Hello fellow DhO members and other unregistered readers,

Did you know you can stop cycling by going straight to its conclusion?

Because mind is like multi-dimensional puzzle and to reach some parts of mind in order to put them to sleep and activate something analogous it requires at times bending your mind in very unnatural ways it might be hard to always do - but should be doable if there is connection strong enough for *you* to be able to experience effects of part of mind cycling.

Fruition 101: It is literally just putting part of mind to deep unspecified length of time to do its sleeping/maintenance/etc. activities disconnected from needs of mind and unbothered by it. For that to actually work we need to also activate new similar part to take its place.

If you do that the moment there is first indication of tiredness you will never have POI or these fancy schmancy nanas. Also no dukkha and also why I always say neurons get tired. Neurons individually but also whole mind needs time to sort itself out and parts of mind which need to do it can be considered "tired" even if individual neurons are not tired.

Now my understanding is that if POI and going through all the nanas was actually needed or useful then the whole bloody thing wouldn't end in fruition anyways. Thus I started testing it if I cut cut the chase and how that would feel and how it would affect me and concluded that not only POI is not needed but person can just identify the nature of attainments in general and choose to have mind operate in this way. The key word is "choose". Its a choice, nothing more.

Of course in order for things to just work like that person needs to put an effort to know how to do these things and what that choice is about. Nothing 'just works'.

My mindset was like I always present it: to know what I need to do and do it rather than do something and have something happen.
And since that is the case I have lots of experience with failing - because the "what?" and "how?" isn't intrinsically known.

For that reason I could not avoid (read: I totally could - with more attempts but that would be pointless!) some cycling, could not avoid some meditation with methods to keep things going like typical pragmatic dharma maps describe them. The point however was in my head all along to recognize the most important aspects of cycles, of performed practices and not wait for attainment but just do it as soon as I had good idea and enough skills to do it and maybe most importantly (also because knowing what you want is literally knowing how to get it if you remove all the pesky descriptive mind dwelling in abstract ideas) knowing what I want to accomplish - which still required lots and lots of trial and error and having some more traditional POI cycles.

I wouldn't bother making this topic if not for the fact this very rare attitude.
Heck, knowing myself if everyone done this I would do something else because I'd still want to be somehow different... but who knows. Myself is the hardest person to guesstimate what it would do, always.

Concluding while adding additional info:
- cycles don't happen for magical purpose of enlightening us - they happen because there is an issue in part of mind which cannot turn itself down - and it needs to do it or it will experience dukkha
- fruition is just mind figuring how to turn itself down and switch activity to some other part of mind
- structure of POI/nanas is how it is again not to enlighten us having us to go through some magical pre-programmed stages but because how nervous system typically reacts and solves its internal issues
- issue at hand can be resolved at any time - here I advocate conscious mindful volitional action
- doing it like that is like learning how to drive a car - at first we think and are conscious about every single thing but after a while its just something we barely think about and it just happens - same with all the actions which might be necessary to switch part of mind which are active
- each "active" part of mind has its consciousness
- there exists methods how to do that from within this consciousnesses or by developing various types of meta-consciousnesses... here I am not even suggesting "how" but rather "what" and "why"
- mind is very interconnected and lots of things depend on other things
- when pondering how to do cessation of this whole mass of suffering that exist in it its important to realize that we might try and attempt at its cessation and even for limited time succeed (which BTW practices useful skills!) but to do it right all the parts of mind which are connected need to be involved in our "called fruition" need to be involved
- usually in practice its almost all parts of mind which are active at the time - and to be more precise everything that feels like experiencing any nana

Some time ago I said the best nana and the one I dwell most in is... 1st nana - "Analytical Knowledge of Body and Mind". This is why. Its indication from this nana which are sufficient to start doing something about "body and mind". Until mind gets little "tired" it doesn't cause itself to have any knowledge of itself. It just is. Once the switch or fruition or you could call it "cessation" (though I purposefully avoid this term as it focuses on cessation aspect too much even if its important) is happens the new parts of mind should NOT experience 1st nana or any nana. Not even EQ. The experience of EQ is already giant indicator there is an issue and went for far too long or perhaps was solved by something similar to fruition but on micro-scale and the moment it happens has very specific expressions.

