Some clarification on SE?

Is SE simply to have a comprehension through direct experience that "I" am an illusion, and then experience being generally the same (such as moods, prejudices etc..) or is it more of an entire shift into experiencing self as an illusion as a baseline? In other words, once SE is attained, are moods and such still sticky or not at all because it's always obvious that "I" am not real? Something like that:) Thoughts? Insights?

I'm tempted to make the immediate disclaimer of "different for everyone." I personally didn't experience anything definitive, and had already experienced no-self via psychedelics (although not emptiness). It was just a little moment, a blip, no conscious realization of no-self or anything. But looking back, that time would be a great marker, in fact THE marker, for when things really began to accelerate, spiritually. No dramatic shift, just kind of the start of one, for me. Although the week or two after were really nice weeks, and concentration was excellent and jhanas became much more obvious.

I have conceptualized the brain as always trying to adjust to things and make sense of things in some way, and the sudden exposure to cessation, emptiness might require a BIG adjustment. Like, "I'm this" but now "I" am not, might just require the old computer to dial down the estimates a bit to account for that.

The first letting go of the selfing processes?

Over the course of my practice there haven't been much of what I would consider dramatic shifts in perspective, or ways of seeing. Often I realize after the fact that something has changed about the way I view experience or react to experience. So it's more of a slow burn, and the waves are so gentle I don't notice that things have changed until long after they have.

Hah. Yeah I haven't experienced anything at all like that. Just moments here and there were it's KNOWN that "I" am a dream. The whole sensation of existence is that of a waking dream. Swirling phantoms or something. It's hard to describe. My experience in general is more firmly grounded in Now than it's ever been but there is still distraction, fantasy and all that. Perhaps just a side effect of equanimity (again).

Chris Marti wrote:

FWIW - this is very clearly not the same as the experience of the simplest thing.


Chris,

I hope you don't mind me asking:

What do you mean by "the experience of the simplest thing"? I'm pre-path, and it seems mysterious to me, even though I'm sure it's not meant that way.

I've heard Rodney Smith say that realization is as close to oneself as the breath, and even that stumps me.

Do these statements indicate something similar, or not?

Chris Marti wrote: Duane, to your question - nothing really changed much after that. Stream entry was not a dramatic shift to not-self realization or to decreasing emotional experience or the removal of discursive thoughts. What DID happen was that i got much easier access to the jhanas and thus obtained a deeper, more relaxing concentration practice. I did not have any major changes in view or those deeper realizations related to it until third path, but that's just my experience. Others will report differently, I'm sure.

This was my experience as well.

Stream entry didn't change my experience much beyond the blissed out honeymoon phase. It was more of a reassurance that this stuff can lead to real transformations, and that I had the tools to get it done. No big insights into self at that point.

Bill Hamilton said of stream entry, "after all, there are 4 paths, so how great could it be? You might imagine that it's about 25% to enlightenment." (Rough quote from Kenneth Folk)

Chris Marti wrote: Tina, by "the simplest thing" I meant non-dual awareness. I was presented with that view earlier in my practice.

Chris,

Pardon my ignorance here, but is non-dual awareness to be recognized primarily through insight practice, concentration, or both? I ask because in the "doubt" thread I mentioned how I cannot reach absorption, and some of the responses indicated that it isn't always necessary for realization.

Thanks,
Tina

Russell wrote:

Chris Marti wrote: Duane, to your question - nothing really changed much after that. Stream entry was not a dramatic shift to not-self realization or to decreasing emotional experience or the removal of discursive thoughts. What DID happen was that i got much easier access to the jhanas and thus obtained a deeper, more relaxing concentration practice. I did not have any major changes in view or those deeper realizations related to it until third path, but that's just my experience. Others will report differently, I'm sure.

This was my experience as well.

Ditto.

Tina wrote:

Chris Marti wrote: Tina, by "the simplest thing" I meant non-dual awareness. I was presented with that view earlier in my practice.

Chris,

Pardon my ignorance here, but is non-dual awareness to be recognized primarily through insight practice, concentration, or both? I ask because in the "doubt" thread I mentioned how I cannot reach absorption, and some of the responses indicated that it isn't always necessary for realization.

Thanks,
Tina

Hi Tina, if I may offer some input...
The realization of non-duality is conditioned by insight and contemplation of the nature of consciousness and dependent origination. The first time I experienced non-dual awareness was nearly a year before stream entry. While walking around the neighborhood with my family I began to pay attention to the feel of my steps on the ground and in this way got fairly concentrated but no where near "absorption".

