What's noting has to do with knots, and clarity? - Discussion
You're asking the right questions. This is tricky stuff and there aren't simple rules. Meditation is basically being both the patient and the doctor/therapist at the same time, or like building a bridge as you are driving over it at the same time...
Noting basically increases the level of attention on an object. Often, this is enough for our natural intelligence to fully experience and understand the meaning of the object.
But experiences may or may not have a deep meaning. A lot of meditation experience just happen. It may simply be a fleeting experience. It's worth noting if there is a resistance to this "fleetingness". Often there is an emotional tone that feels uncomfortable. Our sense of a solid and persistant self doesn't like fleetingness...
You can think of experience as having two aspects: its raw power and its meaning. Sometimes we shut down because of the pure intensity of an experience. Sometimes we shut down because an experience is confusing or contrary to our normal beliefs/frameworks. Perhaps both during really intense/stressful events. Many experiences that bubble up during meditation is due to them not being fully experienced/understood the first time around and it will keep bubbling up until it is.
There are many many different meditation practices because each approach provides a framework for certain kinds of investigations. Tantric approaches tend to be about developing the ability to be present within the pure power of experiences. Psychological approaches tend to be about how the experience is framed and what meaning an experience has. Adult development frameworks are more about off-the-cushion attitudes/beliefs and capabilities which make it possible to live a full life. Advanced meditation practices are about the subtlest of ways we resist experience and try to protect a sense of self.
Catharsis is rarely the answer, only because real catharsis happens so rarely. Most of the time, people are actually re-traumatizing themselves and surviving it again, which sort of feels like progress but is probably just spinning their wheels. The hardest thing is to investigate our mind's reactivity with intimacy and curiousity, with love you could say.
Insight is a good word for what you want. You want to have an insight into your own mind, how experience come and go, how beliefs form, how attitudes color what is experienced, how greed/aversion/indifference "poisons" what simply is.
If you are getting good benefit from noting, you might also try "noticing". Basically, notice what happens to the object when you hold your attention on it. Many times these solid experience, like ice, start becoming more fluid, like water, and even evaporate, like mist into the air. This can be a good approach to add.
When objects seem solid/persistant, then more active investigation is sometimes good. Where is this experience in space? what are it's boundaries? what is it's weight? what does it feel like? what emotional tone does it have? what thoughts are associated with it?
The goal is NOT to get rid of any experience, but to explore the nature of the mind and mind objects. Investigate with intimacy and curiousity. If there are challenges that keep happening, then think about "what method would work well for this challenge". Most experienced meditators have a dozen or so approaches for exploring their own mind and dealing with challenging experiences.
Sounds like you are already using different approaches, including IFS, so what you are describing sounds really good to me. I guess I would just say keep going, and remember that you can always slow things down when things get tough. Eat an elephant one bite at a time.
I know all of this is vague. Hope this helps in some way.
Noting basically increases the level of attention on an object. Often, this is enough for our natural intelligence to fully experience and understand the meaning of the object.
But experiences may or may not have a deep meaning. A lot of meditation experience just happen. It may simply be a fleeting experience. It's worth noting if there is a resistance to this "fleetingness". Often there is an emotional tone that feels uncomfortable. Our sense of a solid and persistant self doesn't like fleetingness...
You can think of experience as having two aspects: its raw power and its meaning. Sometimes we shut down because of the pure intensity of an experience. Sometimes we shut down because an experience is confusing or contrary to our normal beliefs/frameworks. Perhaps both during really intense/stressful events. Many experiences that bubble up during meditation is due to them not being fully experienced/understood the first time around and it will keep bubbling up until it is.
There are many many different meditation practices because each approach provides a framework for certain kinds of investigations. Tantric approaches tend to be about developing the ability to be present within the pure power of experiences. Psychological approaches tend to be about how the experience is framed and what meaning an experience has. Adult development frameworks are more about off-the-cushion attitudes/beliefs and capabilities which make it possible to live a full life. Advanced meditation practices are about the subtlest of ways we resist experience and try to protect a sense of self.
Catharsis is rarely the answer, only because real catharsis happens so rarely. Most of the time, people are actually re-traumatizing themselves and surviving it again, which sort of feels like progress but is probably just spinning their wheels. The hardest thing is to investigate our mind's reactivity with intimacy and curiousity, with love you could say.