Everything about the so called Enlightenment has one way or another to do with some kind of switching of parts of brain happening in the mind/brain. There is lots of ways to accomplish that and therefore lots of different experiences. From my personal experiences - its much much easier to play with these different ways and different experiences when they are the last thing that mind/brain needs. Having fresh clicking meat... I mean mind/consciousnesses which don't experience issues is the best time to play with switching them around in this or that way, play with triggers for these switches or any number of other things which are pleasant for the same reason of reducing per-unit-of-time activity within the brain like using jhanas (parallel activation of parts of mind... or arising of consciousnesses) or as I always called it "momentary cessations" which by design were designed to halt activity and not necessarily induce any switches in where activity should be after activity is resumed. Though that at times happened anyways.

Maybe as a last thing I mention pink elephant in the room: sense of self.
So.. it by itself is unrelated to dukkha in any way whatsoever so no point in talking about it. I mean sure this faculty is used in wrong ways and usually experiences most issues, etc. but it itself can be solved in the same way as every other dukkha so it doesn't really matter by itself. Not to mention our bodies have their maintenance mode of operation and once part of mind which experience as I always called them "tired neurons" and "routing issues" goes to sleep (undergoes cessation) body will just repair itself and sooner or later (in case of bigger issues) this part of mind will be used again not experiencing such issues. Healing might take longer time than just one time so if when using this part of mind again it still has issues its good to recognize these and do cessation again. Of course having better internal perception of mind allows to use consciousness to resolve some issues even faster but even in this case it isn't something done on active mind.

I mean that any precise actions are best done on mind which is not being used. Kinda like meditation - you don't do tuning of car that you drive in while driving it. Likewise you don't repair car while driving it. There might be impression that its the only sensible way to repair mind because how else would we do it... switch to other part of mind which currently is unused and probably getting its own type of dukkha that arises from lack of sufficient activation and use that to then from this other mind deal with previous mind. Of course its best to not do it right away. Things need to settle in mind, activity in nervous system needs to settle.

Anyways, that is about what I wanted to say.
If you read the whole thing then thanks you for your attention and now re-read this whole post again using fresh attention otherwise it will just mean you lost time reading it and haven't understood a single word.

Interesting post Ni, even though it feels like I pieced it together from the maybe 10% I think I understood. I think I actually have a similar hypothesis to your 'tired neurons' one regarding cycling, but I think about it more as a depletion of neurotransmitters (this is pure speculation): ie in early nanas you sort of gain some ability to direct the mind, using insight to flip it into a model of reality in which every moment is rewarding in itself. This culminates in a&p, in which the mind gains full control over the cookies it bakes itself, at which point it effectively burns through its energy supplies. Then in the DNs, the raw materials slowly build back up in the background until things balance out in EQ, and the cycle starts over again. I have no account of what fruition does in this model though.. When i think of it this way it's as though cycling is a way for the mind to stretch and exaggerate its capacities until it grows dispassionate with all the possibilities. Wether the dispassion or equanimity can happen on a macro scale that puts an end to cycling altogether is still an open question to me, although the highs and lows have trended towards more balance over the years. I feel like whenever I lean into a particularly high powered A&p i tend to crash for longer afterwards, which is in part where my theory comes from (along the lines of something like drug consumption).. anyway, what do you think?

Hi Ni,

Two interesting references for you ! If you can't find the articles, I must have them somewhere, I can email them to you. I think you will like it.

Petitmengin, C. (2006). Describing one’s subjective experience in the second person: An interview method for the science of consciousness. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 5(3–4), 229–269. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-006-9022-2

Petitmengin, C., Remillieux, A., & Valenzuela-Moguillansky, C. (2019). Discovering the structures of lived experience: Towards a micro-phenomenological analysis method. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 18(4), 691–730. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-018-9597-4

Neurotransmitters definitely are involved but imho not necessarily the way we usually think.
Imho low levels of them are symptoms and not cause of the issues.

Imho nervous system is down-regulating activity because some places experience too much of it. Taking anti-depressants which increase levels can works because that stuff can cause activity to happen elsewhere and this can lead to activity to shift from places with issues. It can unfortunately also lead to the affected places to get too much stimulation and without any way to down-regulate which ends like taking anti-depressants some times ends despite promising first results.

