie "The Big Chill" (not a recommendation!):

Michael: I don't know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They're more important than sex.
Sam Weber: Ah, come on. Nothing's more important than sex.
Michael: Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?

Dreamwalker was sooo good at finding the rationalizations in a person's self-mapping. And frankly that both hurt and helped people. If people were confident in there practice so far and looking for what to working on next -- perfect. If people were unsure of their practice and fragile it wouldn't go so well.

The thing that kind of strikes me now thinking about all of this is that sometimes people need to hear 5 or 10 compliments if they are going to hear 1 critique. If you were in Dreamwalkers presence you would feel that loving interest that he had for people's practice. Unfortunately, that vibe couldn't be beamed into the internet into a post.

So anyway, my big observation is that I wish I mentioned to Dreamwaker to maybe point out all the things that someone was doing right before pointing out the flaw(s)... maybe that would have been good advice. You know, describe what is working and maybe give a model for why it's working... and only then acknowledge the challenges of their cutting edge or blindspots. Who know, or maybe that's a waste of time because people won't "hear" it anyway! No one really wants advice and I know that from my own personal resistance to it over the years. And yet it is funny how old advice seems to pop up in our mind when we are finally ready to hear it and I know that from my own personal experience over the years.

So I don't know. Regardless, it's too late. But maybe it's helpful in some way now... or not.




 

I think I told Dreamwalker once that I will kick his sorry dhamma arse if he doesn't pull back He took that rather ok I think  

I see diagnosing as being a pain killer. It matters little really. There is nothing ever there in the first place. But it's a helpful tool. It sure helps the thick headed like myself to keep up going! Keeps you focused on "the thing". All good stuff! 

I'm not trying to excuse, but to explain:

The tone set on DhO from the very beginning was quite harsh, and the founder served as a model for the interpersonal harshness. Some of the early moderators perpetuated the harshness. At times, this place was intolerable. I quit frequenting DhO myself. Dreamwalker came here early, and the tone he used in many of his comments comes from those early habits. The place was difficult to break into for new users, and too harsh for many of the original members, even the very experienced and important voices. So they left. I think it's much better here now, thanks in large part to members like shargrol.

Ooh, I just had a flashback of one of my many leavings of DhO because of the caustic vibe -- good reminder Chris!  

Everyone has an idealized version of a teacher, at pretty much every stage of the path. Teachers themselves tend to teach the way that worked for them. From the perspective of self, or duality, it takes all kinds of teachers to make the dharma world go round, and from the non-dual perspective, there is only one teacher with many faces.

Well ... I did first join DhO in 2011 and after about 30 post left never to return! It was very harsh and utterly direct indeed! Some folks just couldn't relax into such a bombastic dynamics! Me including! 

It's such tricky business, trying to figure out what kind of constructive advice is likely to land for someone, and what would just be off-putting.

I think most people are capable of receiving advice, but people differ in which areas they are more able to take on advice, and which areas they are not (ie the ones that hit their deeper insecurities :o ). And even for the same person, their willingness to hear will depend on their mood that day, what's been going on in their life, whether the advice used triggering language or not (see: deeper insecurities), how well they vibe with the advice-giver. Sometimes, the shit-sandwich approach will help get a harsh truth across more gently; other times it will do nothing, or even feel like salt in the wound.

Oh the joys of navigating around someone else's ego issues...!

All that to say, I appreciate it when people make the effort to sound kind, encouraging, etc, to try to slip past someone's ego defences, and I think it's preferable to barging in and exposing their weaknesses. Especially when giving advice to people on the internet, when there might be no existing relationship of trust and rapport that might have softened the blow. But however the advice is couched, the way it lands will still be wildly unpredictable, and it's good to keep that in mind when advice backfires and feelings get hurt.

May we be forgiving towards ourselves and each other when ego-stuff infects a conversation...

Well, I know that I am a relative newcomer here, and did not experience some of the harshness described, or perhaps only a little bit of it.  What I did experience in this regard never really bothered me personally, at least.

However, in the last few years of on-and-off participation in the DhO, I do feel like it has become a bit more open, more friendly, more diverse with more representation from different traditions as opposed to just the Mahasi / Goenka tradition, and I definitely think that is a good thing.

I just want to clarify that I am in agreement with everything that has been said here.

