beoman journal 2

i watched the 'getting it done' hurricane ranch talk. really good stuff! the ending especially was hilarious. just something exceedingly funny about tarin getting motivation cause he didn't want to be the only unenlightened person there, or dan doing it cause he had 3 weeks before a residency which was like the worst thing for him. intent is important!

fun sit after that. i tried the consciousness taking consciousness (itself) as its object and seem to have succeeded. it was quite interesting. it was like all the things i was watching were watching themselves in a way, or not that they were watching themeslves but that they were the watching at the same time as being the thing. overlaid on this was a sensation of all this intermingled watching altogether, with a light jovial humorous air to it, but that was still a set of reflexive sensations. seems a really good way to get insight into stuff, seems to have led to a bunch of fruitions.

"Hi Claudiu,

I realized I forgot to say hello. You might remember me as AndyR from DHO -- we had a few short conversations regarding some questions I had about stream entry.

Good to see you out here. Enjoying reading your posts.

Andy

"

sup andy! hope all's well

well i feel more or less nice. there's still a tendency to focus in on the head area, and that starts causing pain when it happens, but the tendency is diminishing. it's like now i know there's nothing to be found there, for reals this time. and also if i think about 'who is perceiving this' there's still some sense that perception is over there and there is something perceiving it, which then shifts to the person perceiving that perception, and then shifts again etc., but i stop pretty soon because it seems clear that that's pointless.

no desire to do vipassana and 'find an answer' to whatever or 'see whats really happening' in the way that i did before. but there is intention to figure out the cause+effect of all the various unpleasant things and to stop doing the causes. and also, relaxing is nice, taking deep breaths, etc. i'm learning to do 'longevity breathing' from bruce frantzis's book 'opening the energy gates of the body'. im at the point where my belly expands, and now i focus on breathing around the kidney area. doing this brings up a lot of fear, which bruce mentioned might happen. it's pleasant, though - the fear isn't pleasant, but releasing it, having it subside, then breathing again, is really nice, and it feels like continuing to do this will bring lots of benefit.

generally i feel like something happened with that shift, though nothing extraordinarily significant, but now i've calmed down a lot and i can let processes happen and investigate them in a cautious level-headed way without feeling like there is some answer to something that i dont have.

Sounds interesting, hang with what's happening right now and see how things play out in the upcoming week or so. I'd try to keep a practice schedule going, if only so that you don't become complacent. Fingers crossed bro, I'm rootin' for you. : )

"Sounds interesting, hang with what's happening right now and see how things play out in the upcoming week or so. I'd try to keep a practice schedule going, if only so that you don't become complacent. Fingers crossed bro, I'm rootin' for you. : )"

thanks for the tip! i was getting complacent but i spoke with trent and got good ideas for a daily-life practice. perhaps i'll sit formally too to see what happens. excerpts from the chat:

trent: a sense of shifting implies a series of sensations; which of those in the series is the most gross sensation, and what happens if you look at it really closely?

me: the grossest one keeps shifting -you mean keep tracking the grossest one?

trent: yes.

trent: don't let it get away.

trent: open all of your awareness onto it, like drawing wide open the curtains in a dark room on a sunny day

trent: the most gross sensation is what is most vulnerable / most easily broken down / seen through; if you've got a rock and want to hit a target, and it doesnt matter which you hit, you may as well go for the biggest one

trent: and the point of looking at it is to see that it indeed transitory, unsatisfactory, and subject to dependent origination; looking closely you will see: this is the cause, this is the effect; seeing the cause, seeing the effect, you'll let go. the easiest thing to see is, of course, the most gross sensation
...
trent: does it seem immediately rewarding if you increase the frequency by which you apply that directed intent?

me: yea its basically what i was wanting to do except i was not doing it so directly
...

(after doing that for a bit i noticed that i seemed back where i started - focusing intently on my head - which is what caused a lot of pain in the first place.)

me: i guess i shouldnt look at my head, but i should look at all that is happening as best i can, and from that pick the grossest one each time

trent: you wanna try to do both. keep a lock on to the grossest sensation until it dissolves, then find it again (the next grossest sensation) and so on until there are no gross sensations. and at the same time, give diligent attention to all of the senses all at once, which is senuousness / ardency

trent: this might give you the impression of playing whack-a-mole. where the moles are the grossest sensation, and the mallet is senuousness

trent: its like the grossest sensation gets '˜mashed' into a wall of solid sense clarity

---

basically this seems in line with my goal which was to do something about the annoying sensations in my head. this seems a good way to do that. it also helps A LOT that i don't think there's anything 'special' or 'interesting' there that it's worth slowly drilling a painful mental hole into my head to find.