In case of nanas imho there is definitely at times too much this stuff being used up during A&P but that is also imho not what causes the issue. Maybe at 5th nana some first effects can be caused by it but later hell that ensues is tired neurons through routing issues we cause during A&P by being perhaps too creative in creating stuff without being mindful (on brain level) how things relate. The same parts of the brain already doing self stuff can stretch their muscle and make all sorts of cool experiences out of thin air causing it all to feel as if we were mega ultra enlightened and everything seemingly coming our way and all feels so real and our mind is already perfectly developed and... it was all just a visualization - creative visualization which can lead to development of new things in the mind but at that point only a visualization and all pointing to parts of mind which are usually already too overburdened by pointers to them existing in mind. Now if we attempt to experience this brilliant mnd we had during A&P it will only add more activity. Not only nothing of the new things we experienced weren't really where we thought they were and nowhere developed as we thought they were but they made lots of connections to itself and mind as a whole, as a person might cling to these experiences thinking that all the dukkha they experience can be resolved by these experiences.
It is then because of this over-stimulation why brain needs to down-regulate neurotransmitters.

Overall however the issue is even more complex. It isn't just momentary suffering of individual neurons which by themselves have bigger issues to worry than lack of stimulation and expected responses caused by not having signal transmission medium. They have ATP running out, potassium calcium levels, internal/external wear of their cell stuff and levels of rare in body micro-elements and other nutrients, to name most obvious. This is an issue and what causes experience of dukkha but there are also issue with the network itself and what I call routing issues. Mind over time experiences "tiredness" of the kind where connections are getting too focused on specific parts of mind and don't go elsewhere to spread activity. There are also positive feedback loops causing some activity to literally blow-up causing immediately over-stimulation. There are much more nuances to this thing and in some cases more relevant like e.g. side activation where consciousness is activated as part of normal waking experience but the way mind naturally shifts activity causes it to experience multiple activations from different parts of the nervous system at the same time or as I call it experience of 'errors'. Its especially related to 3C nana dukkha nanas. This stuff is however resolved in the same way as any other 'routing issues' so overall its mostly something to ponder about to better understand how mind works.

All this stuff need to be repaired. Mind needs a lot of time to sort all that stuff out. When you use parts of the brain which should go to maintenance mode you will have bad time. Now EQ works but it doesn't exactly use the same parts of your nervous system. Not completely different but not exactly the same either. You can quickly fall from EQ to DN by wanting to experience A&P stuff. Less when you aren't very specific and its much harder to even remember A&P stuff from EQ.

Fruition like I said is mostly just large parts of mind being switched to new parts of mind.
It might sound ridiculous in light of this not being widely known fact BUT its not like we can tell. Most people experience hemispheric cycling multiple times a day and yet even though when 'manually' changing these it is obvious how both of these minds are "us" we cannot really even imagine the other mind and assume nothing like that exists. In this light in case of more drastic shift like in case of fruition people attention comes to effects of entrance and mysterious moment and feeling amazing and not that underlying hardware was replaced.

There are reasons for that - consciousnesses are synchronized by attention that 'drives' them and shapes conscious experience a lot. It is possible to develop mind that uses different ways of synchronization... which could be summed "best synchronization is not needing synchronization" and this makes these things easier to notice. While doing that first and advanced meditative tricks like the ones I describe leave for later is sound idea but there is a workaround: All the things mind can do after you could call it self realization or enlightenment or awakening of sorts, etc. it can already do.

Obviously the issue is answering the question "do what?"
Well, practice would be to observe our normal mind as it seems to be there and consider these things:
- its not permanent or solid but actually works in pulses
- the most important parts get activated in these pulses but can get activated outside these pulses also which is in-between moments this normal mind arises
- it is pointless to try to argue with this normal mind as it is or try to make it go away and trying to do so will only make it stronger
- in-between the moments it arises we can in fact do a lot of cool stuff
- discover that stuff mind can do in these moments, try to experience something even if might for the most part feel like nothing... like literally non-experience
- the act of mind doing something need not be of this normal mind and it then lacks certain feedback components which normally kinda confirm action but it doesn't feel any less 'real' and its quite opposite actually

When I say to "do" what fruition does I mean its something done in-between these moments. Done by mind which is still you and you do it but not the mind which normally asserts itself as being you with which you might identify. Its not all there is to mind. Mind is much larger than that, you are much larger

It might take some time to realize relative mastery of it but the amazing thing about this specific practice is that person can practice it at any time. No special prep required. In fact I would say the most efficient way to practice is to "do" stuff outside the cushion because then on-cushion mind is more plastic and it will be much easier to actually accomplish goals. At the same time on-cushion thinking is less focused so its harder to notice some things which require conceptually analyzing them to figure what to do. Even if its harder to do in waking consciousness if you make enough attempts at this time it will be easier later on cushion to not forget what you need to do and then it being easier do it and once its one on cushion then out of cushion it will be this much easier. Rinse and repeat.

