So I attained some path, let's say 3rd.

Massive improvement in quality-of-mind.

It's so fuckin' before-and-after I actually thought it was 4th. Who knows? I am certain it can still get better --- it already has, since --- so who cares?

Point is, I have a method people can try, if they like.

For years now I have mentioned the strobing sensation in the middle of the brain. Perhaps you know what I'm talking about, perhaps not. For me and at least one other person (private correspondence), focusing on this phenomenon was vital (the key ingredient) to attaining SE. Another post-SE practitioner told me he learned to have fruitions at will after I specifically suggest he focus on that strobing sensation. Kenneth Folk once told me progress is to be had by focusing on it. So it seems to be important, at least for some people some of the time. Some others seem to have no idea what I'm even talking about, though, or at least give it no special emphasis.

For me, once again, it was vital for progress.

This time I had a shift in perspective... the consequences are massive, though the moment itself was quite anti-climatic.

Home-retreat, it was the 6th day. Very powerful and concentrated mind starting the afternoon of the first day (!). Around day 5 I am used to it, and slack off a little. So it felt like I reached my peak performance, at the moment, and didn't really know what else to do, really. I was seeing everything, it was pretty clear, pretty wide, consistent, and so on, and I was still getting a little bored.

So I decide to put more energy into the practice. Nothing suicidal, just boost it up a bit.

I walk for 1 hour with extra determination, see everything, everything, everything. Everything seems to be in one place... but wait, why does the strobing sensation seem to come "from" somewhere. What is this feeling of "comming from somewhere in the background", and why is there a feeling of "holding" that immediately follows it. What makes this/that background/foreground?

Nothing does, actually, they both seem the same and are "just happening". That was the "shift". Like I said, anticlimatic.

The consequences were quite spectacular. The strobing doesn't feel like noise anymore, and it can "just relax". Mind is much quieter. Stuff comes and goes at ease. Equanimity very easily within reach, even in discomfort. Fruitions happen naturally and easily without effort. Meditating is now really easy. Mood is generally glad, overall quite balanced. Health improved. Better digestion. Need less sleep. And I can do 20 push-ups by using only the strength of my erect penis, which now somehow bends and flexes in order to pull-off this otherwise impossible manoever! The joys of meditation!

So that's it: just notice that feeling of "comming from the background", and how absurd and arbitrary that distinction actually is.

Still slightly out of sync. Still see similar patterns in other chakras. Subtler, more fleeting.

howdy bruno!
great to read you again.  congratulations and nice to see that progress happens.

btw.  that center brain focal point is well known and i remember your se writeup on it many moons ago.

cheers

tom

Bruno, this post is intriguing and i will definitely investigate with the hope of replicating.  Can i ask how fast is the sensation in the brain strobes?  Or does it vary?  Is there light associated with it--is that why you chose the word "strobe"?

For the last year and a bit i've experienced a throbbing of sorts between, inside and around my eyes and much of my face.  It seems to be associated with too much concentration practice, a fatty ketogenic diet and perhaps caffeine.  There's no reason to think that this isn't simply the sensations of blood circulating (which i've concluded).  And this seems unrelated from what you describe.

And congratulations on the pushups.  You da man!

Alex 

There is no special reason for using "strobe", I guess. Sometimes in the dark with eyes closed each pulse will fill the vision with a white pulse, akin to a disco strobe light. But not always, and the "strobe light" isn't nearly as obvious/powerful as a disco strobe. I have also called it "pulsing sensation".

Here is a youtube video of me causing the strobing/pulsing sensation to happen. If I turn my eyes upwards (as examplified in the video) and close them (as in the video), the eyes will flicker at about the same rhythm and intensity variations as the strobe. It is a very characteristic rhythm/intensity variation, and just looking at it and trying to do the same might be enough to replicate.

The flickering is a response to the "strobing/pulsing sensation" which is actually felt in the center of the brain/head. Fruition happens when some sort of connection/short-circuit/pass-through/relaxation happens there (which also somehow connects to the crown chakra, and then very mysteriously down to the heart chakra), can can be sometimes be brought about by focusing at that point.

Before this latest shift, each pulse felt like it was coming from "a background", and attention would feel "like closing down/latching on" each pulse. Now the whole pulse feels more like it "just happens". I first saw it like that when I tried to hold in mind both "the background" and "the pulse". At some point it just felt like there wasn't any background at all, and the whole pulse was seen more clearly from beginning to end (whereas before perhaps I could only see the center properly). Attention doesn't have to close down onto it (at least not as much), and can just relax and let it happen without getting stuck to it.

Or something like that...

Congrats!!!
I got a couple questions for you if you dont mind,
1. What have the perceptual shifts been like? Anything different with the 6 senses?
2. Can you find anything that still has subject/object duality?
3. When you say "Meditating is now really easy" what do you mean by that? What part?

~D

This is very interesting!  I have been pouring through meditation manuals over the last five years and is the first time i've heard of this.

Hope to have time to meditate tonight and report back any discoveries.

Metta

Kenneth Folk used to direct post-pathers to roll the eyes, or flicker them so there was a strobing effect to check if one had had the baseline shift. When I do that, and focus on the endings of the strobing, what people round here call fruitions or cessations occur pretty much without fail. When I got the frist major baseline shifting cessation on a 10 day rretreat, i remembered Kenneth's advice to do this and I spent a whole day doing it, blissed out. Everytime I did it,, the cessation would occur quickly followed by the usual reset and bliss wave. I also got an intense violet colour race through the mind's eye (or maybe actual visual field)
Nick

Stuff feels more like it's in the same place. So, to give an example, while thinking there is the tangible quality of thinking and a feeling of change in blood flow in the head, happening in the position of the head within the space where this body is, and both happen at the same time.



I am really sorry, but it has been years since the last time I thought I knew what that meant. I'm guessing that some of the sensations I'm having could be the same kind of sensations that other people have, and which they are referring to when they use the term "subject/object duality". But I don't really see any specific sensations as being worthy of this concept, which I find completely confusing and not useful (to me).

The closest thing I could say is that there was an impression of some sensations appearing "out of a background", which is no longer the case. In fact, in retrospect, I think that the sensation of "coming from the background" was simply the result of not seeing the arising of certain sensations properly from the first moment when they arose. The beginning wasn't seen clearly, because it was murky or covered by the same sensation that would compel me to follow along / attach to the sensation.

This inability to see the beginning clearly (a kind of "out-of-syncness") still happens. But it happens to a lesser degree, and it no longer feels that there is a "background" and a "foreground". Just that lack of clarity / out-of-syncness.



Hmm... wanting to do it, enjoying it, maintaining it, finding interesting things in it, not having the feeling of something "being wrong" and having to "struggle to do it". Really an improved experience overall. I never understood the "just sit" approach, but now I think I can see what they mean.