Ron's "Now What?" Journal

Some interesting developments since last time I posted:

I'm finding that what happens after 4th path takes a lot of time to mature, and it does so on it's own whether I'm doing anything about it or not. At first I was going back and forth between feeling relief, joy, contentment, peace, etc. and feeling like nothing happened. Since that time, the post-4th experience has deepened quite a bit, and now I'm finding myself more and more in this experience that is constantly fresh and equanimous. What this looks like in my life is that I've gradually gotten to the point where ordinary things that I normally take for granted and never notice (a flower in a neighbor's window, the color of the light at 5 o'clock, the shape of a person's hands on the bus, the comfort of my desk at work - all sorts of little things) are starting to feel new and interesting in a way that is hard to explain. The closest thing to it is an experience I've had when experimenting with LSD back when I was fresh out of high school and had no responsibilities. I had a sense that lots of little things that I had never noticed before were suddenly very beautiful, and some things that I paid a lot of attention to normally were actually quite ugly. I could stop and watch water flowing into a drain and be fascinated. This is a very similar experience (though it doesn't feel weird or trippy, just very comforting). It is as if I'm settling into the beauty of my own life and really seeing it moment to moment.

I suspect that this makes me look a little stupid, but I don't really care. I'm spending a lot of time just looking at things and appreciating stuff around me, and what this likely looks like to others is that I'm daydreaming or that I'm spaced out. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Sounds really wonderful!

"I'm spending a lot of time just looking at things and appreciating stuff around me, and what this likely looks like to others is that I'm daydreaming or that I'm spaced out. Nothing could be further from the truth."

Yes, Ron, same thing happens in my experience. I attribute this to the removal of a lot of the distraction of discursive thinking and the preoccupation with the "survival" instincts of the discursive mind. It's not something that got added to my experience, rather it's something that was revealed to have always been there as a by-product of the removal of a lot of useless crap

"I attribute this to the removal of a lot of the distraction of discursive thinking and the preoccupation with the "survival" instincts of the discursive mind. It's not something that got added to my experience, rather it's something that was revealed to have always been there as a by-product of the removal of a lot of useless crap

"

That's it exactly. It's as if the mind is spending much more time in silence now, and the silence is the absence of all that useless crap. Worries, habitual planning, judgements, fantasies - they aren't totally gone, but they are dropped as soon as they come up (usually), and they aren't that strong when they come up.

The mind goes right back to silence. That silence is really an amazing thing, far better than I would have imagined. If I had told the young me that you'll be walking around in silence, I'd have balked at the idea, after all, without all those thoughts how will I get anything done? But now I realize what an annoying noise-maker the mind can be, and I can get things done even better than before because I'm not preoccupied when I'm doing them.

The silence has made room for lots of new things, that is what I'm discovering now, and it's wonderful. It really is like being in a contemplative state for most of the time. What it is making room for is ordinary life, the everyday stuff that gets ignored because it was always perceived as so mundane and unimportant. Now I'm finding that it is actually the mundane stuff that is beautiful. It was always there, I just couldn't see it because the mind was always stuck ruminating on what I used to think was important.

Hey Ron,

Have you ever read Huxley's The Doors of Perception? The experience he describes (although based on mescaline, iirc) is quite similar to what you wrote above. It might be interesting to explore some of the parallels.

Isn't that about Huxley's experiments with psychedelic drugs?

Yep, mescaline.

Ron, What about your relationships with other people? A major reason I've taken up this practice is that I'm sick of being with my family and never really being with them at all. It's as if they're there, but can't penetrate the fog. My favorite trick is escaping into a book or the internet. Or else I'd be ruminating about some juicy conflict I was in, either personal or on the political front. Politics, in fact, has been a huge distraction for years.

That is getting better too, I'm noticing habits that keep me from connecting with them, however, this kind of conditioning runs pretty deep and i'm finding that it takes some extra mindfulness to not fall into old arguements, debates, and disagreements or avoidances. I still do, but I catch it quicker and can let go of it sooner. I suspect that things will continue to get better, if this general deepening trend continues.