I might even add that practicing this way was enough fun to make me just invent things to practice. Once you start feeling your mind its full of things to try out, things to discover and things you can feel it can be improved in how it works e.g. make it more jhanic or specific jhana, control some parameters of perception, etc. You don't need to tire normal mind with giving it something to do. It will when you interact with greater mind just slowly fade away. Or like Buddha put it will run for as long as its actually needed and once it isn't it will extinguish itself.

How is this switching stuff done...
I just talk it out with consciousnesses and agree what needs to be done, why, maybe throw some pointers about how and when to do it and then part of mind when everyone feels they are ready attempt doing it. After doing it for some time everyone gets pretty skilled at such sorts of things.

Well, consciousness operate in many modes but for out purpose its only enough to recognize two modes which I call:
- driver consciousness - its consciousness that we are actually conscious of and it drives its own actions
- executor consciousness - its doing stuff and doesn't expose its own actual consciousness from point of view of driver consciousnesses
Names represent how I called these things years ago. Probably could use improvement... or even finding how these things are called in dharma or something. Still it doesn't really make that much difference what note you slap on to these things.

If part of mind appears totally unconscious then we needs to become conscious of each-other - connect. How to do that one can practice on hand. Everything related to consciousness can be practiced on with consciousnesses in hand, things like jhanas, cessation, etc. I consider having given skill if I can at least can instantly do something it in my hand - like if I could not move my hand I wouldn't say I can move it and likewise if I could not experience hand consciousness in some arbitrary jhana I wouldn't say I know jhanas.

So when we know how to make consciousness conscious of us then only part of the equation is finding part of the mind which isn't active and would want to play with running some electricity through it. Specific type of consciousness in inactive parts of mind is part of 7th jhana experience - it feels completely static. Active consciousness can interact with inactive parts of mind through it to query consciousnesses without waking them up yet. Query mostly for if they would like to be active in this and that role. These can be parts of mind which never did and in this case they will not immediately know how to do it but that's fine when we can afford it. More specifically when certain level of performance we expect from pre-trained consciousness is not required e.g. when operating heavy machinery. Not even because there is faculty loss (its still much better performance than using tired neurons!) but I am mentioning this because vast majority of times it couldn't really cause any issues whatsoever even if using completely new mind for some faculty because in our today's world we are generally very safe. Anyways, parts of mind engaging with new activities always have very specific feeling to it - its the same experience as path fruition.

Now for technical difficulties: It might be hard to disengage running mind because there are signal flows that need to be constantly (read in pulses - so from time to time) handled so consciousnesses which currently engaged in handling these signals cannot just stop and disengage. Best workaround for that is to make new part of mind starting picking activity more actively. As this happens it might cause specific blip when part of mind blanks out. It means nothing except not doing it correctly as it should be smooth sailing without sudden drops caused by signal collisions. One should certainly not optimize for such things as blips. It doesn't matter however for a long as consciousnesses did their dance and what before active now is resting and what wasn't is now part of an active mind. If that didn't happen then it wasn't done correctly.

Because everything about this process is agreed upon in mind it can be made to look fancier like having some specific signal to drive the switch so e.g. prepare everything beforehand and then make actual switch in one moment and its done in one instant. If doing it that way best to not get confused. There isn't any signal which does anything. It only does when agreed upon within the mind. This process of agreement can vary and doesn't even always require much active consciousness of this kind. A lot of the time what we consider consciousness is barely having any. It is good to know and be mindful of it... mindfulness BTW is being conscious and not operating on predetermined impulses. Not that neurons usually care for as long as they get enough food and sleep if they run some reality tunnels or something because these are usually okay. It is however causing whole lot of issues doing if without at least from time to time being conscious of each part of the mind and everything all at once. They, consciousnesses have even more fun when they aren't confused what is what.

Anyways, so that is how I practiced that stuff. Also why no dedicated practices for it. When there is tired consciousness in sight its responsibility of everyone in my mind to do something with it. They know its good system for them ;)

Consciousness = Mindfulness,
Ni

That sounds delirious to me, can you please reformulate?

Delirious in what way?
Hand has consciousness so all the experiential things that any consciousness can do experience also be experienced in hand. Maybe for not all things hand is the best suited but that is the point. There needs to be understanding so deep within mind that even hand can do it.

Say 1st jhana - if I can induce 1st jhana in my hand then my mind obviously knows 1st jhana.
Even better if in other hand I can do different jhana. Makes skill more meaningful.
What is experience of hand anyways?
Its a moment in which awareness of hand consciousness arise.

