Stages, Part the Third

I had a truly horrendous day today. Bad sore throat, reports to get out the door to the Wall Street bankers and their anaylsts, technical problems with servers on the way to getting that done, registration breakdowns on the web site, demands for explanations for the reports to Wall Street, daughter decides to just skip going to summer school and not tell anyone, blah, blah, blah. Funny -- it all just happens and while it's going on it's a big deal and a problem and then when it's done it's just gone. Really gone. The "gone when it's gone" part makes me feel a little bit like the village idiot, not being able to hang onto anything for very long, but then I realized - hey, that's what I wanted! So here it is, non-clinging at a time when non-clinging actually helps. I can do one thing at a time, focus on that and not be churning about anything else, then when that's over move on to the next thing, and so on. So horrendous turns out to be pretty good, not really a problem.

Still making chairs, too, RuyGuy

"Happy in heaven; happy in helluva mess--" like the man say.

Turns out the village idiot has been getting unfairly dissed all this time, eh?

"
I had a truly horrendous day today. Bad sore throat, reports to get out the door to the Wall Street bankers and their anaylsts, technical problems with servers on the way to getting that done, registration breakdowns on the web site, demands for explanations for the reports to Wall Street, daughter decides to just skip going to summer school and not tell anyone, blah, blah, blah. Funny -- it all just happens and while it's going on it's a big deal and a problem and then when it's done it's just gone. Really gone. The "gone when it's gone" part makes me feel a little bit like the village idiot, not being able to hang onto anything for very long, but then I realized - hey, that's what I wanted! So here it is, non-clinging at a time when non-clinging actually helps. I can do one thing at a time, focus on that and not be churning about anything else, then when that's over move on to the next thing, and so on. So horrendous turns out to be pretty good, not really a problem.

Still making chairs, too, RuyGuy

"

Back before practicing, what would such a day have done to you? How would you be feeling right now?

Roomy --

Mike -- angry, wondering "why me?" and feeling like a victim, afraid of the next piece of bad news.

Kenneth said something on another thread that I want to reiterate in my own way because it's so important and it leads so many people astray -- as a result of your practice you will never actually lose your sense of self. No matter what, if you're a healthy human being you're going to live with a sense that there's a "me." You will continue to experience life with a reference point - me. You will still observe the subject-object duality. What you see and hear and feel and experience will still come through as "other." Kenneth calls this "ultimate self-referencing." What changes isn't the nature of reality. What changes is the way it is perceived and processed. You will have a felt sense, always there, that "you" are not the center of the universe. You'll know without any doubt that there is no process, perception, feeling or thought that has a privileged status above any other process, perception, feeling or thought. And that will include the feeling, process and thought that there is a privileged "you" somewhere in your head that manages and governs a permanent entity called "me." Kenneth calls the post-awakening version "provisional self-referencing." I really like those before and after terms because they get it exactly right.

This is one of those things we encounter in our practice that is only a hair's breadth different in the before and after picture, but that tiny difference translates into much larger effects in experience. This is also a reason to recognize that we should all be thanking folks like Daniel Ingram and Kenneth Folk for de-mysitfying the process of awakening. Without the honest and, as or more important, open accounts they've provided to us we'd all be looking for, and doing, the wrong things. The lack of that openness explains how countless yogis can spend decades on the cushion and yet not wake up.

And... the idea that you will lose your sense of self is a testament to the unbelievable power that ideas and concepts have over us. If you think that's what you must do then that's what you'll try to do, that's what you'll look for and that's how you'll end up just chasing your tail. Another thing about practice that I'm so very thankful for is that -- the power of concepts is diminished because the mental processes that create the conditions that allow concepts to influence outcomes is slowly exposed for observation and through observation can then be objectified accounted for. I can't begin to tell you how many times that has helped me in my everyday life, to see the hidden crap others don't see and better yet to see my very own conceptual craptacularness. It all works together.

"craptacularness" - another new word to trademark

Thanks for posting this Chris.

This is very timely and good for me. These welcomed "slaps" to the face really re-focus my efforts and make me realize how perhaps I am "looking for" and expecting a certain outcome and that can become such a hinderance because I let those ideas subtly influence how I practice. This re-focusing, re-aligning my view of what it means to "get it done" helps tremendously in allowing me to get back to the drawing board, no need to speculate, no need to "look for" the outcome, but to do the basics of meditation and allow whatever will occur to occur. "I" am stepping out of the way of progress thanks to Kenneth and many yogis here including yourself just cutting away the BS, and saying "hey....this is the deal, don't waste energy "looking for" a specific outcome".

Very grateful....this is truly streamlining our practice.

