Dan T's Practice Notes

T Dan S-, modified 9 Years ago at 4/2/14 5:57 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 4/2/14 9:39 AM

Dan T's Practice Notes

Posts: 69 Join Date: 5/3/11 Recent Posts
Rough structure of this post:

-Practice History, to present
-Actualism-inspired practice progression
-Current Experience
1-3 may help others, but I post primarily so any blind spots I’ve developed as a result of my practice are pointed out.


Questions in a sister thread: http://dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/5371437

Practice history:
-Joined DhO 7/11, some weaksauce thai temple retreats doing shamata, 2 goenka retreats, multiple 2-10 day home retreats following goenka model but applying MCTB/Mahasi fairly rigorously. Ingram gave some advice that helped here. On the insight side, maybe got stream entry: a lot of experiences matched but couldn’t reproduce fruitions.
-Became aware of the AFT 03/12, practiced basically off Tarin/Daniel’s HR podcast, and Trent’s “Chaos and Wonder” post. On and off with school/work. Had a lot of success getting into EEs with music/passive activities and struggled elsewhere.
-Various life/work related developments (read: stressful events) prompted me to chill out for much of late 2013 and chance into some really strong EEs, raising the bar multiple times for what I considered a PCE.
2014:
Mid-late february :
-Aforementioned PCEs compelled me to do more reading, and practice a little more, starting a cycle of this. I would take advice from this forum, apply it, and come back when I felt I had experienced what the post was trying to get at.
-Started doing 2-3 hours a day of walking practice. Some interesting experiences but in retrospect I was doing a lot of dissociation. No major hangover like another poster though, just adjusted and got better results (matched more closely with AFT, DhO members’ descriptions). Possibly confounding variable here right at the beginning of these long walks, I’d get clear insight-cycle experiences like never before, with clarity/intensity like never before. Almost unmistakable fruitions 1x/days, which maybe happen now but I pay very little attention to. No intention on my part, was not even watching it happen, a couple hours later thinking “hey wait, the order of those qualities sounds familiar…” Will make a thread to verify/elaborate/critique if there is interest.

March:
-Added reading of DhO’s actualism-inspired practices forum for another week, along with the walks. This culminated in mid march when I did a half dozen 10-18 hour sessions reading everything I could find on AF compiling a list of practice points to review. I basically made a list of everyone on the DhO who (1) made posts I’d valued in the past and (2) were practicing some form of actualism, and read all of their posts. Then I moved on to the AFT, correspondences, and the yahoo mailing list. Skimmed the last 2, focused on Richard’s posts on the AFT. I was sleeping less and happy/harmless* for 70%+ of the day. Cleared up a ton of subtle and not-so-subtle practice points.
-Decided I had enough information to make a run at real progress, stopped reading and entered effective retreat mode. Conditions varied as I decided it would help to not be as strict as insight-style retreats. I had no sleeping schedule, took an hour whenever I woke up for email/admin/errands, and basically chilled out for the rest of the day paying attention to my experience. Started off at 4-6 hours of walking practice, spent multiple days near the end lying on my bed for 10-12 hours listening to music, then 10-12 hours in silence. Before starting the retreat, I did not intend for it to go in this direction, and did not believe I could just chill out in a room without leaving (aside from bathroom breaks) for that long. I had a great time.

Practiced with music a lot. Sometimes with a single song on repeat for the day, paying attention to progressively subtler experiential changes. These two threads were the closest I could find to simple versions what I was doing, but nobody seems to have run with it as long as I have.
I’ll elaborate in another thread if there is interest.
http://dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/1505833
http://dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/1291450