So, that said, the thing that comes to mind after giving this some thought throughout the day is something that I hope Devin would have appreciated.

"Technical" people are not always good communicators in the traditional sense - in fact, they usually are not.  This is true in spiritual spaces, it's also true in other spaces.  In the business world these interpersonal communication skills are sometimes referred to as "soft skills".  And, in many companies, there are positions designed around the assumption that technical folks are maybe not going to have the best communication skills.  This is why we have project managers, customer liasons, etc etc.  And both the technical and more external-facing, 'business' roles are absolutely critial positions to have in order for your engagement to be successful.
The ideal is to have someone who is both technical and also a good communicator, but this is quite rare.

In the world of awakening, the technical folks are the ones who are highly experienced and passionate about the nitty gritty, the mapping, the theorizing, the states and the substates and the relationships between those states, etc.  Devin was very much one of these people.  Daniel Ingram is another of these people.  And, I personally think that they are both actually pretty good communicators, but I also recognize that their personalities throw some people off, and I do agree that it would be better if that didn't happen.  

To cut to the chase, one of the main things that makes the DhO a unique and valuable space is that it's a place where people can really get down into the weeds on tech stuff. And if those nitty gritty conversations aren't happening, some of those highly experienced tech folks are going to lose interest.  Not to say we don't have plenty of them right here at the DhO and on this thread right now.

And I guess I'm just saying that, when you have these really technical conversations, you're probably just going to have some difficulty in communication and that's pretty much unavoidable.  It's also just really hard to communicate some of the minutias.  

Sigh, well, that feels a little clumsy, and I wish i had a little more time to iron it out... oh well.  I hope I'm getting my point across.

In other words, there's certainly such thing as "too harsh".  However the opposite is also true.  The challenge is finding the balance and it is a challenge because it's so, so complex and (as noted earlier) every individual is different and is going to react in different ways, its nearly impossible to know in advance how someone will react especially communicating online.  The great thing is that the DhO is full of many very experienced and very good communicators and I feel like I see helpful advice being given all the time.  

When you have a variety of teachers/practitionrts with different backgrounds, then it's easier for one to jump in when they're confident that they'll be able to help.  Maybe it won't go as expected.  You do the best you can.

Have a good weekend all!

Regarding harsh critique, I think most people benefit from technical discussions of practice which are carried out with politeness and in a spirit of sharing and mutual respect. Such conversations are valuable to those engaging in them as well as those reading.

I havent been a part of this forum during its peak period and thus cant speak to the benefits there may have been of Dharma 'combat', but personally the only objection I have ever had to discourse on this forum is the willingness of some peeople, sometimes, to diagnose The Dark Night of the soul when somebody actually needs to consult a psychiatrist or therapist.

Like years ago, I would check out the forum and this would be happening in atleast one of the active threads and there would be no pushback from more sensible posters. Seeing that I would just leave, rather than engage in any social friction.

That by the way doesnt happen much any more. Thankfully.

Adi Vader --



Yes, for some reason, people tend to lean in on Dark Night diagnoses, even if the post is from a complete stranger and might be only a paragraph or two in length.

Hi Chris. Thanks for seconding.

I do believe that people in meditation/awakening practice circles generally want to be helpful, but at the same time do devalue ordinary mundane possibilities like psychological problems that are 'ideally' addressed in a clinical setting by qualified mental health professionals.

My personal experience was actually contrary to my current opinions. My problem just simply wasnt addressed through psychiatric medication and therapy, it really did need consistent planned methodical meditation. Its quite possible that I simply wasnt a good candidate for psychiatric medication at all. Its quite possible that if I had skipped that entirely and come straight to mindfulness meditation things would have been much better for me. But at the same time I had the good sense to stay under the care of a doctor. That's what I personally try to recommend to people.

I was lucky enough to find doctors who did not discourage meditation practice and were extremely willing to help me taper off drugs when I didnt seem to need them any more.

I can definitely relate. I have some firm, non-negotiable boundaries around my mental health — I’d go back on medication or back into therapy in a heartbeat if I needed to. Not everyone is as open to critique, willing to be wrong, or willing to seek help (or even realize they need it), and I’ve been there too. To a fault, I’m usually willing to try almost anyone’s advice, lol. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. Of course, if I’m really attached to a belief and someone’s advice challenges it, that’s where it helps to stay willing to change my mind if possible.

