Not only does it seem that I have I been here in the Dark Night for most of my life, it manifests in the most insidious ways imaginable. Strangely, it manifests as fooling me into thinking that I am transforming it into equanimity and even cycling through attainments. Unfortunately, it always reveals itself for what it actually is, the Dark Night over and over again. It's like the universe is saying, "Ha ha! Fooled you again!

The universe often calls me a Fool but I've learned to take it as a compliment. The Child-Fool is our naiveté and sense of wonder, our exploration into the less traveled paths, and excitement from what we discover along the way. He is our symbolic vision and sees not with the eyes but through them. He dissolves the complex with his laughter and does not fear the catabolic forces of nature, the cycles and laws which he is obedient to. Inter-personally, the Fool represents the peculiar innocence and even ignorance from which we each seek to rise through leaps of faith. That faith is really in ourselves. It is the inner awareness that we are born to experience all that is, and the eventual realization that our inner being and the external world are not two separate things, but operate according to the same principles and ordinances.

The Fool is one who has resolved the metaphysical and epistemological conundrums which confound the philosophers and men of science. His spirit is not "trapped" in matter, for he understands that matter is spirit; so how can spirit be trapped by spirit? Maya (or illusion) is not Matter, but the absurd, omni-directional, and reflexive template imposed by men's minds upon matter, or nature. It is by this artificial mental matrix that men are contained and confounded, and not by nature. The Fool smiles at the absurdity of those who cannot see passed their own phrenic fallacies as they peer, with scientific hubris, into the voids.



To avoid the truth that we are captured by our own projections, humanity has fashioned the pernicious and unsustainable lie that "base matter" is the prison of "spirit." Locked behind this folly men everlastingly batter the door to salvation forgetting, all the while, that the true key to freedom is held in their own clenched hands. The absurdity persists in their equally convoluted "Eureka" theorems, which lead nowhere but back on themselves, back to the original quandary which echoes perpetually through the sterile laboratories and seminaries - "What the hell is going on!?"

It is said that the Buddha himself was asked about this very question of liberation. He replied to the inquirers that, in regards the mystery of human liberation, there is both bad news and good news:



The Fool's litany is the Song of Innocence, a vision preserved by the world’s eternal children. Theirs is the circle of the bubble, effervescent and intensely fragile. Theirs is the ecstasy of the intangible. The Universe meets the Fool's simple needs because he refuses to live in excess. He is content to survive on the feast of his daily bread and asks for nothing more. He never thinks of, or begs for, the bread of tomorrow, of the week, the year or the lifetime. In this way he never knows want and his bowl is always full. With this reverent attitude he can keep his mind and heart alert, innocent, and receptive to the strange symphony of life, the beauty and perfection all around him and of which he is a part, rather than a spectator. He knows that only by living simply can many others be allowed to simply live. For the Fool, there is only the beginning, only the thrill of the first step, the first discovery. Yesterdays and tomorrows mean nothing. For him only the present exists because he is present. Each morning when he awakes, like a student at his first class, he prepares a blank mind for the day to write upon.

So when the world of silly men forces me to look at their hyper-reality and threaten to exile me from their so-called-all-encompassing world-view, I should just say, "Tra luh lah luh lah!" And go on my merry little way? Hoping that some super-food-fruit falls from the trees each and every day while I skip my merry little way through their hyper-delusional yet highly imposed, hierarchical systematic little drama play? Well, I think a rubber room awaits for all the meditation-time I could ever hope to contemplate!

Though the evidence is all around, and though the "engines" of the Beast throb and shudder everlastingly, the truth goes undetected by the hylic "Everymen" whose rapid arrival to, and departure from, the theatre of time and space prevents clear insight into the workings of the well-oiled machinery which operates behind the "Wheel of Samsara" (existence). Moreover, these erstwhile actors, caught in their mundane roles, perform better when they believe that they think with the mind, not for it. They offer their services in exchange for access to, and receipt of, the many endowments and powers that intoxicate their waking and sleeping dreams. Through its colossal adventure, the collective mind rewards those who serve its purpose, demoting, and conspiring against those who do not, or will not. It has fashioned both heavens and hells for this express purpose. The "Puppet-Master" covets those individual minds who can assist it in its super-secret agenda, its devouring of experience and framing of the world into its own monstrous likeness. The pawns who are recruited to assist in this conquest rarely comprehend what lies behind their personal ardors, their mistakes and discoveries, their rise and fall, or suspect that they are participants in a timeless transaction, mere bubbling test-tubes in a vast unholy laboratory, their personal value lying solely in their designated functions, and not in their selfhood. In the laboratory of the Beast, and in the social hive, we have our assigned duties to carry out, duties which are performed better when we believe ourselves to be operating under our own volition. Our periodic failures, during the vast experiment, are due to our supposed nemesis ignorance, while our periodic successes are, in total, our ticket to supposed salvation and enlightenment. This is the life-act which enslaves ephemerals and eternals, angels and devils all.

The Escher- or Dali-Fools, who have looked behind the god-game, and who presume to speak or teach the truth do so at their own peril. Far from being rewarded or exalted, they are vilified, and branded "Renegade." Every attempt is made to silence their audacious voices, and confound their antinomian philosophy. They are the cracked test-tubes, or corrupted data files, to be trashed and deleted. The Beast attributes little actual value to the problematic individual, only to the species. It may experience the occasional "failure" on the ontological (individual) front, but the plaque of its phylogenetic (collective, historical) success is proudly posed above its penthouse desk, so to speak. Unhindered by the brave resistance and resignation of foolish iconoclasts, the mighty wheels of the demiurge relentlessly grind on. Slowly, through its particular form of osmosis, the worm-like mind ingests the stuff of reality, reducing it to processed dust in its "dark satanic mills." All the long while, during its Sisyphean Labor, the ego-tyrant fails to realize that the phenomena which it imagines as "external" and antithetical to itself is really an apparition, or epiphenomena, of its own convoluted processes and that, in its efforts to dominate matter, it has succeeded only in further enslaving itself. Its window to the world turns out to be a mirror. In Blake's terminology, Urizen's chains are his necklaces.



