This is a continuation of my first log. I feel like it's time for a new log because I feel like I have to localize where I am with my practice and consider what I need to do.
To some extent there doesn't really seem to be much new stuff, but basically previously unseen or ignored things.
But what is becoming more and more apparent on a more global scale is the undeniable ultimate unsiatisfactoriness of experience and how I deal with it, in particular how it's avoided by seeking.
I call this "kissing the frog" - because the way out of endless seeking seems to be to directly confront the unsatisfactoriness - with the help of seeing avoidance clearly.
(In the fairy tale, the princess discovers that the frog is actually a prince by throwing him against the wall, but I think this inaccuracy is ok, because "kissing the frog" (and thereby seeing it's true nature) sounds better ) )
It could be that I log very irregularly, just saying.

The following from a few days ago is already old, at least it feels old now, and it is infused with dark nighty romantic confusion, so I put it into italics:

I begin to have the impression that I am constantly gravitating around the Dark Night (seeing more and more dukkha, mostly as avoidance, resistance and craving). I can't ignore previously ignored patterns very well anymore. That holds especially for sloppy practice as well as behaviour and tought patterns I deliberately ignored previously, some from the beginning of practice almost 3 years ago, some habituated since then and some seemingly from the beginning of being conscious...

During the last week I would typically encounter a mix of fear, sadness, anger and frustration, followed by short phases of child-like rapture.
Now I am more and more noticing a pervasive sense of unsatisfactoriness underlying all of that. This can make up for much heaviness and sorrow. There is a lot of bitterness involved in seeing how much I clench my fists to achieve something without even knowing what or why. I begin to see that the only way to understand this running against the wall is that it's a reaction to the unsatisfactoriness of experience. So there is a co-existence of the sense of there being something invisible/empty but very important and promising waiting somewhere to finally fulfill and the realization that none of my experience will give me that.

There's a little phrase I came up with:

You don't suffer because you aren't where you want to be, but because you aren't where you are.

In other words, the thought that you ought to be somewhere else to be happy is what makes you unhappy. It sounds trivial and trite, but...
It's really kind of the opposite way we think it is. The promised happiness of "when I'm there" is a wrong view. The mind for whatever reason keeps believing that there is satisfaction in the sought after. It's a weird obscuration. Progress is seeing through "progress". Happiness is seeing through "happines". It's a big mistery why the mind puts the happiness we would encounter if we stopped seeking into the promised result of seeking. Probably that's what's called fundamental delusion or fundamental stupidity. Thinking again, you might also say that there couldn't even be happiness without seeking/unhappiness, because else we wouldn't know what happiness is. It's hard to pinpoint.

Rupert Spira offers "the happiness you seek is the happiness you are". Or it could be "believing the seeking leads you away from yourself". Or it could be some other not really pin-pointing it mind-twister...
Maybe I'd say it a bit more how Daniel writes: "(further) seeking is not the answer, but the answer is to be found in the seeking, or even is (in the three characteristics of) the seeking.

When I stay long enough with the energy of seeking, it seems to revert into presence/wholeness. I am more in my body. This has a lot of layers of subtlety to it, and I think the difficulty now is to have enough conentration and mindfulness to digest the subtler faces of seeking. Feels like a workout.

I am not sure if I really need to study 5 elements and 6 realms, because proper practice seems to show me those reaction patterns quite clearly. At least it's good to know them because it helps framing the experience of reactions. And without at least a little bit of framing it's very hard.

I have experimented a bit with effortless awareness practices but there's a tendency for too much imagination involved for me.

08/30/22:

Not so much sense of seeking and forcing. After I found that debating with myself which timer preset I should use is stupid and I just used the old 20/40/60 bell division, I could relatively easily let the sit unfold up to middle EQ.

It's interesting: I wasn't aware that a part of me somehow expects that seeing dukkha automatically produces aversion against it. Somehow I assumed that being aversive to suffering is natural without knowing it.
But actually it's more like seeing dukkha fully (or at least enough) eventually leads to compassion. I think there is a threshold after which the mind doesn't add aversion to suffering but starts to show compassion, "love" it and "leave" it. You could say that this is the returning to natural mind which is compassionate in nature, or what you could find as "return to innocence" in literature or music. It looks like a good way to understand the relation between awakening and compassion.

The keypoint for me seems being able to see dukkha as not self. So when suffering is seen to be generated by the mind, but not by (a) me, this develops a whole new relation to it. Somehow embracing it. True compassion as opposed to pity.

Seems to come with practice. Not forceable, not solved by thinking, not enough just to be told by someone, not a one-time insight.

nice. yes, we "liberate" dukka by holding it compassionately within a caring and respectful awareness. then it releases, lets go, unknots. and sometimes will give us an insight into why it was there, like maybe we had an over-solidified sense of identity and we weren't flowing/adapting to life's changes, maybe we thought we were more fragile then we are and were over-protecting ourself, maybe we're just acting out a family pattern, maybe we were just avoiding the truth of things, etc.  

if we fight dukka, the knot tightens.

If we avoid dukka, it starts expanding until it can't help but fill our attention again.

If we try to kill dukka, it might go away only to respawn again.

it's an interesting video game. the way to win it is by acceptance, friendliness, caring, and appreciation. 

Thank you for the great input!

Now I see it this way: there is 3 different ways the mind can deal with dukkha. It can "liberate" dukkha into self (like looking for reasons internally and eventually blame, hate), into other (looking for reasons externally and possibly blame, hate), or find true liberation by being caring and so on. Liberating dukkha into self causes unnecessary internal confusion and other unnecessary problems and so dukkha actually persists in a different gestalt (it's always nice to have the opportunity to use my mother tongue ). Liberating dukkha into other causes "feedback problems", because other doesn't want your dukkha. And, in a way you can't hurt others without hurting yourself. At least shame, guilt and regret will hit you.
So the only way is leaving it where it is and possibly harvest its information!

08/31/22:

6.30.: wake up, tired, decide to get up and have coffee. Standing in the garden, A&P arises. That's when I had those realizations about how the mind can deal with dukkha and how dukkha + self and other creates more dukkha.

Then I sat. I gravitated around Disgust (with strong 3rd VJ flavor) and went to Desire for Deliverance in the end. During the break afterwards some Re-observation. I then took a nap and moved to high EQ/formless realms while falling asleep. Formless realms were impressive. Saw some fields of abstract grey bubbles and immersive pictures of rooms that began to tilt after a while. After the nap the mind was very pristine, clear and original. The following dog walk was infused by confusion (later EQ) and at the end (around 10.30) the cycle reset.
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I am thinking a lot about pride. Is pride merely a defense mechanism against the fear of change? Or is pride a habituated roadblock that doesn't actually originate from fear of change? Does it originate in the assumption of an overly fragile self? So it could be a protection mechanism. I just think it can be habituated without the individual seeing the need for protection, for instance when parents cultivate pride in their children, but I think that's just inherited pride which at some point did originate as a protection mechanism. The interesting thing is that (I think that) even when it's inherited it contains the original information of being a defense (against fear of change), so that people who are trained to be pride are also trained to be insecure and protect-ish. Looking up my notes on 6 realms... Here we have: pride beings (gods) train to be ignorant (animals), spend a lot of energy on self, which can collapse into other (hate, hell realm) (and I'd simply say they become defendish), and when frustrated they become greedy and needy (hungry ghosts). Sounds logical that when maintainance isn't possible anymore they don't know what they do and being to panic and try to figure out how to get back there.

I think for me, personally, I was trained in and influenced by pride, but I begin to see the fragility and the strong tendency for isolation and the potential for hate/defence in it.

sidenote: remember to always copy and paste your posts before sending!!! (I fortunately did, no worries )

Pride is fine at times, we all deserve to feel the joy of accomplishing things...

But pride as an identity is fear. It's a pretension -- a pre-tension -- that tries to proactively push away future shame. In the god realm, they create gated communities, they shop at different stores, they watch sports from rooms high up in the stadium... but the thing is the gods have no real friends. As soon as the god makes a normal mistake or starts to lose their wealth, all the gods push them out of the god realm. Even though they seems like freinds, now they are kicking you out of heaven. And the desperation of a falling god very quick becomes an ambitious titan, then a desiring human, then a surviving animal, then a greedy ghost, and then a hell being. The fall is very quick for a god.

With all of these indentity-emotions you can never have + without -.  Prideful people are trying to push away the shame they remember feeling, are feeling, or are afraid of feeling in the future. 

High ego isn't healthier than low ego -- it feels like it, but it's a sneaky trap. That's samsara. Black and white, this or that, positive or negative type thinnking is how samsara makes us think in ways that trap us.

How do you escape samara?

If you were neither proud or ashamed, what would you be? You would just be you. Simple.

Wow, when I read this the 5th or 6th time and I began to understand, I almost broke into tears of relief (I was in public, so... but I don't know if I could have let it happen when on my own). It definitely helped me to catalyze something...

08/31/22:

In the evening I began to feel like in review again. It could be that this is part of the processing that was catalyzed by reading shargrol's message about high ego not being healthier than low ego and seeing that I'm really just myself when I'm neither proud nor ashamed. It really felt so simple and released a lot of tension for a while.

Edit: an insight that I think is worthwhile to mention : when I assume self and other, there is self and other. When I don't assume self and other, there is no self and other...

here's another mind bomb: if there is no self or other, when we read "somebody else's wisdom", we're really just recognizing our own.

EDIT: this needed some improvement.

Wow, very interesting to see how wisdom seems to develop itself. I sense wisdom in what I am writing, and then you reply and tell me that I am reading my own wisdom in your message. So it's as if wisdom has a seed in me but, in a way it needs "other" to know itself.

And guru's hate this one weird pointer, I have to say it.

09/01/22:

Your thoughts are just mimicking what you already are.

Yeah, I'm not so sure about this statement. Maybe it's more straightforward to say "your thoughts tell you what you need to see".

This morning A&P arose after a quite challenging struggle with myself (3C's in retrospect), as the realization of the ability to see myself as process.
The sit was even less focussed than yesterday's, almost only thinking, tracking, trying to comprehend, explain, interpret, effortful. At some point I saw a pattern: not wanting to be there, preferring to entirely vanish (Disgust), feeling that maybe it will get better soon (Desire for Deliverance) and then the conviction that getting up would be really, really right (Re-Observation). Then everything coming close, consciousness becomes diffuse and fades, weird jhana shifts, attention moving to the third eye (Equanimity with aspects of formless realms).

Like yesterday, I have some reminiscences of older territory.
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It's really common now that when sitting, the first thing I clearly notice is Disgust. This is quite early in the sit. Then I get to some EQ and then some time after (which can be a few hours) the mind digests it into fruition(s). I mean it seems like most of mind energy is  invested into digesting aversion. Each day I have a moment of consternation at how much aversion there is going on in my mind or at how I could (let myself) suffer so much in the past...

There is a few things I really need to work on, two of which are seeing through the habit of adding restlessness to restlessness and finding out what I try to get out of meditation that makes me so clenchy.

The last two statements felt a bit over the top and I deleted them.

