Stages, Part the Third

Today I've had a lot of clarity around seeing the operation of mind as it sees what materializes, seemingly from nothing, returning to nothing. This has been accompanied by (caused by? derived from?) a lot of equanimity. I've been observing of the dance between the is and the is not off and on all day long. At times like this it becomes apparent that we construct what we experience and when things are this clear those constructs can be seen to go deeper and deeper and deeper, right down to time and space. This used to appear to me only infrequently and only after some serious letting go. It seems to be quickly and easily available today, like glancing over my shoulder. Weird, because yesterday I was embedded, caused in large part I think by having to be in meetings most of the day, leading discussions, playing a part in the process of life. So each day brings a different view of self and other, and of the relationship between them as it is perceived or not perceived, in each moment, but what is ever clearer is that each of these views is wrapped in the same awareness. That awareness is ever present. It enables the clarity of the view. In times past I would have used the word "distance" to describe it but that's wrong. It's actually intimacy. Intimacy is what the heart wants and seeks in each and every experience. Intimacy with all of THIS. There's no fear bound up in it so it's open and willing to be present all the time. What happens is what happens, it emerges and is accepted on its own terms, is where it is, and passes on into the void it came from, is replaced by the next thing in attention, and so on, and so on, and so on. This is what life is, all the time, no matter what's happening. JUST THIS.

"
That awareness is ever present. It enables the clarity of the view. In times past I would have used the word "distance" to describe it but that's wrong. It's actually intimacy. Intimacy is what the heart wants and seeks in each and every experience. Intimacy with all of THIS. There's no fear bound up in it so it's open and willing to be present all the time. What happens is what happens, it emerges and is accepted on its own terms, is where it is, and passes on into the void it came from, is replaced by the next thing in attention, and so on, and so on, and so on. This is what life is, all the time, no matter what's happening. JUST THIS.

"

gorgeous, Chris! There is a Zen koan that goes 'Not knowing is most intimate.'

I think the hard part of the workaday world is most apparent when there is some sort of high-pressure conversation going on, with all the other participants operating from the usual premises, at the usual overcaffeineated speed-- keeping the stillpoint in view under those circumstances is quite challenging.

Finding opportunities to take a quick, personal 'reset' practice moment [in whatever way you find works for you] can be very helpful. And what is great is that this sort of on-the-fly practice has greatly amplified effects, in rooting your practice in your life independent of circumstances.

Thanks Chris and Roomy for your excellent points...

I'm having some small amount of trouble these days. It's an embarrassment of riches in a way but it's still a problem. I want to talk. I want to talk about practice and what's happened and yet there's often no one to talk to face to face. I can launch into monologues all day long and my poor wife will listen attentively for about 20 minutes and then tune me out. And since she's not on this practice wavelength those conversations are described more by me explaining terms than they are about a real conversation. So I feel a little bit isolated. This forum helps. E-mail and phone conversations help. But I think I may need to seek a real life sangha where I can sit face to face with other human beings. I find the timing of this to be kind of odd, as that need should have driven me to do this years ago.

I feel you Chris... I have one friend I talk with about this stuff on a regular basis... He is into more Kriya Yoga, but I have intro'd him to some of Kenneth, Daniel, and Bill's writing... Before that this practice has a way of being very isolating... because I mean... I don't know many people who during a normal conversation I could just be like... "You know I am coming to understand more and more that even these fruitions are not where the final goal lies... what do you think?" haha it just doesn't really work... When I get back to the states I hope I find a good Sangha... Best of luck Chris...

Choice -- this is an important thing.

The more you see the more choice you have. The more choice you have the more freedom. The more freedom the more you feel responsibility. The more you feel responsible the more you pay attention, take care. The more you pay attention the more you see. The more you see the more choice you have. The more choice you have the more freedom, The more freedom the more you feel responsibility. The more you feel responsible the more you pay attention, take care. The more you pay attention the more you see. The more you see the more choice you have.

And so on... forever and ever.

This is apparently an infinite loop. An infinite loop of being aware of the cause-effect and living according to its lights, or maybe as my friend Alex Weith says, just moving in harmony with the Tao. The more I experience this and think about it the more I realize how much I was fighting, struggling, making my own existence far more difficult. I can see this play out and I can sort of make adjustments to move things along or, more critically, know what not to do to get in the way. I can see when other folks are fighting the flow, and I can and sometimes do offer a pointer to what is a more authentic, flow-based approach. They don't usually pay much attention ;-(

This isn't clairvoyance. It's just being able to see and navigate within the Cosmic Rules of the Road. It is not eye seeing. It's gestalt seeing, feel seeing, innate sense of things seeing. Dharma Eye seeing, maybe. It's powerful.

Yeah, moving in harmony with the Tao.

Thanks Alex!