The world, and its apparent content, is an image within our own minds that we condition ourselves to believe is an external reality. The principle incarnate architects and exponents of this lie enjoy titles like "philosopher," or "scientist," but they neither love wisdom, nor see further than their own perplexity, their own "Newtonian Sleep." The Fool is one who awakens to this paradox. He is awakened after hearing the ambient pulse and whirl made by the giant machinery of the omnipresent mind-game, the all-pervading, relentless and terrible rhythm unheard by those intentionally deafened by the clamor of thoughts, words, ideals and deeds. Upon his awakening, the Sage-Fool arrives at the peripheral wall which stands between the real and the unreal. He sits down in its shadow and remains silent, listening to it. There he puts an end to his struggle, his desires to own, command, understand or prize that which is unreal. The unreal, by being unreal, eludes ownership. It cannot be possessed, known, held or even destroyed. Only the mind which conjures the unreal, and desires it, can be silenced. The ego which adamantly and feverishly attempts, incarnation after incarnation, to find the world, and not its own countenance, framed in its ancient mental mirror, must eventually smash the glass, and end its vain quest, in order to really experience the nameless and everlasting Tao.

I appreciate the lengthy, in-depth response. And while I agree, the truth of it all leaves me rather indifferent and detached to it all. When I say all, I really mean "All"!

Hey HS, a suggestion - if you cut and paste replies from stuff you find on the internet it would be better to give the source, as otherwise one might be mistaken for thinking this is your own writing. I presume your name is not Michael Tsarion?

This is the original source for those that are interested:

http://www.hiddenmysteries.org/author/tsarion/thefool.html

http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/4633382

I have studied kabalistic writings in depth, and I can understand why you would cut and paste it. It is extremely exhausting to actually think about all of that stuff. Like the quote from Mark Twain on HiddenMysteries.org says, "When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained." If there is such a thing as a universal mind that is god, it would most definitely have to be insane. I am not saying that any of the categories collected by mystics over the years are meaningless, though. I can see how people would who are interested in such endless mental activity would want to organize such symbols. I, however, have studied it, meditated on it, practiced it, and find it all so tiring and so not helpful. If you ask me the whole universe needs to just burn its tired ass out already.

Since you bring up the topic of the universe being manifested by a deranged entelechy I will briefly comment on the assertion. To sum it up in a few words I basically think that the universe isn't fully deranged only half of it is. The trick is to learn to resonate with the sane half, then you'll find out there really is something to be excited about.

I'll quote this one properly since there was a complaint but you can just click here to hear it being read aloud.




amazon page

Yeah, like I said none of that really helps me any.

You'll have to excuse me. I don't really even have enough energy to cut and paste what exactly it is that I am quoting you about, so I will just say it outright in my sentences: If the insane half does not know that it is insane and in need of help, then what makes you think that it is possible to side with the sane half seeing that both seem to think that they are sane, HS?

Or perhaps the side that thinks it is sane, is really mistaken, also.

hey how about just good old fashioned paying attention to the moment. practice with perseverence and let things take care of themselves.

The only way to know for sure is to become as sane as we can on our own and in doing so the sane twin may take notice of our efforts and reward us with the gnosis of the greater universal sanity. I of course think that the Buddha was a physician who taught humanity how to move closer towards this gnosis, but he was not the only such physician. In a sense this sane twin is not actually separate from yourself, perhaps you can think of it as your higher self. Many great authors have written about this. Philip K Dick referred to the sane twin as the Plasmate, and he referred to the Deranged Twin as The Empire. I believe that once you achieve this gnosis then you know for sure that you're dealing with sanity. In other words you become sane enough on your own then your sanity can recognize its larger self as well as recognize the realm of derangement, but the reverse is not true. "the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. "

Since I brought up PKD in my last post I will share with you more of what he had to say on this subject, just click here

There are many other frameworks in which to explore this kind of thinking of course. You mentioned the Kabbalah so I will quote to you from that perspective too:

That is all that I do. I have very small but good algorithm for meditating that keeps me in the moment, relaxed, and continuously returning to equanimity all the while focusing on the breath as if it were cut up into smaller and smaller frames of now where there is no center and no separation between what appears to be the body and the rest of the vast, wide universe. I do this constantly. However, my entire life seems to be a dark night no matter how much inner peace that I have in the moment. Society does not seem to allow me to have success or respect. Perhaps this is just really bad karma that must burn, but it does not seem to ever go away.

The Tao-Fool does not seek to escape his ignorance but, instead, makes ignorance his reverend teacher. He is fully aware of his limitations, and never under-estimates his own ignorance. It is a virtue that makes him truly wise. Being as a blank canvas, he can read the inner nature of others who come in front of him, and his estimates are clear and true. Thus, he knows little of disappointment from deception or betrayal. All who come in front of him are seen for who they are, their true nature's naked before his deep and lustrous eyes. No masks, charades, games or camouflage conceals the face they think is hidden. Seeking nothing from anyone, the Tao-Fool is never dependant. Nor does he ever seek to make others dependent upon him. Thus, when he speaks, he does so without hypocrisy or care for what others will think of him. Their judgments are an anathema to him. Friend to himself, he needs no other. The "relationships" of the unawakened are to him a prison to be lamented and avoided. His silence and his darkness are companions and guides enough.

While he quietly smiles, the clever and motivated over-achievers charge tragically about him infatuated by the chimeras of halos, transfigurations, bleeding saviors, badges for excellence, palaces in the sky, social and intellectual utopias and conversations with god. Their nirvana is but exhaustion, the cessation of a lifetime of infatuation and utter folly. Their religions, creeds and dogmas are founded not upon understanding, but upon their perplexity, expectation, and hubris. Their holy books, altars and idols are their jealous prison wardens. To them, silence and emptiness are horrific and morbid, and should be avoided at all cost, banished by the din of prayers, choirs or wars. Those who have been caught in the webs and "mind-forged manacles" (Blake) of the Adversary, who know little more than pain, sorrow, loss and struggle, are bound to imagine that their temporary release or unsustainable freedom is the highest Satori, and that anyone who throws them a coin is a saint. Their very attachment to what they attain becomes the tethers of further enslavement. Their tight fearful hold on what little love, light or truth comes their way, ultimately suffocates and destroys such gifts. We never guess that it is our propensity for holding on so tightly which pushes away what we most value and require.



