Tommy's Journal - Season 2

A peculiar week all in all, I was off work due to being loaded with the cold and ended up working on jhanas, nirodha samapatti (finally found the killswitch) and calling up ñanas at will with varying degrees of success. After watching Daniel Ingram's recent video interviews at Brown I've been trying to get more heavily into the technical side of meditation, getting my concentration jacked up and paying close attention to vibrational rates, spatial qualities, and getting to grips with subtle stuff that, in my haste to make progress, I've overlooked.

I've felt very 'flat' the last few days, everything feels very much like Dark Night but the experience of it is totally different although I'll be damned if I can pinpoint what it is. I'm noticing various negative emotions arising at present and it still sucks, particularly when sitting in work at a job which gives me no pleasure, but they just sail across the perceptual field. I actually considered experimenting with PCE/AF but, after speaking to Nick Halay, I realized that I wouldn't be committed to the practices as I have no desire to go AF. I can see the appeal, but it doesn't float my boat. I'm more interested in exploring what's possible post-4th path (if indeed this is 4th path), delving back into magick, experimenting with the siddhis, and getting more into energetic practices, none of which would be possible were I to seriously pursue AF.

My main interest right now is Dark Night and helping people navigate it more effectively, this is why I'm getting so deeply into exploring these ñanas and also examining how they're discussed within other traditions e.g. the nigredo stage of alchemy, the abyss of the western magickal tradition, as there's a wealth of insight to be had and I think that quite a lot of progress can be made if we approach these stages in a different way.

(Cont.)

(Cont)

Practice-wise there's been nothing noteworthy (no pun intended), I've been working with getting into hard jhanas via the breath or kasina which has been quite good fun and allowed me to get more familiar with the the entrance, exits and transitions between them but this will be an ongoing practice. The only downside to this has been the perceptual weirdness which happens when I've been doing concentration stuff for an extended period of time, a lot of mild hallucination and activity in the periphery of the visual field which, while admittedly quite exciting and funny, can be distracting at times. If it's not the jhana practice that's causing the weirdness then it's confirming my long standing suspicion that I've actually gone completely mental.....Ha!

Peace out,
Tommy

Tommy,
Looking forward to hearing how you make out with that interesting and ambitious post 4th practice. And, Thanks a lot for all your posts!

Hey Rev, you're more than welcome! Thank YOU for your posts as well, we're all in this together.

"My main interest right now is Dark Night and helping people navigate it more effectively,"

That, my friend is a wonderful goal. I am pretty sure there are an unimaginable number of people wandering around stuck in the DN. I have many zen friends who are obviously dark night yogis and have no clue how to proceed (me too but I'm starting to get the clue) - they don't even believe in dark night, they just think its their 'stuff' and they can work on it somehow and it will go away.

Well, hopefully something positive will come from it! Personally, I've been torn to shreds by DN over the years and had full-blown psychotic breaks, paranoid delusions and watched my life crumble before me, but only since finding the progress of insight map have I ever been able to consciously navigate through it and accept it for what it is. Even if it's only being able to comment on someone's post and say "Don't fight it, just roll with it and maybe try doing x, y, and/or z to see if it helps" 'cause I know that the territory and possible range of experiences is just too vast to be able to develop anything more than a generalized approach. I'm under no illusions about it, the lessons taught in DN are essential to spiritual progress and we all need to learn from them, but to know that it's possible to navigate through them is incredibly empowering and something which I've rarely seen addressed so directly and efficiently as Kenneth and Daniel, amongst others, have.

I'll still be posting practice notes as I'm not making any outright claims to 4th path until I've spoken to Kenneth and subjected these changes to extensive reality testing. If it's not 4th, so be it, it's not a big deal and I'm still meditating anyway so nothing's changed. Thanks again for your reply's folks, much appreciated.

Hmm - did you have jhana access before path? Im curious but I would like to see someone make a study of people who got path and see what the differences are. I am thinking at this point that being able to go from J1-J4 smoothly should allow for less 'stuckness' in the maps up to 11.

My pre-path history is pretty complicated and I also got 1st path before coming across the Theravadan map which complicates things even further! I practiced magick and yoga for about 10-12 years before finding the DhO, posting a practice thread and having Tarin Greco point out that I was actually going from 4th ñana to Fruition in my sits that I found out I'd gotten stream entry. To complicate things even further, I thought I'd hit nirodha samapatti within about two months of practice (I now think it's more likely that it was a fruition in the arupa jhanas) which completely threw me and led to me taking a complete "back to basics" approach.