I also had to get my “psychology game” locked down before I even felt like I could begin pushing my practice. Like Addi said, it was the success of meditation — combined with the support and blessings of therapists and psychiatrists — that gradually helped me see that meditation has always been the thing that keeps me sane, even if I’ve had some very “insane”-sounding experiences at times.

I wish I could have known Dreamwalker. There’s a good chance the caustic environment people describe would have kept me away “back in the day,” so I’m grateful I found this space when I did — but I still wish I’d had the chance to know him. 

I was lucky enough to find a good local therapist who was also a meditator. Talk about serendipity!

My last therapist in 2017 was the best and one of most benefit to me. Old lad. He would not advise meditating more than 7 minutes for folks like me who suffer PTSD (combat plus rough childhood). He talked about a study with soldiers and longer meditation would cause issues. Most of here know that meditation can open dark emotions which could ravage PTSD folks. 

I would advise beware of overdoing it if one is experiencing psychosis like panic, paranoia, suicidal thinking, deep depression etc ... 
Finding the right therapist is the way to go! Then with therapy, and even meds, in time as things get back to balance, get back to meditating. 

Best wishes to all beings above, below and all around! 

Adding on two thoughts/ideas...

I remember Ken McLeod saying something about teaching/advising, like "be careful when you find yourself repeating how you say things that you've said in the past. If you're using old language, you're probably not really listening to that person's question/situation."  But maybe I've mentioned that before.... ( )   But it really is interesting how bad advice is often repeating good advice from the past but to a different person where it doesn't apply quite as well. I guess this is another way of saying don't be lazy.

I'm also reminded of times where I really wanted to give advice, but it was more to show what "I knew" or my wanting to "be right" about interpreting the situation... that never goes well.  Teaching can become a form of narcissistic feeding, I guess. 

Maybe one other thing... This is sort of an interesting discussion of stages of adult development and receptiveness to feedback/counseling  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355890481_Cook-GreuterSoulen_the_developmental_perspective_in_counseling 
It focuses on the seven most commonly encountered ego stages as presented in Cook-Greuter... and in particular points out  things like:

"No matter how skillfully a counselor tries to offer constructive feedback to individuals at the Self-protective stage, any such attempt will be reacted to as a personal affront or threat to their sense of self and power. Typical client response patterns at this stage are to be aggressive – fight back, argue, and blame something (bad luck) or someone (“so and so screwed up”) for problems, but never admit to having made a mistake or needing correction – or to withdraw and try to avoid direct confrontation with the counselor by manipulating the situation with passivity or passive-aggressive behavior in order to protect themselves. Rather than diagnose antisocial or passive-aggressive personality disorder and then try to speak from counselor’s own level of meaning making (which is perhaps several levels higher than the client’s), counselors will do better to predict and address the Self-protective person’s experience of being attacked or threatened by them, and simply attempt to help the client see how conforming to behavioral norms can be in their best interest."

"Conformists, on the other hand, tend to listen respectfully to any criticism, say “yes, I understand,” but meanwhile feel put on the spot and defensive as they want to please and fit in. They tend to avoid conflict at all cost and cannot yet reflect on their behavior and its consequences. In order to help Conformists save face, feedback is often best given in concrete behavioral terms, making use of their desire to be liked and fit in, and in general, third-person language (e.g., “people sometimes try it this way” instead of “you might have more success if you try it this way.”)." 

etc.

Thankfully they also mention how aspects of our psyche are probably at different stages and therefore we may behave differently in different contexts. The reason I mention this is that aspects of our personal meditation practice can be very sensitive to critiques, whereas we might otherwise be a fairly "secure person". It probably takes a lot of experience before we're as resilient in our "meditation identity" as we are in our occupational lives, for example.  They say:

"It is critical to keep in mind that ego functioning in an individual varies widely in response to circumstances, context and stresses. Counselors can, through their clinical acumen and perhaps through testing, determine a client’s developmental center of gravity (the highest stage that has been reliably mastered) and range and repertoire of meaning-making strategies. By observing and assessing the level of ego functioning that is evoked in different contexts and relationships, in response to different challenges and supports, and from moment to moment in the counseling session, counselors can respond more skillfully to their clients through attunement to their developmental “leading edge” and vulnerabilities."

Which is a fancy way of saying, people don't like it and can lash out if you're harsh and critical about something they're insecure about, I guess.