The Buddha-Fool carries no load, and does not care where his paths lead. He seeks no direction since he knows that all roads lead from, and back to, himself. The Christ-Fool can dine with the lepers or the emperors and teach both something new while, himself, learning what cannot be communicated. These Sage-Fools are the uncontained because they do not seek to contain, and are free because they do not aspire to possess anything or anyone. Like the invisible air, they exist above, below, on either side, behind and within all that can be apprehended by the senses and the brain. They have learned to inhabit the "negative space," and come and go through the portals between exhale and inhale, dream and nightmare, failure and success, laughter and tears. Though we never see them, they watch us as we sleep, and work, love and cry. They are ever near, always walking at our side tending our existence. They are our inwardness, the peculiar forgetfulness of self, which comes to some from time to time. They are that Beauty which is there when we are not, when the "I" is not. They are the Ancestors of all, but they belong to no one. They are the Shepherds of Being, and their omnipresent embrace is known as Compassion.

constantly.. except for the "however" eh? and the "however" is "my entire life"?



ok I think you are using "dark night" differently than it is usually used here... "dark night" is an absence of inner peace.



this doesn't sound like an innerly peaceful attitude. you seem to be taking this as an objective truth rather than a passing thought. a tendency of dark night perception.

I propose a brief meditation:

The present moment is totally free of any of the following: "society", "me", "success", "respect". Look around the physical space you are occupying, notice the totality of your perceptual universe without any added interpretation. is this problem (of lacking success and respect) actual, rather than imagined? Can the problem exist in the absence of imagination [1]? Even if you are imagining a world you label as "better" where you are respected and successful is this imagined world anything more than an imagined world? Does it necessarily indicate that something is wrong with the world you are in?

when there is genuine inner peace outer conditions have a tendency to follow in my experience, though not always. and when they don't, the inner peace (if it is genuine) doesn't mind.

[1] an absence of imagination as such basically being what meditation is about. you don't imagine any "other world" to compare with this one. you just are present to this one in genuine meditation. effortless acceptance of what is actually the case is utterly pervading when you stop creating 'other worlds.'

p.s. I know the game of "I can practice fine except there is just this one problem which I can't just practice through." it is the same old "I would be happy if I just got a new car" with a spiritual mask. I have had such thoughts and mind states many times. the trick is to stop believing that they have genuine relevance/importance for your life. this can be achieved through non-judgmental observation.

Yes, of course that is the way that I meditate. There are times when I cycle back to a dark night in my meditation, though. That is when I also see the dark night of my life, which may not be a common use of the word on this site, but it is common in almost all other spiritual circles. If I am left alone by the world, then I can always go immediately back to equanimity, but yes there is a however, HOWEVER, the world, most of the time, comes knocking loudly on my door letting me know that all is not really as peachy as I might be able to make myself feel, inwardly and detached from it all.

You too, like most people that I encounter in these types of meditation circles seem to have no idea what real hardship is actually like. I can KEEP detaching from the world around me, but the problems are always still there. AND sometimes, I do not have peace, because I get tired of continuously forcing myself to meditate to that place of equanimity. I get very tired of it all sometimes, and at those times, I just don't really care whether there is peace or not. Sometimes I get very angry and yell so loud with such pure hate and rage that the whole universe seems to reel.

In the Thai Forest Sanghas some monks live accepting only 1 meal per day and accepting only the food that is placed in their bowl as offering. They are never allowed to specify that they would rather have this or that. They do not allow themselves to touch money, they do chores all day and often go on dangerous hikes through the jungle with bare feet where they could literally be savaged by a tiger or rhino, yet some of these beings are among the happiest people on earth, truly.

Here in the western world we have been conditioned to expect a certain thing, and therefor when we get something that runs contrary to our expectations we suffer. In the Thai Forest beings condition themselves to expect very little, and so almost everything that they get including every meal is a blessing, and their daily lives are also experienced as blessings. This is not an exaggeration.

They do not detach from their lives, they live their lives skilfully but they perceive the living a very different way. The path they tread is The Way of the Noble Ones.

It would be easier to live that way there, too. No one is going to fill a bowl with food in this country. Not where I live, but I can still find food for myself in the woods until they send helicopters to pick me up and send me to the state hospital. I think that I would actually be more apt to be peaceful living that way than living here in the states. Most of the anger and hate that I feel is towards this imposing trap of a place that I live in.

I've experienced hardship that seemed real at the time and I know it sucks. like months of oscillating between suicidal ideation and general depression. with really intense ruminations that made me think that they were "voices" and thinking I was going insane. that was all right before and during the first few months of meditating.

that said if you blame your suffering on outside sources and convince yourself that they genuinely terrible, your not leaving much room for improvement. what are you going to do if your problem is with the trap of a place in which you live? start a revolution? if you want relief that comes a bit faster then question your thoughts and live in the moment.

Sometimes I think that all of these Buddhist explanations are bull. Oh, no, those problems are not real! It's all in your head! Again, I seriously doubt any of you would be spouting your brainwashed crap or shaking your mystical box of trinkets like you do if you had ever gone through what I continuously go through, throughout my entire life. This isn't something that lasts for a little while, and it isn't something that years of meditation seems to be able to fix, either.

consider this: every time you believe in thoughts about how difficult your life is those thoughts become more compelling the next time they arise.

every time you consider counter-perspectives, simply avoid focusing on the thoughts, or consider how difficult it is to live with such beliefs your commitment to them will lessen. they will be less sticky on future arisings.

i am repeating myself and have provided you with all the knowledge I have about dealing with suffering. I have nothing else to add. if you still find that your suffering is too "real" to be dealt with in this way then I got nothing for you.

what are you going to do about these circumstances? can you improve your external conditions in some way? I am willing to talk about that too but if your not interested that's fine.

best of luck, metta

Has it occurred to you that all your life you've been looking at the symptoms and not at the root causes?

You wrote: "I can KEEP detaching from the world around me, but the problems are always still there."

Why do you think is that? You keep distracting yourself hitting equanimities but the problems keep coming. You keep fixing things at the thought level to no avail. If the problems, as you say, are not "in your head", where could they be? How about taking a close look to your heart instead?

