Stages on the Way to Cessation

"Also... I need some feedback: Am I boring you with this update stuff? Am I posting too much of it? Overdoing it? It seems like I am, but that's to me. Please let me know."-cmarti

Please keep posting this journal, Chris! This kind of raw, honest chronicle of your practice is priceless and will benefit many people.

Gratefully,

Kenneth

... I need some feedback: Am I boring you with this update stuff?...."

What, are you kidding? This stuff is fascinating - please keep posting! I always look forward to reading these accounts.

John

I wasn't kidding. What I experience is interesting to me, to a point, but that doesn't mean it's all that interesting to you and others. I'm just trying to calibrate myself in regard to how much I post here. This is, after all, "out there" in the public domain though the content of it is intensely personal. My hope, as Kenneth has already said, is to be able to help others. That's why this makes sense to me. So I'll keep posting.

"
I wasn't kidding. What I experience is interesting to me, to a point, but that doesn't mean it's all that interesting to you and others. ...My hope, as Kenneth has already said, is to be able to help others. That's why this makes sense to me. So I'll keep posting.

"

Please continue to update this thread. I don't have much to add but I'm a definite lurker on this topic. Your reports are very helpful.

Andrew

I've drawn a conclusion -- I'm trying too hard.

And by "trying too hard" I mean continuing the endless cycles of want, want, want, do, do ,do, control, control, control. That's the definition of hell.

when will it become okay to just let go?

Great question! Funny thing about "just letting go." There seem to be many elements to such a simple concept. You have to see the mess you've been living in for what it is. You have to acknowledge it as a mess - face it, confront it. You have to have the courage to do that. You have to see that there's another way. You have to give yourself permission to pursue another way. You have to be full of resolve. You have to devote time to it. You have to figure out somehow that "doing" is not succeeding, in this case, unlike with everything else you've ever tried. You have to figure out the mechanics of "just letting go" and you have to jump off a steep cliff, ground or landing place unseen, and have faith that you won't die or otherwise ruin what you have been deluded into thinking was a good thing.

It's very hard to do. If it were easy we'd all be walking around enlightened.

Doing is not succeeding!

I appreciate your question very much, Mike.

but how about just for a couple of weeks not caring so much about all your stuff?

What "stuff?"

EDIT: my point being that there is a difference between paying attention to and working with your "stuff" at the level of psychology - which I don't care much about - and working with the "stuff" I mentioned in #82. See, Mike, there is "stuff" that I seem to desperately want to see that I just don't see.... yet. When I said, "I'm trying too hard" that's what I was referring to. What I need to do as far as I can tell is put down the desperation and give in to now. That's the surrender/just letting go that needs to happen. And as I said last night, that is easier said than done.

I have 53 years of "doing" behind me. That's a lot of mental habit to see through, deal with, and try to "get" at a meta level - the "what the hell is really going on here and now" level that we work with in our practice.

Make sense?

Yes, I meant the #82 "stuff." I'm sure you are in the middle of a process that I'm not at the point yet that I can really relate to, you know?
Keep posting.

I'd like to validate Chris. Sometimes it's easy to notice that you're holding on to things and just "let go" - but if it doesn't happen that easily it's counterproductive to *try* to let go. It's kind of the opposite of letting go - in fact, sometimes people have to "let go of letting go." I say stay with whatever phenomenon it is with mindfulness and equanamity. Just notice yourself "not letting go" - notice when you don't, when you do, etc. Examine the phenomenon.

By the way, I wanted to mention that this thread has been extraordinarily helpful to me in understanding some phenomenon I had been overlooking, and helping me diagnose myself.

Also, if you are still having a lot of lucid dream experiences, you may want to check out Tibetan Dream Yoga.

D

"
What I need to do as far as I can tell is put down the desperation and give in to now. That's the surrender/just letting go that needs to happen. And as I said last night, that is easier said than done.



"

Hi Chris,

I can identify with that statement 100% - I'm at a similar point (only I'm still pre-stream entry, as near as I can tell).

I'm trying to let go, but I'm finding that the desire for deliverance can be an insistent, all-pervasive, clinging , cloying nag ...

I forget who to credit for this old quote, but I've been reminding myself of it whenever I've been tempted to just throw in the towel and roll up the mat:
"The only road out of Hell goes straight through it."

Just keep on keeping on.

John

To your point, John, yes -- every ugly, nasty, weird, uncomfortable, putrid, dark, selfish feeling I've had lately stands out in high relief. I have been tacking into all of it. This is weirdly like first path but different. It feels deeper and the desire to get to the root of it - the why - is much, much stronger. It's like I know what I need to be able to see, but just can't quite see it. It's but another source of suffering... but in this case one that HAS to be overcome. I told Kenneth last week that I feel like a champaign bottle someone shook up and whose cork is about ready to blow off.

David: Tibetan Dream Yoga. Got it. I'll check it out. Thanks!

Hi Chris,
It's wonderful to see that you're now allowing for effortlessness in your practice.
Perhaps it would be helpful at this point to refer back to one of the first posts made on this site; the thread is about "surrender." kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/thread/3120910/surrender%3F

Another important part to this process is to stop thinking so much. When I entered priest training two years ago, one of the first things my teacher said to me was "if you want to make progress, you need to stop 'thinking' about making progress."
.