Man, that's a great one

09/02/22:

Not much A&P and DN today. I stood in my meditation room and stared out of the window - I felt like digesting something. Then the mind found conformity with the thought that the self finds safety in extreme views. Then I immediately began to feel drowsy and sleepy. Honestly, I decided to simply lie down on my meditation cushion and dose for a while. That's my meditation for today. 8)
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On my way to work I realized I must have been in the DN of some larger cycle and that now it's mostly equanimity.  Interesting: I thought about a person that can easily trigger me, and after a while I realized that I'm not willing to accept their behavior, and I am making it into my problem. Then I watched a short video of Angelo Dilullo (which I didn't do for quite some time) and at some point he began to say that it's all about non-acceptance. Sometimes it's really strange... [and I can't help being a map freak and say that this is common in Equanimity].  Then I contemplated the relation between non-acceptance and the self hiding in extreme views. In a way, it's all the same thing, in a way it isn't.  Both have a strong flavor of "moving to the edge". Why is it edgy? Because it's not stable from the beginning. An extreme view is just an imagined/assumed refuge. Maybe it helps for a while, but in truth it's shaky from the beginning and it's thinned out by impermanence (or simply by living truth). Non-acceptance is different in feeling-tone but it's based on ignorance as well. They don't really fit!

Hopefully I will succeed to try to keep this all simple. It was really useful to hear the word "simple" by you, shargrol! 

I will try to practice feeling where non-acceptance in my body either when it arises, or I will let it arise by reflecting on the most triggering thing of the day (like Dilullo and others suggest).

Today I'd say

Your reaction to your thoughts tells you/is what you need to see.

On the other hand, it can feel like reactivity is in thought... Well, let's leave it here.

I'm thinking a lot about responsibility these days. To which extent am I responsible for what I write here? To which extent does a statement that's not thought through well pose a danger for somebody else to catch it in the wrong way?
That's interesting, worry seems to be the "minus side" of caring. In a way, (emotional) stress and guilty conscience are the minus of responsibility. The more we ignore responsibility, the more those minuses pile up until they eventually need to break through. Then we cannot keep a sane relation to worry and shame and they make us reactive. You could say that ignoring responsibility grows worry and shame in the shadow where they eventually start to operate from, although I don't really like this "shadow" word, it's kinda mystical and has become somewhat loaded.

Practice:

On a good day it's all a bit like surfing. Surfing the dukkha wave. Very visceral. On a not so good day I have to stick to noting to not get wept away by aversion.

09/03/22:

Exhausted.  I only sat at the side of my dog and let the mind incline towards jhana for an hour. I went "left and right" between more vipassana and more jhana and progressed into ok-ness.

When I walked the dog, at some point started to see life as process again (which is my current A&P) and when that faded I really dug into the nature of meditation as surfing. This seems to be my current DN experience. As I said above, it’s about surfing on attraction and repulsion. That’s the main benefit of a concentrated mind. Much quicker reaction (in the sense of adaptation), movement, and not so much reactivity, which is more a property of untrained everyday mind.

09/04/22:

Finally some more solid practice. Very intense content, with the usual suspects anger, fear, misery etc.. I oriented myself along noting the most prominent sensations and somewhat tried to survive the DN. Afterwards I felt quite purified and the mind felt pretty stable and alive.

Yesterday I watched a Frank Yang video and it made a lot of sense to me when he said that awakening can be seen as „(weight-)lifting suffering“ and that the mind becomes resilient that way. I liked that comparison. It feels like this is what I’m doing. It’s like a workout.
As I write this it reminds me of shargrol’s „mindbomb“, because from the perspective of there being no self and other, when we watch something like such a video, it just activates the parts of us which are already there and need to be recognized - which in my case is the recognition that I am lifting suffering That was helpful.

09/05/22:

Did a feeding your demons session on anger.

Afterwards I had a lot of thoughts about the nature of progress, in particular that eventually the only "progress" is recognition.

progress is regress.

progress isn’t - regress is.

regress is.

progress is discovery/recognition... and discovery/recognition is progress

discovery exists.

recognition is.

isness is recognition.

09/06/22:

I just sat. It's always late dark night (with lots and lots of repulsion) to conformity. I have the idea that this progression is a long term thing to be worked on and it's becoming more and more fine grained. Today it felt perticularly slow and fine.

Sometimes when we think we are overly critical with ourselves, we are actually not critical enough. Hm. It could be that overly critizising (things that aren't necessarily so bad) hides the things we really need to work with. 

Edit 09/10: Typos

09/07/22:

The definition of greed, aversion and delusion is when the mind, via the notion of self, goes into the 10000 things, thinking that it can have this and that, not have this and that and ignore this and that. With this weird filter of confusion it enters a mysterious dream.

During my sit, when, as usual, my face turned into a snear, I tried to investigate, thinking that it can’t  just be me making a snear or „the Disgust ñana“.
I perceived a strong sense of a need for distance to experience, sort of overwhelmed. In that non-conceptual spirit I continued and found a few things (still work in progress):
I asked myself: what hinders the flow? What blocks? What prevents intimacy? I found a lot of fear. Visceral, subtle but profound fear. Also worry, the more thought-based form of fear. Maybe worry is based on escaping the visceral fear, maybe it preceeds it, I’m not sure. Probably both is true. I guess the right answer is that they interact. When fear is there, worry comes, and distracts from the fear, but when we believe the worry, it creates more fear. Something like that.

An observation and reflection that came up, partially stimulated by shargrol’s pointers:

The mind is naturally curious. Wanting to know is good and natural. But as an identity it’s a cause for restlessness, discomfort and uncertainty- or simply fear (of not knowing).

In the end, I felt-thought into the idea of the core problem being an addiction to linearity. It made sense. Narrow, linear self as a conglomerate of all the little (and not so little) dukkha we carry around.
In the afternoon I just sat down with eyes closed for a couple of minutes. The whole notion of me being a self appeared in awareness and it (decently viscerally) seemed as if the whole problem complex of suffering and linearity was encoded in that one image in that moment. I reasoned that this whole notion of self is  actually not different from all the other dukkha. Just another dukkha spot. And as  I am (at least to some extent) able to liberate dukkha spots, it must be possible to liberate this one, too! And it didn’t feel large at all. Same size as a pain in the thumb. So I begin to think that self can self-liberate! It’s not different from other sensations. I had the idea that, the whole point of spirituality being self-liberation, actually is to eventually have self-liberation - awareness locates self and liberates it.  

In the evening, after work, I met a friend and decided that I could have a few sips of beer with him, just for the taste. In this spirit I seemed to be able to forget about all the spirituality struggle - and a strong fruition occurred. There was a sense that something has moved deeper into the bones, came closer. I think it’s the ability to perceive things more directly. A „there-ness“, a simply-being-there-ness. Less distance.

Summing all of this up: it’s not that the self liberates from this and that, that’s aversion by definition of, but rather that  self, or the notion of self, is liberated in awareness. And that way less distance in created.

And it’s crazy: the last bigger shift I experienced happened just the night before I started a new part-time job,  right on time, so to say. Now that I’m having a 1 1/2 weeks  holiday, right on the evening of the last working day, another shift happened. No-self anybody?

09/08/22:

Wrote most of the report of 09/07 today.

Practice was basically closing my eyes for about 45 minutes.

The mind feels huge, vast and very unusal. I have a strong sense of "higher wisdom" and also more experiences of "no-distance"

note: sad and angry turns into life-drama when identified with and not relieved.

09/09/22:

Sitting very „unintense“, mild.


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I think the last shift gave me access to a lot more subtlety and overlooked stuff.

09/10/22:

morning sit: I think it was too subtle. I have no idea what happened.

Some observations/thoughts:

I had a not-enough-progress, not-enough-insight drama. Is this the fall of the titan? Or the fall of the god?

Judgement over others can uplift the ego. Once I read a very clever comment: „aversion is the cocaine of the ordinary person“. It can very much feel like that. As if aversion keeps me alive.

Self as dukkha is wanting self to be finally lasting, finally satisfying. It’s a trap. Higher ego, lower ego… this is samsara.  It’s an addiction.

Where is „not samsara“? Where is freedom? Is „liberation“ the answer? Why am I meditating?

I can to some extent see that nothing is wrong but the thinking that it is. Anger, judgement… It’s all ok. The tiring/dukkha part is the wrong-thinking of emotions. The hindrance is in the disliking. It’s not even the judgement but the not wanting to be judgemental that eventually makes a problem. Judging is probably ok at times. It's a bad idea to think of ourselves as "I am not a judgemental person" when in fact we do judge. It's a form of ignorance. Identity concepts are a form of ignorance. Necessary for development but not helpful in the longer run/higher development. A strong identitiy necessarily leads to reactivity and ignorance. So if we weaken our assumptions we can weaken our reactions, it seems. But only if we see how harshly we react, we can begin to reflect on our assumptions.

evening sit: I pendulated between agression and depression for a while. I would note „agression“, mostly as constrictions in the body and fierceness, then I noticed a depression in the form of heaviness and sorrow. This play was interpersed with acceptance. Then I began to try to note in a simple but structured way in the form „sensation, vedana, liking/disliking“. I find that I can either feel the vedana and note the reaction or note the vedana and feel the reaction.  

And I promise that I'll try to have better editing on these log entries!

09/11/22:

When there is no self and other, when our judgement becomes condemnation, it’s our own condemnation

I find that I suffered a lot from being overly judgemental as well as from denial and looking away, and still do. Denial eventually is more painful than facing things. Seems to be the easy way out, but, as shargol said, dukkkha always returns. Recognition is the first step of improvement

Sit: I don’t remember much, I think I could have been in some strong concentration states which I don’t recognize.
I experienced a lot of raw desire.
Conformity came about after I was able to view things from the viewpoint that everything which happens in my internal world actually wants the best for me.
    ___
Comment on sit:

IFS sees ego as parts of us which act in a pseudo-compassionate way. Daniel talks about confused compassion. Same thing, different flavor, I guess. And it’s a good way to see things… and it brings up a lot of emotions. As if the emotions where hidden under the confusion of ego.
Maybe we can say: everything is in our best interest (or from a no-self point of view: everything is in its best interest), but we have somehow forgotten how to see this. A possible view on delusion or ignorance. It fits with all the stuff about actual intention and what the ego makes out of it. Like with anger. When we overreact it’s usually because we see our (solid) identity threatened. The reaction is still compassionate but acting on a confused assumption. Or when the function of pride is misunderstood and taken as identity, when it serves as a protection mechanism instead of a healthy part of development.  That’s a hindrance. Then we have sorta misused it with good intentions but that didn’t really do us a favor.
Also here: the worst thing would be to forbid ourselves to be pride at all, telling ourselves that we don’t want to be a pride person. That’s cold hell.
Finally, I feel like my tendency to „be smart“ in what I write is partially a hindrance, probably protecting me from acknowledging some simple emotions, maybe shame, but partially it’s just the way I process things. And probably people don’t really want to hear about my intellecualizations. Well…I guess it’s something to moderate.

Not sure about the raw desire, it didn't feel wrong, just a bit naive, seeing it in retrospect. Well-wishing but naive, like a child can be. As I write this now I think it fits quite well into the confused compassion topic. Desire as a confsed seeking.

Maybe worthwhile to mention, but more for myself: I feel like the POI is synching up with my life, assuming it wasn’t like that all the time but I didn’t notice. One evidence for this are the seemingly perfectly timed fruitions - when starting a new work situation, when starting holiday (larger ones), when finishing the dogwalk (smaller ones).
Another evidence is that during my dogwalk today I experienced the POI in a very personal way (when I write "dogwalk" I mean about an hour of walking through woods and meadows). Fear, Misery, Disgust all showed up with/as very concrete life-issues and worries.
Towards the end I reflected on the nature of fear, frustration and anger again (I’m pretty sure this is the equanimity part of re-observation). In particular, I can more clearly see that anger is there to keep (the right) distance, set healthy boundaries. A protection mechanism. It makes me think of rage as an overprotection, and that we rage when our boundaries or our identity feels violated.
Frustration is there to give up (an old idea/approach) and take a new perspective.