As I type this I'm sitting on my front porch. One of my cats has been sleeping on the couch next to me. A random neighborhood cat, a black and white persian, walked up and laid down on the chair next to us. This is not related to what I just typed... or is it?

Edit: I typed "one of my cats" and should have typed "I'm one of his humans."

Someone here on KFDh just got first path. This is so cool and it brought this to mind for some reason:

A few weeks before this last event I was fixated, absolutely dialed in, on the difference between awake and not awake. I knew somehow that I could see just about everything I should be able to see, and I was absolutely determined to get that last shred of "it" out in front of me. As this developed it was not something I was choosing. It was something that was choosing me. I was not in control, and I had not been in control for years after crossing the A&P Event. Night and day, awake and asleep, this dilemma, this enigmatic "thing" kept nagging me. It was tormenting me, frankly. I was so tired of the chase and really just wanting to be done with it already.

So, I recall reading "The Three Pillars of Zen" years and years ago, and this torture made me think of that and I still think of that when I think of this last event. I recall posting here that I had discovered the power of a koan. I'm not sure and when I describe this it sounds kind of foolish but I really believe this last event was driven by this insanely intense feeling of HAVING to get... it.... done. And inside, in my little pea brain, I'm convinced it's not a coincidence that several others that I know had the same thing happen, pretty much in the same way. I'll leave it to them to speak up but I wanted to get this out there for whatever reason.

I don't frankly know what caused this and maybe I'm drawing a silly-a**ed conclusion based solely on proximity, but sheesh....

I know that feeling.....it is present in whatever blissed out jhana states or fruition bliss afterglow I experience. That there is something "I NEED to get done". It is constant...a nagging feeling of not being satisfied. Of feeling like I haven't completed something. I am just not satisfied. Not "at peace" yet. Please keep posting Chris. Your experiences and insights help us get to where you are faster.

Exchanging some PMs with folks here today made me think of this: the infamous Insight Disease, the conveyor belt, the escalator, the ride, the involuntary drive to complete the cycle of insight, is pretty much just like everything else we live with. It's involuntary. A baby is born and starts to breathe and must keep breating in order to live. Breathing is probably an ugly thing at first, probably feels like a fight, probably creates a certain fear, maybe panic. Probably panic. With some modification that's what this Insight Disease thing feels like upon getting to first path. I could also have used eating. Or sex. Or scratching an itch. All of these things parallel the lemming-like drive we invoke when we first fall into the stream.

The punch line? The progress of insight is just like everything else in our lives -- we only think we're in control. What we really are is along for the ride.

Edit - spelling.

I'm still trying to grok how to deal with the fact that I'm not wired up, fired up or injected intraveinously into my job any more. I care, but the care is temporal and takes place in la la land. Everything takes place in la la land so that the ol' career does shouldn't be a huge surprise. It's an adjustment. And I swear that my wife is testing me, seeing if she can make me crack, take a position, hold it and defend it. Last night it was about money. But, of course, money exists in la la land, too, so in the end why get worked up about it? Why get worked up about anything? Who's getting worked up?

A truly violent thunderstorm knocked our electricity out Friday afternoon. It came back on later that evening but went out again yesterday afternoon and is still out. This has been a great gift. It's been really quiet and peaceful, especially last night. The pace is slower, too. I'm enjoying this respite from television, video games and other powered stuff the kids are always doing... and it's a great practice enhancer. I wish I didn't have work to get done, but I do, so here I am for a few hours at Starbucks.

Starting to accommodate the lack of ecstatic overly focused enthusiasm I seem to have now at work. This kind of thing is going to be the way it is, so I have to go with it. There are times when I can muster some of that old magic and times when I can't. People are starting to notice. I'm not sure what to tell them when they ask about it. "Well, see, I started this meditation practice a long time ago and last month this thing happened and...." Nope, that's not gonna fly.

I think I'm just going to blame it on age

Walking around, driving, working, talking to people... I always have this expansive sense of "big" that pervades it all. It's awareness. I marvel at how transparent things have become, especially the "me" crap that used to cause reactiveness. Ignorance, really. Now when that me stuff arises it's seen quickly and most often just flows through quickly, but not always. Noticing what folks call "bad stuff" like anger and pain and disgust is now more of a physical process than a mental process so it's much easier to be with the world as it is, which is the really wonderful part. No matter what's happening and no matter what is done or said there's a far greater chance I'll be with it as opposed to reacting to it, so I have a lot more choice than I used to have. That's liberation, man. Liberation. And that allows the love and compassion to flow, and that's just all good.

Now, some people notice this happening, too, and I can likewise credit the wisdom that comes with age

Good stuff man... thanks for the updates...

Ditto what Clayton says - it is wonderful to get reports from the other side of the stream. With each one I get a tiny bit more clear about where this is all going...