Jhana-wise, I had definitely encountered 1-6 before having 1st path confirmed but, again, it's complicated and I didn't realize that many of the yogic techniques such as tratak or dharana were leading to these same states we're calling jhana (I didn't make the connection between jhana and dhyana). Due to the amount of meditation and experimentation I've done, the number of traditions I've practiced within and the fact that I've never worked with a teacher, the water's been muddied and I've confused myself quite a lot since starting out with vipassana last year.

Having jhana undoubtedly makes DN a bit easier, if only as a respite from the harsh vibrations for a while.

Just a quick practice note, I sat for about 50 mins tonight and played with breaking things down into pure vibrations. I was looking at different ways to get to that level (A&P) of perceiving reality quickly and found that the sensation of an itch breaks down really fast, probably because of how fluid and obviously not solid they are. Paying close attention to this allowed me to reliably drop to the bare sensate level and get into 2nd vip. jhana, even when starting from within the rupa jhanas (don't know about the arupa jhanas yet, haven't tested this), within a matter of seconds. I don't know if this same technique will work for anyone else but it might be worth a try, my concentration was strong as I'd started out with a bit of kasina and moved through the jhanic arc up into the PL jhanas and back so this obviously contributed to it's effectiveness.

Metta y''all!

Tommy, Just want to express my appreciation for your thread(s). I've skimmed them today and plan to go back and read more carefully, but feel prepared for stuff to come up. Get a kick out of your experiences with your pets . Also shocked to hear you'd gone off your meds a month or two back--I tapered mine, and even doing it very carefully I almost died. Stay well, Laurel

Thanks very much, Laurel!

Glad to see you're ok now at least!! I hope all's going well for you, I think we briefly chatted on DhO when you started on there so it's great to see you on here. My stopping of the meds was a bit of a silly thing to do, it was interesting but certainly not something I'd recommend to anyone with any sense! Take care of yourself. : )

Practice has been fairly sporadic lately, this recent shenanigans with the AF issue left me angry and frustrated which contributed to my decision to sit yesterday for the first time this week. I may not agree with the outcome of that practice, personally I see it as a dead end which denies the spiritual aspects of life, but I leave people to make their own decisions in life and deal with the consequences. The main thing about that entire debacle which angered me was the influx of fundamentalist AF'ers rubbishing what we choose to do rather than keeping their f*cking noses out and getting on with their own lives. Anyway, rant over. Ha!

For the last week or so I've been dealing with a lot of negative stuff coming to the surface. I've noticed a lot of frustration, anger over really stupid disagreements and other annoying stuff like that combined with a really DN-like tight focus of attention which, more confusingly, instantly flips into this panoramic awareness as soon as I investigate it. What's been really interesting about this is using Kenneths direct mode technique and really being there with it, seeing the direct correlation between mindstate and bodily sensation and being able to constantly bring myself into the moment as it is.

Something I've noticed quite strongly in the last few days is a sense of my body being like a hollow tube which is constantly circulating this energy from the Earth, through the body, out through the head and back in to the heart area in a perpetual loop. In fact, perceiving subtle energies (even stuff as cheesy as auras) has become quite a regular occurence lately which I attribute to having worked a lot more with pure samatha practice. Another side effect of this has been increased instances of lucid dreaming, this is something I worked with pre-vipassana but I've deliberately played with meditating within the dream with some interesting results.

(Cont)

" In fact, perceiving subtle energies (even stuff as cheesy as auras) has become quite a regular occurence lately which I attribute to having worked a lot more with pure samatha practice. "

I've had some observations about auras lately. I was watching a video dharma talk of Anam Thubten last night and saw a strong aura around him. This is the second time I've noticed this happening, the first time was when watching Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche speak in person.

I played around with it a bit last night while it was occurring, and the aura seems to be due to being in open awareness and highly relaxed yet focused on the subject at the same time. Its like I see the colors less and the contrast more around objects. Some attitude of either respect or receptiveness toward the subject may also be an ingredient.

So I don't think its any characteristic of the person themselves other than their attitude and personality may be helping facilitate a more relaxed and receptive attitude.