Good questions.

What if seeking “liberation from samsara” is just “aversion to aversion”?

Yup, I hate my anger. Thanks a lot for this.

Nothing changes, but it changes a bit faster

I'll just describe a little bit what happened over the last few days.

I had those sits with nothing particular happening, just before I went on a short holiday, and I stopped practice for those three days. On the last day I began to notice "unresolved energies". Those energies which can't be resolved by doing sports or being busy. I reckoned that I was in three chactereistics ñana. The next day I tried to be with those energies and stiffness. After I had been with the stiffness seemingly long enough I could see momentariness of experience in a new and clearer way. The mind went from object to object with unhindered acknowledgement as it usually does in A&P, but this time, in each of those moments, I could see the sense of observing co-arising very distinctly.

I concluded that what got me out of contraction and stiffness was simply being with it without judgement. I reasoned a bit that this strong sense of contraction may be because the mind is unwilling or unable to face/accept the three characteristics (i.e. momentariness of experience). I remembered that Daniel advises to note more and quicker in this stage (upping your game) and I thought that another option could be to just be with the contractions as they are. Somehow lightly take the contractions as concentration objects, if you will.
Anyway, the suffering seems to come from projecting a (linearly continuous) self onto the momentary experiences, and this self isn't willing to let them go, because it thinks it will then die. That, in a way, seems to cause the energetic fixation and contraction.
As I see it, upping your game and seeing more momentariness will eventually make the mind accept and relieve the tension. Directing attention to the suffering itself in an accepting way will also makes the mind let go, so that it can allow more momentariness, it seems. Interesting to see this from different viewpoints. (I'm not trying to teach here, just trying to understand)

This whole self and other topic leads me to realize how much I am seeing my own problems in others and what a judgemental person I am without really realizing it. I call this interpersonal self and other thinking. There also seems to be an internal self and other division. It's the way how the ego occupies internal experience. It somehow reifies experience so that it can make it it's own. I think this where the concepts of emptiness and no-self are designed to help. Because if we come from a perspective where there are no things, the ego cannot take or gather experience and make it it's own (not me, not mine, not self, not a thing). It then cannot split experience into something to be conquered and another instance that conquers it. No clinging.

Asking myself: ok, but where does this all lead to? How do I make use of it?

09/16/22:

Today I experienced for some short moments that it's really actually possible to have even the most difficult emotions without reacting to them! Or at least without a strong reaction. To simply have them! Why not? Haha Just a glimpse, but: Eureka! I think that's a part of the answer to yesterday's question about the "usability of all this".

The speed at which I can perceive emotions coming and going is really fast. It's not clear to me if they have always been so fast, and I just didn't see it or the mind is now able to process faster and so more of these can happen. Probably the mind does less reification and the unhindered flow makes them come closer to the original capacity of the mind to generate them as they are needed. I find that the most sticky and problematic emotions and hindrances are anger, confusion and doubt. Confusion and doubt are mind-states, not emotions, but they are for sure related to anger and fear.

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I realized how much I am justifying my actions with others. It gives a sense of security to justify one's behaviour with others. And it really, really prevents true autonomy to project your own intentions into the other person (blame).  No wonder I feel beaten up at times. It doesn't have the be the other person's ill-will, it's more likely that I have some anger and I make up a motivation of the other person to make me angry, as a justification. Also my own anger may have come from some unfulfilled wish that I needed them to fulfill.
So: I have a view how things should be, need the other to fit into that view/fulfill my desire, I get angry when things work out differently, and then I blame a motivation into the other why they want to make me angry.
Or, I simply don't want to do something, I'm not clear about the reason why, can't admit my own inability, and then I start to look for a justification in the other person. Insanity!

I’ll seriuosly have to consider this issue of being too other-directed.

(Rambling a bit, perhpas this can be seen as a case of "duality in non-duality". There is interaction between individuals, of course, people do trigger reactions, but only the mechanisms of blaming and shaming create a mental distance (artificial duality). As in "I am angry because of you (...and at all... why do you always have to....!)" as opposed to "I feel angry because you forgot to take out the trash." It's somewhat subtle to speak about it but intuitively it seems pretty clear. It's the "extremization" that makes up for conflict.)
 
On the other hand I feel like I don't find it easy to be with the suffering of others. Or at least not as well as I think I should be able to. Pain of others and my pain. I don’t find it easy to tell how much the pain of others just triggers my own pain and to which extent I am taking others’ pain to be mine.

practice: In the evening I sat a half-assed, tired 45er in the evening. After I had some divertment and ate something, I felt much easier again [got to conformity]. Never forget the interplay between real-life and meditation. Because meditation is real life!  In the beginning it was very clear to me that meditation is directly influenced by life and vice versa, it was unquestionable. But somehow that knowing lost itself on the way. That's probably the way how this evolves. Having, losing, regaining...

09/17/22 (late 3 C's):

Back to daily practice.

Noticing energetic movements in the belly. Having impressions of the interplay between the no-self self (Self) and the small self. Made some sense to me to surrender the small self to the Self.

Found some really well done tibetan bowl sound tracks. One track for each jhana. This is interseting. You can play at random, tune in and see if you can identify which jhana it is supposed to be. I had 7th and thought it was 3rd. I can also mistake 6th for 2nd.. They have similar vibes to me. Don’t know how much I’m making it up.

09/18/22 (early A&P):

Did some more bowl sounds listenings.

Sat a speedrun up to 8th jhana and beyond. noticed impatience and fear of not knowing post 8th.

after a nap I felt an incredible lot of anger with upcoming of old situations of anger and helplessness. Tried to be with. read a bit in 5 elements. Helped a bit. Found that earth and void reaction seemed to be typical for me. At some point I began to sway and I just let it sway out for a while.

09/19/22 (somewhere around A&P):

The sit was a bit rigid/dull, but it feels  like there a a whole lot of things to be digested in my belly and that takes time. Still some kundalini.

There seems to be a strong re-wiring going on. There are moments when there is an emotion and the mind figures that it’s building a and believing a story around it. In particular it finds that it constructs such a strong environment that it really believes that this is how it has always been and maybe always be. Then it figures that it’s much more natural, adequate and sane not to do that. Especially the believing that there was a past around it.

It can all feel a bit open and empty. At first it’s great to have emotions just as emotions, but then what’s next? It’s as if I don’t know where to get my next hit from. Nothing really satisfies. Maybe I’m just tired.

09/20/22 (late or peak A&P, not sure, no event, maybe already descending into DN):

practice (just sit):
mostly: subtle unwillingness to accept self-knowingness
cutting edge: self-knowingness with happiness

I feel like I am lacking intention. Just sit, or, let the mind explore itself, is ok, but I feel like I’d benefit from some intention.

Trying to explore formless jhanas. Here, I seem to gravitate around nothingness, not sure, but it feels reasonable by my intuition. Also, when I listenen to those tibetan bowls, the frequencies of the 7th jhana track seemed to match almost exactly with the frequencies in my center-of-gravity jhana. Unfortunately jhana practice requires so much concentration and is exhausting, but it’s fun to explore.

Edit: And I'm also tryin to get a bit deeper into realms and elements, especially elements. Really like the chapter on the pattern imperative ("can't have this, must have that").
Edit 2: Added link to the tibetan bowl tracks

09/21/22 (not sure):

sit 1: In my first sit I tried to note but soon got lost in guessing what's going on. I didn't really consider that a problem at first, but after the sit I felt really displeased. Following same intuition, I decided that I'd dedicate myself to another sit.
sit 2: I found myself in manipulating experience, and I knew that this is probably re-observation. Also there were moments of wanting to totally vanish disgust, helplessness, impatience and so on. After a while acceptence and natural reflection came. By natural I mean reflection without an agenda. Then the usual cascade emerged. First slap happy and content, then somewhat dry and spacey, then a sense of very important, then a moment of slight shock, then expectation and impatience, then getting lost. This time I noticed the fruition only by the after effect of refreshed, clear, understanding, relief and so on.
Maybe the most remarkable thing I learned is that when I have the sense that it's very, very important what's going on, that that's a kind of fear. Technically I think it's the fear ñana of Equanimity.

I hope the way I write this is helpful for somebody.

So, it seems like my "practice" is somehow to "wait for fruition" and have one or the other insight and/or purification on the way.

Edit: I just realized that calling it "waiting", while, in a way it's true, I wait and watch, it doesn't really do justice to what I'm doing. You could also say that I'm really trying to be present with my experience besides heavy emotional content. I guess that's what this is all about, struggle and the knowing of struggle (and you could call that the higher self.. or not...).

You realize this is just judging yourself right? We're a highly social species, our survival depends on making frequent, fast and mostly unconscious evaluations of others. Anyone who says they don't judge others is in denial about a basic part of what it means to be a human being (yeah, I know, that's a judgement). This is a good thing, you are becoming aware of something that is usually repressed.

The former. Ajahn Chah (p 504) likened trying to separate the links of dependent origination in real-time to trying to count the branches as you're falling out of a tree.

This is also completely normal. When we get worked up about politics, sports, religion etc. this is essentially what we are doing. It sounds "selfish" but the more you focus on your own feelings, the less need there is to project them onto others.

I want to mention a very nice conversation with Lex Fridmann and John Vervaeke. I really like how John conceives of a good practice: you need to have an insight practice, a contemplative practice which serves as a "descent to real life" for the insight practice and a practice that can induce a flow state, like Tai Chi for instance. He is a very pleasant and smart guy, a psychologist and cognitive scientist who teaches buddhist psychology and has done research on mindfulness. I have only seen it from 1hr 59 mins on, and it's very long, but I think it could be worth watching the whole thing.

If you want to go really crazy you can watch this conversation of Jordan Peterson and John Vervaeke at the very edge of spirituality and scientific/philosophical thinking where they, amongst lots of other things, go deeply into the lovely distcintion between philia sophia (dialog for the sake of wisdom) and philia nikia (dialog for the sake of victory). Despite being continuously interrupted by Peterson, Vervaeke drops a lot of wisdom. Peterson does, too, but here he is really playing the role of the admiring child, trying to get as much wisom out of Vervaeke as he can.

I also want to mention the awakening to the meaning crisis series, a contemporary approach to meaning at the edge of cognitive science and contemplative study.

09/22/22 (I have no idea but it feels dark nighty):

I have two comments, one on perceputal insight, the other more contemplative, the division being inspired by Vervaeke. And they  seem to feed on each other in a way I can't understand intellectually. Or maybe they don't...

insight: I wasn't satisfied with my comment on "waiting" and it bugged me the whole day until I changed it into there being struggle and "the knowing of struggle". In my morning sit today I captured this notion and it became pretty obvious that the mind builds up a superego from the "knowing of struggle". It's a very subtle notion of a background knowing/er, but it doesn't have to be there, it's built up. It can resolve into something that I find difficult to word but I'd intuitively call it a state of "have knowledge" (knowingness, is-ness).
So "I am the knowing consciousness" is a pretty decent state. And it's an aggregated state. It dissolves into the state of "have knowledge", or "see" or just "nice", because it feels really nice, lol. Let's call it N.I.C.E. - No Intervention Called Ego. )

contemplation: George, thank you! Your comment turned my attention so much to the sense that I am trying to fix something with meditation! Now, if available, I'll try to do a very simple contemplation when I feel that I am trying to force something: I am simply asking myself: "what's wrong?" and use that as a focussing question. It can lead to a strangely simple sense of resolve. Also the trying to count branches whilst falling thing seems to apply.