Actualism-inspired practice progression:
In order:
-Focusing almost exclusively on the sense doors. Dissociative. Would instinctively use the sense doors I had aptitude with, to “crowd out” negative experiences.
-Then using Dunning’s social identity advice as an interrogative mechanism to find “mental space” to examine strong emotions, using that space to apply apperceptiveness, felicity, lowering the intensity of those emotions. Some of this work was verbal or thought-based, where I’d try to explain an emotion, maybe write it down, and pay attention while doing that, letting it run its course.
-Then when haietmoba could be a nonverbal attitude to most of experience, not just sensate/”light emotions”, using that as the interrogative mechanism to see everything else in a different light. Would think thoughts to see what happened, watch the intention, the watching of the intention, the arising of (progressively subtler) somatic charge, etc. Much less thought involved, no speaking when doing it well, turning haietmoba into a verb and ‘doing it’. “I am my feelings, and my feelings are me” starts to gel at this point, ability to sit at rest *clicks* as any impulse to move or adjust experience can be appercieved and simply not acted upon (an act of letting go, versus self discipline).
-Practice notes are 3 words right now: “Like, apperceptiveness, looped.” Brevity of these notes helps with the goal of making it a nonverbal attitude, which helps with all that shadow being stuff. I used to use some attention to re-examine the meaning of the words in haietmoba (different inflections, emotions, etc), a bad idea. I found this more direct.
1. Like refers to the felicitous quality I sometimes forget to notice in any experience. It helps to start here.
2. Apperceptiveness, refers to first establishing awareness of the sense field and any affective qualities. My attitude here is almost identical to asking haietmoba, but with an emphasis on the any label-able emotions/subtle vedena because of previous imbalances where sight/hearing would be the focus.
3. Looped, refers to what happens immediately after, where the mind is aware of itself being aware of itself. Put another way, I’m reminding myself to keep applying apperceptiveness, to the idea that I’m applying apperceptiveness.
Coding example:I think of apperceptiveness as a recursive function call. Apperceptiveness(), feel better, Apperceptiveness(feel better)...or awareness of that shift in progressively more subtle vedena…When practice is going well, it’s an attitude / direction to incline, and the words don’t matter.
Does that make sense?

-Did not experiment with sweet spot but during long sits I’d kind of effortlessly scan around and find everything was great, “I” was feeling perfect and didn’t need to micromanage the experience, nothing to worry about, etc. Finding the sense field clear / free of affect I’d look for hints of somatic charge and got vibrations/warmth/tenderness in the chest that subsided after a few hours of examination...then deep in the solar plexus about an area the side of half a USD bill, but oval. In retrospect I may not have been examining the positive “this is great” aspects in enough detail, I’m not sure. I didn’t experiment past this point, so no bringing it down into the navel. Solar plexus “feelings” still exist, but I don’t know, I don’t really notice. Blood vessels?...it’s sort of like how my knee feels more solid than the rest of my leg because of the bone density? If I was still sitting 12 hours a day this is what I would be working on...I honestly can’t say why I stopped. Perhaps part of me felt there was stuff I could do with these mental tools, thus the performance testing below. So in that sense I’m totally practicing suboptimally, but everything is still great?

-Attempt at a description of a PCE: No watcher, stuff happening on its own, everything is great. Can emphasize with another poster’s use of the phrase “this is it”, but wouldn’t use the same words. I would characterize the “this is it” as a subtler-than-normal affective response that arises when there is very little desire experienced. Same for “this is perfect”...experientially feels perfect but has more to do with the absence of any wants. Ie, nothing is “wrong”. See: previous threads’ uses of expressions like “vivid colours”, “in the seeing just the seen”, “directness”, “clarity”, all of which I can relate to.
-Not affectless, but subtle and non-sticky. Making daily notes to keep track of this, almost all of the situations where emotions occur are multi-person social interactions.
-90%+ happy/harmless*.
-Apperception includes the mind apperceiving itself. This nullifies any compounding effect emotions used to have.
-Not much of a distinction between practice / normal life right now. It’s all just sort of happening. Post retreat I hesitated to post because I wanted to do some performance testing. I used the decreased need for sleep/stimulation/movement to reorganize my reading list. Spend at least 12 hours a day reading, mostly non-fiction. Looking for hints of burnout after multiple weeks of this, none so far. Fatigue isn’t the same when there isn’t a recoiling from it.
-There’s so much more I could say, and want to say, but will stop here for practical reasons and hope it isn’t already so long that someone who could give me advice stops reading.
-Important point: the initial rush/draw/novelty of the PCE went away pretty quickly. My understanding of AFT writings indicates this is normal / sort of the goal. “This is perfect/it” does not reflect my current experience. With experiences characterized by expressions like “full on direct PCE, wow, tremendous draw to X, etc”, after, there tends to be “am I in a PCE or not? Oh no? what’s this? how can I get back? etc”. Apply apperception to that, and the ability these phrases have to accurately express these experiences drops off sharply. Stuff is just great, but without the “rush of awesomeness”, as I once called. Awesomeness here being taken literally, as “awe-inspiring” (maybe with a hint of fear), instead of the slang use as “good”.