Insight is a good word for what you want. You want to have an insight into your own mind, how experience come and go, how beliefs form, how attitudes color what is experienced, how greed/aversion/indifference "poisons" what simply is.
If you are getting good benefit from noting, you might also try "noticing". Basically, notice what happens to the object when you hold your attention on it. Many times these solid experience, like ice, start becoming more fluid, like water, and even evaporate, like mist into the air. This can be a good approach to add.
When objects seem solid/persistant, then more active investigation is sometimes good. Where is this experience in space? what are it's boundaries? what is it's weight? what does it feel like? what emotional tone does it have? what thoughts are associated with it?
The goal is NOT to get rid of any experience, but to explore the nature of the mind and mind objects. Investigate with intimacy and curiousity. If there are challenges that keep happening, then think about "what method would work well for this challenge". Most experienced meditators have a dozen or so approaches for exploring their own mind and dealing with challenging experiences.
Sounds like you are already using different approaches, including IFS, so what you are describing sounds really good to me. I guess I would just say keep going, and remember that you can always slow things down when things get tough. Eat an elephant one bite at a time.
I know all of this is vague. Hope this helps in some way.
"Eat an elephant one bite at a time"
this made me giggle Nice one! And nice post/reply in general! Thank you S!
this made me giggle Nice one! And nice post/reply in general! Thank you S!
Still chewing on this, thanks. The pebbles have been a tad too quiet lately, tho.
Getting used to the vagueness too. I used to say "adolescence only ends when you realise it never does." Then shit hit the fan, or rather, fell down, and things seemed to finally settle a bit... on a new level of uncertainty. Lemme guess: it's elephants all the way down? So, better keep on chewing!
shargrol
Catharsis is rarely the answer, only because real catharsis happens so rarely. Most of the time, people are actually re-traumatizing themselves and surviving it again, which sort of feels like progress but is probably just spinning their wheels. The hardest thing is to investigate our mind's reactivity with intimacy and curiousity, with love you could say.
Felt just like this the first time I was administered the Ideal Parent Figure protocol (wasn't expecting an express therapy buffet in an Unified Mindfulness event, and the trigger got me good).
What I do wonder is why isn't any of this communicated more clearly. "Look, shit hit the fan already, only you probably don't even remember. But when it comes back down, you would do good to tackle it from above and below so you can clean up enough to be on your merry way to Nibbana without stinking all the way. Do you like chewing stones? Try this or that dry meditation and trigger therapy; else, work on yer calm and a more comprehensive way of unburdening..."
Is there an article somewhere that explains succintly what different contemplative and therapeutic practices are about, and what *might* one expect of them? To each it's own path yes, and expectations can easily derail us yes, but an executive resume of the many options would do wonders, really... IFS, Bio-emotive Framework, The Work, IPF, Focusing, etc... and for the even more numerous contemplative practices, I don't think I have yet a complete idea of what *any* of them are about! (is noting about being present, having a complete experience, breaking the speed of conscious perception, all of the above?)
Even Shinzen is very short on practical details, and like most, suggests you practice what "resonates" with you. Few things resonate as retraumatisation does though (the "Holistic Psychologist" goes as far as to say more often than not, that's what we call being in love). Any reading suggestions to distinguish actual progress from wheel spinning?
Is it me, or this elephant tastes like cheese?
Getting used to the vagueness too. I used to say "adolescence only ends when you realise it never does." Then shit hit the fan, or rather, fell down, and things seemed to finally settle a bit... on a new level of uncertainty. Lemme guess: it's elephants all the way down? So, better keep on chewing!
shargrol
Catharsis is rarely the answer, only because real catharsis happens so rarely. Most of the time, people are actually re-traumatizing themselves and surviving it again, which sort of feels like progress but is probably just spinning their wheels. The hardest thing is to investigate our mind's reactivity with intimacy and curiousity, with love you could say.
What I do wonder is why isn't any of this communicated more clearly. "Look, shit hit the fan already, only you probably don't even remember. But when it comes back down, you would do good to tackle it from above and below so you can clean up enough to be on your merry way to Nibbana without stinking all the way. Do you like chewing stones? Try this or that dry meditation and trigger therapy; else, work on yer calm and a more comprehensive way of unburdening..."