This also seems related... the role of the fool...

https://integral-review.org/issues/vol_14_no_1_cook-greuter_construct_aware_stage_and_the_fool_archetype.pdf 
cut and paste...

"As I like to say, we are all bozos on the same bus. Once we get this joke, we can become more light-hearted, and see ego’s striving for control in a more benevolent light because it can do no other. Fooling us and misdirecting our attention is ego’s task. It makes us feel secure, permanent, and important. It creates for us a pretend world in which we can reach heaven and in which we don’t really have to die. And yet, there is no escaping the tragedy and randomness of life and our inevitable death. 

"To summarize, mature integration as a human being entails an increasing capacity to notice ego’s workings. At the same time, we can lighten-up and experience the simple and childlike joy of being alive. We can delight in the senses and our inner world – moment to moment as well as appreciate the lives and struggles of humanity.  

"One of the surprising insights of late stage maturity is realizing what a hoot ego’s efforts are. It is folly to wish experience to be different than it is. And yet many of us idealists feel it is its own madness to see life as it is, and not as we wish it to be, and as we think it should be. It is natural that we want to feel that we are here for a higher purpose, that our lives mean something beyond simple existence. 

"Perhaps most important of all, immersed as we are in language, humans automatically participate in the delusion that symbol-mediated knowing is true understanding.

[...]

They [fools/jesters] expose and laugh at all that is pretentious, inauthentic, and unpoetic: 
 They unmask intellectual arrogance, expose mental rigidity, and uncover (defrock) spiritual 
ego inflation. 
 They expose and poke fun at sacred cows, and pompous behavior of any kind especially in 
authorities. 
 They deliver the truth raw without embellishing or softening it to please. 
 They are spontaneous and often irreverent towards the established order.  
 While they challenge the conventional mores and beliefs of society, they generally do not 
try to overthrow them as would rebels. 
 They shake people out of deep-rooted patterns of thought and behavior and remind us of 
our human frailties and limitations. 
 Like very young children, they embrace innocence, are joyful, imaginative and can play on 
the world stage with abandon. 
 At the same time, wise fools are always also laughing at their own suffering, confusion, and 
the reality of our shared human lot. 

How do wise fools and mature humans hold up the mirror? 
 They present a different angle or perspective on reality and offer a wider view of experience 
than people who swim with the mainstream. 
 They use self-deprecating humor, puns, and wordplay to diffuse tense situation and soften 
the blow of their critical observations. 
 They can voice disagreement by profusely agreeing with an absurd notion, so that the 
perpetrator sees the absurdity for him or herself. 
 In scholarly contexts, they may use reason in such a way that the fallacy of a belief becomes 
evident. This requires that proponents of a theory are open to having their ideas and 
certainties challenged. 
 They can create space by exaggerating the absurd that is taken for normal and thus create 
laughter as the only healthy response.

Shargrol thanks for linking that little essay on the fool archetype. I remember back in 2023 I read something you had linked on here from the same author about the levels of ego-development. I'm just curious where you're getting these articles and essays from. Does Cook-Grueter have a book? A quick google search didn't reveal anything beyond the essay I read back in 2023. 

Either way it seems that we can all be a bit more effective with aiding one another by listening and trying to find the little cracks in each of our egos. It's a difficult skill to cultivate alongside the actual practice. Cheers!

There are a few "cook greater pdf" floating around on various sites. Those three words were my google search. I'm not aware of central site. 


EDIT: by the way, sorry for the short reply, I was on my phone and I hate posting through it. Anyway, it's very interesting to see the number of sites that have take cook greuter material and created spreadsheets, graphics, etc. 

Looks like a lot of material is available on ResearchGate https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Susanne_Cook-Greuter

Hopefully that was helpful. ​​​​​​​

 Interesting. The point made above about the DhO being a place to get into the weeds of technical practice, I left for a number of reasons, but first and foremost among them was that I found that not to be true at all. 

I remember when I was still a lurker, someone having doubts about the statement in some TWIM manual about jhana temporarily setting aside the hindrances. When I was still checking up on that thread, NO ONE, not one person, actually said something like "Yup. That's actually what ALL the manuals on serenity and insight say since the suttas and the Visuddhimagga. You find that in all the Pa Auk books, you find that in Gunaratana's books, you find that in MCTB2, Leigh Brasington, in TMI, it's one of THE basic points of concentration practice, and it becomes very obvious once you develop it." Not one person seemed to have read and retained enough of the most basic literature on meditation tech to make that point. What there was instead was... people musing based on their biases and opinions. To my mind that is still... wow. Just... wow.