The downside of it though is interesting. Given your question i decided to check in with my wife about it and see what she thought. In general she likes how things have developed, but she did describe some confusion about the changes that have happened to me, and reported that sometimes she felt like she didn't understand what was happening or why, and really wasn't "in on the joke" at times when I would catch my ego slipping in and would laugh to myself. It is an interesting reaction, and it makes me consider how to handle this process better.

The changes that she is referring to are pretty subtle and no one outside of my home would notice them, but to a married couple they can seem pretty big. What's happened is that I'm gradually shedding beliefs and behaviors that were either redundant or nonsensical after fourth. For example I've been doing formal sitting meditation A LOT less, and after over a decade of sitting every day, this kind of threw her for a loop. For a while I started eating meat again, after more than a decade of being a vegetarian. I've since returned to my old veggie ways, but now my reasons for it have a lot less to do with supporting the kind of "self" I can be proud of. This really blew her mind. Other, little things, changed too. I became sensitive to taste for a while there, and started adding sugar and cream to my coffee - after about 20 years of drinking it black. This threw her off as well.

There are a bunch of other little like that that happened that I won't go into because they seem pretty mundane and personal. But suffice it to say that there was a kind of deep change that took place and is expressing itself in all sorts of weird and interesting ways that are completely strange and inexplicable to family and friends. They feel totally natural to me, but they feel pretty unnatural to my long-suffering wife.

Now that I know this I might have prepped for it a little better, the same way that I did for dark night, by letting her know that I might seem a little different for a while but not to worry. Now that I'm in the midst of it I can't wait to see where it goes.

Thanks, Ron. My husband considers himself a Taoist and works a lot with Tai Chi, so he's good with weird, plus I've been talking with him a lot about this stuff. I think he gets a little tired with how preoccupied I seem to be with it lately, but he's used to me being preoccupied with all sorts of stuff (see my last post) and is probably maintaining a healthy skepticism about where all this is leading. I'm not taking any of that personally!

yeah I can totally relate to that. My wife is sick of hearing about the meditation stuff, and cannot understand why I have been so obsessed with it. The hard thing is putting into words what the "insight disease" that we talk about here feels like and why it would drive one so hard. On the other hand, now that the insight disease is gone for me, she can't understand that either! We meditators can't win.

I've noticed that this is kind of a trend with a lot of folks here - their partners don't meditate and aren't really interested in it. This makes for some interesting relationship issues I would imagine. Anyone else have difficulty explaining this stuff to their partners?

Yes - same stuff. I'm almost glad though, knowing how difficult it has been for me to not follow crazy mindstates out of a relationship on a whim, I think its best that no-one close to me is a dark knight yogi. Best for people to know about it though, otherwise if they get into that territory themselves they are likely to wake up one morning and decide to exit stage left, only to change their minds the next day. Its hard to explain to someone - 'hey I feel sick can we stay home tonight? No, honey its not the flu I think its my meditation, it will pass'.

I've been trying to commit even more to doing the direct mode practice and it continues to be a struggle for me. Recently I had a breakthrough though (I think) in the emotion-labeling department. Up until this point I really had a tough time finding an emotion to label at any given moment. Of course I could label something as raw as anger or as flashy as happiness, but for the most part when I checked my emotional experience at the moment there was just... not much. A kind of neutral feeling tone without a lot of distinctiveness to it (I'm making it sound bad, but it's not at all).

But then about two days ago, while driving home I went through a tunnel and when my car came out of the other side I noticed just the tiniest twinge of fear, followed by a faint excitement. Now, I had never really thought of emotions that are that weak as even really being emotions, but in that moment my awareness locked onto them and labeled them. Ever since then I am noticing very subtle emotions that are percolating at the edge of awareness, and if I try and tune in (or remember to do so) I can accurately tell what a lot of them are. Still, I struggle with it, and in any given hour I probably label about five really subtle emotions and maybe one or two "normal strength" ones.

Ironically, the grounding of the emotions is effortless for me now. As soon as I notice them I can ground them and I know that I've done it correctly because there is this juicy thrill and ordinary things become inexplicably wonderful to look at.

I keep marching on with this, trying to make the connection between body and emotions, trying to see through the illusion, but it is taking me some extra time...