Is there an article somewhere that explains succintly what different contemplative and therapeutic practices are about, and what *might* one expect of them? To each it's own path yes, and expectations can easily derail us yes, but an executive resume of the many options would do wonders, really... IFS, Bio-emotive Framework, The Work, IPF, Focusing, etc... and for the even more numerous contemplative practices, I don't think I have yet a complete idea of what *any* of them are about! (is noting about being present, having a complete experience, breaking the speed of conscious perception, all of the above?)
Even Shinzen is very short on practical details, and like most, suggests you practice what "resonates" with you. Few things resonate as retraumatisation does though (the "Holistic Psychologist" goes as far as to say more often than not, that's what we call being in love). Any reading suggestions to distinguish actual progress from wheel spinning?
Is it me, or this elephant tastes like cheese?
Yeah, these are all the right questions.
No one has written a comprehensive article/book on all the treatment modalities that are out there and their end result. I suspect that one of the reasons an article doesn't exist is because practictioners all would argue "my practice reveals the truth and gives the quickest results"
Here's the important thing as a meditator to figure out. Every practice has its framing method. For example, for noting it is "experiences appear as very ephemeral blips of sensation". Every practice has a practice method. for noting it is "try to experience these momentary sensaitons with speed and accuracy and clarity". And every practice has a result, for noting it is "having a baseline equanimity and clarity about thre present moment, which minimizes getting trapped in a fix worldview about "who I am and how things are".
And then we personally have to decide: am I willing to (at least temporarily) view the world through this practice framework? am I willing to do these practices? and are these the results I specifically want? The answer might be yes or no or "well, I'll try for a while and test it out".
Part of navigating the world of meditation is learning to figure out these key aspects about whatever some guru or student is talking about. What's the frame? What's the practice? What's the result? For some reason, teachers/tradtions rarely describe this explicitly.
Ultimately, meditation friends and teachers can help us find a practice that 1) is interesting and 2) works for the results that we're most interested in. But we have to be wise. Their recomendations are going to be based on their experiences and range of knowledge.
So yeah, so many options, so many possibilities. But the more we can get clear on what we want, the more obvious the answer to "what practice should I do?" becomes.
https://shargrolpostscompilation.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html#the-pragmatic-dharma-approach
For me, the most practical book on meditation practices was/is "Wake Up To Your Life" by Ken McLeod. He presents classic tibetian practices, but does so in a way that doesn't say "this leads to the truth!" but rather "this practice is designed to create a particular kind of knowing... and here's how to do it... and here's the result."
Hope that helps!
No one has written a comprehensive article/book on all the treatment modalities that are out there and their end result. I suspect that one of the reasons an article doesn't exist is because practictioners all would argue "my practice reveals the truth and gives the quickest results"
Here's the important thing as a meditator to figure out. Every practice has its framing method. For example, for noting it is "experiences appear as very ephemeral blips of sensation". Every practice has a practice method. for noting it is "try to experience these momentary sensaitons with speed and accuracy and clarity". And every practice has a result, for noting it is "having a baseline equanimity and clarity about thre present moment, which minimizes getting trapped in a fix worldview about "who I am and how things are".
And then we personally have to decide: am I willing to (at least temporarily) view the world through this practice framework? am I willing to do these practices? and are these the results I specifically want? The answer might be yes or no or "well, I'll try for a while and test it out".
Part of navigating the world of meditation is learning to figure out these key aspects about whatever some guru or student is talking about. What's the frame? What's the practice? What's the result? For some reason, teachers/tradtions rarely describe this explicitly.
Ultimately, meditation friends and teachers can help us find a practice that 1) is interesting and 2) works for the results that we're most interested in. But we have to be wise. Their recomendations are going to be based on their experiences and range of knowledge.
So yeah, so many options, so many possibilities. But the more we can get clear on what we want, the more obvious the answer to "what practice should I do?" becomes.
https://shargrolpostscompilation.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html#the-pragmatic-dharma-approach
For me, the most practical book on meditation practices was/is "Wake Up To Your Life" by Ken McLeod. He presents classic tibetian practices, but does so in a way that doesn't say "this leads to the truth!" but rather "this practice is designed to create a particular kind of knowing... and here's how to do it... and here's the result."
Hope that helps!