My flow inducing practice (rope flow) is a bit on a halt, as the weather is becoming worse and I am going to the gym again. Some gym exercises can be flow-inducing, too, of course.

09/23/22 (I have no idea but I guess it's Equanimity):

In today's morning sit I could get a bit clearer on what's going on, I am riding the jhanic arc. The states of "I am awareness" and "N.I.CE." both seem to be parts of the 6th jhana. I conclude that because afterwards I fall into nothingness and I also sense some aspects of NPNYNP.
So, in a way, I think it's reasonable to see it as a short-term goal to work out these jhanic states. [From a meaning perspective, I am somewhere between seeing it as "my quest"/achievement and the understanding that it simply is what needs to happen and that I make it possible by respecting and going with it.]

Some thoughts are: is is-ness really just a state? What insight is to be gained? It feels real. Is it a jhanic preview into the natural state?
Reading in MCTB2 (on 6th jhana) isn't really answering things. He says "it[6th jhana]'s showing [me] a valuable piece of the puzzle..."
Does identifying it as a jhana count as not being bound by the golden chains?

When it comes to concrete practice, balancing energy and concentration is quite difficult. All this subtlety seems to make it difficult to get a handle on proper sitting technique. Or at least to get a decent amount of stable attention... Maybe I'm worrying too much.
Maybe it's time to see that the mind will concentrate anyway, regardless of me trying to do something. Like "I am concentrating" is just an idea and it's better to let it happen whilst participating. Easier on some days, difficult on others.

On the evening of the 23rd, I noticed that I am very much in Re-Observation (no in, no out, constant freak out, need to escape, grasping at everything, despair, trauma, restlessness). That night I had a very mystcial trauma relief experience.

BUT: I dare to make a decision. I will not use the POI as my main reference anymore. This has two reasons: first one is that it's a subtle avoidance and clinging pattern, and I think without I could be more free. Second, and maybe the more honest one, is that when sitting, experience comes and goes so extremely fast that mapping/evaluating really feels like trying to count branches while falling off a tree. It's nice to be able to see sub-sub-ñana stuff but it's also easy to make mistakes. So I'll try to step back from evaluating experience in terms of ñanas.

Today after getting up I sensed that I am having fear of open space. And that I want to work with that. I intuit that it corresponds to the patterns of elemental reactions, and I am trying to understand my experience with the help of McLeod's book.

I intuitively found that I have these basic fears:

Fear caused by seeing causality = fear of not being in charge, confusion
Fear of openness = fear of being lost
Fear of being erased (which I called fear of void)
Fear of uncertainty
Fear of "losing it"
Fear of being swept away (this comes with a distinct swipe effect). From reading McLeod I found that that's the water element.
I am quite sure I can find the relation to elemental patterns also for the other ones.

A few thoughts/observations (work heavily in progress):

I see that when I stay with my experience closely enough for long enough time, it begins to know itself. Something tells me that if the doer/knower and knowingness really were two essentially different things, this couldn't happen. They must have the same substance, somehow. As if "I am the knower" is just a possible appearance of knowing. My mind somehow wants to understand awareness as the crucial point between form and emptiness. But I have to think of it as a stable crucial point. I need more feeling-into.

Q: If awareness is empty = form, what is the formed form of awareness?
A (attempt): The thought "I am aware"?

Yesterday night, after a conversation with a friend I realized that doubt works as a comforting mechanism for me. It keeps me in the comfort zone. I then thought "ok, maybe that's necessary sometimes", and it was ok. Then the question arose why I need those moments of comfort, and I thought it's because I am trying too hard. Maybe I had less doubt without so much ambition. Very likely so.
It's getting clearer to me that you really can't have one without the other. Eventually you can't have aversion without greed.
The mind has a natural, pervasive curiosity, and it's funny, the german word for curiositiy, Neugier, is literally translated to greed for something new (Neu-gier ~ new-greed). And I think it's this underlying basic curiosity and goodness which can tip into greed and then (automatically) also into aversion. As if the birth of samsara (i.e. greed, aversion, delusion) is unawareness of basic curiosity and good intention. Mistaking curiosity and openness for greed, or so. From what I read in McLoud, I currently conclude that unawareness makes for the transition from emptiness to form, and awareness makes for the transition from form back to emptiness. From direct experience, it feels like awareness can take emptiness (because it is emptiness in nature??). Reasoning yields that only non-awareness/non-presence can't handle the presence of emptiness and we start react to it.
And you can't really think this right because there is a hen-egg problem, since + and -, when born (as thought forms), are inherently indistinguishable. I think I mean to say that right and wrong have no inherent meaning after their (co-dependent) birth. Either we live in openness /acceptance or we live in „+/-„ world. And practically there is everything in between. This is the hardest part to accept for the distinguishing mind and so the next mistake is to discretize samsara and nibbana. So does it make sense to say that sometimes it’s nibbana and sometimes it’s samsara? That smells like +/- thinking, too. The last idea for this entry is remembering the middle way. Keeping both extremes in mind. I'll leave that as a contemplation for today.

Any comments? Is that the right direction?

Pretty much yes – identification with the thought of something that doesn’t even exist! (try to find a thing called “awareness” which is separate from sensations …)

Kind of. Really it’s all just experience (predominantly thoughts, feelings, sights and sounds). It’s only “samsara” when we think that there is some better experience called “nirvana” which we could be having instead of the one we are currently having. That’s the root craving/aversion which “creates” samsara.

The weird thing is though, the thought that you could be having a different experience right now is just another thought which happens to be your immediate experience. If you’ve observed dependent origination closely enough then you know that it’s not even possible since choices are conditioned. Even if you think that you could be having a better experience in the future, by the time the future arrives it’s just another present moment experience … the future only exists when you think about it! In that sense samsara is already nirvana, despite the fact that you might think it isn’t and nirvana is waiting for you in the future (so what, just another thought).

These kind of ideas are generally unpalatable when a lot of one's experience is taken up with “unpleasant” emotions (basically emotions which have been repressed and are considered to be wrong in some way). That’s why it’s so important to do the work of sitting with your most uncomfortable emotions and making friends with them. It’s not an endless process, once you’ve seen your demons face to face and released enough of your repressed emotions then they don’t have to keep running your life. At that point you can take a step back and look at the totality of this so-called samsara business. If there’s no speicial experience called “nirvana” in the future, then isn’t this already it? Hasn’t it always been just this way?

https://www.reddit.com/r/streamentry/comments/osqhcg/vipassana_the_progress_of_insight_part_3_dukkha/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

​​​​​​​Please read this and see if you find it useful. Thanks.

I don't know if this is helpful, but sometimes basic instructions are important to return to. It can be very easy to over complicate meditation because we have such a strong verbal or intellectual minds. Sometimes we seek verbal insights too much. And forget what makes meditation different than thinking or philosophy.
The basic basic basic instructions for meditation are to develop mental clarity and equanimity with the Raw sense data of experience. What is this experience of being alive right now? 

when things get complicated that's what I go back to. What does it actually feel like to be a life right now? Not trying to verbally describe it, just experience it. When words and thinking pulled me away, I go into the feelings and sensations of being alive in this moment. 

It's only in formal practice that we can do this, because every other aspect of our life requires conceptualizing, predicting, reflecting, all those mental things. We need formal practice because we need to carve out a time in the day where we can actually go into the experience of being alive.

In other words, we need to appreciate and learn from the difference between the interpreter and the interpreted 

I believe you have interpreted my comment correctly.

I'm catching what you're throwing?  

When we transform everything that happens into a dream about who we are, we will never be truly alive.

Thanks a lot to you guys, first of all, it feels really good to know abour your participation!

I guess it's clear now that I slipped into a mode of thinking too much and didn't even really recognize it. I had some hints of that in the back of my mind, but that's the great thing about having other people, they tease those hints out! I also had an hour-long conversation with a dharma friend/teacher yesterday, so that's a lot of input.

My overall agenda will be to remind myself to return to actual experience as best as I can, when I can. I am also planning to add in more focussing (the technique) and a simple exercise of the (first) chapter on dependent origination in Burbea's book. It's called "a skilfull tolerating of craving". In this exercise you basically, with a spacious awareness, observe how craving behaves, how it relates to dukkha and how it changes. The key seems to see that there is always a peak, followed by a lessening, together with a sense of relief.

________________________________________________________

I call this phase "the emptiness dark night". It seems to me that there is a gradual release of seeing more and more emptiness (self-knowing, no doer, everything is just an experience...), and then there is digestion of that, which includes emotions like hate, doubt, pride, fear and worry. Those emptiness insights are very close to home and I think it's understandable that the mind goes into sharp thinking about what's going on afterwards. Because that's what the thinking mind does: trying to figure things out.
Maybe I just need to be cautious and catch it before that runs on autopilot and turns into empty shrouds of thought. Because I mean that's some big part of a depression, right? When having necessary and inspired thought turns into rumination for too long and you get lost before you realize that there is no energy and you'd better be with what's right here. Okay, maybe that's not necessarily connected to depression, but I think that a depressed person rides that strange train of thought addiction most of the time.
Hm, now that I write this... could be interesting to observe how it seems like "high thoughts" = high ego, "low thoughts" = low ego...

One more thing I notice frequently nowadays is how the mind constructs self-identity out of single moments of experience, and how that creates negative moods and mind-states. All the suffering seems to lie here! In other words, it really seems to be the key to suffering when we believe that one thought-emotion is "the reality of my whole life".
A classic example being a moment of anger quickly and magically turns into "I am an angry person and I always was, it's my destiny". Escpecially the part of ignoring any gaps and just smoothing begins to feel ridiculous. I mean that's insanity.  And I can see how that has caused problems in the past.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

@George:
I'm trying my best. Some of them still seem so dramatic and a life-and-death issue, it will take some time to understand.

@Adi:

Thank you, this is confirming that I go in the right direction by being with unpleasant emotions and urges on a feeling level.

That's Bodhi? Cool, didn't know that. Really like it!

@shargrol:

Well, I am doing an hour a day, but I guess I must have to some degree slipped into an attitude of "experience, would you please leave me alone for an hour?". A little bit fed up, probably.

@Chris:

I don't think I know if I interpret your comment correctly but I'll have it as a koan to figure out what you are pointing at.

09/28/22 (Re-Observation):

Well, if I map, I map, that's that.

It became clearer that I'm in Dark Night/Re-Observation. All the doubting, strategizing, all the epicness...those interesting mechansims that keep you miserable, like "this  next thing is it!", all the misguided heroicism and so on. It's funny, I can get the sense of "I am writing my opus magnum here!" lol
And it's amazing how much emotions are amplified. It's not loneliness and not knowing, it's epic loneliness, and epic fear of the future.
My hunch is that that's the intensity with which the mind has to see it to be less intrigued by it over time, though.

My evening sit was a classic (and you can see that I'm trying to take this with some humour): I started by debating whether I should have rather taken a walk (yes, that would have been much better...) Then I thought that if it's not that, then I should at least get some rest. Then I became angry because the rest evaded me. Then I gave up, became, annoyed, drowsy and cynical. Somewhere in between those epic emotions of fear came up. I lay down and tried to get some rest that way. When things became a bit calmer I had a brief period where I thought "ah, right, it's all just an experience...". Then I was somewhat dazzled and waited for the clock to go.