"ordinary things become inexplicably wonderful to look at" - nice! Good reason for me to hang in there

Thanks for mentioning your "kind of neutral feeling tone without a lot of distinctiveness to it" that's most of my day as well. I've played with this a little, apparently its difficult pre 4th path, and had more trouble finding emotions then grounding the obvious ones I'm able to find. Glad to hear I'm not alone, and it can be worked through.

After getting a little advice, I've started working on the problem of how to turn those neutral feeling tones into something that can be grounded. Turns out that they can, and they are really the key, because they are the most predominant feeling tone (at least for me, and I suspect for many other folks). So, grounding the indistinct feeling tone is working well. So far, it has worked pretty well and the focus has shifted to grounding rather than identifying all the subtle emotions.

What is "grounding" and how do you do it?

" while driving home I went through a tunnel and when my car came out of the other side I noticed just the tiniest twinge of fear, followed by a faint excitement. Now, I had never really thought of emotions that are that weak as even really being emotions, but in that moment my awareness locked onto them and labeled them. Ever since then I am noticing very subtle emotions that are percolating at the edge of awareness, and if I try and tune in (or remember to do so) I can accurately tell what a lot of them are. Still, I struggle with it, and in any given hour I probably label about five really subtle emotions and maybe one or two "normal strength" ones.

"

I've had that same twinge of fear ( usually at dusk ). Put it down to a primal fear of the dark. A sort of genetic fear carried over from when we lived in caves, as this seems to be the only trace of anything that resembles anxiety left.
What do you think ? Steve

"
What is "grounding" and how do you do it?

"

It's finding the body sensations that occur with the emotions and then just resting attention on the body sensation. The grounding happens with the resting of attention, and it has a peculiar result in that there is a moment when the body sensation seems to become very pleasant (even if it was unpleasant to start with). There is a bit of a thrill and the effect that things look very pleasing all of sudden.

As Kenneth explained grounding:
kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/page/3rd+...Tolle%2C+and+the+PCE

"he grounding happens with the resting of attention, and it has a peculiar result in that there is a moment when the body sensation seems to become very pleasant (even if it was unpleasant to start with). There is a bit of a thrill and the effect that things look very pleasing all of sudden."

So to make sure I'm getting this right, Ron -- if one senses an unpleasant object then if one "grounds" that by paying attention to the effects (causes) it has in the body, the sensation morphs into a pleasant one?

Not fully - at least not in my experience. The sensation itself doesn't really seem to change, but there is some suffering that goes with it that is relieved.

i was recently listening to Shinzen Young's the Science of Enlightenment and he talks about this quite a lot in the book, so apparently this is nothing new and has been part of mindfulness of body practice for a long long time. He used it a lot when working with hospital patients in chronic pain, and describes a nice little theory behind it: suffering = pain x resistance. There is something about this practice that dissolves the resistance. The pain is still there, but the suffering aspect is greatly diminished.

But here is where it gets a little strange, when I do it, not only does the suffering diminish but there is this thrill in the body, a very pleasant sensation, that isn't very different from a strong A&P type rapture. Along with that the mind becomes expansive, and the weirdest thing is that visual objects that were dull become really interesting.

Chris, from previous threads, like the one sited above, I assumed that you had tried this practice yourself, as a 3rd gear practice. I got some pretty interesting results within the first few minutes of sincerely giving it a try, so it's worth a brief experiment to see what I'm talking about. Grounding the sensations and seeing what it is like takes very little time to learn, it is making it a consistent daily practice that is turning out to be really difficult for me.

"But here is where it gets a little strange, when I do it, not only does the suffering diminish but there is this thrill in the body, a very pleasant sensation, that isn't very different from a strong A&P type rapture. Along with that the mind becomes expansive, and the weirdest thing is that visual objects that were dull become really interesting.

- Ron"

That was my experience as well. This practise seems to energize the system subtantially, but in my experience it is only temporary. When it becomes integrated into your everyday experience, the high subsides and tranquillity remains.

"Chris, from previous threads, like the one sited above, I assumed that you had tried this practice yourself, as a 3rd gear practice."

I did, yes. I was just curious to hear your experience of it. I don't do the practice regularly as it doesn't seem all that effective for me, but maybe to get the deeper result I need to try it more consistently.