As we walked along I noticed everything else in awareness and contemplated the nature of consciousness - how it is not separate from its "objects". I'm feeling this in real time, not just thinking about it. When we arrived back home it suddenly became apparent that everything I was looking at was the same thing as me - my wife, the kitchen cabinets, the counter top, etc. There was a feeling of centerlessness. This all happened while carrying on light conversation with my wife. It's insight which leads to it, the level of concentration may be a factor but is perhaps not the most important one. When we attend to what is happening now in a consistent way then the concentration develops naturally.

I hope this brings some clarity to the issue.

First a disclaimer: I am skeptical of the 'truth' of maps, in this case, the four path model of awakening. but 'truth' aside maps and models do sometimes have utility. The value of reframing from a 'truth' orientation to a pragmatic one with regards to maps is, then the map is always situated in the context of an actual practitioner and an actual practice. From that point of view it might become evident that a given map doesn't really pertain to one's path. That said, this model served an important role in my path, but hasn't been that useful since then (...so far.) So I can speak about SE in the context of this system from personal experience, but I doubt that in each case awakening even proceeds by anything like this four phase system. And further, as is evident from everyone's comments so far, different practitioners seem to get very different insights from SE.

Before SE I would definitely have glimpses-- sometimes long ones-- of insights similar to what you (Duane) describe. Clear insights into the illusory nature of self-as-subject. I would marvel that I could just 'let thinking think' or 'let playing play' (i.e. music) without there needing to be a 'think-er' or 'play-er'. Those glimpses were available and arose spontaneously at least since my first memorable a&p in adolescence. But my baseline way of being was one in which "I" felt like a thing, made of thoughts and feelings, inside the body looking out. "I" really felt that way, even though intellectually I didn't believe it. It was frustrating because in these glimpses i could see the illusory nature of that perspective-- that thoughts and feelings are just natural processes, like weather, and didn't constitute a solid separate stable 'me', and that felt very liberating. Coming back to the baseline then felt in contrast like a painful constriction.

After SE, it quickly became evident that my baseline had shifted, and that old perspective could not be generated. The senses were much more clear and they all, including the mind sense of thoughts/feelings/images, became increasingly more 'tactile' after that as well. Body and mind and environment felt much more like facets of each other. The subtler dimensions of mind (its formless qualities) have been more generally apparent ever since (thoughts generally seem to occur in a big clear space).

So for me SE marked a radical, immediate and lasting shift in the way identification functions-- identification becoming unmoored from coarse thoughts and feelings. That identification process-- the search for a solid, separate, permanent identity-- looked elsewhere for a place to land (notably, to those subtler formless qualities of experience). This was a pretty dramatic shift for me.

Operationally, this shift also marked the beginning of a new relationship to practice, one in which 'practice' no longer was uncertain or effortful in the *same way as before*. It just became a lot easier to sit. It became a lot easier to cultivate my flow of experiencing, and so the time since-- although it has included some more abrupt or radical shifts-- has been marked more distinctly by steady unfolding and change in way-of-being, as if way-of-being was unnerringly 'aimed' at a continuously receding fractal attractor of authenticity, contentedness, integrity, awakeness, kindness.

In fact, for the most part the only thing that seems to slow this process down-- or disrupt it's natural unfolding-- are my own remaining deeply entrenched tendencies to manipulate experience and produce some outcome (and gods know I have plenty of those, lol!!). Every apparent dead end since then has been the result of pursuing some plan of cultivation based on some standard for how experience 'should' be. The way has opened up again each time as that assumed standard became fully conscious and could be seen for what it was, just another interpretation masquerading as certainty. This opening of the way that has been returned to again and again, is also the opening of the way that appeared at the time of SE. SE occurred in its own time once I could suspend my assumptions about how to practice, about the outcome.

SE for me was diagnosed by Kenneth Folk by having a long stretch of equanimity (maybe a month), then a hiccup, then easy access to jhanas. I am a founding member of the no-big-wow club -- life did not drastically change at any of the paths or upon attaining any of the jhanas. I'm also a very lazy meditator and the slowest of my class to graduate.

Peak insights become more solid after paths... but it's interesting. The best way (I think) to think of the fetters that supposidly disappear after each stage is that you aren't suckered in by the fetter (e.g. self identity after SE) once you recognize it. After SE, self identity falls away in a moment when you realize you're in that mode... but it hangs around. Plenty of arhats are prideful at times, but if they caught that experience, they would drop it in a second. You basically know it's no use to take refuge in a fetter, but you might find yourself unconsciously doing so. So practice continues even after paths...