09/29/22 (milder re-Observation, hints of emerging Equanimity):

I found that I am somewhat proud of being in dark night. A strong meditator "having to face it". I mention it because I didn't really realize it myself just until now. In a way, it's all in MCTB, but when we don't see it for ourselves and only read it, it's not really helpful.

Here's what I decided to do today and maybe for longer, partly based on your suggestions:

Since I tend to become so drowsy, I decided to do something open-eyed. I sat down with pen and paper for a focussing session. I began focussing on the question "what's not ok?" for a while. Then I noticed that the progress of insight has started. This time I tried to give as much attention to the actual sensation as possible, and since I had pen and paper in front of me, I wrote the most prominent ones down to not drift away.

It started with fear and the fearful question "am I missing something?". Then some relatively subtle but pervasive sensations of rejection (disgust) and doubtful thoughts appeared. Then thinking began to feel shakey, which made me feel shakey (aha, the definition of identification!). Then I felt like I want something but I couldn't get at what it is. I began to think that something must be wrong. That was the dark night part. All those weird irritations...

Equanimity began with a moment of realizing that the content of my thoughts doesn't actually happen now. I still somehow believe that I am the actual experiencer of/in the content of my thoughts. The definition of a dream... I thought that I was stupid to forget that. Then a feeling of honesty and a phase of reflection set in. Then thoughts became somewhat sluggish and I could see some difficult stuff from a needed distance - compulsive thinking (which is mainly doubt, I guess), the compulsive need for relaxation (I named it "unjoy"), and what stood out quite a bit was "stuck reactivity", as in I need to be reactive, but I can't. I sensed that pretty deeply in myself I still think that I need to fight emotions and I am whipping myself to some degree.
I stopped by the hour.

Shortly after, while having my coffee I felt like I began to develop jhanic conentration and decided to do a sit on the cushion. A totally different scenery opened up. In this sit, right from the start, the mind was very swift. It was as if hindrances appeared like buttons with the label "push here for more jhana". Really, it seemed as if the mind was eating hindrances just to transform into more absorption. It's a very common pattern to reach EQ and then explore formless realms, but this time there was this specific sense that the jhana takes it's energy from things like doubt and irritation. Concentration grew and grew whilst the mind kept processing subtle energetic conflicts and contractions. It expanded into a very pleasant and relatively stable experience of open space. At some point it felt like the mind was lifting off more and more and I found that really exciting. I was still looking for hints and clues to make sure that I really am in no-thingness or neither perception nor yet non-perception but I was more aware of it, and I consider that a valuable thing.

Thanks for helping and thanks for reading!

That's the way I do it - using hindrances as the fuel for jhana. If you didn't have any hindrances then you would be in jhana the whole time and you would have nothing to compare it with to know it is so blissful! I also find that jhana gets a bit boring after a while, like there's an urge to return to the world and stock up on some more hindrances. It's kind of like a recurring creation myth

Makes sense!  

The most profound freedom is to know that nothing is actually free (of conditioning).

On the evening of friday 09/30, I had a very memorable moment - I found that I take myself to be meditation. Whilst walking on one of my usual walks, everything began to feel very much like a vast and heavy flow, everything was born in this very moment. At some point I began to think about that I wrote to shargrol that I'm probably a bit fed up and I began to ponder how it would be if I never meditated again. It came up that it would be ok to just live my life, but, and this is beyond words, there came up a very intimate sense that "I AM meditation" - as if it's my most inner being - and so I can't actually stop. 

The following saturday's morning sit was very memorable, too. I sat down without much agenda, basically surrendering. After 20 minutes I was through the dukkha ñanas (which is unusually fast), Equanimity emerged, and I went up the formless jhanas and spent some time in the 8th - more distinct and longer than usual. Then I had some sort of a break time (which I think is what Daniel calls the post-eigth junction point) and I just felt like experiencing how it is to be alive (as sargrol suggested). An amazing state emerged: a pervasive sense of open space with the imagery of a wide open desert landscpace, dry and wild but warm, welcoming and benevolent. I also very noteably felt the weight of my body on the cushion (and I thought this probably has something to do with the root chakra). As the state evolved I sensed aspects of 5th and 6th jhana, wide open space, and a friendly knowing quality. But in a way, the open space quality was different from 5th jhana, it was more integrative, as if the focus wasn't on space itself but much more on being in space, a bit like if space was a canvas and I was drawn into it. Of course I began to wonder whether this is a pureland jhana. But I didn't really mind. It was so profoundly benevolent and all-encompassing that I felt really, really joyful and sane. The afterglow lasted about half a day, even though I had a lot of stuff to do.

Yesterday was kinda crashed by ambition. I thought ok, I have maybe access to Pureland Jhanas, what about Niroda. And, spoiler, of course it didn't work. I watched Daniel's video and thought that it sounds like I can do the preparatory steps, at least my mind is in principle able to do it. I sat and tried to be without expectation, but that doesn't work..You cannot try to be without expectation, because that is expectation. Also, I was very tired. So it turned out that the only memorable thing was that I spent some time in 8th jhana and then I fell asleep.

I notice unusually many fruitions, I estimate it's 10-15 or maybe more a day. And lots of cycling. They are not always very distinct, but noticeable. I think it has to do with how the body is, because for me, the build-up to fruition is a process that takes energy, and so, like with everything else, fruition is clearer when you are clear, so to say. 

My perception of reality seems to have changed quite a bit, but I don't want to talk about that too much. I'd just say something like as soon as I settle, vastness and/or emptiness predominates experience. Whatever that means...

I'm seeing some benefit in meditating on the emptiness of attention. It feels pretty doable. I need the settledness of about 20 minutes  of sitting until it becomes available. Then I feel like a little child watching how attention moves and how it's directed by interest. I don't really like to use the word craving here because it's a bit of a loaded word for me. But yeah, attention is indeed directed by craving, either interest/need for something or wanting to not really experience something, and I guess ignoring leads to a sort of blurred attention. When I do it for a while I begin to feel content with just sitting in this natural movements, and the loadedness of attention subsides for a while. It's the contentness of the mind knowing itself, I think.

It makes sense. I feel free when I see that nothing is actually free And how could it be otherwise? Because when the mind doesn't see the conditioned nature of things, it thinks it has to cling (and clinging is the definition of not being free). Actually very simple

Edit: I just want to add the observation that when the mind doesn't se e the conditioned nature of a sensation, it thinks that the sensation is a self. 
Edit 2: fixed lost structure due to editing with phone.

04.10.22 (Review, A&P-ish, openings, new perspectives)

Experienced objects equally as far away and close, and equally as large small. After an evening walk, when I looked at our house, it had a friendly tininess to it. Even knowing that this house is „large“, it was also „small“. When I looked at the stars, they had a very-closeness (and friendliness) to them. Even knowing they are „far“, they were very near. That was a very happy moment.

For some time I felt like being the intersection of a transcendent world with the material world. Felt very magickal.

Got interested in the magick topic, but subsided quickly.

10/05/22 (Review)

Woke up very early with mild anxiety. After getting up I encountered strong sadness. Tried to not slip into thinking about it as best as I could. It became really intense. I hoped that I could take it to the cushion, and I could do so to some extent. See some possibility for improvement in directly encountering it on the spot instead of trying to take it on the cushion.

Morning sit:

The only thing I did was to try to get back to a sensation in the body when attention would move to thought, because I wanted to experience the sadness as intensely as I could, because I felt that’s what I need to do. During dark night I helped myself with noting.
The strong sadness came back, and moved to cynic anger and other emotions related to aversion. I remembered how easy they are overlooked when you search for a focus object in the center of attention, because the "shadow emotions" are located at the periphery and need a widening of perspective to include the "shadow area“, which is somewhere "sideways in the back“ ("where the demons are", and that’s why we imagine the little angel and devil as sitting on our shoulders, I guess).
As a side note, the early part of Equanimity stood out somewhat, as it got clearer to me how it's still mildly unpleasant.
Had some expectations about what would happen after Equanimity, and I felt like the mind was heading somewhere, but as usual I only quickly went through the formless realms/formless aspects of Equanimity and in the end I would drift into reverie and fruition with repeat fruition, which I take as another sign of being in review.

After the sit I felt decently purified. The only thing that bothered me is the nagging sense that it’s still not enough purification, that the purification hasn’t gone deep enough yet. It can feel like this process is never going to end (as George mentioned).
 
10/06/22 (Review)

I did three sits. First one only Dissolution, everything passing by without a clue what’s going on. Began to feel shit afterwards, sat a second sit 2 hours later. Started as a focusing session, turned out to become (more) review of Misery. It was very intense literal misery, and wailing, like bewailing a loss, saying „no, no, no“, as in „how could this happen?“, „this shall not be…“. The review insight is that there is still a part of me that doesn’t completely allow this process, because maybe it is scared of its intensity. Proceeded through the rest of dukkha ñanas and in the end pendulated somewhat between the later formless realms and hints of pure land jhanas.
I found that the I have some fear/respect when entering 7th and 8th jhana, there are usually some doubtful thoughts. I also noticed that they have a frequency, pretty slow like a very slow rotor movement.
Later that day I sat another sit but I have no clue what happened. I guessed it was dominated by nothingness, but definitely also tiredness


10/07/22 (Review)

In the morning I simply dosed around and let hypnagogia happen. After some time a very nice play of colours happened. A multi-coloured grid appeared, and after a while the tiles of the grid became water puddles and flushed away. I sensed some hints of screens, as in the fire kasina phenomenology.

Later: review of Re-observation. Heavy dream about fear of non-existence and a lot of other/related topics like anger, fear and shame.
I dreamt that I was very angry about my flatmate’s behavior, told her in front of my other flatmate and there also were guests hearing it. The other flatmate teamed up with the one I accused and that made me feel very alone. The guests would complain about how I spread so much anger. In retrospect it feels as if that’s because they cannot take their own anger, as I can’t take mine. It’s probably a reflection of not being able to digest strong anger energy without overwhelming people. The shear anger energy made one flatmate protect the other, and made the guests complain, I guess. That’s a good example that strong emotions run situations just by themselves if not moderated. And that I still need some moderation when expressing anger, resp. that I am not yet fully aware of how anger shows up for me. Apparently it expresses much more unconsciously that I am aware of.

I don't remember when exactly, but I had another nightmare: I don't want to go into too much detail, but it basically was about seeing intimacy as a threat. So I guess my mind has some fears around that.

10/08/22  (not sure, probably end of review)

Review seemingly coming to an end, seeing aspects of mind and body and cause and effect emerging, basically the interconnectedness of body and mind. How mind sensations are based on bodily sensation in this case.
Feel that there still is some inhibition, some doubt about the automaticity of this interconnectedness without the need for a self.

10/09/22 (not sure, maybe new territory opening)

More mind and body, some three characteristics. Sense that stages are moving quicker and milder.

10/10/22

No formal practice

10/11/22 (not sure, maybe A&P)

I settled and concentrated on tensions in the forehead. The mind extracted the witnessing aspect and took it as a concentration object. You could say it made itself become the witness. Being the witness, it traversed very quickly through all the stages and formless jhanas through to cessation in ~15 mins. Then, in ~20 mins it travelled from A&P to J8 and back. Then I just sat and chill out, kinda baffled by the ride.