"
Starting to accommodate the lack of ecstatic overly focused enthusiasm I seem to have now at work. This kind of thing is going to be the way it is, so I have to go with it. There are times when I can muster some of that old magic and times when I can't. People are starting to notice. I'm not sure what to tell them when they ask about it. "Well, see, I started this meditation practice a long time ago and last month this thing happened and...." Nope, that's not gonna fly.

I think I'm just going to blame it on age

"

To be perfectly honest, this is the first thing I have read about the whole process that has me concerned. Outside of this, it has been about bettering "me" and how I relate to the world. But this affects others in a potentially negative way and I am not sure how to take that.

Tom, you have to understand that my "old magic" was not healthy, to say the least. There have been many times in my practice when I was different than before or affected in some way because of the practice. All of those things were not "good" effects, certainly in the short term. But as I've said here, you would have to kill me rather than get me to go back. Does that help? I don't want to demotivate anyone but at the same time I want to tell the truth about this stuff.

"Does that help? I don't want to demotivate anyone but at the same time I want to tell the truth about this stuff."

Hmm, honestly, not really. I truly appreciate the honesty part, but where I am coming from is this. You and I seem to be cut from similar technical cloth, so I think you get it when I say that I need to be embedded in what I do to do it really well. And people are counting on me to do it really well. I get paid fairly nicely to do it well, and my family relies on the same. And I get a tremendous amount of satisfaction out of creating stuff out of nothing that people end up using. So if I lost my "edge", my "good magic", my enthusiasm...that seems to me to be not such a good outcome. I am all for seeing through the things that make me "suffer", and being in a happier place.

But are arahatship and entrepreneurship (in my case) or business-drive-to-succeed (more generally) mutually exclusive?

"
To be perfectly honest, this is the first thing I have read about the whole process that has me concerned. Outside of this, it has been about bettering "me" and how I relate to the world. But this affects others in a potentially negative way and I am not sure how to take that. "


I just posted something like this on the AF thread, but I think it's really important to consider the two perspectives from which a) the way the progress of insight and other such things play out is largely predictable, and b) the way other parts of our lives plays out is largely unpredictable, the mundane outcomes of awakening being one of them.

So, who knows where you might find yourself, Tom, upon attaining to arahantship, etc. If it syncs up with how you understand reality and what kindness/compassion are, you might be more rude and grouchy and harsh, or you might be more sweet and gentle and tender. You also might not change a lick in that regard. You might become totally uninvested in your work (real possibility, yes!), or you might become totally re-invested in your work (also a real possibility).

Sure, if one's work ethic, livelihood and its benefits for oneself / one's family aren't in line with the truth, then it may be time to find a new line of work. But if practice threatens to destroy something worthy and good, maybe something's off in your approach to practice. Sounds to me like it's destroying something that has plagued Chris, which is an entirely different matter.

I know it's considered "kindergarten impermanence", but let's also not forget that any of us could die today. Loss is often much closer at hand than we believe. And yet what if there is some 'thing' that can't be lost? Sounds worth seeking.

Tom, I still do things really well. What I can no longer do is live to please other people and live in fear of their disapproval. I used to live to work. Now I don't. This has been an uncomfortable change because a lot of my self- sense was bound up in what I did for a living and how that was perceived by other people. I was too competitive and too afraid to "lose." When this kind of change occurs some people will almost inevitably notice it. I'm not sure they perceive it as a bad thing, but whatever they think... I think the change is healthy. My family relies on me, too, and I have two kids in college, sent one all the way through and have a fourth who'll want to go in a few years. I can't afford to be in La La Land all day long. And I'm not.

No, arahatship does not seem to be mutually exclusive of the drive to succeed. I still want to succeed but I think my desire/fear/live-for-work hyper-focus has been healthily tempered.

So, does that help?

Thanks for the candour, Chris. Yes, it helps. (And I really hope that I did not sound like I was suggesting you were no longer trying, or not doing things well, or otherwise slacking off.)

In the interest of honest communication about practice it's all good, Tom.

I find it hard to believe that someone can sit in meditation for years and years and not at some point encounter something other than first gear. It's just not plausible, especially if one has read a lot of Buddhist literature and has knowledge of the various Mahayana practices, of the nature of those practices and what their objectives are. If it's true that such a thing possible then I'm saddened by it. There is so much more to this practice and to the nature of human beings than what is directly in front of our noses. There is great insight, poetry, amazingly deep, fulfilling experiences. The end of some great mysteries, boundless silence, real peace in the eye of the storm and, above all, a direct line to the heart. To not see that, to miss it for whatever reason as a sin of omission is one thing. But to deny it, to ignore it or to suppress it is flabbergastingly short sighted.

Flabbergastingly. Yep, I made that one up.

These perspectives are motivating and balancing. I find them interesting and insightful. Thanks, Chris.

Andrew