(Cont)

When I say interesting, it's more that it's been interesting to me as there's a lot of personal symbolism happening which has been quite illuminating when it comes to dealing with the psychological "stuff" which has been rearing it's head of late. I'm going to look more into this in future, but for now I'm going to continue with direct mode, exploring the samatha jhanas and working through each ñana with emphasis on 5th-10th.

Now I mention it, I've also continued exploring Dark Night and keep coming to this same point early in 10th ñana where noting brings me into this weird loop. There's flickers of 6th-9th ñanas (mainly physical tensions w/mental imagery) flying past rapidly but then it all just loops and the only option is to submit to it and let it happen. I get a lot of death related imagery here, not in a fearful sense but more accepting (possibly due to the tinges of 11th ñana coming through?) of the inevitable which causes the whole thing to move into Equanimity.

Other than practice, I'm planning some stuff for this Down to Earth Dharma project and hopefully will manage to get something online within the next two weeks (if I can get After Effects reinstalled!). If anyone's got any ideas of any subjects they'd like to hear discussed then please give me a shout and I'll see if I can figure something out. At first I'm looking at just recording informal chats with other yogis for a real-life perspective on this stuff but I'm hoping to be able to incorporate my post-production skills into this create visual examples, similar to what AugustLeo has done in the past, overlayed onto live video to illustrate points.

Anyway, back to work as I've been jumping on here between calls and will end up getting my ass kicked. Ha!

Metta all 'round,
- Tommy

To be honest, I've never really bothered much with auras and that sort of thing (I have a problem with that sort of fluffy New Age nonsense) but when I have it's usually similar to what you're talking about i.e. more about observing the contrast around the body than colours.

I'd say it's unlikely that you're seeing auras on videos (although I could be wrong), it's more likely that it's just artifacts from the file compression than any sort of energetic activity. I was watching a Shinzen Young videos and could've sworn I could see through his head to the altar behind him! Gotta love that perceptual distortion....

After my earlier rant about AF I wandered into a PCE tonight. Ha!

I was out with the dog, just enjoying the colours and scents in the garden and feeling the fine, cool rain falling on my face when I started using direct mode to ground a tinge of anxiety noted in the chest area. There was a shift into purely sensual experience, no self-referencing and no sense of being, just the pure, immediate and direct experience of things as they are with absolutely nothing in between "me" and "it". All very lovely and selflessly beautiful, but I can't help thinking that it's much more fun just to have that at your disposal than to dwell in it permanently. Ach well, each to their own.

Btw, just to make it quite clear: I ain't interested in becoming AF, I just like exploring different states and modes of experience. To those who are, best of luck to you.

hi tommy!

i have been reading your log for a while but havent posted yet..

can i ask you about your use of ssris? when were you diagnosed with depression? do you find that the medications help you with this?
and how is the meditation influencing your depression?

with lovingkindless,
james.

Hey James,

I was diagnosed with depression when I was about 21 although I'd been dealing with it for a while before that. I had been able to deal with it until that point when it started seriously affecting my life and interfering with my ability to function so I went to the doctors and got put on 20mg fluoxetine. I stayed on those for about six months and then gradually stopped as I felt they were no longer having any effect, and also the symptoms has subsided somewhat and I was able to control them through meditation and other sorts of practices. This pattern continued on and off over the next few years (probably also due to Dark Night, although I didn't recognize it as such at that point) and I stayed off medication altogether for the best part of three years until 2008 when I started back on them again and only now am I reducing my intake again as I no longer feel the need to use them.

Medication helped as it seems to make the typical depressive thought-patterns easier to deal with, they prevented me from dropping below a certain point and getting myself into these loops of thinking. Meditation helps, particularly vipassana, as you're objectifying phenomena and seeing that it's not you, it's transient and it's only this tendency to see things as being a self which creates the main problem. When you stop identifying with sensation the problem stops, and even though the symptoms and emotional states still arise you're no longer involved in them so they can be seen to pass away naturally. Concentration practice is good too as it leads to tranquil states and some lovely blissful stuff, but it doesn't address the root of the problem: Identification.

Hope that helps a bit but feel free to ask whatever you like!

Metta,
- Tommy

hi tommy, thanks for the reply.

what is the 'long term goal' of your practice?
i ask this because i find this issue quite interesting.
would you say it is to remove all the tendency for any negative state, or simply to be ok with those states arising?
i mean like anger, annoyance, sadness, self-rightousness, etc..