Boom. Trent nailed it right there. Make it happen.

oo neat i realized i am not my perception. mind can be inclined towards a certain area, and more perception will occur there, but it's not 'me' that is perceiving different things.

it also seems like the self is really good at distracting you. like i try to perceive sensations on my leg and a sensation of the self keeps butting in taking up bandwidth.

Objectification is the entire game, Claudiu. What was previously taken as subject is seen as object. This is an iterative process; it keeps happening at ever more subtle levels until everything in the experiential field is seen as object. Since "I" can never be an object (if there is an "I", it must be the one who is looking) and since EVERYTHING within experience can be seen as an object, there is no "I" to be found.

To objectify everything is to see that everything has equal status; it's all phenomena, including those sensations, thoughts, and mental impressions that come together to create the mirage of "I". When everything within experience has equal status, you are free.

You can do this in a very systematic and structured way. Every time you identify a new subsystem of selfing, you can deliberately target it with your attention. You will see that sometimes the subsystem in question operates and sometimes it does not. Having identified this binary situation, you can devise a binary practice: "Am I self referencing? Yes or no." You will see that sometimes the answer is "yes" and sometimes it is "no." When the answer is "yes," there is suffering. When the answer is "no," there is peace.

All you have to do is continue to juxtapose suffering and not-suffering in this way. The mind does the rest automatically. Like a rat in a maze, like a carrot and a stick, this is pure Skinnerian conditioning. There is nothing mystical-shmystical about it, so even those of us with a more rational bent can become free in this lifetime.

Keep on keepin' on!

"You can do this in a very systematic and structured way. Every time you identify a new subsystem of selfing, you can deliberately target it with your attention. You will see that sometimes the subsystem in question operates and sometimes it does not. Having identified this binary situation, you can devise a binary practice: "Am I self referencing? Yes or no." You will see that sometimes the answer is "yes" and sometimes it is "no." When the answer is "yes," there is suffering. When the answer is "no," there is peace.

All you have to do is continue to juxtapose suffering and not-suffering in this way. The mind does the rest automatically. Like a rat in a maze, like a carrot and a stick, this is pure Skinnerian conditioning. There is nothing mystical-shmystical about it, so even those of us with a more rational bent can become free in this lifetime.

Keep on keepin' on!"

thanks for the tips! i feel this is just what i'm doing with the type of attention trent's advice points to. the grossest sensation is usually some subsystem of the self - so far these have been mostly localized in the head region though they come up over the body when a stronger emotion comes about. though once the emotion fades, the head sensation comes back into focus. observing it as such i notice that thoughts or emotions or intentions might arise which are followed by a hardening of that sensation. i can then find the cause of that tightening - some desire usually - and see its effect - the tightening - and seeing that i can see it's not necessary and then it ceases... to be replaced by another subsystem immediately after, hehe. got to keep at it.

today my impression shifted from that of this being a never-ending selfing process that happens randomly and that i'm at the mercy of, to one of this being a finite set of things that happen for specific reasons, which i can identify and eliminate.

"Objectification is the entire game, Claudiu. What was previously taken as subject is seen as object. This is an iterative process; it keeps happening at ever more subtle levels until everything in the experiential field is seen as object. Since "I" can never be an object (if there is an "I", it must be the one who is looking) and since EVERYTHING within experience can be seen as an object, there is no "I" to be found.

To objectify everything is to see that everything has equal status; it's all phenomena, including those sensations, thoughts, and mental impressions that come together to create the mirage of "I". When everything within experience has equal status, you are free.