10/12/22

Similar to yesterday but less focus on being the witness, less concentration. Cessation after 13 minutes, then unclear, just sitting, some boredom. After the sit I appreciated being able to experience just what’s going on now for a while, I felt like experience had just the right intensity to not fall into reactivity.

Meta-review and reflection:

When I reflect on this week of review, what comes to mind is distraction. Distraction from actual direct experience, usually by habituated patterns. Still avoiding the true depth of experience, although knowing that actual freedom lies there, and not in distraction. Distraction is an easy way out in the short term, but a self-built prison in the long run. As usual, moderation is key, I think. Allowing distraction to the extent it is needed is very important. It’s needed for self-regulation.

This shift is the one with the most definite impact on my actual experience. I spend a lot of time just sitting there and watching the world unfold within it’s own rules and logic. Then I sense that there is some unpleasant clinging to observation and regulation, the slight urge to control. The dukkha that can come from assuming an observer is mild, but as this develops, the mind seems determined to not tolerate this in the long run, and so it can be experienced as unbearable.

Put another way, or, taking more of an Anatta perspective: sometimes I am overwhelmed by all the complexity of my inner system and how it runs self-less. That causes me (the mind) to take the role of an observer/regulator. And probably that’s all there is, probably that’s the simple role of the observer/regulator/moderator. A short-term instance that comes up so that the system doesn’t run into trouble. It comes up as a part of the system and there is no reason to think of it as a problem. And sometimes I take myself to be that moderator. Good to know, something to be aware of.

In my communication with others I notice a decent clarity and resilience, usually much more than I think myself to have. So even when I’m a bit afraid or uncertain before a conversation, I experience myself as quite confident and stable. At least much more so than before.

More personal reflection:

A part of me thinks that when I get through this thing as soon as possible, I can finally continue my life. This part of me is not eager to practice, but does it because it’s necessary, cannot even really identify with spirituality, doesn’t understand why one should sit down in silence and fight falling asleep, doesn’t actually enjoy watching those dhamma talks half-assedly, has not much sense of a community and all of that. It’s interested in living a sane life with real connection, newly gained empowerment and fearlessness.

Another part likes to enjoy the fruits of the path, finds it interesting to see the play of the divine in front of my eyes, likes to interpret it as a self-organizing system and enjoys thinking about how it integrates into philosophical/spiritual theories. It likes being in jhana just for the cause of it. It has a sense of narrowness in the lower jhanas, and is hoping for new discoveries. It feels friendly and sane and has a strong wisdom of simply being. It doesn’t even understand the idea to see a necessity to doubt itself. It’s a little bit romantic. It begins to feel a bit sad when I think that I need to warn myself that this romanticism could be bypassing. It’s not. It’s not, when I’m aware of it and not using it as a means to escape reality.

Another part of me thinks that I’m not accountable for what I write here, that I’m a fool without a plan, a sloppy practitioner, deluding myself and others, being disrespectful, arrogant and an asshole. It feels uncomfortable when confronted with what I’m actually doing. It operates somewhat in the shadows. I probably need to take it more seriously and scrutinize it to be able to accept it.

Yet another part says: yeah, it’s true, I don’t really know what I’m doing. Who cares? I sit down and things happen.. or they don’t. You could call that foolish, but it seems to move forward. Very quickly. Reliably. Why make it into a problem? Who tells me how I need to practice? And what’s even the point? Awakening doesn't have anything to do with a specific practice.

thoughts: of course those parts have intersections. Probably the biggest contribution to mental insanity is thinking that only one of these parts can and must be right. It makes me come back to the idea of moderation. And moderation seems to come when each of the parts is taken seriously, and given the ear it needs for the right amount of time. Not indulging, not avoiding...

How to go onward(!?)

For formal practice, as you can see, I have some doubt about whether it’s the best thing I could do to just let things run like they do or plan something more intentional and structured. It's a rational doubt, if it's reasonable I don't know. Maybe I could have another look into Seeing that Frees. Not sure.

More concretely: I am now seeing all this as a self-regulated system with the observer/manager sensation integrated, but when I just imagined telling this to Daniel, I remembered that he keeps saying that there is no observation. So there is still some nagging sense of something missing. And then I had some glimpses into there being no observation. A sense of a direct, immediate connection with no delay. So it's not enough (not the endgame) to see the sense of observation come and go and sort of understand it as a still-clung-to thought, causing distress, but to directly see it's emptiness. Or maybe I'm overcomplicating it and all of this just lead to where it must lead to and I'll just keep letting the mind contemplate on the remaining dukkha that comes from assuming an observer/regulator as a real object.

For my life, I want to make sure that I learn to moderate the parts of me that make me slip into habitual non-doing and light depression when confronted with issues like decision-making. The fear that comes from not knowing can be unbearable. Sometimes I manage to transform this fear into a very clear and explicit knowing of what is. It is the same mechanism that transforms concentration on tensions in the body into being the witness. A shift in consciousness caused by being exactly with what is. Sounds interesting; being with fear of not knowing (as an object) makes it into a knowing of what is. And then the fear is gone, or mostly gone. In a way, it’s pretty logical.

Opinions welcome!

You're on the right track.

If your mind wants to take you on a wild ride through the jhanas fine; and if not, fine as well

It's basically already happening, so getting on with your life is always a good idea! Oftentimes I've found that meditative progress happens when I stop practicing so hard and focus on getting stuff done. Then when I come back to the cushion it's like a block cleared up in my subconscious or something and I go straight back into a deeper level of mind. It's definitely possible to meditate yourself into a corner.

On the personal reflections, my experience is that the closer you stay to your emotions, the less need their is for second-guessing oneself, others, motivations etc. It becomes more habitual over time, although of course drama still rears its head from time to time (life would be boring otherwise!)

If there is an "endgame" it's weirdly simple. I would encourage you to consider why it's not enough to see the sense of observation come and go, just like every other mental state. Everyone starts out with clinging to the sense of being the observer, but maybe now there is some clinging to "no observer"? In the later stages it's very easy to get stuck imagining that someone else has some special permanent "endgame" state which you don't have. A lot of the remaining dukkha is really just about observing the subtle craving for any state other than the one your mind is currently occupying, whether that's a state you've already had and need special conditions to re-create, or one that you imagine somebody else has and you need to attain for "endgame". Of course there will always be deeper and more impressive states to attain if you have the time and inclination, but that's not the "endgame" if you get my meaning. Or to put it another way, maybe what's missing is "nothing missing" ...

Thanks George, this all reads very true and applicable!

A question I have is: I am not explicitly meditating on elements and I only become aware of elemental reactions in daily life. I am also quite aware of a lot of urges and can more and more identify them as not being me.
I am interested in  the difference between urges and elemental reactions. Currently I think an elemental reaction might just be an urge that comes with a flavor (of fire, water...). That lead me to wonder to which extent it is beneficial to see "as which element I react" as opposed to only being able to identify urges as not self, and if knowing the elemental nature is more than "nice to see". It seems to give more clarity, but also potential for fantasy.

Again, basically out of interest:

1. is there an essential difference between an urge and an elemental reaction? Maybe urges can have a more psychological reason?
2. Does every urge have an elemental pattern underlying it? Or could it even be the other way around - first urge, then elemental colouring?
3. Is every reaction identifiable as elemental?
4. Is it worth exploring all this or am I creating more complications/problems that way?
5. I think a common reaction type of mine is void in the form of bewilderment, as in "I just don't understand how this could be", or "by no means can I comprehend how this is supposed to make any sense...". And a possible follow up can be "I almost can't help but think that this situation is designed to frustrate me." Okay, I know that now. Is this a classical case of having been mindful of it often enought will eventually make a difference?

That’s the way I see it as well - the elemental reactions are like different flavors of urges. Urges are basically the craving link of DO - either positive (I need it), negative (I need to get rid of it) or neutral (I’m going to ignore it – not so much an urge, but still a subtle reaction). It’s not an exact correspondence, but if you look at the elements:

- two of them are attractive: earth (the need to hold onto something to feel solid) & fire (the need to consume something to feel alive)
- two of them are aversive: water (the need to disperse or evade a perceived threat) & air (paranoia, suspicion, anxiety)
- one of them is neutral: space (spacing out, feigning incapacitation, confusion, dullness etc.)

Looked at in this way, elements are just a simple framework for providing some more psychological detail around the middle links of DO. The only point of this stuff is to provide a quick simple useful framework for analyzing your own patterns. You shouldn’t expect to find an exact correspondence for every kind of psychological pattern. If you are getting lost in over-analysis/complications … then that’s probably an air element pattern!

The real value I got from it was being able to recognize that it was basically the same kind of pattern at play across time in different areas of my life. For example I had a lot of worldly ambition when I was younger (earth element -> titan/god realm). When I got into meditation I thought I was turning away from all that, but then I realized that some of that ambition pattern was simply re-surfacing as spiritual pride (wanting to be a “high achieving meditator”). When you see the same pattern operating in different areas then it becomes much easier to recognize it and isolate it.

The other value was seeing how the same pattern leads to the same kind of realm, even in very different areas. Strong earth reactions (craving solidity & power) tend to lead to titan-like competition and god-like dominance scenarios which eventually end in a fall due to titan jealousy. It doesn’t matter if the medium is money, power or spiritual kudos, it’s the same pattern. Strong fire element reactions lead to addictions, whether it’s alcohol, drugs or meditative bliss! Water reactions lead to anger & conflict scenarios. Void reactions like you say lead to confusion, helplessness etc.

The interesting thing is that often we subconsciously create the scenario/realm that we think is being forced upon us. If someone has a lot of repressed anger then they will tend to get into conflicts easily and think that the world is full of angry people. If someone has repressed helplessness then they might unconsciously be drawn towards situation where it’s easy for them to feel helpless, but they will interpret that as “life is too much for me” (depression). People can also switch easily between opposite kinds of reactions depending on the context. Someone might feel completely helpless in some not particularly challenging areas and very competent in some quite challenging ones. They might feel angry in certain situations and space out in others. And then of course certain patterns tend to trigger other ones. Helplessness (air) might often be followed by anger (water). The triggers often go back to early childhood when these patterns were first laid down. This is really just good old psychological projection in the meditative framework of dependent origination.
​​​​​​​ It’s great that you are becoming aware of them in daily life, but for me the most transformation came when I would meditate on specific reactions to “liberate” the underlying emotion. If you do that then next time a similar trigger comes up you have a better chance of identifying the urge and giving yourself just enough space not to automatically react in the same way. It happens really fast so we are just talking about a flash of recognition around that 1 second when the urge first kicks in. As you get more familiar with them then it mostly becomes automatic. You are aware of the patterns as they arise and you tend not to automatically create the same problems for yourself. But from time to time reactions still arise that call for more attention.

Thank you very much for taking the time to write this very informative post! I guess that's enough conceptual background and it's up to me if I will invest the time and energy to dig deeper into the material practically.