For the length of my practice I go through cycles of dedicated sitting and then for months will have no interest in sitting, and this will go back and forth. I don't know if I'd say sitting is difficult in those times when I don't do it, I just don't do it. However it seems a great deal of progress is still made (at least for me at my speed). Most recently in the fall I spent several months sitting every morning and night for 30 minutes each with no aversion to it really (it was quite easy), then suddenly I just stopped doing it and shifted to paying attention to my emotions and reactions to them (in the body and mind) in daily life and being very cautious about my engagements with others (to varying degrees of "success"). I've not been sure if this is just the natural unfolding of my path (as it seems paths naturally unfold like it or not) or I am being lazy (because I am) and could be more actively chasing the carrot of SE (which still seems vague to me - and often I consider silly - the chasing that is). I'm trying to find a common theme in all these accounts of SE but am not having much luck. I'd like to hear more about "suffering" pre and post SE. Would everyone here agree that the common aspect is a dramatic decrease in suffering? Or is it a shift in the understanding of what suffering is?

Does anyone have an idea of whether SE is more or less the same as 1st kensho in Zen?

Ya know, Mark, that might be even closer to my point! Maybe I'm looking for a map that lines up with what I'm experiencing, maybe it's too early to tell, maybe it will shift as I go. I don't follow a specific tradition so it's difficult to know where I stand sometimes (not really sure how much that matters though as it's clearly a concern of the ego - or the self referencing "I"). Hmph. Thanks I hadn't thought of it like that. I was strictly speaking 10 fetters just because that seems sort of "universal" but I'm not all that schooled in the various traditions and maps.

duane_eugene_miller wrote: I'd like to hear more about "suffering" pre and post SE. Would everyone here agree that the common aspect is a dramatic decrease in suffering? Or is it a shift in the understanding of what suffering is?

For me "suffering" (reactivity/getting caught in stuff) was already dropping off long before SE.

So in my case it was more of a shift in understanding, although it was preceded by the deepest insights I'd had to date on how suffering is created. In the months before SE it was "oh that's how it is" (life, the Dharma). After SE it was "no, really, that's how it is - oh cr@p!" In my case suffering had a more dramatic drop off after third path and an even bigger one after fourth had started to settle down somewhat (I'm only 5.5 months out from that).

shargrol wrote: SE for me was diagnosed by Kenneth Folk by having a long stretch of equanimity (maybe a month), then a hiccup, then easy access to jhanas. I am a founding member of the no-big-wow club -- life did not drastically change at any of the paths or upon attaining any of the jhanas..

I forgot about that club. I still regularly go to meetings at the not-even-a-medium-wow club. Chris thinks my practice has post-SE things about it, but nothing that people say about a blip-out or restart sounds familiar to me. Same with fruitions. But I'm kind of dense. I'd read about A&P for more than a year on KFD before I realized that pass-thrus of 4th nana have been a feature of my practice for years. And some time after that before I realized that I sometimes had dissolution. And I only recently figured out how to identify 1st thru 3rd jhanas, and some of the DKs. From all the personal accounts it sounds like SE is not something you could miss, at least in retrospect. Of course you'd only here from the people who didn't miss it. But if you could miss it, was it actually a milestone for your practice? Sometimes the walking in the mist long enough to get a little damp idea seems more meaningful to me. But I still feel like something big is unresolved.

Mark Peacock wrote: From all the personal accounts it sounds like SE is not something you could miss, at least in retrospect. Of course you'd only here from the people who didn't miss it. But if you could miss it, was it actually a milestone for your practice?

Well I was missing it!

I was even having pretty obvious fruitions - and in spite of having read MCTB, I didn't know what was happening - other than knowing that I was feeling more awake. My teacher figured out what was going on.

Mike Ramos wrote:

Mark Peacock wrote: From all the personal accounts it sounds like SE is not something you could miss, at least in retrospect. Of course you'd only here from the people who didn't miss it. But if you could miss it, was it actually a milestone for your practice?

Well I was missing it!

I was even having pretty obvious fruitions - and in spite of having read MCTB, I didn't know what was happening - other than knowing that I was feeling more awake. My teacher figured out what was going on.

Yeah someone I know who's been at this stuff for quite awhile seems to think I'm "there" but I'm not convinced. I feel like I totally understand most of the concepts (non-dual awareness, emptiness, etc..) conceptually but don't walk around experiencing them as a baseline. There is clearly more to be done as I still "suffer" and react poorly at times and all that. But it's like everybody has this SE carrot and I don't and it's irritating. Ya know:) Stupid grasping.

I hear you Duane. After puzzling over whether I could have had 1st or 2nd path or some hybrid and not know it, I decided it doesn't matter. I'm far from "finished".