I remember a practice log here that convinced me even more to really not ever have one here. Every zig and zag in practice got a handholding talk therapy circle. The guy considered himself much healed psychologically, significantly reduced reactivity, etc. A couple of weeks later he was just so full of energy. Couple of weeks later he was again so struggling. NO ONE cared to mention that... maybe you're just cycling? Because he seemingly considered himself beyond that and it seems to be somewhat taboo round here to refer to cycles in later stages of practice. In later stages of practice cycles of course aren't the point, totally agree, but development still often seems to takes the form of just your average insight cycles just the same. If you go from some impressive equanimity to a new high to a new low and round and round, maybe what quacks like a duck is just a duck. Did any of the senior or other commentators mention that? Not that I have seen it. Again... wow. And yes, interweaving with psychology, etc. All true. But still, high, low, eq, and round and round and no one even mentions cycles as a normalizing (and maybe humbling) aside? 

I remember several times in discussions trying to make the super basic point that, again, is all over the literature, that Ingram restates so elegantly: "Figuring out that right balance of how to get an extremely high degree of natural resolution while maintaining that sense of effortless occurence is part of the real trick of sophisticated, high level vipassana."

Whenever I tried to make that point, the general stance seemed to be that vipassana is knowing vibrations inside out, but if you wanna go beyond, vipassana is not the way. Wich, in personal practice CAN BE true if you personally can't get to high level vipassana, because you can't really get out of the brute force pardigm you yourself attached to vipassana because of individual personality architecture. But high level vipassana would actually mean the balance decribed above. And that is fricking textbook. If you are so lost in your own views that you cannot even see that vipassana = brute forcing is and equation in your head and not a universal, well... Idealistic as I am, I expect grown men to at least be able to reflect on that, most of all here, since it allegedly is such a great place to really get into the weeds of practice. Maybe look it up again in some basic texts? Nope. Not happening. That such super obivous points that are all over the literature are even being discussed, and so little self reflection and so little revisiting of basic literature seems to be going on... Hm. Maybe some improvement is possible here?

Then again, is it really a huge problem? No. This place is helpful for people trying to find their way in early stages of practice, and I owe tons to several people here, whose responses to old threads were super helpful when I tried to figure out how to navigate pre 1st path EQ and how to proceed, how to review, etc. Researching the threads here was what got me the infos I needed, time and time again. 

But overall, when I actually got on here it just was too low brow for my liking. Be caustic all you like, but have some sense making skills, some precision of language, some consciousness of abstraction. If I would have to copy and paste pages and pages of what I consider the basic literature because that is being argued against by senior members, then I can either engage in such windmill fighting activity or just leave. Engaging here showed me where I needed further work, and oh boy do I need further work, but it also showed me that what I was looking for was not to be found here. I had to log out one afternoon while being in one of those moronic "high dose vipassana = brute forcing it" discussions because I had to teach a class, and just didn't log in again, didn't lurk, just stopped doing the DhO thing. 

This is a very personal view, and I am fully aware of it. But man, what a different place this would be if the majority of posters would learn some basic sense making skills, learn to make better inferences, review their axioms and mentalize their implicit assumptions etc. instead of believing they're already as trained as could be in that respect. Because "I studied at a university, am a engineer, a professor of x" or whatever. As if that would garantee proficiency in a skillset that so few ever intentionally take on a as a life long learning endeavor. 

I thank you all for the lessons, the much needed mirros held up to my face, and the openly offered help. But maybe, just maybe, consider that the tone here is less of problem than the shockingly low intellectual standard. The first and last training also includes working on reasoning skills. All your life. When did you last do that? In gym bro cycles there is that "Don't skip leg day" saying. How many brain days have you skipped? 

But to do that you'd actually have to HAVE a brain day, a practice of trying get better at reasoning. So many people seem to think that meditation and psychology is enough and seem to be blissfully unaware that getting better at sense making and language use is an actual practice you can take up and get better in. You wanna see pride rearing it's head? Mention THAT in a place like this. Where the stern logician scholars can't even remember that jhana temporarily sets aside the hindrances and that vipassana DONE WELL goes from vibration tracking to synchy panoramicity on its own - IF you can let it.