My current sitting situation: after the supposed review phase sits were "everyday something new", one day concentration -> magick-ish, one day more purification, one day only weird. This is basically still true, but now I see that is a common angle point. Each sit has an emphasis on the 8th jhana to some extent. The mind seems to unify the most around that jhana. As if it has something to collect. Somebody once told me that he relates the 8th jhana to "somebody moving through time", and that seems to fit, because I also sense an emphasis on contemplating the urge to wake up, and the dukkha that's involved in holding up the image of a stable, lasting self. Also, getting to terms with how things are is a topic. For instance, on tuesday, on a long walk I began to ponder that it's just the mind's nature to produce concepts and ideas around everything that happens. Then I pondered that if this is just so, why do I feel unsatisfied with it? I began to feel that one strong urge behind this, and I sat down. I felt into the urge, and at that moment it felt like it doesn't actually point anywhere, like an energetic cloud that makes me believe it wants to go somewhere. Then, in a memorable moment, I realized that I AM the urge to wake up. It was similar to the moment I had a few weeks ago, where I felt that I AM meditation, but causes and conditions where a bit different, and it wasn't that memorable anymore. Anyway, the hot topic seems to accept that mind will always interprete experience and build ideas, stories, concepts around it, and to figure out what this primal urge/drive really is. My intuition tells me that it's a doorway. I found this talk by Ajahn Sumedho very nice. Its motto is "it's like this".

When I view this through the three speed approach of Kenneth Folk, I'd say the focal point is to understand the transition from second gear (who or what experiences this?) to third gear (this is it). Sometimes I dive into pure land jhanas, and I enjoy figuring out which is which and getting more clarity on what is going on (afterwards). I also have some fun recapitulating the other jhanas.

Sometimes I watch this guided tour through the 13 jhanas with Kenneth Folk and have fun with it.

Nice George!

I had a few very intense days. It all began when I noticed how much self-hate there is, and with how much aversion I am meditating. I mostly sat with self-hate and intense, painful misery. Yesterday I had two decisive moments: There was a reaction chain of length 4 or 5, happening in a second, and one of the components was a hate reaction, followed by a sadness. It felt like the sadness we experience when somebody hits his dog. It made me think that, seeing it like that, sadness is based on aversion. That really gave me something to contemplate.
The other moment was similar, a quick, even quicker succession of experience of pretty abstract thought-like blinks, which made me interpret it as utter disconinuity and it led me to seeing continuity as fabrication. I think that's 8th jhana territory.

Now today I think I have a good outlook on what happened. I noticed that while the mind was trying to get to the purest possible state (higher jhanas), everything else seemed so unwanted, and it makes me think that this is typical titan-like behaviour. Wanting to be a god! Everything else is inferior! And that's how aversion is created.
On the other hand I noticed, and this is really the most striking, that I don't allow emotions like helplessness, hopelessness, confusion and the like because they might make me feel inferior! And then I had to laugh somewhat cynically at this stupidity. It's really, really clear to me now that I don't want to experience feelings that might indicate weaknesses (inferiority). And I'm so, so much trying to protect myself from these. What a relief to understand this!

I had to think about what shargrol said about feeling superior and inferior and the conceit fetter, I also just recently read it again, and it seems to fit so well! Let me take the opportunity to thank you again for writing this, shargrol! And now that I know you are reading here, also thanks so much to Pepe for compiling it! Invaluable! Without this backup I wouldn't have been able to interpret my experience that well.

So that's conceit fetter... Interesting. And finally experientiable. Well, actually it's clinging to immaterial rebirth, aversion and conceit. It's the titan that wants to be a god, abiding in the pure abodes, disapproving everything that isn't pure enough. And I'm sure there is some ignorance involved, too
I was contemplating the relation between earth and titan a bit, like George said, and it made sense, thanks also to you again, but I couldn't really experience it clearly enough. I had to see more very, very subtle but pervasive and painful reactivity to get it.

Feeling good now

Yes!

God realm is fundamentally based in superiority & ignorance - fixating on having "the best" and ignoring everything and everyone around you. Whether it's clinging to jhana or power, it's the same pattern. There’s nothing wrong with jhana or power per se, but the more you cling to it the bigger the eventual fall.

The emotion which fuels God realm is pride; and its mirror image is shame, which fuels feelings of inferiority and hell realms.

The interesting thing is that we are never going to completely eliminate feelings of pride and shame. They serve important evolutionary functions for social animals. The feeling of pride evolved to make you want to be valued by the group, the feeling of shame to avoid being rejected by the group. Your ancestors would have starved without these emotions!

What tends to happen when people are uncomfortable feeling shame is that they repress it (ignorance) and try to feel as much pride as possible to displace the shame, by doing all the usual titan stuff to try to make it into god realm. The problem is that repressed emotions don’t disappear, they stay trapped in the body and they need to be felt in order to be released. That’s why gods often end up in scandals – it’s that repressed shame trying to get attention. The ironic thing is that if you are comfortable feeling shame when it arises, then it passes quickly and hell realm doesn't have to be a big drama. It’s the same with the other emotions & realms. If you are aware that you are feeling pride then you don’t try to cling to god realm and the inevitable transition back to human realm is much smoother. When you are aware that you are feeling anger then there is less need to "get angry" (hell realm) etc.

So yes, keep focusing on the “negative” emotions, the ones you don’t like, and notice how that aversion fuels the realm experience, and how when you really feel into the physical experience of the emotion then the mental experience of the realm runs out of fuel.

Sorry for deleting the last post, I was too nervous, couldn't let it be there, too many emotions, too many claims, too much conceit.
I'll put it up here again just to record in which condition I probably was. Feel free to skip. But I would be grateful for a comment on the whole post.

_____________

11/17/22

I am learning more about my ways of suffering. In particular, seeing positive experiences as an escape is very dangerous. It's not even really enjoyment and you are actually missing what's really going on when you are drunk by craving (to put it a bit harshly). And by seeking enjoyment out of need for it, you confirm that you are unhappy(!) Positive content is very positive when enjoyed without craving. Maybe the mind habitually tends to think that we can only enjoy positive experience with craving? Mistaking craving for enjoyment?
When I listen to a happy song and I need it to make me happy, it won't. When I can just enjoy the happiness and good vibe, it's a whole different thing. It's less self and other, more connected and "truly enjoyable".
Concerning unpleasant experience, the real suffering is not unpleasant experience, but the distraction and the distancing, the trying to keep away from it.
All this seems to hold even for dharma :/. And it  ties in with the recognition that I need to listen more to what I really want and need. I tend to be too ignorant here.

Very simple statements and nothing new, I think I simply develop a better direct understanding of the difference between feeling and craving.
__

This is a sketch of what I did and experienced during the last 3 weeks.

I mostly sat with strong emotions. I began to experience (amongst other things) a general sense of being surrounded and a pretty pervasive fear and a lot of sadness. Experience tended to be spacious but enclosed, with heavy emotional material around "the center".
What really helped, basically following George's advice, was to sit with the emotions and let the proliferation run out of fuel. It was tough, but in doing that, insights into dependent origination naturally evolved.
I read up on DO in Burbea's book and tried to somehow re-enact/comprehend what I had experienced.
A lot of things made sense. I could see sub-links and -loops and how it's by no means really a linear progression, everything interconnected. I got fascinated with the idea of what I call "mutual emptiness", namely the view that the mutual dependency of phenomena is one way to see their emptiness. I also found it really promising that (according to Burbea) it's possible to see that in the end even the links of DO are empty (because they are interdependent, and dependent on other things). It made a lot of (visceral) sense to me. I often felt like I am missing something before birth. (By birth I mean a sense of me (basically as the witness) being re-born in the moment. Even if it's just the birth of a self as the witness. Sometimes the full birth of a suffering self.) It had a strange gappiness to it. Often I could see how after contact there is a back-and-forth movement of craving, which entangles itself into clinging and eventually leads to some kind of becoming. Seems like the mind investigated different links at a time.
I found it interesting to link realms with DO, and to see the underlying view as a setscrew for determining in which direction DO goes. I heroically wrote "It's all determined by the view!" on my whiteboard
One example would be that when you don't allow yourself to feel shame, or better to say you do feel shame but your view is that you shouldn't, then this determines a hell-state where you hate yourself for being ashamed. It's the birth of a suffering self. And If you manage to soften the view, DO doesn't take such a rough turn, everything is pretty tame and you don't proliferate as much around the shameful feeling. It's interesting how aviija and consciousness at contact seem to be linked together here.
I find it interesting to see the link "aviija (in the form of a view) -> sankhara" as being what we would call a moral imperative (like "you shouldn't be afraid/angry/ashamed") in western tradition. At least it feels quite right to me. It feels like the moral statement (view, aviija) and the implied imperative (sankhara) can't be separated by the mind.
DO is certainly the most sophisticated and complex way to approach the dharma, because it has so many linkings. Actually it's more like a web/cloud than a chain, as Burbea writes. And it has a certain abstract-ness to it, which realms/elements clearly don't have, and it's quite prone to linking errors. I'd say realms is more prone to fantasy, though.
Looking back and that period, I see the tendency to be fascinated with the emptiness of the links of DO as a subtle form of avoidance.

I think it was on sunday evening when I contemplated the links of DO on my whiteboard that a spontaneous cessation occurred. Only when I went outside for a break, I realized how strong the afterglow was. I had a profound moment of experiencing emptiness in real-time and the most striking thing was to see that even the clinging is empty. I was left with a mix of unbelieving and sense of total freedom.
For safety I called it an A&P, but since tuesday all those fruitions pop up and I seem to be cycling very rapidly. Almost a bit too rapidly for my taste. On the other hand that opens up the possibility to see the cycling as inevitable and simply ongoing. Well, it's not always easy to see it like that.
With good concentration I can now see emotions and thoughts as "very small", emerging from nowhere, and harmless, and I can clearly see sub-ñana progressions, sometimes even sub-sub. On an emotionally tougher day I have to really, really focus on what the sensations want to tell me, try to relate, ask questions, be with it, but that usually results in a lot of insight.
If this is review, it's at the same time the most confusing and liberating until now. It has the typical high intensity, richness in insight and lazy bodily feeling, and even though everything feels like going so fast internally, the overall feeling is less heroic and more settled. And I can sense a tendency towards more normal life integration. Jhanic states are possible, but I think I can value and respect them more as for what they are. I don't have so much proliferation around it, as in trying to understand and figure out and "what does it mean that I can do this?". This understanding starts do develop for other things, too.
___

I try to learn a bit more how to do IFS, and it seems to me that this last shift allows me to do that much easier than before. I could be making this up, but I have the idea that parts, when there is some understanding of emptiness, are way more willing to be approached and directed and to give space.

One truly good thing I found is about a part I have, which I got increasingly annoyed about. The one that is spitting in so many clever answers and ideas all the time. Some sort of wanting to be better part. Today I found that it just wants recognition and that it's the same part that is easily disappointed when it doen't get enough attention. I previously thought there is two parts, one that is shaming the other, but now it seems to me that it could indeed be the same part that wants to be recognized as smart and helpful which causes the shaming feeling when ignored/pushed aside.

______________________

11/24/22:

I find myself looking for the right practice. I did dependent origination for a while, and I seemed to have crossed a boarder whilst doing so. Then I think I got a little manic after seeing so much real-time emptiness and I got flooded by emotions. Now I am obsessed with IFS practice. It seems to have so much benefit, but I'm overdoing it again. Ok, catastrophizing papanca mind aside, realistically, I'm probably just doing a bit too much.

I somehow know that just sitting with it is the right thing to do, but I'm still craving a method. One thing I could imagine is to sit with what is as long as I can do it and when possible (in EQ) look for greed/aversion/delusion, and fall into jhana when it's happening. Sits aren't so strongly colored by jhana anymore, though. Cessations are a revealing refresh, but I sense that I still want to make it into more, somehow unconsciously trying to extend it.
I am also getting better at realizing when I am adding anger to anger, and give it up, and I hope I can somehow become better at realizing it earlier. I know that it's Re-Observation to Equanimity intellectually, but that's not really helpful at this point. It has to "get into my guts".