I don't really have any long term goals as such with practice itself anymore, other than to continue learning by exploring different states, traditions and practices. I suppose my original goal was to answer the questions which came up when I first had the whole "awakening" thing most people encounter, being able to end my own "suffering" wasn't a massive part of it and my understanding of that has changed dramatically since the start.

These techniques helped me to get an experiential understanding of what those question pointed towards, the process itself radically changed my relationship with states, negative or positive, which now means that these states just arise, pass away and don't cause the same problems as before.

You working with any of these techniques yourself just now? Btw, welcome on board! : )

"I don't really have any long term goals as such with practice itself anymore, other than to continue learning by exploring different states, traditions and practices. I suppose my original goal was to answer the questions which came up when I first had the whole "awakening" thing most people encounter, being able to end my own "suffering" wasn't a massive part of it and my understanding of that has changed dramatically since the start.

These techniques helped me to get an experiential understanding of what those question pointed towards, the process itself radically changed my relationship with states, negative or positive, which now means that these states just arise, pass away and don't cause the same problems as before.

You working with any of these techniques yourself just now? Btw, welcome on board! : )"

wow, i love your answer tommy, its very clear.

about this part "changed my relationship with states, negative or positive, which now means that these states just arise, pass away and don't cause the same problems as before."-

do you ever get angry at your partner? say something mean, insulting, insensitive, etc ?

i am trying to understand why someone would want to explore different states, traditions and practices but without any purpose or meaning of changing one's life and habits for the better..

for me, i practice according to the thai forest tradition, thanks for the warm welcome!

I still get pis*ed off about stuff, no doubt about that, and my partner and I often disagree about different things but the difference is that these things don't "stick". As for saying something mean or insulting, it's not something I do generally and I'd rather ensure that the issue was resolved before it got to that stage anyway. If someone interprets something I say or do as being "mean", "insensitive" or whatever then I'd rather discuss it openly with the hope of making myself clearer as being mean or unpleasant to people is never my intention.

I probably seem rather vague and give the impression that I'm not interested in changing my life, and that of those around me, for the better. That's not the case, words could not express what changes have occurred and how grateful I am for every single moment. My family would testify to these changes, they all notice how much happier I am naturally and how much easier I am to live with. I used to be an angry and bitter man, I treated a lot of people badly in my life due to my selfishness and ignorance but that has all changed and I now value every moment as it arises.

I've solved "my" problem, now I'm interested in helping others which is part of the reason why I'm exploring different traditions. Don't get me wrong, it's partly because I enjoy experiencing other states of consciousness, but I figure that there's a common thread to all spiritual practices and it's that which I'm most interested in. I think that that the Buddha taught the simplest, most straightforward way of seeing things as they are which is why I tend towards these techniques as my bread and butter of meditation. However, as with Kenneth's 3 Gear system, I think that there are many practices from other traditions which might be helpful to some people on their journey so I'd like to be able to explore that more.

" I think that that the Buddha taught the simplest, most straightforward way of seeing things as they are "

ahh.. this is where we see things different..
i was taught, from a very young age, that the buddha taught not only to see things as they are, but to change them from the root, to extinguish the Asavas.
my teacher would always quote to me a sutta that said one needs to destroy and destruct these asavas, which are the kilesas ,mental defilements.

what do you think of this?

I'd agree with you there, that's my understanding also. The Buddha laid it out in simple terms, that's the main point I was getting at.

The difference is probably because I'm not a Buddhist, I enjoy the framework and descriptions within Buddhism but I don't align myself with any specific traditions.

"
The difference is probably because I'm not a Buddhist, I enjoy the framework and descriptions within Buddhism but I don't align myself with any specific traditions. "

ahhh...
you said you solved your problem, but if looking at this through the buddhist teachings, you haven't solved the problem because the 'asavas', mental defilements or kilesas are still manifesting ("I still get pis*ed off about stuff, no doubt about that") , so.. either: 'seeing things as they are' isn't enough to 'solve the problem',or somethings are still not seen deeply enough, no?

also, i was reading through Folk's stuff and he uses the same term ('solved my own problem'), but Folk himself has attained '4th path' long time ago, and only now after alot more practice he says he 'solved his problem' (even though before he also said that, but then found more to do), also on the way it seems he got lost in weird 'Rigpa', something he does not talk about anymore.

so.. thoughts?