"

my conception of what a 'self' is is changing. before i thought that there was some special thing to find, something i couldn't see, and that would be the answer - but now i think that that was just a perceptual gap; nothing to find there.

now there is still clearly a self. some set of sensations is more important than another in that a really painful itch is more 'important' than a less painful one. i'd rather eat filet mignon than gravel.

i like the term 'dependently originated' instead of no-self or selfless or happening-on-its-own. it's weird. it's like there is this set of sensations - which are objects, since i am looking at them - and i don't take them to be 'me' in a way i might have before - so it's like it's just a process that happens to cause suffering. on the other hand i realize it is 'me', so it's in a sense both personal and impersonal at the same time.

it seems that whenever there's something 'wrong', that's the self. if i'm sitting and meditating and i want perception to expand and it doesn't and that annoys me - that's cause perception is not 'me' and it's not malleable in that particular way that the self wants it to be. it is dependent on causes and conditions; setting up the proper causes and conditions, the perception can happen; not setting up the proper causes and conditions but thinking one has, or wanting to without doing it, and expecting the result, causes suffering.

seems like another look at the 5 aggregates is in order. volition is one of the aggregates - volition is not 'me' in the same way that perception is not 'me'. but there is a great tendency to latch onto volition as if it is 'me' willing something. i think i am slowly teasing apart what is a self-contraction and what is volition, though. intent is volition. desire is self-contraction. sometimes when i intended in the past, i self-contracted and thought that intending is painful. now i am seeing the difference.

all this being said, this morning, it did seem like insight disease was back. started worrying about whether i missed something, what to do, oh no not this again, heh. however after being caught up in it for a few moments i was able to see it as also just another process - a painful one that i should seek to stop (via a method like kenneth's or trent's) but still a process.

"Objectification is the entire game, Claudiu. What was previously taken as subject is seen as object. This is an iterative process; it keeps happening at ever more subtle levels until everything in the experiential field is seen as object. Since "I" can never be an object (if there is an "I", it must be the one who is looking) and since EVERYTHING within experience can be seen as an object, there is no "I" to be found.
...
You can do this in a very systematic and structured way. Every time you identify a new subsystem of selfing, you can deliberately target it with your attention. You will see that sometimes the subsystem in question operates and sometimes it does not. Having identified this binary situation, you can devise a binary practice: "Am I self referencing? Yes or no." You will see that sometimes the answer is "yes" and sometimes it is "no." When the answer is "yes," there is suffering. When the answer is "no," there is peace."

actually, a question. you seem to recommend two things here - objectification, and the stopping of painful processes. the latter requires the former, as without observing the processes one cannot ascertain how they arise and pass, their cause and effect, but it seems that the former does not automatically lead to the latter - you can objectify but let the processes (that are of equal status, even though you might prefer filet mignon to gravel as Dan Ingram put it =P) happen.

is this accurate or am i missing something?

i think i'm still obsessed a bit about what practice gets one to 4th path and what practice one does after 4th, so this is why i ask. i hear self-referencing continues after 4th, tho it is experienced differently, so the 1st practice is a get-to-4th-path one (objectify) and the 2nd is a reduce-suffering-pre-or-post-4th-path one (cease self-referencing).

i did sit a bit last night and meditate while lying down. interesting stuff:

* noticed i am not perception (mentioned earlier)
* better understanding of how intent works. i was lying down, everything was really buzzy and chaotic (i was trying to go to sleep so being purposefully dull a bit). then i figured something like (not in so many words): 'hey this is all going on in perception, what if i try to see it clearly?' and it all instantly crystallized.
* neat fruition where i was staring at a particular aspect of my head-sensation. staring staring staring, then suddenly a sensation of 'me' arising instantly on the other side, staring, through the head-sensation, at 'me' on this side, immediately vanishing right after into a fruition.
* neat fruition where was just staring at stuff and then it felt like the upper-left-back corner of my perception was yanked backward a bit, then snapped back in a fruition
* neat fruition where suddenly a process started going 'rat-at-at-at-at-at-at-at' and somewhere in the rat-at-ats there was a fruition.
* interesting how different techniques produce different results. like doing more noting-style stuff that i have been doing, open awareness, results in fruitions. doing the open-attentiveness-looking-at-grossest-sensation results in really interesting insights into those processes which don't necessarily entail fruitions.
* i tried doing a microcosmic orbit and was able to move stuff through the chakras. i'd bring my attention to a chakra, then stuff would gather there, there would be what felt like a fruition, then stuff would move on. however it doesn't feel like it resolved anything or made progress in any way, though it felt nice at the time.

Love your descriptions of fruitions, that's something I really need to work with more 'cause they just happen and I don't really bother too much which was which.

I had quite a heavy DN in the lead-up to feeling done with this thing, what I've realized since then is that it's like a final clear-up of what's still left to be seen through so it could be worthwhile really staying with that suffering for the moment and watching what's still getting preferential treatment i.e. pretending it's you.