So it all feels like a big comedown. Not really this, nor really that.

Maybe I should also say something about what happens when I sit: I begin being somewhat uncertain and anxious, somewhat confident. It's mostly vague for the first 30 minutes. Sometimes I feel that there is Kundalini energy, sometimes there is none at all, and this distinction is pretty new. I personally think that's a signpost of moving to a more open mind and it takes some time to get used to not having action-juice Probably I am clinging to good concentration to some extent, because I feel some nostalgia and expectation as I write about this.
After about 30 minutes I get into a very different situation. There arises one mind-state after the other, and the mind investigates to which extent it's having a problem with it, or how much it can unify around it. It can feel like I am not needed in this process, and reflecting on it, basically I play the role of the one who has the theoretical background to know what's going on, like "aha, the mind is doing a mix of mahamudra and ifs, these are exiles, those are protectors, now I feel like an active self, now I worry about whether this is right, and so on...". I can sit in this state for a long time and it can get really comfortable. It feels pretty natural and somewhat (very subtle) being guided by divinity. It's just that sometimes the mind can't really decide where to let the ego reside.

Summing up: I have seen emptiness operating in real-time, it was as sublime as it was unsettling, I am getting better at seeing the difference between sensation and craving, and I am slowly learning to reduce proliferation by acknowledging it. Actually practice seems to be ok.
Maybe I am making myself unnecessary problems by thinking that I have to understand, develop more concentration, more curiosity, more resilience, more this, more that. I'll consider that.
And I think I should try to keep in mind that the mind does DO, mahamudra, and so on, if I just let it be so. I wonder where the discomfort and worry comes from. At times the ego-self is very comfortable just watching, but at times it's so worried.

11/25/22:

I feel a lot of protectioinism. It can, poetically, feel like a fist is opening. I remembered that shargrol wrote about it in this really well written post.
When I tune into that feeling of a clenched fist, it can switch into a feeling of being held (by the universe, some invisible force, something...). It makes me think of a golden chain. The next layer of imagination after we see that the holding is somewhat empty/not self, seems to be to imagine a higher force being in charge. It feels much safer, soothing, but it isn't a real refuge, because it's a thought construct... and that realization is scary, too. Maybe it makes most sense to see that this reification is understandable and not to dramatize it once again. Maybe what's scary about it is the realization that it can't satisfy. So it's more interesting to feel into why it needs to satisfy. And that leads to the sensations of worry and fear.
It could really be that the worry I feel is related to opening this fist. Worry because I don't know what's going to happen. It could be that something really, really, really bad is going to happen. But the closer I get to the feeling of fear, the lesser the anxiety actually becomes.
A view days ago I viewed it as a part of me and asked it what it wants, and it told me that it wants to heal me. I felt really great after that. But feeling great often is undermined by creeping doubt. I haven't quite understood what this doubt is, nor how to appropriately deal with it.

The following is a kind of creative writing, free association work.

When I open the fist, it hurts a little. The pain heals itself when it is recognized, relived, cared for. Holding the fist with compassion. Holding the holding with compassion makes the opening a healing process. )
Painful feelings come. Shame, ignorance, fear, doubt.

So the holding with compassion makes the one big pain become a bunch of unpleasant emotions - it untangles. Can I hold the unpleasant emotions with the same compassion as I did with the painful tangle? They are smaller, less sticky, quicker, more difficult to pinpoint. The reactivity towards them is subtler.

Again and again and again do I have to remember that the insight doesn't come through thinking, but through willingness to experience with compassion. Willingness is compassion. Patience is compassion. Comprehension is compassion.

The searching gets into the way. It seems like there is a switch to flip. I have to see often enough how, out of habit, I fall into the trap of making a discovery into a thing- my thing. That means when an insight appears, I want to make it into a method, make it something that I can use to finally crack it. Pretending that it was my discovery and building up on it.
More generally, it's as if the mind makes what's there into what could be there, and how much nicer it would be. And that is understandable. It's the same thing with the painful tangle/fist. I cannot make the pain fall into its components (the unplesasant sensations), it only happens when I hold the pain in awareness with compassion.

Funny how this is just as I started this log. The answer was immediately given (by shargrol):
What have I learnt since then? A painful question... I guess it all has gained more subtlety. I can see very slight dukkha variations, like the idea of appropriating insight and how this idea is actually driven by a good idea, but it leads to nowhere, because the mind doesn't work that way. Hm. Ideas aren't the problem, they are normal and necessary. The feedback loop of thinking "if I had had this idea before, then I could have avoided this and that" or "if I just had more of these ideas" is pretty much problematic when we identify with it. Yeah, it all seems to come down to wanting to find a safe space. Why is here and now not safe enough? Why is this not safe enough?

Had a great evening sit. I sat for 20 minutes, noting "pleasant, unpleasant" and "neutral", mostly for the breath. I started to see a mix of craving and proliferation, related to the specific vedana. In the example of an insight, followed by thinking about how to make up a practice to see more of it, that would be a pleasant experience, followed by craving for more and unhelpful proliferation on how I could achieve it. The proliferation is unhelpful because it's fueled by craving.
I began to wonder if there is proliferation without craving. I thought maybe that's when the mind gets dreamy, but that's probably proliferation around a neutral sensation.
It felt like whenever there is proliferation, I could find a corresponding sensation in the body. Then I saw clearly that there can also be proliferation around a memory.
It also seems helpful to distinguish between mere thought and proliferation (thought, driven by reactivity).

Sitting continues to consist of 2 main parts. After having settled and developed some samadhi, the mind starts to investigate around the middle links of DO. On a good day, like today, that's chains of several reactions in less than a second. If I think about "a second" in that context, it doesn't really make sense, though. It's more like just a string or ray of events, very pre-verbal. The dukkha is very, very subtle but clearly there. On that level of subtlety, I kinda experience the craving as heat. 
My intuition and sometimes also my experience is that this intense investigation of DO is what leads the mind to forget avout reactivity and turn to experience as it is - luminous and beautiful - or simply what it is.
In the next part investigation takes a different turn. Now it's more like I am sitting in the open and experience is somewhat cloud-like, and much slower. Denser clouds (mind-states) stay for a while, wait for acknowledgement and dissolve then - not always completely, though. The longer I sit, the more I can see the 8C's of the Self from IFS show up to different degrees (these are clarity, compassion, confidence, creativity, calm, courage, curiosity and connectedness). On the contrary, after the sit I can see how the clouds/parts slowly return, and how I thereby slowly move away from the state of true self and/or natural mind. Recently I would describe natural mind as a  tautological, non-distinguishing acknowledgment of experience, but it's tough to describe and somehow not quite it. I could also call it unquestioned so-being-ness, the true what's-going-on-in-the-background-ness, it-ness, no-need-to-even-ask-ness .
You cannot ask it what it is, because a question would require it to give a concept. Or: when asked (what it is) it smiles (knowingly).

I found a very nice exercise in Burbea about sharing pleasant experiences and taking on unpleasant experiences. In a nutshell, when there is dukkha, you view it as dukkha that nobody else has to experience since you experience it, and when there is bliss you imagine how someone else would have it. I think this attitude could help me to share happiness and to not take my suffering too much as "stuck on my side".

Today, instead of micro-second DO stuff, the mind touched on the formless jhanas in the first part of the sit. The second part was basically as usual, sitting in the open and letting mindstates arrive, settle, stay and go. Felt really good.
If I'd want to map it all to DO I'd say that the mind investigates the middle links in the first part of the sit, and in the second it investigates how it feels to be born into different ways of seeing the world. These are ways that were usually suppressed to some degree in the past.

I want to add that this

maybe should have been "when turned to/asked for advice, it smiles knowingly, points me forward again, saying "you know what to do"", and so it represents natural confidence.

Edit: I also noticed the typical titan-like impatience and wanting for a more special/satisfying experience when concentration is as strong as today. It seems to reflect a decent chunk of the suffering of my life to make things unsatisfactory and frustrating by saying to myself that they simply must be more special and satisfying.

Recently I noticed that I have still so much ambition, and that it's dragging. Underneath there was fear, but that's not the main thing. Yesterday evening I watched a Mooji satsang, I began to think how gullible people become out of neediness. It sort of hooked the mind around something.
Today, after meditatoin, I played a few games of online chess (which I find a very good diet for the mind), and after one game I looked up and could pretty clearly how the mind congeals a sense of self around the experience of fullness. I began to think that it's clear: fullness leads to a sense of self. Thinking twice, I thought that experiencing emptiness probably leads to a sense of neediness, and that that also has to do with a sense of self around it. So that's not quite it.
I then made a sort of diagram:
 fullness is experienced as satisfaction and power. Can congeal into self, which then wants more of it. This is "positive" craving.
emptiness is experienced as ease and openness. Can congeal into self, which conceives of the ease and openness as lack and then wants to get away from that sense of lack. This is "negative" craving.
That said, because experience is always moving between emptiness and fullness, it can be both ease and satisfaction, but it can also be neediness and I don't find the right word for the other direction, the suffering when fullness is congealed into self... It's a wanting... So neediness is wanting to get away from the sense of lack, the other wanting is wanting more fullness. Ah, it's greed... *slaps head*. Maybe I can say for now that wanting more fullness is greed, wanting less emptiness is aversion.

This is just a bunch of thoughts, but it's impressive how the mind seems to slowly clean itself up. The problem seems to be right at the edge between emptiness and fullness. It feels as if there is something between, and as if my task is to understand that this friction or knotting consists itself of fullness and emptiness. I feel how I am becoming greedy to solve this and so I better stop here and go to bed.

In today's meditation I could see for a moment how fullness is empty and in another moment that there is no clear transition between emptiness and fullness. You could say that the transition between fullness and emptiness is empty.
So intellectually the answer is clear: when fullness is seen to be empty, there is no clinging to it. Vice versa, when emptyness is seen to be full, there is no aversion/fear towards it.

Later I sat with the remaining friction/knot for a while. When I carefully paid attention, it unwinded more and more into clear sensations and emotions: pain, fear, vulnerability, aloneness, impatience, hate, shame, sorrow. It unwinded quite well. And I think the way to go is to learn even better to let those be as they are. Let them free themselves.
The picture was like a cloud where all of them had their place, and I began to think that "there really is no self in this game". Then I realized that in this very sentence, there was the self! It felt a bit uncomfortable, because I didn't know what to think of that realization. Is it a problem? Why does it make me feel uncomfortable? Is there any unacknowledged pride in here? Yeah, that could be. At least for now, that's the only explanation that makes sense.

Hm. The more directly I look at something, the more I seem to melt with the object and the duality resolves. It's not really that I melt with the object, but the duality, the friction, the ignorance melts. Observer and observed integrate into space and stand on their own. The more I ignore something though, the more sense of somebody looking at something there seems to be. Quite paradoxical. Same for time. The more I ignore what is right now, the more of a sense of a past and a future emerge. Ignorance seems to be the core of duality!

Just an ordinary experience... Just typing, just freaking out, just looking, just being aware, just fear, misery, anger, disgust, just freaking out, just grabbing and only catching air, just total asynchronicity, just happy, just surprised, just confident, just struggling, just remembering, just shifting, just worried, just shining, just stimulated, just thinking, just checking in, just an ordinary experience.