If you train not entering jhana as if there was anyone to enter anything but as consciousness arising with characteristics of given jhanic state then when it is being experienced it will have these characteristics.

To have experience of jhana in hand can also be done when using typical way mind synchronizes its activity but it is woefully unpractical for that kinds of things and meditation in general. Rather than making the whole mass of activity happen all at once its better to split activity to many separate arising. In this case for hand to be the only thing arising at the moment hand is experienced. That is called right concentration. Otherwise the whole mass of activity would pretty much need to be certain jhana and in this case it makes some sense to say that "we enter jhana". Personally I don't use that faculty since almost two decades so I don't practice it at all. If anything I wanted to make experience of hand have more oomh it wouldn't be through this normal mind template but more like having even more consciousnesses arise at the same time but also related to single faculty and its consciousness. That trick can be done using synchronization - which would feel like given jhana in case of jhanas but even wider - or be allowed to not synchronize - in which case I call it as not keeping coherence which doesn't necessarily feel like any jhana arising from concentration and has somewhat shimmering in different colors and expressions of the same thing appearance with some differences being result of arising in noisy environment caused by other similar consciousnesses. That last trick is very pleasant but can use up all the available neuron resources. Its not necessarily related to case where consciousness is directly connected and can works for any configuration of consciousnesses.

BTW. In any case anyone reading my posts: I didn't practice by reading stuff in book. I have my conscious mind to practice with, don't need dharma for that. Besides its what being Stream Enterer is about.
Also when I use term "control" its not one part of mind controlling the other. Even if given mind state (e.g. when I am trying to experience something specific) requires unconsciousness its usually something specific it does and the 'control' in this case is just consciously (read: connecting consciousnesses to make one bigger consciousness) doing something including setting it to behave in specific way through the conscious choice and then choosing for part of mind to turn back on itself (so become "unconscious" of conscious mind) and then react in specific way to specific signals. Its how mind-state visualization is done.

If anything trying to condition mind through some silly practices on repeat is closer to trying to control oneself but doing it in very unsophisticated way. I always found it funny when people who advocate these ascetic practices accused me of talking about advocating exerting control. I guess one could read it like that when I shorten it to just saying that one should make this do that and that other thing something else but I always in each case mean to do it consciously.
One can do it without so much emphasis on consciousness when it has been done many times already and I admit that at times I kinda forget this 'step' after it 'just works' without it but my mind sooner or later reminds itself to not be treated like an item. My mind... I mean neurons, the little delirious sentient beings

  Apologies for the harsh language but I felt you could take it and for some reason it felt called for ;) 

I'm gonna point to the parts of your quote in my last post that I have diffculty understanding : not trying to be a pain in the ass, I just wonder why someone would write so much without wanting to be understood, and so I assume that is your intention, so, letting you know the languaging here is not working for me. Unless it's on purpose, in which case I will stop reading your messages to avoid frustration, but please let me know  


What is a part of mind? What is it like, experientially, what phenomenon does this refer to? Could you describe using other words? That something can "appear" and yet be "totally unconscious" is at odds with my own understanding of the word "conscious". "Appearing" to me implies a "consciousness" which is actually the phenomenal substance of the phenomenon arising. Unconscious in what way? What is it like in your experience, when a part of mind appears totally unconscious?


Grammar?

And: Who or what needs to become conscious of what and how? How do you connect? What connects to what? How can something be conscious of something else or connect? Does it mean to become aware, or pay attention, or bring mindfulness, to a sensation or phenomenon that was not being clearly/mindfully perceived?


What is hand consciousness? What is it like to experience hand consciousness in some arbitrary jhana? 

My theories about bit (1) : At the end of your post, you write "consciousness=mindfulness", so I feel like what you are saying is "if some phenomenon arises without there being mindfulness of it", which seems straightforward enough, but am not sure, as then why would you describe something in these terms?