Cliffs notes:
-did a bunch of AF-inspired stuff over a short time period, saw some results: clear experiential and behavioural changes
-reduced need for sleep, can recline, engage in sedentary activity, engage mentally, for longer because of non-stickiness of emotions
-primary object was music
-continuing to practice in daily life, at a lower intensity



Tarin’s attitude before he sorta stopped posting on this forum is an interesting one. A lot more ambiguity in responses, and at one point said “I don’t want to spoil the fun for everyone else.” I can’t speak to his motivations, but in a way I’m glad he did that. Not sure why.

His posts also made me laugh a few times:

tarin greco:
Does this master of amazing feats in the zen parable also feel sad when he feels sad, and feel angry when he feels angry?

does he also tautology when he tautologies?[1]


tarin greco:
[1] if guns don't kill people, people kill people, does that mean that toasters don't toast toast, toast toasts toast?


tarin greco:

assuming 'watermelon' is here actually caring, then there are ways one can want watermelon that will cause one to remain watermelon-less.. and there are ways one can want watermelon that will deliver it. it is overly simplistic (that is, inaccurate and unrealistic) to think of the relationship between the two overall ways of wanting as a linear progression from the former to the latter that necessarily happens. one can certainly remain watermelonless.



Dan
Adam , modified 9 Years ago at 4/2/14 2:21 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 4/2/14 2:20 PM

RE: Dan T's Practice Notes

Posts: 613 Join Date: 3/20/12 Recent Posts
and there are ways one can want watermelon that will deliver it. it is overly simplistic (that is, inaccurate and unrealistic) to think of the relationship between the two overall ways of wanting as a linear progression from the former to the latter that necessarily happens. one can certainly remain watermelonless.


thanks for this quote, that whole thread is pretty cool http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/953759... I wonder if you have any insight into how to want the watermelon in the right way (in the context of the thread I understand this to mean deeply and sincerely) rather than in the wrong way (as a manifestation of pettiness and frustration). It is strange that I find myself wanting to want something...

also I appreciate your post here
T Dan S-, modified 9 Years ago at 4/2/14 5:18 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 4/2/14 5:18 PM

RE: Dan T's Practice Notes

Posts: 69 Join Date: 5/3/11 Recent Posts
Adam,

Without re-reading the thread, I think:
-Katy suggests wanting is about a linear progression, which you might be understanding as involving sincere-ness on one end, and pettiness and frustration on the other.
-Tarin, operating from an affect-free interpretation of want (they certainly exist, as the word want has myriad definitions and uses), is pointing out that you can want something in ways (not necessarily affect-free, but certainly suggesting/pointing in that direction) that make certain events more likely to happen (in this case, an event that may extinguish desire, or could be described as "getting what one wants"...I'm phrasing ambiguously here because the "getting" event isn't always clear from the "wanting" experience).

I don't find it strange for one to want to want something. This happens fairly quickly with assiduous application of the actualism method. I admit at first it can be puzzling to feel affective charge without a discernable object.