There is mostly only goodness in my heart. For five years I have been wishing everyone well, even my enemies. Ending enmity in my heart was the first thing that I did when I turned to Buddhism. It is what gave me my first feeling of release and realization that the Buddha's Dharma was correct. I have done good and have helped people even when they probably didn't deserve it and did not care whether or not it was appreciated. I have been very disciplined at both work and school, but when I either had an accident or some illness, neither place was tolerant of it. Work replaced me and school kicked me out. When going to job interviews I get looks like people have been telling them about me behind my back while they ask questions concerning things that they should not be familiar with unless some sort of blacklisting had occurred for some reason. When the doctors put me on a medication that I reacted to in a bad way causing paranoia to flare up, I began questioning whether or not I was being spied on by the university and the government. When I tested it, I realized that I was not just being paranoid. When I confronted them about it, they went silent and blacklisted me. Now, I feel stuck and very angry. I hate the society that I am living in and feel like I cannot trust anyone, anymore. I even found out that one of my good friends was actually a spy sent to get close to me in order to find things out about me, but I do not care: I do not need friends or relationships. I'm perfectly fine completely alone.

I can keep on meditating that way, but after so long of doing that very thing and only seeing circumstances get worse for me, it becomes rather dry and seemingly pointless. Perhaps five years just wasn't enough, though.

So, can you also see how opposing 'positive' feelings {love, sympathy, empathy, compassion} and moralities {helping others, putting others before yourself} to 'negative' feelings is just as ineffective as hitting jhanas and equanimities? In other words, can you see how all that is just another form of repression or evasion?

Also, maybe you 'feel stuck and angry' because you feel all your goodness wasn't reciprocated by society, so what was really the use of all your previous intentional good feelings and behaviors? Perhaps all that just created more expectations and demands on others, so it really backfired big time when reality presented in this or that way.

Where is the exit then? I would be inclined to say that in the absence of all the bad feelings and beliefs.

In regards to feelings, the answer to sadness and anger, for example, is the absence of sadness and anger, not some opposition of affective antidotes such as love and compassion.

In regards to beliefs, the answer is not in maintaining a moral system and extrapolating and demanding those values to the society, but to question the factuality and the efficiency of such beliefs on your well-being... in other words, questioning your need for reciprocity, fairness, justice, trust, etc. Why do you hold those so dearly? What's been the result of holding them all this time? Are they even a fact or just a human imposition on how the universe actually works?

It is not about going to extremes for the sake of balance. I already know that doesn't work. I also do not feel angry about the lack of reciprocity. I do not expect the piece of crap society that I live in to ever function in such loftiness. It is more of disgust towards its utter lowliness and indifference. It praises such depravity as greed and lust in the rich and famous while at the same time requiring hyper-critical perfectionism in everyone else not giving anyone any kind of break except for the already overly franchised and privileged. Again, I don't expect society to be right, but I am thoroughly disgusted at the amount of wrong that it holds up on pedestals. Nothing has backfired, because I'm not trying to get anything to be any different than the way that it is, but I do hate the way that it is, nonetheless.

Not only am I thoroughly disgusted at the way society is, but I also hate it for forcing me to try and be a part of it, to play its game according to its rules created by its pieces of crap, corrupt, fascist law makers who expect respect. I hate society because it forces me to use its money and to believe in its systems even though they prove to be broken and ineffective. I hate society for forcing me to get an education in its piece of crap universities and to uphold its idiotic, mostly worthless labels and degrees. I hate society for making it appear that I am the one who has a problem in need of psychiatric help from its own flawed, greedy, sick system of diagnosis of problems that its own society caused in the first place. This rant of my hate goes on and on and on without end inside my brain. It never stops, because society's hyper-reality never stops shoving itself into my face!

But what's the use of all that hate? Does it help with anything or does it actually just perpetuate belligerency in yourself and among human beings?

Do you realize you're just as selfish as the rest at the moment you want to change them according to your own moral standards? Do you realize you're just as malicious and greedy as them when you do that, with the only difference that you express those feelings through other beliefs?

Why don't start by investigating and changing all those traits in yourself to become an example of peace, sanity and civility to your fellow humans? At least for your own sake, like Shantideva said...



Regards,

Felipe

Thank God for bringing havoc to you. By suffering we look solutions more quickly than with happyness. With happyness there is high probabilty that we will end our meditation and forgot it and succumb into illusions of happyness.

Make a determination that you won't get up before you get new insight.

There is no use for the hate, it's just there. I do not wish to change anyone, but I hate their social order. Is there self acting with all of this, perhaps as a survival program, but I do not believe in non-physical, inner selves actually existing. I also do not actually identify with any emotion, hate or love, for those are really just chemical processes in the brain.

Yes, new insight is good, but what god are you referring to? As far as I can tell there is no such entity.

The insight that I have gotten from examining all of this more honestly is that the survival programming of my brain has been stressed beyond its ability to cope with the impossible demands of almost every social expectation that there exists. The deep seated anger and hate comes from the frustration of being forced to perform in ways that I do not naturally have the innate processes to do what society says is necessary in order to have a place in it. For that reason it has been impossible to stop this inner rage of the stuck amygdala from the futile situation of society forcing me to try and survive by its rules and only its rules. In other words, my brain finds itself threatened beyond its ability overcome the socially induced traumatic stress.

there will come insights or realization that after you won't be affected much by these things anymore. The more deeper you get insight into noself, impermanence and suffering the easier it gets to live, thought the life is still the same as it always have been.

If you have lost faith in society, lost money countless times, no job, lonelyness, you have nothing but suffering. Now it is time to stop thinking too and see what is left. Self realization is so close.

But society, especially when one needs to pick oneself up from the bottom, requires a self with lots of passion. One hears it everywhere one goes: "Passion in one's field is an absolute must." They also require a genuine happiness. They can sense when it is fake and do not want to be around anything other than absolute perfection. They require one to care about making money and to care about what everyone else cares about. One must be outgoing and extroverted. They frown on those who are by themselves and quiet all the time, rather they are suspicious of it, and they project all kinds of heinous imaginations upon those who are not very social. They lie about you. They spy on you and take your words out of context using them against you.