I'm writing this in a rather amused tone, looking back. Back then, I was just really, really disapointed. And the two or three times I checked in here again since have shown me nothing that changed my mind. 


I'm outta here again. 




 

A person can’t know what they don’t know and therefore can’t teach what they don’t know. Once a person knows, they are much less likely to actively teach or talk about it in a path like way. Not because they are not interested in helping others, or they don’t have good communication skills, or whatever—that is all from the perspective of a self—no, it’s because it is impossible. “The weeds” only help the path walker to talk themselves out of their own field, which is the only way they get out. In this respect the “bad advice” is as helpful as the “good advice” as you alluded to your disappointments with DHo actually being helpful at times. No amount of linear progressive path map analysis is IT or will in itself lead one there. The truth of the path is that there is no path. There are maps, stages, states, progressions, teachings, all of that, but all of that stuff is for the self. The one doing the practice is the self. The one that thinks it is learning is the self. The one that believes it will one day become enlightened is the self, and the one that believes it’s probably already enlightened, or mostly enlightened, is the self.The self is the field of weeds, and all the wrangling the self does as it walks out. This place is no more useless or instrumental in this happening than anything or anyplace else. It might be the place you need to be, or not. Mapping and defining vibrations might be helpful, or not. Jhana as a practice might be helpful, or not. Meditation retreats might be helpful, or not. Wherever you are right now is the right place. Thinking it’s not is the self thinking. And yeah, I know this sounds like blissed-out non-dual, double speak, and it will sound that way until it doesn’t. 

Being right can be awfully frustrating. 

Yeah, but only if you care about being right. 

Pixelcloud --


Why didn't you say something earlier? I'm genuinely curious about that because it may be just as important as your other comments. Maybe you could have gotten what you were seeking by speaking up? Honestly,  I've never been a teacher of any kind, and my vocabulary is no doubt limited, as is my ability to deal with abstraction. I tend to state things as simply and directly as possible, in as few words as I can, mainly because I'm horrible at typing and don't have the patience or time to draft lengthy comments about the stuff that gets talked about here. I like to deal with what I know from personal experience. Also, my level of patience with all the reading material used to be very high some years ago, but over time, and with age, it has shrunk to almost nothing. I guess this is all meant to express my view that no place is even close to being perfect, especially if the content relies almost entirely on those willing to speak up about the topics at hand.

I'm glad you posted your issues and complaints about today's DhO instead of just silently disappearing. When you find that perfect place for you to participate in online dharma discussions, maybe you'll reappear on DhO and let us know.

I'm happy that Daniel Ingram and a few others I can think of don't know about this. It might have prevented them from doing it so well.

Hi pixelcloud.

Your criticism of the forum at large is so vague that it won't meet its target.

You should point much more clearly who, where and how, in what words, and why, were worthy of your disappointment and amusement.

A general criticism of a point like the one you quote Ingram about may be valid, but where is it aimed at? That does not anyway sound like something that isn't discussed here, though you obviously disagree. Maybe your point about cycling is useful, too, but that depends also on context.

A much more general criticism of the intelligence and sense making skills of the participants of this forum just makes you seem like quite an arrogant person - I don't know you, but that's how it looks like. Also, while you apparently feel that your language skills are way above most of us, you fail to express the criticism in concrete terms and with detail that would make it useful. Maybe someone can get something practical out of, I don't know.

I'm personally quite (but not fully) aware of my strenghts and weaknesses what comes to understanding, language, experience and being, and general criticism like yours helps meaninglessly little in learning more of that. It may give some motivation in some unfriendly way, though. Maybe that's good, then.

So, what were you actually aiming at? What did you think you would succeed in writing your post? 

Best wishes!

Yes, Brian. Exactly!

Pixel, it’s good to hear from you; I’ve missed your contributions on here. A meditation community always needs serious, technically-minded members like you. I hope, one day, that you’re motivated to return.

I’ll echo Kettu’s remark that your message, particularly the latter part, comes off as arrogant. Practically speaking, this is a counterproductive presentation. In addition, it is likely a sign of spiritual work yet to be done.