I promised to post here about what happens more or less as it happens, so I feel an obligation to lay out that fact that this morning what was behind me is now in front of me. It's weird because I've been whining pretty loudly for a while now. Maybe intent (or in my case begging) is a bigger element of practice than I thought it was. I don't know. I've been focusing my attention differently the last week or so, and I have no idea about the cause and effect of this. Anyway, I see objects this morning but now they have new "attributes." The woman in the car driving next to me is the woman in the car driving next to me in my head and all the stuff in my head is also in that car with that woman. The same applies to all "objects," although I'm not really happy describing them as objects anymore because they're really not. They're nothing. And everything. They're both nothing and everything. They are no longer "out there" with me "in here." They both out there and in here. And that's as it should be for once!

The background has changed and the view has changed, the world has grown quiet and still. The energy in the body is evenly distributed. Woke up at about 3:30, had a flashing discontinuity, unlike anything I've experienced before. A very bright, white light up in my head's eye. Then just this, slowly being realized over some period of time. Kind of like, "Whoa." It's very difficult to accurately explain or describe this. There are a thousand things that are different and yet in an odd way nothing is different. This is both very, very subtle and very, very profound.

If it lasts you'll know. I have no idea. I'll report back but probably not for a little while because I think I'll take the day off tomorrow and just hang out with this, or whatever is there tomorrow.

There is joy.

Bye for now.

Sounds great Chris!
I didn't write much on this thread, but follow it with great interest. Thanks again.
Alex

beautiful

So much for taking a vacation day - events have intervened. Those "events" are Microsoft server products that are almost infinitely complex and that Microsoft won't support in certain configurations - like my company's.

So... I'll report here that I see little change from yesterday. I'm still evenly distributed, both attention and energy-wise. I'm still experiencing a melding of what was once "inside" with what was once "outside" and on more reflection this one thing seems to be a little more prominent this morning. The subject-object duality seems to be fading is the bottom line on that front, I think. Things don't seem to be sticky. I guess that's called "not clinging."

I still have "speedy brain" today. I told Kenneth it's like I've turned the family sedan in for a sports car. I can watch more of the entirety of events in real time and kind of adjust to them as they occur - no delay like there used to be.

And there is one new-ish phenomena going on. I'm still walking around with a little mental "buzz." And no, it's not drugs or alcohol! It seems to be related to the more immediate accessibility of other mental states. All I have to do now to access some of them is decide to "go there" and wham, I'm there. At any time. In fact, "getting there" can happen involuntarily, and does many times a day. (Sorry Kenneth, I forgot to mention this one to you.) For example, I just closed my eyes and decided to go there, and was very quickly swept into a pretty deep jhanic-like state. Until very recently this was just plain impossible. and I would have had to sit still and get quiet before being able to access anything like that.

Anyway, we'll see what comes of all this as time passes.

Edit: I fixed a spelling error.

Chris,

This is awesome! Please continue to describe your experiences as they are a motivation for all of us to continue with practice.

Metta,
Andrew

Great stuff, Chris - keep up the good work...and keep the reports coming, please!

Nothing new to report today. No significant changes from yesterday or the day before. Time will tell.... though an editor once told me never to use that phrase

Wonderful, Chris!
Sounds like it's all coming together for you now that you've relaxed into it.

Again today there's not much that's changed. I've begun to experiment with the jhanas since they're now always available to me. I took my mother to the eye doctor this morning and while she was being examined in the empty hospital wing I sat on the floor, closed my eyes just let the concentration do its own thing. If I do that, as Kenneth has suggested I "not do," then a series of states arise, one after the other. It seems to be an identical progression every time. And while it's a bit harder to tell, it also seems that I ramp back down the same set of states in reverse order. I have a lot more exploring to do but this new capability makes practice more exciting and I can already say that not pursuing these states in my practice before now was a mistake. I have an intuition that these states are helpful in insight practice as much as they are just plain blissful. I'm also convinced that the immediate availability of these states is related to my feeling of being more grounded and no longer subject to a rigid subject-object duality, the "more relaxed and aware" feeling I have lately and the non-local perception of "where" things are. Don't ask me to explain it, though, because I can't. It's one of those things that just somehow "is."

The emergence of this concentration capability has raised a lot of questions and makes me want to ponder the implications, mainly because it seems so organic/biological. But that's probably getting too analytical and I'd like to avoid getting back into that territory for a while. I tend to overdo it and then it affects my practice and, probably worse, my general outlook about practice - which then leads to a lot of churning over "stuff" that isn't important. And THAT, that one subtle little thing, may be the most important lesson to come from all of this churning of late.

KISS

Edit: I can see that what "I" bring into every moment (expectations, urge to control) becomes part of that moment. Maybe I can see the parts of now that are "me" better these days. Anyway, that's not a very good thing to do, but we all do it to one extent or another. A better way is to let every moment be what it is, untouched and without the urge to control. That's much simpler (KISS) and reveals more truth. Somehow, in some way that I can't get at very well, having access to silence and peace has allowed me to see this better. I'm babbling, so ignore my babble if you must. The point won't stick with you unless it sticks with you anyway. It didn't ever really stick with me, either. I had to see it first.