And re quote (3): If consciousness=mindfulness then this sounds off. To me, "hand" is a gestalt, a phenomenon with various sensate and mental components to it, such as tactile, visual, and kinesthetic sensations, potentially even taste, smell, depending on what's going on, mental visual imagery, spatial representations, a part of the body schema at a given moment, etc., and it is also the referent associated with a specific name (or several: hand in english, main in french, etc.), and a sort of non-verbal mental concept of "hand" which might be called "interpretant" in semiotics parlance, I guess — a phenomenon composed of nama and rupa, name and form, or sensate stuff and mental stuff (I use mental to mean the mental sense door), which incidentally according to some, is a precondition for the arising of "consciousness", which is itself a precondition for the arising of nama-rupa. Speaking in terms of dependent origination. So, can't find an object "hand" apart from hand consciousness when looking, and yet the phenomenon "hand" manifests: rainbow, emptiness, etc. It feels like what you're getting at might be that it is then possible to use the malleability of perception that comes from insight into these components and training in the ability to "tweak" mindstates, to then voluntarily manipulate (etymology, the word comes from "hand", manus, btw ;)), how the phenomenon "hand" manifests, e.g., influence its "dependent origination" so that it appears with various qualities that can be considered "jhanic", e.g., bliss, rapture, neutralness, sense of space, sense of absence, stuff like that. Is that it?

edited for clarity and to add: our bodies have immune, hormonal, digestive, cardiovascular, metabolic, and various other systems... Which it may be interesting to explore as possible underlying physiology of mind, if you're gonna go the physical reductionism way
  

The sense of self is inextricably connected - linked - to the whole mass of suffering. One coes not "do" cessation.

Sense of self ceases with the whole mass of suffering.



The sense of self is never enlightened, never attains...it can only cease.


The sufis say, "die before you die."



Dukkha is of course linked to the sense of self as two of the three marks of existence.

it might be said that consciousness and mindfulness are inversely related...

people who live in glass houses...

Why would anyone have such purpose?
I put considerable amount of effort in to trying to be clearly understood and often explain each term, what it means and at times etymology of the label if its not self-explanatory. My skills might be inadequate to describe this topic in clearly understood way. Complexity of the topic isn't justification and just reason to try harder. In other words just do it and improve while driving.


Ok so unconscious it would be like if you and your wife talked for an hour and after an hour of talking she realized you were not listening about the single world she said after "and then we went with my girl friends to shopping mall...". You were in this case unconscious - probably to protect your sanity. This example is double funny but I won't say why.
Same can be said for other direction - if you talk to someone and they don't really seem to respond in how you would consider conscious person to respond. In mind its really this numb sensation that comprises all of experience. Here I am suggesting it doesn't need to feel that way.

In mind it gets a little bit more complicated because the assertion is that consciousness just is - its some kind of phenomena that exists and its single and personal with mind not having any minds that are separate from it. Here I don't imply your body has mind of its own and if anything it is actually unconscious mind that could be characterized as having separate mind should it start doing things which you would not expect. If it does things you expect or can justify as done by you then it feels normal, as part of you. There literally is mechanism in our mind called sense of self to facilitate describing what we do in a somewhat coherent story. It can work to such a degree that patients with split-brain would justify their part they are not aware of as if these were their actions.

Ok but what is part of the mind and how one can start noticing something is up... mind made from some 'parts'?
Well, its usually not as clear we have parts because typically we synchronize activity within our brain in such a way that it hides actual complexity. It is clearer things are separate when you can address them separately - you need right concentration for that. In case of concentration practices it would be like if you had to concentrate on object but didn't even attempt at having this image of you concentrating on object but having experience of object arise completely separately and nothing else arose at this moment. As the word "moment" suggests its about things arising separately for a moment. If this is made in to a practice then the goal would be to optimize for these single moments where attention and object are one and the same - just not as something to notice but just have arise when you choose so it should arise and in this moment there should be absolutely nothing else.

Now if you use this type of concentration where things can arise separately to observe your conscious experiences then when these moments where concentration is really good you will notice how each faculty has its own consciousness. I could also say that experience is the same as consciousness but I won't say it because its more complicated than that and this reference is loaded. I don't like loaded references because they distract from the topic at hand.

Parts of mind/brain/etc:
Out minds are not monolithic and are made from smaller parts and these parts are made from smaller parts down to individual neurons. If you experience hand as the only consciousness within the mind at the moment it arises and then experience some other faculty then it should be quite clear these are not the same consciousnesses. Here in this topic especially but also in general when I write posts when I refer to parts of brain/mind I often mean consciousnesses which are the same faculty but somehow copies of each-other but which are still separate. We don't have one part of brain for one faculty. Its rather we have multiple possible consciousnesses which could arise for given faculty (unless its something very new like just learning new skill) and in normal operation if you were to continuously need to use this faculty they would play tag team and switch on you. This is why when we learn new ability it can be like we can start doing it pretty good and after a while we suck at it again and at times even after we are pretty good but practice for a longer while it can feel like something inside forgot what it was supposed to do. In the last case its not that we forgot - we might never actually knew with this part of our brain how to do it.