They also require you to think. They require you to think hard and solve complex problems. They do not tolerate meditators, because they say they are aloof, space-headed, and lazy, even if it isn't true. They have all kinds of preconceived ideas and projections. They blacklist you and make it impossible to succeed in life, but require you to do it their way.

The more I meditate, the worse my real life gets. The more other people, not me, isolates me and refuses to give me a chance with anything.

I already do not believe in the self, so what makes you think that I would believe in a so-called "True Self" if it ever came about as a realization. Why not just say that is not self also. There really is nothing but a dark, chaotic void, and the True Self is just the last attempt to find sanity when there really is none to be found? So tell me, What is the use?

Hmm so what exactly do you want out of life? If you could snap your fingers and have it happen, what would be the ideal circumstances for you right now?

That is a silly notion to contemplate, because it is so unrealistic that it would never happen. It would only create a desire for something impossible. The whole world would have to change and be different. That won't ever happen, so I don't really want anything. I suppose that is the biggest problem of all. I don't really even want to be alive on a planet like this. The reality of ignorance and suffering is just too much.

I just mean that, right now, you seem extremely unhappy. I'm assuming that you'd want to be something other than extremely unhappy. But instead of assuming I thought I'd ask. You're saying you don't want anything, though - so you're fine with being the way you are now? If you're not then you want something. You can't have it both ways - saying you don't want anything but then continuing to be miserable - cause being miserable means you want something to be different. So which is it?

Ok, so YES! I want the whole world to be different! But it won't ever happen, so now what?!?

Exactly - if the only way for you to be happy right now is for something impossible to happen, then what? Are you doomed to perpetual misery? Yes, unless you change something about yourself. Can you find a way to be happy in the world as it is - not by changing your mind that it sucks and deluding yourself into believing that there's nothing wrong with the world - but to be happy despite what's going on? That is, to emotionally accept that which you cannot intellectually accept. Cause you must realize by now that being miserable isn't helping the world to be different in the way you want anyway, no? So there's really no use. It just sucks for you and for everyone around you.

Sientifically there is no self, even the true self is not existent. There is left and right channel(self), left and right amygdala. The true self is when you balance them. When they are balanced it is blissful. And along the way you progress it gets even more blissful. Along the way the roots of self will fall away one by one, you will get more insight.
Good video about this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqrpKUTMXgY

Later the other people can't hurt you because you are immune to their threats, bad feelings just does not arise..
I think you hang out with wrong people. Unless you are put together with those people by force.

I have noticed even the anxiety or fear surges are eliminated occassionally automatically, they don't even reach to their destination to cause more harm. Also the sexual urges all will be defeated/lowered in intensity.

I don't get always a good opportunities for long meditations because lots of things annoying, even for this there is a cure..more you advance then it does not matter much of the conditions, you still can meditate. Thought it is still better meditate in a cool room and alone.

Like you, i have one formula for meditating, i have tested various ways but nothing can't beat it(yet).

I think that the self exist as long as you are aware of it and then its lost forever. That means sometimes its good to wait to the morning and see what self you then have, and do you think the same way as yesterday. Usually the old reality will come like as a "dark cloud"(i.e when you have serious problems what makes the shit boil all day long and only escape is sleep)...if you can't handle it then there is more work to do by rooting the weeds.

Other thing is when i am nervous over something and when its done I think that I could do it many more times and wonder what there where to worry about so much. signals...

Well but what is the thing in total cessation, the awareness 4th state above dreaming, waking , and deep sleep what is not conditioned to anything? There also is the click and you are not anymore in control, means there isn't any reasoning or calculations only freezed awareness. Is this the state between destuction of one self and creation of new self..

So detach and stay detached?

Hmm, maybe in some senses of the word. I guess I'm saying there's two broad categories: things you can change, and things you can't change. There's no point getting upset about things you can't change, so perhaps detachment in the sense of not getting emotionally involved is a good thing. If it's raining, for example, it makes no sense to cry about the fact that it's raining. That's an easy one. A harder one is to accept that you can't change other people. You can talk to them like we are talking now but I know I can't make you change yourself. I know that it's ultimately up to you whether my words have any effect. I don't even know if it'll be a positive effect. But hopefully it will be. Sometimes I forget this though and get upset when other people don't understand something I'm saying. This is something I intellectually know is silly but it hasn't sunk down to the emotional level yet to the point where I don't get upset anymore. It's an ongoing process.

Then there's the things you can change - namely, your own life, and the decisions you make in it, to a certain degree. But mostly I'm thinking of how you react emotionally to things. It can be difficult but it's possible to change - instead of just control - your emotional reactions. The main driving force behind this change is the intention to do so. Although it might not feel like it from a subjective point of view, I've come to the conclusion that when I continue to have an emotional reaction that I would rather not, and I seem to be unable to change it, it's because ultimately I don't yet want to change it, for whatever reason. Without the intent nothing will happen. I would say it's not a good thing to detach from your emotional reactions because these are things you do ultimately have an influence over. So, instead of detaching, seek to change them.

But the 'self' is ultimately an emotionally-formed creature, so it's not possible to just stop feeling entirely. Thus I'd recommend redirecting your emotional energies away from misery, not into nothingness but rather into more enjoyable emotions. Focus on something you like to do in life and then take joy in doing that. Maybe a physical activity like exercising or playing an instrument or walking around. It just might work. You will certainly feel a lot better. Then you will actually have a chance of positively influencing this messed-up world we live in.

What you seem to be talking about is really just a temporary distraction. You say to focus on something that I like to do. I usually compose a different piece of music every day, but when the composition is done and I play it in its entirety, while I play it is fresh and new, thus enjoyable, but then it ends. Then there is silence again. Then there is the world again. Then there is all that the world has to hate again. Even then, I go into meditation and see that I am not my emotions, I am not really this hate that my brain seems to process, but there it is nonetheless.

My first 2 paragraphs were talking about permanent change. My point is to stop hating the world because it doesn't do anyone any good. The last paragraph was indeed a temporary thing, a suggestion as to how to get yourself into a better mood in order to put a break in the hate, so from that better mood you have a better chance of changing yourself so you don't hate the world.


