Q&A on "bleed through"

"Similar to Mike, I'm pretty sure I got caught in a dark night patch for some years from getting stuck at a certain level of practice and not realizing it. I then thought I had to be a 'good' buddh'ist' and keep all this yukky stuff in. Result? Compacted yukky stuff."-Serenamay

Awesome!

"It's one of the characteristics of the mind that it likes to split reality into two parts. I don't think that's right or wrong; it's just the way the mind works. And (says he, splitting the world into two parts), there are those who are aware of it happening, and those who are not aware of it happening."

Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:

'There are two kinds of people in the world. The first believes that there are two kinds of people in the world. The second doesn't.'

"Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:"

Yes, that's a good one, isn't it? I would argue that the second subset is likely empty, since dividing in two seems fundamental to the way the mind works.

Back to the main point of the thread -- I do find it disturbing that people can be enlightened in path terms, and yet still have psychological blind spots that are quite visible to an average person.

"I do find it disturbing that people can be enlightened in path terms, and yet still have psychological blind spots that are quite visible to an average person."

Disturbing? How about "human?" Your being disturbed by this means you had the wrong model in your head and that's really easy to fix. Practice and watch what happens

"Your being disturbed by this means you had the wrong model in your head and that's really easy to fix.

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My model comes from a book I mentioned on another thread, Michael Washburn's Embodied Spirituality in a Sacred World (Albany, SUNY, 2003). The sense of a solid, permanent, separate self is formed through early (pre-verbal) repression. Psychological blind spots are the result of later repression: a defense mechanism is formed to mask awareness of unwanted feelings.

Okay THAT model is wrong. Whatever awakening is it is not the eradication of the personality and related traits developed over a lifetime. It is not the re-shaping of the human being into something different, other than, better than, higher than, the baseline human-ness we all share.

"Okay THAT model is wrong. Whatever awakening is it is not the eradication of the personality and related traits developed over a lifetime. It is not the re-shaping of the human being into something different, other than, better than, higher than, the baseline human-ness we all share.-cmarti



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I agree. The model Derek is describing, although superficially plausible (and very appealing to my rational mind) does not fit with observable reality.

It is essentially a linear, developmental, one-dimensional model.

Perhaps a two-dimensional model fits better. Here's a quick diagram I came up with in Photoshop:

i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk243/derekc...on/quadrantscopy.jpg

Shades of Bill Hamilton....

"[awakening] is not the re-shaping of the human being into something different, other than, better than, higher than, the baseline human-ness we all share."

So you are saying that the "grasping" that disappears at arhatship is somehow not part of the "baseline humanness"? I personally find that I have changed tremendously, in fact I have "been reshaped into something different" by the practices I have done.

Are you still a human being?