Disputes over abstract categorization have really lost their intrigue for me. What if there is no way that things are? A great promise of the dharma is to free us from fixed meanings, singular perspectives, and essentialism. What a relief! We can keep the technical rigor and precision while eschewing its obscurations and frustrations.

You ask us to work on our rationality skills. In your case, I think you would benefit from working on your metarationality skills. (David Chapman, "Developing ethical, social, and cognitive competence"; Wikipedia, "Perspectivism".) Being able to work pragmatically with people across and beyond meaning-making systems and interpretations is key to high-level dharma discussion and dharma helpfulness. It’s as close as we can get to undoing the confusion of Babel.

Yes absolutely. There are a small minority of enlightened people that “teach” or speak about it publicly, for whatever reason. I DO think it’s even getting a little more common these days than it used to be. That’s probably good, but it also opens up “markets” for the teaching thing, that will attract people who shouldn’t be doing it. Or, I say shouldn’t, but actually there is no should or shouldn’t. It’s just in the relative there will be more scandal and misdeeds surrounding the space. People “doing stuff” eventually creates dogma and hierarchy, and all that nonsense. It’s inevitable. This will water some of it down and make the message more palatable for the masses, and therefore more profitable. I’m no idealist, so basically more of the same.

Pixelcloud -

I guess since this has turned into a thread about general complaints and personal grudges about the DhO, I'll air one of my own.  

I can't stand when people come on here, make some sort of big post (especially when they are making some sort of claim to an attainment), or pose an interesting question, then just throw their phone/laptop into a river and run full speed into the hills.  I'm not just talking about you - it happens all the time. 

Like, who comes on to a website, especially if it's for the first time, asks for some help or an answer, gets lots of enthusiastic responses, and then just peaces out without responding to anyone?  That's really rude, imho.  If we want to make this place a better, more realistic place to communicate, then people need to stick around and have the conversation they started.

Re: your comment specifically - I mean, I agree with you on a couple of points, namely that DhO is more helpful for less experienced people, which is true for pretty much everything, as one becomes more self-reliant with more experience.  Mostly this sounds like a rage rant based on a personal grudge.

It's a bit of a shame because you clearly have a lot of great ideas that you could be contributing to the DhO but you'd apparently rather spend that time calling people names. I mean really, look at how much you wrote.  Imagine if you wrote that much, in a separate post, about the definitions that you felt were missing from other threads.  Seems like that would be super helpful. But instead you wrote about 25% actual substance, and the rest just calling people dumb.


DhO has got its limitations.  No one's arguing against that.  But this is a place where there are at least a handful of arhats, lots of stream enterers and mid-pathers, not including those that have made those claims that actually aren't.  I can only think of one or two other places online where you might find that.  One of them being r/streamentry, which is IMHO kind of a dumbed-down offshoot of the DhO (sorry for my rudeness).  

DhO may not always seem like a place where technical discussion are held-- threads can often devolve into silly drama, there's communication issues, it's a clunky old interface-- but it absolutely can be that, and I'd say a lot of the time it is that. I personally have found it quite helpful even way past the "entry-level" type discussions, moreso than any 'in person' sangha I've been a part of.  Which is kind of weird to say, but it's true.  I've learned more here at DhO than at my real life Buddhist centers that I went to, lol.  And I was going to classes multiple times a week, for over a year.

So, yeah, anyway bro, you get what I'm saying  
Hope to see you around

Martin, I suggest noting who you're responding to in your posts, since if someone is reading the thread in flat view rather than tree view, they could misconstrue who you're talking to. (Hope you're doing well ) 

Ha! Yeah, [edit] John, that's true. Also, it would have been hilarious if someone replied to pixelcloud's post with "Exactly!" 

​​​​​​​Count me in as being curious about this, too, pixelcloud.

I'm very sympathetic to this statement and mostly agree. A lot of time people will reply about something... but it's unclear if the reply is a personal opinion, an opinion originating from some other authority, an initial personal experience, a often-and-thoroughly experienced personal experience, etc. It's unclear what map people are using in their reply or from what tradition the opinion is coming from. It's unclear if the meditator/questioner is truly at the stage they are identifying at. It's unclear if the advice-giver is truly at the stage they are self-identifying at.  It's unclear if people are responding based on an understanding of the meditator's history in full or just a pattern matching exercise of "this worked for me when I experience that" regardless of the meditator's history and needs. Nor is it expressed how certain the reply is and/or what qualifiers/disclaimers might apply. Nor is it clear what the counter-indications of the advise are, i.e., what happens if is is the wrong advice or the right advice but done in excess. (etc.)