Are you really not this hate? Some people look at the world and don't hate it. You look at the same world yet you do hate it. What's the difference between you and someone who doesn't hate the world?

No, I am not my emotions, and neither are you or anyone else. They are merely chemical reactions in the brain. In the sense that they just occur, they are not of self, but also there is no such thing as self, either, in any sense of the word, not actually.

It looks to me that when people's brains do not respond with the proper emotion, then they are ignoring the aspects of the world that would produce such emotions. If you are suggesting that I ignore the aspects of the world that would produce the emotion of hate, then just admit it and say so.

No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying look at those same aspects that you react to with hate, realize that reacting to it with hate does nothing but perpetuate those aspects of the world that cause you to react with hate in the first place, and thus all you're doing by hating it is making it worse, then stop hating it and start enjoying your life instead because if people would simply enjoy their lives they wouldn't feel the need to do those things which make the world a hateful place in the first place anyway, and one more person enjoying their lives vs. perpetuating hatred is one step closer towards a hate-free world, which I assume is something you want.

Actually, I think you are still referring to willful ignorance. If you were a rebel in Syria getting bombed with chemical weapons, then you would hate your own government for dropping those chemical weapons on you. Likewise, if you were in my shoes and the world seemed to not be offering you a place in it, rather it was making life miserable for you by ostracizing you and not allowing you to make it, you would likewise hate your own life as well as those making it that way as I do. Another way of looking at it, if I took a bunch of dust that you were deadly allergic to, and I blew it into your eyes, you would cry, and most likely be very mad at me for doing it. Otherwise, you actually have a much protected life where it is easy to ignore the difficulties of everyone else, and therefore are not in the way of things that would cause you to have the natural reaction of hate.

I think what you fail to realize here is that there's more than one possible reaction to any event, without necessarily any ignorance or repression involved. Take two hypothetical people, both of which have the same accident, leaving them paralyzed. One person becomes bitter and resentful of his lost abilities and misfortune and spends a good few years, or perhaps the rest of his life, in painful unhappiness. Another is of course quite sad at first but learns to adjust to their new life circumstances and learns to enjoy his life despite his misfortune. What separates the first person from the latter? It's certainly not ignorance of the fact that they are paralyzed.

Or to use your example of hating somebody who causes you pain. You will perhaps appreciate the following advice here given its Buddhist origin:



I'm not saying it is unnatural for you to feel the way you do given your life circumstances. I'm saying it's not the best way for you to feel, given various things to optimize for, e.g. happiness or actually changing those circumstances to the extent they can be changed. That being said these sorts of things have tremendous momentum - I myself am struggling at work lately, for example - so it takes quite a lot of effort and will to change these natural reactions. But it is possible.

So the answer is yes, one should remain detached. If one is to be absolutely unaffected, one is detached. If one goes further than that and trains oneself to not only be detached but to respond with good will, then one is detached and trained to be unnatural. I already have gotten to the point of not identifying with emotions, so now, according to what you say, I should just not have any emotional reaction at all, except for the unnatural ones of good will towards those who torment. If this is what Buddhist monks do as well as the Buddha in order to keep pervading the all-encompassing world with good will, then it does not seem to have worked. It definitely has NOT worked in my case as my life keeps getting worse. I did not used to just let the hate be. I used to ignore it as you suggest and trained myself to respond with good will, but it did no good, and now I just don't care anymore. I also don't see others doing this changing the world any, either.

Oops I shot myself in the foot a bit here by not qualifying that quote. I only put that quote in to show that it's possible to react differently than how you naturally react. This is by definition unnatural. You know what else is unnatural though? Skyscrapers, irrigated farming, computers, etc. This does not make them bad.

However, I actually agree that following the Buddha's advice here is not the way to go. Well, my take is that getting angry in that situation is only useful insomuch as it causes you to do whatever the hell you can to escape that situation. But on top of that, not much, and you don't need anger to garner the motivation to not get your limbs sawn off. In any case, pervading malicious people with good will won't change the world much, no. It hasn't worked for the past few thousand years yet, anyway.

Here's a question: did getting to the point of not identifying with emotions make things better, or worse?

Not identifying with ANYTHING has made life much, much better. It does not remove natural, chemical reactions in the parts of the brain that are programmed to occur for survival purposes, though. Not identifying with the survival modes of the amygdala has made it possible for me to not have to get involved with it. Sometimes I slip up when not being on top of things and allow the emotions to take action, but that is usually as if some program has taken over a non-sentient robot. There have been a few times when I have had no emotional response at all, and although it was very peaceful for me, that made people even more mad at me. People seem to like me to get involved with their dramatic crap. So I don't really know what the answer is. When I was like everyone else getting thrown to and fro with my emotions, then I fit in more and life was an easier place to make it. Going completely back to that is not much of an option, though, as I would not like to be identifying with emotions and other such junk as I did not like being that way. It did seem to benefit me to some extent, though, socially.

J E B:



Obviously you don't want to identify with your emotions when they are horrible all the time, but would that be the case if you start to identify your 'self' with them but only with the aim of changing them radically from the root, turning them into felicitous/innocuous ones? If you think about it, if you identify with your feelings, 'you' would be your feelings and your feelings would be 'you'. That premise implies that you can be under full control of your emotions {because they are the substance of 'you'}, so you could turn them into the ones you prefer... most likely, into felicitous/innocuous ones.

Would you like that version of your 'self' {a happy and harmless 'self'} more than a detached {equanimous, uninterested in what feelings are happening} 'self'?

Hmm... from the way you talk now it doesn't sound like your life is very good right now. Was your life as bad as it is now before you started disidentifying from everything? Did you consistently feel as bad as you do now before you started disidentifying from everything? It sounds like you've been at this for a while so it might be hard to separate out the circumstances.

Life, my inner reality, was much far worse than it is now.

Good or bad emotions, when I identified with them, there was no sanity at all, before. Now, I have much sanity and capability to think. I had to get rid of identifying with emotions in order to get through the rigors of school. I doubt that I will be able to finish that, though, either, now. I am completely exhausted and overly in debt.

So you are happier now than you were over five years ago? (Not sure when you started meditating.)

