Duncan Barford, who used to post here years ago, and whom I regard as a strong practitioner and admire for his willingness to share details of his practice and progress, reported a baseline shift, path, or whatever it was on his blog:

On Retreat with Alan Chapman

Anyone recognize what he's describing? How would you fit this into your favorite working hypothesis?

Me, I find it reminds me a lot of the Heart Sutra. But he is very specific that Buddhist concepts and language don't work for him regarding this development.

Cheers,
Florian

"Putting it frankly, Alan’s approach pisses all over Buddhism from a great height."

Well, you have my attention...  

Are these guys still primarily using Western Magick as their framework for practice? I haven't kept up with them in a couple of years, it seemed that both of them moved to more pure vipassana after SE. I do miss reading their stuff.

EDIT: "In subjective terms, it feels like my heart has expanded infinitely. But this infinite heart is God’s as much as mine. My heart is encompassed within the heart of God, even as God raises mine to the dimensions of Its heart."

I'm not sure what to say about this other than it sounds similar to what Bernadette Roberts and other Christian mystics talk about, being unsure of where "self" ends and where "God" begins. 

That Platonic cosmology has piqued my interest; if I had the cash I'd book a Chapman retreat. The no-effort-required part sounds very much like what was said a few times in this BATGAP panel. It's gonna ruffle a few feathers in this forum, no doubt

And, I'm definitely unsure but the love bit reminds me of the following
Crowley poem
I'm interested to see what everyone else has to say on this

There is something confusing about this article. Chapman is said to define 3 stages:
1. non-duality (Said to be Daniel Ingram's flavor of enlightenment)
2. liberation
3. Enlightenment

The author hints that he is past liberation, or around that stage. Then he says that according to Chapman, Enlightenment doesn't requires effort or going through shitty stages. It's not clear if he is talking about the third stages or the first. It's a very important distinction. 

In an interview, Kenneth Folks talks about a small group of people with whom he participate in some kind of social experiment where people point at each others patterns. I see some kind of connection there. Still, it's not clear how much this is relevant for people working on stage 1.

Yes, Magick all the way down as far as I know, very eclectic. A few years ago, Alan got interested in Pierre Grimes' work on Platonism and Philosophical Midwifery (i.e. Socrates' schtick). Looks like he stuck to it.



Yeah, that subtle dualism. Duncan claims that it has collapsed for him.

Maybe he will weigh in, I pointed this discussion out to him.

Cheers,
Florian

I think the effortlessness bit is about the entire process of enlightenment in the context of the retreat.

Cheers,
Florian

That poem certainly plays into the "midwifery" theme.

The A.:A.: grades map nicely onto the Theravada map, though: Master of the Temple to Stream-enterer, Magus to Once/Non-Returner, and Ipsissimus to Arahat.

I'm interested if this map (A.:A.: and Theravada) covers what Duncan is describing at all.

Cheers,
Florian

I agree with your grades correlations and have similar thoughts.

I read Duncan's descriptions and I am not sure what to make of it, but it sounds like he is definitely getting something out of it and having a good time. It will be interesting to see if it stays that way and/or what it turns into when and if the high wears off.

I hope the "guru" thing is all tongue in cheek. I have only met Alan once and we sort of locked horns over some subtle dharma point, and, in retrospect, I wish I had just shut that down and shifted geers and spent more time getting to know the guy.

In one of his books he says that if he ever starts playing the guru game then someone should shoot him.... Just sayin'

And, do you mind divulging what subtle dharma was the point of contention? After relating heavily with all three of Alan's books I'm left very curious about his current take on enlightenment and how he relates it to the A.'.A.'., sex magick, inner alchemy, the 'secret of the OTO', and so on.

Yeah, reading this, a deliberately insulting and affrontive take, I think, "Uh.. yeah, that's not an outcome I want from anything I study." And I don't really want anyone to be  born in a place where a neighbor says, "My practices pisses on your practice from great height." (there's a fake Calvin and Hobbes bumper sticker that does illustrate this mind well: boy pissing on something and smirking angrily). So there's a lot of that, and if one's model is "mine is bigger than/pisses on yours" this person exhibits they are getting this way of being from their practice, and there is certainly an audience for it.

However, maybe it's just this practioner is going through a hostile and insulting phase and clearly celebrating it publically, perhaps no fault maybe of his teachers/guides. Vulgar conceit arises in any so-welcoming mind, no matter the model/teacher/path until it's seen as unreliable and self-painful. 

Read the article, a couple of things:

1) Doesn't seem very Buddhist at all, this I would have to agree with. Buddhism is great at beating down the mind, concentrating it, shaping it and so on and so forth, but it seems to beat you into a dead-end after a while, this is my experience.

2) The God thing, the whole Hindu (I am Brahman) thing, doesn't seem to fit here either, Hinduism is very idealist and doesn't seem to lend itself to Duncan's realization.

3) Re the effort thing, I definitely went through a lot of crap to get to where I am today (an abiding sense of non-duality), however, looking back, I really wonder how much of it was worth it or necessary, I have at time speculated that what I went through is really just part and parcel of growing up as a human being, because regardless of what I did, it probably would have unfolded that way anyways.

4) Religious safeguards (stream entry, refuge, guarantees of awakening (particularly found in Mahayana sutras)) never lie, they actually tend to work out, no matter how doubtful you seem at the time.

5) I do remember reading the duo's work over at the Baptist's Head, I was a voracious reader of their activities and whatnot.

Peace.

Yeah, Duncan is not exactly a fanboy of contemporary Western Buddhism. I took the "pissing on" remark in the same sense as the "noble silence lunacy" remark, though: not an insult to individual practitioners, but frustration with the Buddhist retreats he has attended. He even wrote a book about it, "The Retreat", where he is less dismissive of Buddhist retreat culture in the west, but still very critical of it.