I'm not saying this all very well above... but in general, I agree that people are quick to reply and don't spend a lot of time truly trying to understand the situation before giving advice. Ironically, Dreamwalker was a perfect example of the extreme of someone who really really wanted detailed reporting, both over time and in detail, from peoples' self-reporting so that there could be a really technical discussion.

So maybe that closes out why I wanted to start this thread and ends my comments on a respectful and appreciative note for Dreamwalker.

RIP Dreamwalker

I'm going to say this having moderated message boards that are far, far below the standard of thought and communication set here. It would be great to see discourse here like you'd get on a limited-access scholarly forum. Totally unrealistic, but great. This is a public, totally open place that literally anybody can join and participate in, and I think it's a f*cking miracle we don't have much worse to deal with here, so I'm going to take the opposite view and compliment our members for being as civil and intentional as they are.

Just sayin'

I think Dreamwalker truly grokked this place. He loved it, warts and all. RIP, Dreamwalker.

Exactly! 

Shargrol, your questions about peoples replies to posts being unclear in various ways are important, and perhaps some forum users would need those questions asked from them directly, at times. 

At some point I wrote some "advice", or what ever you like to call it, mostly to people seemingly in a mental distress and/or dark night or similar situation, and I did so from very personal position, which must have been quite unclear in the mentioned various ways. I did it basing the replies to personal experiences, to the felt need (debt of sorts) to pass on some helpful things that helped me in similar places, and an mixture of knowledge and learning from many traditions etc. - but not very clearly disclosing the background, which definately is different to the general context here - I'm not from the pragmatic dharma or progress of insight etc. camp, though I see them appealing in many ways. (Also, I never claimed that I'm on a stage or a territory on any map, and I doubt mapping myself would be very useful. Better to be lost and journey with intuition and momentary observation.) 

At some point I felt that it is not my business to try to help people here, so I mostly stopped. I also sensed that such questions like yours in the post above were raised, but never asked directly. Sometimes it was obvious that the replies were unwanted, though that also was never stated directly. I would encourage you and others to ask more directly if such issues raise their heads... Of course it's up to anyone to decide if that's worth the time and effort. Silent criticism is more difficult to interpret, and it is kind of felt anyways.

Best wishes,

Yeah, it's tricky. It's none of our businesses to help, our advice might be good or bad for someone else, our advice might be accepted or not by someone else, we're not the person's personal therapist or life coach, we rarely KNOW the person, we rarely get long term feedback from the person because they ghost, the person rarely describes things clearly or accurately or with enough information to be a complete description, etc. etc. etc. etc. 

It's a miracle this place is helpful to anyone at all. Yet here we are.

”It's a miracle this place is helpful to anyone at all. Yet here we are. ”

 it’s partly the ordinary miracle of connection and communication - everyone needs that, no matter how imperfect that might be. The other miracle is that knowing or reflecting together is a thing. Even when sharing is vague, opinions differ, cognitive skills are lacking and tone is not optimal. Maybe that’s a part of the ”metarational” John mentioned. 

Just a random post... I just stumbled on this, classic Dreamwalker:

Well, Congratulations for whatever you got. I'm a bit sceptical based off your descriptions and lack of description.
You are in HIGH EQ and blissed out? well thats nice but it isn't a predominate characteristic of EQ.
"I had a Cessation" that has no descriptive qualities.
At the same time I felt at one with everything? WTF? during the cessation? before? after?
Again,, Post EQ and your emotional enough to cry? Fine, fine.

My diagnoses based off your limited information Is you went from EQ to A&P.
I will definately trust your teacher more than my ad hoc bs.
What about the usual post SE effects? got any going?
Dont mean to be a dick, but lets not just group think for no reason, or to be over polite.
Good Luck
~D

Rereading DW again just now brough a smile to my face once again.

Describe in fine detail "smile on my face"!!!!!! 

I was browsing random DhO threads during a bout of insomnia, and came upon some of Dreamwalker's old posts, when he was still hammering out his own practice, like this one:


I've never interacted with him - he is before my time at DhO. But I enjoy the curiosity and honesty that radiates from his practice reports, and that the advice he offers is direct from personal experience.