I started Buddhist meditation five years ago, and guess you can say that I am inwardly content. Five years ago was what is described here as a huge AP moment. I turned to Buddhism in order to help me concentrate while studying higher math. I read Wings to Awakening after having read a sutra about ending enmity, I don't remember which exact one, that released me from my angry train of thought that was stressing me out. I read Wings all the way through while doing the meditations in my head while at the same time reading about them. After that reading, I went outside and felt as if I was one with all the frogs singing in the trees as well as all the other animals of the forest, the sky, the stars, everything, really, there was no end to me or the beginning of anything else. I have been meditating ever since.

However, there were still some very difficult times during school. It was very frustrating to do all of that thinking while at the same time go through all of the meditation stages that I was going through, so I cut my emotions off, and that is when everything got so much easier for me. I had a different problem with my mind going blank, though, that I never have really gotten used to handling very well. That is when I started looking into Actual Freedom. It helped some, inwardly, but nothing has really helped me to change my outer societal life significantly. I'm not sure if I expect it to, anymore.

J E B:


Yeah, I agree, bad or good {the antidote to the bad ones, really} emotions pretty much suck, don't they? That's why it's urgent that you take responsibility and do something about them. For example, investigating them, then diminishing them and then putting all your energy to experience likable emotions. These likable emotions are not 'good' nor 'bad', they are an alternative to that roller coaster mode, as they are unconditional and not dependent on external issues or achievements.

J E B:


I would be completely exhausted too. Not only you are experiencing very strong good and bad emotions, but you are also busy transcending/denying them...

J E B:


And applying yet another affective layer of good emotions....

J E B:


Phew

Instead, you could be putting all that energy in trying to enjoy this moment of being alive, the only that actually exists, and therefore freeing yourself from all that complex maintenance you are describing.

Hmm alright. So things got easier when you cut your emotions off. But are you actually better off now than you were 5 years ago? Because some of the things you've said in this thread are very negative indeed:



Here are some of the things I take away about your inner life from the way you've described it in those quotes:
- your whole life seems to be a dark night even if there are moments of peace
- sometimes you get so angry about your life that you feel the entire universe feels it
- you are thoroughly disgusted by society
- your hatred of society is never-ending
- you have been stressed beyond the human body's natural ability to cope
- you have deep-seated anger and hatred
- you hate your own life

If this is much better than five years ago, then what the heck were you experiencing five years ago?! Were you even experiencing these things five years ago?

I'll share something from my own personal experience. While I was meditating, I too felt like my life was a huge long dark night. In fact I perpetually felt like this trip had been one long dark night, but it was getting better lately. Yet that was always the feeling regardless how many months had passed. I did not feel that way before I started meditating. I no longer feel that way now that I have stopped meditating. I find it's much better not to feel that way.

Before I started meditating, it was far worse than it is now. I was on a huge emotional roller coaster with no way off. Now, at least I have an off switch where I can have as much inner peace as I want. My outer life has never really been that great, but I did have a social life then. Other people enjoyed being around me, but I didn't really ever feel that comfortable around anyone else. Now, that part is the exact opposite. Other people don't seem to like being around someone as detached as me, but I can at least stand to be around others. I don't necessarily want to be around others, but I can be.

So what are you suggesting? That I stop meditating altogether?

Also, the negative emotions that are there have to do with society being relentlessly stress-inducing. If I had never started meditating, perhaps I would be much worse off after going through these social issues if I had not obtained these meditation skills.

The meditation skills that I am referring to are:

relaxing, releasing, letting go, unaffected by people or circumstance, no issues, inner smile,
no desire, dispassion, detached from all emotion
vast-wide-centerless-emptiness and calm,
noticing when breathing in, noticing when breathing out,
noticing of the shorter and shorter frames of now overlaying the breathing in and out,
noticing of the vanishing of the whole universe in the frames of now while breathing in and out,
noticing of the noticing of the vanishing,
vanishing of the noticing,
no self

(Replying to the original post so the tree view doesn't get too nested.)


Ok, but what does inner peace get you if your whole life is a dark night and you hate it and you have deep-seated hatred and anger (meaning the inner peace is not that deep I guess)?


Perhaps you would be. This is the common thinking when people reflect on what meditation has gotten them. But is it a fact or just a self-perpetuated meme? Because as an astute man once said, "The more I meditate, the worse my real life gets." So maybe the relentless stress is actually caused by the meditating.

This is not a new idea. It's actually widely accepted in these circles, it's called The Dark Night. The idea is that it's supposed to get worse and worse until finally you break through all the pain and reach equanimity and then hit upon a supposedly permanent altered state of consciousness. Except then you hit a dark night again. Until finally it just stops affecting you even though there are still dark nights. This was the pre-introduction-of-actualism understanding anyway.

But it's possible to just back out and stop experiencing Dark Nights. This is what I did. I still get stressed of course, very much so in certain situations, but I don't have to deal with the fear, misery, despair, disgust, and desire for escape that comes with the package of vipassana meditation. Rather, even in times of stress, I am generally optimistic, know that the stress will pass, that it's not a deep, ingrained problem, and I also have spans of days where I'm actually in a good mood!


Hmm. Well, it worked for me. But I also had a desire to re-engage with life and to start enjoying it again. Without that you will probably be worse off if you just stop meditating but leave everything else the same. Although, maybe not. You don't really hear much about dharma drop-outs, interestingly. It would be nice to have a collection of their stories, much like there's collections of A&P and Dark Night and Stream Entry stories

I don't look at the peace as having levels of depth. There is either peace or there isn't. When I do not have peace, it is usually out of being tired of forcing myself to go through the dry process of getting there. I can get there, though, and for as long as I want it to last. Sometimes I just don't care whether I get there or not, and that is when I notice that there is actually a deep seated hate for society that never really goes away. Most likely because it is a trained set of neural nets that I developed from early childhood. That very same hate was there before I meditated, its always been there, but what I do notice now is that it is not actually me and is just the brain's natural reaction to a stressful society. That is a good thing is it not?

No, because you've given up that you can ever change that part of yourself - you don't even acknowledge that it's part of yourself anyway. Well you put it off to "the brain" but it is the particular brain that happens to be generating you and your experiences.

