Rate of Change, Growing up, and Deciding How Much to Share

I had a short email exchange with Chris recently that got me thinking about the rate of lasting change we can expect though Buddhist (or other meditation/insight/wisdom) practice.

If I look at my practice from day to day, or week to week, I will notice that some days there will be very significant experiences of release and insight that last minutes, hours, or even days. Then, there are days when things just contract. Something else that needs to be worked through shows up, and it can take minutes, hours, days, or weeks to get through. But when they do get worked through, WOW. I'm back to feeling expansive, wise, and just plain great over all.

But that can't really be the point, right? I can't expect that one day I'll just work through all of my shit, and be happy and expansive and beaming with glory for eternity. Something else must be going on for this all to be worthwhile.

And there is something else going on. If I look back over the course of, say, 6 months to a year, will I notice any changes in my individual practice, and in my relationships with others? In my case, yes. Compared to the way I handled difficult life situations last year as opposed to this year, I can say that I've grown up quite a bit with the help of the practice. I am much less emotionally reactive with my friends and loved ones. I appear to be more focused on meeting people where they are at and helping them grow, rather than just expecting them to be a certain way (and letting them know it).

I guess I could say that my level of relative autonomy in the face of life circumstances has increased. I feel somewhat less "blown and tossed by the wind" (to use a Christian metaphor). I still "feel" - sometimes deeply, sometimes not - but I definitely feel. "Feeling" feels qualitatively different sometimes, though. It's like placing a crystal in front of a powerful light. The crystal may change the color of the light, and even project a frightening image on the screen of one's mind. The crystal in this case is like the habits of grasping and aversion (i.e. craving). When the habits are reduced or weakened, the energy isn't as scary. It just shows up, and there's very little to react against. (I'm not claiming to be totally free of craving! Just to make that clear.)

I also feel more authentic, less caught up in self-image, and less likely to make decisions just because I don't want someone to feel badly toward me.

Again, these are incremental, but noticeable, changes. It could be that I'm just growing up (I am turning 29 this year, after all). But I think the practice has been helping me grow up into spiritual maturity in ways that probably would not have occurred otherwise... at least not this soon.

This is why I think there is so much wisdom in the "sudden awakening; gradual cultivation" principle. Daniel Ingram's warning to "wait a year and a day" is also appropriate. I could go into all the details about how my practice is progressing in day to day, first-person, phenomenological terms, but how helpful would that really be to most people? I tend to share these things with only those I think will be able to benefit from it, or with those who I believe will be able to help me navigate something they may have already gone through. To me, everything else seems too much like bragging.

Do any of you relate? Have you noticed any gradual changes that may be due to practice, but that do not necessarily mirror your day-to-day practice? Taking the long view can provide some very insightful perspectives, I think.

Jackson

I had a feeling you would, Chris. We tend to see eye-to-eye on these things. It's one of the reasons I'm happy we all put this forum together. It helps keep me sane

Of course, different opinions are welcome!

Jackson

I totally relate, Jackson; my earliest intuition, after the jolting breakthrough, reminded me of a phrase that I'd encountered somewhere along the way: "This being so, how shall we live?"

I quickly became divergent from the group that was the context for the breakthrough, because the narrow focus on 'the process' and the minutiae of its phenomena didn't address this question, in my view. I found that focus increasingly tedious, as a result. It seemed to devolve into who or what produced the most dramatic phenomena. [ Whereas the clear implication of the breakthrough itself was, "Who the Hell CARES?!] These last couple of years I've had some sense of 'deja vu all over again,' hanging out on the fora.

Maybe this time around, I'm at least a little less impatient [as a result of less anxiety about an unknown outcome] to see the conversation come back around to the fundamentals. The founders of this forum seem to demonstrate both a discriminating eye and an inclusiveness-- that I myself will do well to emulate. It has been a slow understanding of sudden enlightenment not being a matter of being zapped by the 'Paramita Fairy' and everything being not only obvious but also accomplished instantaneously.

PS-- good luck on finding divergent viewpoints, Jackson!

Absolutely Jackson. Certainly a year ago was a whole different thing. Two years ago more so. But even a month ago, three months ago.... every week brings, I think, a gradually deepening wisdom. I have, perhaps, an advantage on you young kids () in that I did a lot of work on "my crap" back in my 30s, and I've been pretty aware for many years of my habits and propensities and so on. Nonetheless I constantly see old habits in new ways and see new things I wasn't aware of.

I suspect the "gradual cultivation" goes on for a long time, each person's journey continuing to be unique.

Just this morning, for example, I automatically slipped into a sort of bitchy passive aggressive behavior that I call "departure anxiety" - it's simply a mode of behavior I learned from years of stresses surrounding the act of getting stuff together and heading out of the house. (My father was a nervous traveler and tended to apply a lot of anxious pressure on the family as we got ready to go somewhere - the mall, grandma's house, the grocery store, whatever). Today I really saw how I was acting out that old stuff on autopilot, and paid attention to how it was happening. Perhaps next time, or the time after that (or after that) I'll let it go. Because it's just a habit, not "true" or based on any real events or need.

But compared to a year ago, or two years ago, my anxiety levels are near zero. My relationships with friends, family and strangers have an ease to them that I never imagined possible. You wouldn't guess how self-conscious and timid I used to be. I'm ever grateful for that.

I'm also moved nearly to tears every day by the amazing friends I've made via all these online "sanghas" - it's impossible to articulate how profoundly supportive these friendships have been, and how much I've learned from speaking to others on the path that no book or retreat or video could ever have given me.

Do any of you relate? Have you noticed any gradual changes that may be due to practice, but that do not necessarily mirror your day-to-day practice? Taking the long view can provide some very insightful perspectives, I think.
Jackson



-awouldbehipster

Definitely. I think of the daily and weekly pattern as like a sine wave: ups and downs. But then imagine that wave is not moving horizontally from left to right, but rather is itself moving "up" slightly, say at a shallow incline, into generally lighter, more open and fluid modes of being.

I think the big difference that the more dramatic breakthroughs and path-type moments have is that they increase the angle that the whole sine wave is tilted at, thus making it possible to make noticeable lasting changes through gradual work in shorter time.

And I agree there is a value to appreciating this long-term pattern because it can bring a sense of openness and easy-goingness to the daily and weekly and monthly ups and downs. Seeing the long-term trend de-claws the lows and moderates pride in the highs.