To sum it up consciousnesses I am referring to are the consciousnesses which arise when they arise as the only thing in your conscious experience. You need good concentration for that where I don't refer to ability to stay on object for long as good concentration but ability to make things arise in separation from everything else. It requires some practice and the practice is very straightforward in that there is nothing to "do" other than do what needs to be done and it is nothing *you* need to do as in when you start your practice (can be always in any situation really because why would it need special conditions - but you can also practice it on cushion) you might choose some faculty and somehow convince your brain to make it arise alone without *you*. Here practical consideration - do not try to make whatever consciousness you point to arise as it is within your current experience as this is vipassana and not shamatha. Why is that I shouldn't go now but let's say its different skill, much harder and done for different purpose. Instead when e.g. practicing with hands you should aim at some consciousness. As long as its hand its good. It is especially important in the larger context of having all these redundant consciousness play tag team and change from time to time.


Typo, yes.

When you can experience consciousness as separate, the only thing in mind but then compare to how normal mind seems you could then deduce that the so called normal mind is in some sense composite of multiple consciousnesses and these can have some relation to each-other while they are arising. Practices one could do would be to try to have more than one consciousness arise at the same time and check what relations they can have. With just one consciousness it will always feel in some sense like your normal consciousness... and here the issue: what part of normal consciousness is the part which feels like that? To know that one needs to experience much simpler consciousness arise separately and then its easier. Anyways, with two its possible to have them both arise as unity - completely merged. Or one or the other can arise as something that responds to the other consciousness. I call them driver type and executor. Driver would be the one which seems more conscious - and for this example with two consciousnesses as assuming role of main consciousness for this moment. There are different ways they can connect and its possible to have two separate executors which are executor or executors connected to itself and none of then necessarily seems like any of them being anything you could call does main consciousness.

...and its this complexity which complicates things and makes them confusing until its realized in more details. Even with single consciousness this can happen. There are different ways these things arise. And in fact for the so called normal mind its exactly the same. In fact good attainment would be to make it so you can have whole field as Daniel puts it be conscious of itself and each-other in fluid fashion. The less rigidity there the better.


To become conscious of how to be conscious - which is being mindful - there is nothing specific to pay attention to other than consciousnesses and how they arise, how they can relate and how they seem to affect each-other when they relate in different way.


Like I wrote above its consciousness which arise when its experience of hand which arise as only consciousness in your mind. Its obvious its consciousness when it feels more like when someone asked you "Are you conscious?" the first thing your attention would fall on. Less obvious when its not feeling like that and more like experience but which is more like experience - more like but it will still be more obvious its consciousness. If it didn't become clear its pretty much what Daniel was saying about things being where they are arising with some kind of knowledge of themselves built-in. Here I assert one can practice it implicitly. There will me moments of clarity. Attainment is just having it as absolute default with anything like normal mind being something you can make consciously arise for a moment. Hence the flipping of perception.

Jhana feels exactly like if you were in jhana and did this experience of hand arising as the only thing. The novelty in my approach is perhaps in the fact you can work on object (in this case it would be consciousness of hand but it could be consciousness of object) implicitly - as the practice directly. In fact the way I think one should practice shamatha is to make consciousness of object jhanic and best 2nd jhana or above. I mean 1st jhana arise due to sustained effort - it is possible to have it with its very characteristic effects by having the sustained effort in the consciousness which arises but if the goal is for mind to stay on object 2nd jhana is about the best starting point. Now you don't need sustained effort to have jhana if you have right concentration - can make consciousness arise completely separately. Jhanas after all are just using multiple copies of given faculty (be it hand or consciousnesses of object you use for shamatha) with specific to 2nd jhana configuration of consciousnesses.

Now which configuration is that... It is not rigid and more fluid in how they organize their own 'configuration' (btw. even to me calling this here as configuration is silly but for the sake of description...) here I'd call mostly "facing itself" gives this type of experience as 2nd jhana.

Since this requires having skills which arise from practicing in that way it might not be the most stellar description of practice. In practice you just try to not experience hand as part of normal mind but have it as separate as possible. Jhanas you can experience when you take experience of hand - doesn't need to be super pure at this point - and kinda try to find jhanic experience of hand. Its not the experience you have but some other already existing experience of hand than feels "jhanic" with the jhana here not necessarily defined as in specific jhana but can just be something that feels more natural. Just doing it like that makes this experience of hand - its consciousness - arise much more (or already completely) purely with only this jhanic collection of hand consciousnesses being what is in mind. It is rather from here where you make it specific jhanic state by being more specific in configurations of consciousnesses. In practice if you experienced given jhana its quite easy to consciously wiggle things around within consciousnesses to arrive at specific jhana. Keep in mind that while I am talking separate consciousness arise it all happen in real-time as you are practicing so other parts of your mind (other consciousnesses) also play with this and connect to conscousnesses you are working with.