Anyway. If it's a trained set of neural nets that you developed from early childhood, then you can train them differently. Deep seated hatred of society doesn't do anyone good. I would suggest that for your sake and for everyone else's sake you do something about it. Or you can not care and get to your inner peace. It is up to you of course.

Sounds like you are growing up ;)
Just for the record, it's totally possible to meditate and still be like that.

There is definitely a weird trend, though, on this and related boards for *some* (especially young male) practitioners to get all outta whack with intensive practice. I think lots of practical, social and normal developmental issues get wrapped up erroneously into 'dark night', which is a form of spiritual bypassing, and no amount of meditation will make those problems go away or make maturity come sooner. But it sounds like J.E.B is coming from a place where, whether he is doing that on top of it all or not, he is in a pretty deep hole suffering wise, and has been for a long long time. Also, it sounds like it's everyone else's fault... if I had a dollar for every 'them' in the posts on this thread I wouldn't need to scoot home right now to get my wallet that I forgot to go get lunch.

That said, I think your advice that he back away from however he is engaging practice and try to take responsibility for his emotional life is spot on. I hope he takes it.

Hehe. Indeed.

No doubt. Dan Ingram, for example, is always super cheery whenever I talk to him.


Yea, I've noticed that as well. This is what was happening with me. In my case the pragmatic dharma package was just making things worse for me. It was actually counter-productive to working on these issues. Part of the reason I talk about these things is because the commonly accepted notion in pragmatic dharma is that once you're in it, you're screwed, there's no way out but going through it even if your life might start to really suck in the meantime. It turns out it is possible to just back out of the whole thing!


We'll see what happens. I certainly wish him well!

This is exactly what I mean by people not really knowing what it is like to have such a deeply ingrained problem. They don't see it for the permanence that it has played in some people's lives. Those types of people, the ones who seem to have it all together who probably really don't as much as they tend to try and make people think, only see stress as the superficial, impermanent part and peace as the deeper, central solid foundation of who they are. Also, identity is really just a mental program. There is no proof of there being a central entity in any being for that matter.

As for stopping meditation, the only thing that seems to have helped even a little bit in my life, and get some serious "psychological" help, that sort of help has only made things worse in my life. Psychiatry really is close to blood-letting with leaches and really only succeeds in programming a person to rely on the very same social institutions that cause much of the stress in the first place. I recall several pharmaceuticals that were tried on me, all of which produced some very seriously damaging side-effects. One even caused Parkinson's disease, but did absolutely nothing for my psychological condition.

Society actually deserves to be hated. That is for sure, but I do not have to identify with that hate, or anything else anymore. That is a good thing. Before meditation, I was a big egotistical asshole, but I did not recognize what I do now. Believe me it is better to know and know how to detach from it than to be wrapped up in it and actually being that hateful piece of crap.

OK, but problem is, even if you are not owning those parts of yourself (the hateful peice of crap) everyone else has to deal with it-- however and whether you identify with it at all. Now, if detaching from it as you describe gives you the space to change your behavior a bit and be a more decent person, well then, that's one thing. But if detaching from it just leaves your speach and behavior the same, then I'm not sure what good it does except for you- which is not nothing, but a lot less than desirable.

How do you differentiate between the Society that you hate and all the 'thems' that constitute it and the actual people you interact with everyday? Do you hate the checkout person at the grocery store? The family down the street? Me? Or do you just hate some nebulous 'system'?

Also, sorry for how difficult your life has been and how deep your suffering is.

You better be sorry...just kidding. No, I do not mean you or average fellow citizens. If you have actually read what I have said you would know that I have been referring to the hyper-real, integrated institutions of society that everyone, especially those who hold titles and use the system for their own purposes accept as necessary ignoring the fact that it is so corrupt and causing so much stress for all those who are subject to it, which would include all of us average Joe's. We all have this hate within us, at least everyone whom I have had a chance to have an honestly deep discussion with. No one really likes to admit that that hate is there, though, and yes everyone who does not recognize it as I once did end up expressing that hate in repressed and perverted ways not knowing what was really at the base of such deep rooted disgruntlement.

When it is recognized and dealt with honestly in the open, then when it is dissociated from obtaining peace or equanimity, that very meditative process is the very act of retraining the neural nets to become more peaceful and less hateful. However, just running into it during a Dark Night, and not knowing what to do about it, and then "backing out" of the whole thing before dealing with it appropriately and subsequently identifying with it again is what would actually nurture it into manifesting again.

I do not act upon any of my emotions when I am actively in meditation mode in my life. When I become complacent and ignore my practice is when the behaviors, or actually just hateful words, begin to emerge once again.

Hi...my first post on this forum although I have been observing for quite awhile. I'm only meditating (vipassana) properly for the last 14 months although I have tried off and on for 30 years. But I found this paragraph in this thread interesting (apologies for not knowing how to properly extricate an embedded quote):

Jake: 'There is definitely a weird trend, though, on this and related boards for *some* (especially young male) practitioners to get all outta whack with intensive practice. I think lots of practical, social and normal developmental issues get wrapped up erroneously into 'dark night', which is a form of spiritual bypassing, and no amount of meditation will make those problems go away or make maturity come sooner'.

I'm intrigued by and curious about the number of young men posting on this and other similar fora, particularly in what seems like intellectual or separating approaches to the arising of emotions: as if such sensations/feelings are to be somehow 'meditated' away or distracted...as someone who's had her fair share of human anxiety over a lifetime, I increasingly find sitting with the yuck feelings the only way through them...time is a great teacher. Alas I don't think there is a cure for human suffering. When it gets really bad, I hop on the bike, go for a brisk walk or meet a friend for a chat. Smiling & gratitude helps too (must be some physiological kick in)...

Today I am sending much metta to JEB...

Thank you for the good will. I haven't said this yet as I do not want to brag, but I send out good will to the whole universe everyday several times a day once I have recognized the presence of the bad emotions within and dissociate from them. I simply cannot allow myself to identify with my emotions anymore. The good ones become an attachment, and the bad ones make me something that no one wants me to be. In fact I find it best to incorporate mindfulness to the idea and realization that there absolutely is no self at all as being selfless is what usually makes me the best human being that I can possibly be for the sake of others.