Hi, Nick. I'm not trying or intending to slap you If you look to the top of this thread you'll see that at some point it'll become very clear that the very act of seeking is what's keeping you from getting "there," which is just one more fascinating and wonderfully counter-intuitive practice truth.

HA! And that "welcomed" face slap is something we all need. They are pointers to things we are missing, overlooking, hidden from view or behind a wrong view. So I call them face slaps. I wake up from my ignorant slumber and re-focus! Thanks for that further face slap.....nothing bad about it, they are wonderful face slaps!! Keep slapping!!! Hehe!

" Kenneth calls the post-awakening version "provisional self-referencing." I really like those before and after terms because they get it exactly right.

This is one of those things we encounter in our practice that is only a hair's breadth different in the before and after picture, but that tiny difference translates into much larger effects in experience. This is also a reason to recognize that we should all be thanking folks like Daniel Ingram and Kenneth Folk for de-mysitfying the process of awakening. Without the honest and, as or more important, open accounts they've provided to us we'd all be looking for, and doing, the wrong things. The lack of that openness explains how countless yogis can spend decades on the cushion and yet not wake up.

"

This is great, Chris-- I hadn't encountered this kind of awakened View language so succinctly expressed here, before. More often, the emphasis is necessarily process-oriented.

But my own experience has been a sort of strange accident-- [not that I wasn't practicing, but that the result exceeded the expectations of the practice]-- of the 'process' having its own compelling logic, and landing in that paradoxical everything/nothing has changed... continuum.
In "Cosmic Consciousness" a farmer is quoted as saying, 'My cows and pigs and everything is changed!'-- and I like the earthy humor of that; it's a down-home version of '...no old age and no death. No ending of old age and death. No suffering, cause or end to suffering.'

Just so-- no self, and also no no-self. I am not the body, and I am not some transcendent 'thing' other than the body.

"Chris: ... as a result of your practice you will never actually lose your sense of self. No matter what, if you're a healthy human being you're going to live with a sense that there's a "me." You will continue to experience life with a reference point - me. You will still observe the subject-object duality. What you see and hear and feel and experience will still come through as "other." Kenneth calls this "ultimate self-referencing." What changes isn't the nature of reality. What changes is the way it is perceived and processed..."

That's an important point, Chris, and I'm glad you're writing about it here.

The idea that one would lose the ability to self-reference after awakening is kind of silly, but I don't mean that in a patronizing way. I used to think that's what awakening was about, too. A lot of people do. Really, it's not very easy to understand what is meant by 'no-self' until a good amount of practice has already been done.

There are states of meditation where the self-referencing dissolves. But, there are also states of meditation where there is absolutely no awareness of the body. In the same way that one's body comes back into awareness after such states, the self-referencing comes back after states of self-dissolution as well. As Sri Ramana put it, "The 'I' casts off the illusion of 'I' and yet remains as 'I'. Such is the paradox of Self-realization. The realized do not see any contradiction in it."

I like how the late D.T. Suzuki described Satori (awakening) as "acquiring a new view point." Things keep going as they always have, only now one sees things how they truly are - and that includes seeing self-referencing for what it is.

Also, to all of my fellow citizens of the USA, I wish you all a very happy Independence Day weekend
~Jackson

"
.. as a result of your practice you will never actually lose your sense of self. No matter what, if you're a healthy human being you're going to live with a sense that there's a "me." You will continue to experience life with a reference point - me. You will still observe the subject-object duality. What you see and hear and feel and experience will still come through as "other."

"

Just wanted to say thanks for pushing this 'losing the self' point on a couple of threads. Last night I was meditating and it dawned on me - I know I am not my thoughts, emotions, or body and yet they all still function, there is no need to get rid of them to disembed/disidentify from them.
So why do I feel the need to get rid of the sense of self? All I have to do is disembed from that too. It does not need to be destroyed, just seen for what it is.

"All I have to do is disembed from that too. It does not need to be destroyed, just seen for what it is."

Major insight alert!

More and more of my time seems to be spent being aware of all the processes that are occurring at any given time, and within "IS." This is what I'll call "innate involuntary objectification." It happens without being willfully invoked. Sort of like breathing, but while breathing is always "on" this awareness can and does fade in and out, on and off. It's an awareness of the entirety of experience. The mental image I have of it is like this: the universe is limitless and yet bounded on the "edges" and pervaded throughout an infinite, universal sphere by awareness. This is not attention, but Awareness of the ultimate sort. Along with the objectified perspective of everything occurring inside the infinity is immediate access to awareness of awareness - which seems to be out there on the "edge." Because literally everything manifests "inside" this spherical infinity it's easy to let all that stuff go and just be. At those times only the word/concept "IS" applies, and that's not right, either.