Mind can have parts of it operate with very little consciousness in very rigid way.
Notice how I am always referring to some modes of consciousnesses but also stressing how them being 'fluid' is important as a way to it being more meaningful consciousness. Mind which is like water (as Bruce Lee put it) is it, mindfulness.


Yes, experience of hand is composed of multiple consciousnesses. Many many consciousnesses.
As someone who made visual consciousnesses mix with other sense modalities by having these consciousnesses arise together in various configurations I know ;)
Its really you as hand's owner who pick what about hand you choose for practice with consciousnesses - I merely pointed to hand because I was practicing "closer to home" and found it harder to get some realizations about how it all can be done and work than when I started doing more with hands as some sort of additional practice and verification of things to do with consciousnesses. My primary playfield was eyesight and causing changes in visual perception. Vision itself much more interconnected to everything (especially when I interconnected it even more) than hand. Hand is easier to practice with.
I would at a time e.g. practice not experiencing my hand and even when I purposefully pressed it in to a table. It is possible to do something similar with eyesight - though I never managed to and didn't even attempt to do fully cause visual feed to just end. It always felt I should but I didn't practice with my eyes all of the things I did with hand also because hand just feels much easier and safer to practice with. Easier than some arbitrary object to induce jhana and sustain it. Of course to train for excellence its good to practice with various consciousnesses - especially when you feel them lacking


Some of these you can even find consciousness of. Like consciousness that you can secrete endorphins with or other endogen-something that feels like amphetamine (it so happens I know how it feels ... like so much so it feels it actually is the same thing and just in one case forced by external means (in arbitrary unhealthy amounts depending on dose + lots of additional unpleasant stimulation) and in other something which just responsible for some effects, cannot be done too much and it still feels somewhat strange to do. Anyways, these things are also a thing ;)

BTW. This consciosuness thing is pretty much how I always practiced and those would be most of my practices. Perhaps at times dwelling in this stuff too much as a kind of solution to issues and eventually I had to rely on good old POI to sort my brain and consciousnesses out in - do less, observe more fashion which at some point I kinda forgot to do. But still all the insight I got was all worth it and eventually as I experienced some cycles and tried some things which actually worked I really just stopped this cycling nonsense and stabilized my mind and moved to working with my mind in less "let's try this see what it does..." way and more in just first making sure all consciousness feel nice with themselves and at times even kinda forcefully causing cessations if negotiations failed due to everything being just too engangled. Even this involved consciousness and decisions of some kind happening within them. Whatever I did I tried to be as conscious as possible versus just going with what works even if some actions did seem to work - I would stop using them to prefer consciousness. Did some more practices, some even of Mahasi Noting, but mostly to get idea what happens in mind to cultivate it and had amazing results with this approach. Took me in total around decade to get 4th path including everything but it never felt I was missing anything from it so I'd say complete. I had some development afterwards related to consciousnesses but nothing really that important. There are still things I haven't clearly defined as my goal is to be able to describe this stuff.

Hopefully in a way which elicit better responses than "I didn't understand word of what you were saying" which is common reaction to my posts. The thing is that I cannot imagine practice that doesn't involve consciousnesses and working with them directly. It was my assumption it is how I should practice after reading some suttas and some other dharma articles. It was like hearing one thing and thinking "so that person said this because of that and that but if he meant this and this then it would make hella lot more sense and could be justified by this and that". In case of Buddha mostly because he was working with ascetes he had to spin the whole thing around in such a a way to not get people distracted by all the complexity of mind.

BTW. Imho Nibbana is mode of consciousnesses too, based on dispassion. Not aversion, not avoidance but also not passion for activity. Its much easier to do in this 'right concentration' mode than on whole mind as it is.

There is some truth in that my self cannot be enlightened... after all how can it be enlightened if it is the light itself. You know, the brilliant light of universal consciousness

Mindfulness and consciousness being inversely related... yeah, that is why I am self taught. Self taught... get it?

I hate to be the party pooper but Santa is not real!  

Mindfulness and Consciousness is a fabrication. Its not a be-all end-all of anything. anything. thing. ...