A potential source of confusion is that while I posted this here because I was interested in people's takes on Duncan's newest discovery, the article he wrote was mostly about his retreat experience. So maybe I should have just cut-n-pasted the relevant paragraphs here and linked the article for reference.

Anyway, thanks for your thoughts.

Cheers,
Florian

Hi Florian, 

So what comes through there for me in that post you linked to, because of his needless insults and insecure "superiority", is his emotional  anger and fight.

It's like the kid who walks on the field and starts shouting foul words and provoking anger ~ "I have a great console at home and yours sucks!"; "My spork pisses on your spoon and fork from great height" ~ because they need attention and they need a reason to fight. Maybe their teacher wants students like that.

Plenty of ideologies want students like that. 

Yeah, not a peer or a program I seek out due to his presentation and my own comfort with what I do and engaging with balanced*, effortful folks from any tradition or study.


_______

*or balancing out. I sure didn't start out emotionally "balanced", hence why I started this investigation here :]

Ah the stink of enlightenment. It tends to get most of us, if just mentally and we dearly try to refrain from expressing it, especially during the high right after a shift.
Been there, done that, several times.

"Oh suchness which pees higher" upon whom only "the dimensionless wonk" may adimensionally smile.
This makes me smile,  non-adimentionally of course....ummm I think.
~D

Exactly : )

I'm glad you let people filter it as they like, versus providing an edited version here. 

I do look for ways to support the useful scrutiny of buddhism in practice, like, for example, its ongoing commitment to genital-based models. But if I vocalize ~ or even think/want ~ any plan for buddhism to actualize equanimity in its schools via a vulgar, cheap campaign like "End Institutional 'dicks up, chicks down!'" (I'm looking for something roughly peer to what your link author provides in his "pisses on buddhism from a great height" and more), then I'm just going to spread a distracting rudness that is not even clever and it is that seed of distracting rudeness that will bear fruit, and what will not be seeded is the logic of dismissing buddhist genital-bias based on its absurd and wild non-EQ.

So the author of the link you provided has a distracting rudeness/mean-spirited needniness either overshadowing his practice or properly showing its results. Some people, some times will be attracted to that though, want to make more of that in the world; for me, it's just not a fun or worth-the-while collab or outcome.

Thanks for linking this account, Florian! I find it interesting.

Personally I am not super interested in mapping this (translating it into another framework) but that said, my first point of departure would be to ask: is there consensus that what Duncan and Alan refer to as Awakening corresponds with what Daniel calls 4th path? I ask because the shift that Duncan is describing could be a lot of different things depending on whether it is a tangent off of one of the earlier paths or whether it is a post-4th path shift (maybe, I don't really know lol-- this goes back to my allusion above that I am skeptical of cross-mapping and ultimately am more interested on knowing 1) is Awakening in Alan's system equivalent to 4th Path as is implied? and 2) if that is so than what does Alan see Liberation as being and is it dependent on acheiving Awakening first etc?? ).

My impression after reading and reflecting is that it is hard to say what is going on in this account. I found it compelling and it seems that it has been very significant to Duncan; especially in that it was the first shift in the 'structure of consciousness' (i.e., Path?) that he has undergone in several years. So I respect that sense of his that it is very significant. The theistic and Platonic framework is very different for me but I'm pretty good at being able to listen and empathize with folks who express their insights in different systems; but the nature of this one makes me curious whether it is a kind of Shift that can only occur within such a framework. In other words, again: is this about mapping his insight into a prag dharma Therevada framework of does this shift represent something other entirely, a different *kind* of shift? Which latter my gut tells me is more likely, but then, I generally suspect that there are all sorts of Shifts of different kinds that can arise. My raw impression of his narrative is that it is yet a deeper, and more feeling-centered, realization of nonduality. In other words, if Awakening/4th Path is perceptual nonduality, lots of folks do express interesting heart-level shifts after 4th path (and before it too though--). It would be interesting for example to hear Daniel and Duncan dialogueing on their respective post-4th emotional/feeling work and shifts which have arisen in the context of very different frameworks.

I guess I would love to hear more from Duncan about the whole experience and what it means to him, engage him in a bit of dialogue, if he were willing to post here (although perhaps he wouldn't feel too welcome at this point). I also am curious about Alan's framework as there was not too much about what Liberation is supposed to be in his system, how it differs from Awakening, etc, all of which would help me to understand what Duncan's experience meant to him, as it seems that it has been identified as 'Liberation' in this context. So what is that? How does it differ from Awakening? More examples of others' experiences of this shift would be awesome.

In short, fascinating account and I'd love to learn more. Hopefully a serious dialogue will arise.

I'm actually still really interested in this topic, primarily because I feel that I've reached the abiding sense of non-duality spoken of in the article as awakening, I also resonate with the notion of how effort is counterproductive and how practices for awakening are seen as irrelevant after the event.

However I still find this abiding non-duality, really lacking, it is definitely very wholesome pleasant, it manifests mostly as a bodily pleasure so it is possible that I'm just in soft jhana 24/7. Actually I find the descriptions of the state of 'body-witness' very apt for describing this state, also some descriptions of formless realms, the imperturbable and emptiness (sunnata).

Nevertheless, whatever this temporary non-duality is (it takes effort, or exertion to put myself in it), I'm looking for a way to get past it.

Actually as I write this post it's kinda clear to me that I'm merely entering a state of emptiness, or jhana at will, and mistaking it for awakening. This definitely isn't permanent, it's quite subject to change, and it is compounded, so it can't be nibbana.

Need a way to escape this. Anyways just thinking out loud.