Of course, describing this as shapes and in words is ridiculous and silly but mind wants to do it none the less! I think mind is so hell bent on conceptualizing everything it just keeps building these images and pushes them out into awareness even when doing so is inaccurate and, frankly, pointless.

Just rambling.

Now when I read my last comment it sounds like jibberish. Probably best to ignore it.

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Now when I read my last comment it sounds like jibberish. Probably best to ignore it.

"

Not so and far otherwise-- it's just that the 'shimmer' that is the reality of experience can only be pointed at, not entirely described.

But all of art, and much of spirituality, does its utmost, anyway. Why not? 'How can [we] keep from singing?'

Ha! Well said. And thanks. I feel... redeemed

Watching the videos Kenneth posted featuring Nick yesterday spurred me to do jhana practice out on the porch last night. Ahhh! I was able to get up there (I count 12) and then back down and the cool part was that the "back down" was more clear and discernable than it has ever been for me. I don't know if that's due to the watching of the videos (probably) or some other change since whenever, but it was fun. Following the jhanic arc up took a while, say about a half hour. Coming back down was faster but the individual jhanas were clear as I went back through them.

The jhanas have never been the focus of my practice but it's clear their existence has meaning and that each represents some part of the nature of mind or the strata of mind. And there really is congruence between some jhanas and other areas of practice. I recommend watching these videos as I don't believe there's anything like them to be found anywhere but here:

kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/videos

Hey Chris... yeah those videos are really good stuff. I remember in your old thread you talking about practicing "Just Sitting" in the witness. Is that still your formal practice? I am curious if you find yourself going up and down the arch naturally during this sort of practice...

Hi, Clayton. Since May my normal practice is just sitting, period. Not so much in the Witness. Very Shikantaza-like. There is a stillness to meditation that was never available before and I've been enjoying that, letting whatever arises show itself, be whatever it is, where it is, and then disappear into original awareness to reveal the next thing, and so on. If I allow it or cultivate it then, yes, the jhanic arc will manifest. But I haven't been practicing that of late, preferring what I just described because it's so new and still and beautiful.

So, this is when the practice rubber meets the road of life and of parenting and such weighty things. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail but I'll be spending a significant amount of time on health related matters, at least for a while. This is not unexpected but still disappointing. We talk about cycling here in terms of the path but I observe other forms of cycling, as with my loved one's depression. There seems to be a six month cycle that bottomed last January and is doing so once again right now. I was up almost all night just letting the feelings roll over me. This is the kind of thing some folks say they don't want -- strong emotions like fear, anger, guilt, psychological suffering related to doubt, and so on. Even though there are times the power of these emotions would have me crawl out of my own skin, the anger would have me trash the room, the fear would have me run screaming down the street never to return... these are actually and still valuable parts of life. And yes, I'm saying this because of the recent focus on Actual Freedom here and to make sure folks know that no matter how strong and hard this horrible stuff can be, it really isn't the emotions that cause us problems. No, it's the inability to see them for what they are, to allow them to do what they do, to see the value they bring, to be with whatever is going on, be it heaven or be it hell.

Today I wish more than anything that I could take this hard won realization and reach over and lightly touch someone's forehead and transfer it to them. I just don't need it as much as they do, right now.

I have to say, too, there's nothing quite so difficult and painful as watching someone else suffer and not be able to do anything that will really help relieve them of it.

"I have to say, too, there's nothing quite so difficult and painful as watching someone else suffer and not be able to do anything that will really help relieve them of it."

There comes a time when the suffering is so great, and when it's unlikely that we'll be able to do something to alleviate the suffering, that our only two options are to stay with it or to flee (either physically or mentally - or both). Being that our nature is naturally wakeful and present, we know which of those two options is more wise. Sometimes all we can do is be there, to bear witness to these great difficulties and to share them.

I admire your courage, Chris, and your commitment to practicing wisdom, even when the tides of impermanence bring the most unpleasant of circumstances.

I wish you and your loved ones well.
~Jackson

Hey Chris,

Your right--difficult times show us where we are in the practice. There is nothing worse than being powerless to help someone... this pain must be all the greater when it involves someone so close. Metta and Prayers to you and your family Chris....

"Sometimes all we can do is be there, to bear witness to these great difficulties and to share them."

Sometimes, I think that's the best that we can do. Simply hold the space for that other person, to show them with our very being that such emotions can be felt through. I've always had the best results myself by simply BEING with that person who's suffering, as hard as I can.

So sorry to hear about these troubles Chris, my heart goes out to you and your loved ones.