When you're doing that stuff with the chakras, pay attention to that fruition feeling 'cause I don't know that there's a proper cessation when that blockage is released. It's not a bad thing 'cause it's really interesting to pay attention to how the energy within the body changes in feel immediately after each shift, I sometimes get some really deep insights appearing in that instant.

Almost there man, it's right there in front of you. And behind you, And beside you. And.....lol.

"Almost there man, it's right there in front of you. And behind you, And beside you. And.....lol."

yea darn insight disease seems back. want to hurt something

"yea darn insight disease seems back. want to hurt something"

well at least sitting and noting gets me out of the dark night and into equanimity! always nice. seems like i getting good access to equanimity now, just have to really see wtf is going on

interesting stuff yo. went to kenneth's class, which consisted of kenneth's take on AF (which was interesting though i wanted to go into it a bit more in-depth as i think the points he made needed more support, but anyway this is a practice thread), and his current development (working no having default mode be 'no-narrative'). during the while i was having really painful/annoying sensations in the head, noting them noting them, lots of resistance to them, etc.

came back home. i had been resolving to just get this done by the end of yesterday, telling myself its ok to do it , to let myself do it, etc. i sat down for three 30-min sessions. in each one it seems i got into nice equanimity. i tried taking the instruction of taking consciousness as an object, and, well i felt really conscious, like i was observing a lot happening, that i was getting fruitions pretty constantly (though not very clear ones) and just going 'what am i missing? why is this sensation more important than that?', which didnt seem to be doing much. before the 3rd session i re-read nick's practice notes of what he did, which was basically that, though he also threw in statements (this sensation is not better than that). for the 3rd sit i tried doing that, actually seeing them as not different, which shifted the perspective a bit. i had a really neat shift which i thought was it, where it was a two-part thing, at first it started, went half-way, then stopped, then went all the way. it was like the whole field of vision was filled with tendrils from the periphery going inside, appearing + disappearing right away. 'was that it?' i wondered. the pain in the head subsided, but started coming back quickly. then i debated with myself whether to keep meditating or relax. eventually i decided to get up and relax, with 1 min left.

went and watched family guy. came back, lied down, meditated some more. along the same approach. then a really interesting thing happened. it basically came into really clear focus how some sensation in the head was set up. there was a thin tendril, like a string, coming from somewhere in the head and going to the top, connected to a blob of sensation on top. i felt like a disc of nothingness (of awareness) started to cut it from right to left. i made some volitional inclination of some kind to just move that disc all over and cut it, and it seemed like the disc went from left to right and that the tie between top blob sensation and thin tendril sensation was cut. they were just separate sensations - nothing fundamentally connected about them.

felt pretty nice after that one. i was scared to investigate stuff cause i wanted to be done and if i investigated and i didnt seem done that would suck and i felt nice, but i allowed myself to look at a few things. notable things were: had some fruitions or insights involving the center point itself, which made it really seem like i understood it to just be another set of sensations. center point even shifted around in the visual field. another was when i scanned my body from top to bottom to try to relax the energy - at some point it felt like the scanning paassed by where 'i' am. so that means 'i' am somewhere in the neck there, and i must be looking vertically up, and when the awareness passes over i look vertically down. yet, when not doing that, tis like im looking horizontally outward. so i realized that its a completely arbitrary distinction and neither is 'correct', it's just sensations.

also interesting is that observing a sphere of awareness around me seems more complete. its like there were some hidden spots, mostly looking backwards, that i wasn't really quite able to perceive properly before, but now it's much easier to. though then i also realized the 'sphere' is just a set of sensations too, and i wasn't really holding it all in awareness at once.

painful sensations in head massively massively reduced now, though they start up a little. i think what they were is basically looking for that center point by contracting inward. but now it reaaaaally seems like there isn't one, so it seems a useless process. will see how it plays out

---

i propose a 3-path model for the technical model, based on mazlow's competence thing (since kenneth mentioned it at the talk i thought about it =P). it's 'competence of seeing anatta'
unconscious incompetence - regular run-of-the-mill person
conscious incompetence - 1st path to 2nd path. you know that there is no self but you really can't see it too well except when you fruition
conscious competence - 3rd path. something flips and you can tune into anatta real-time, though the default (and even when concentrating) you sink into some duality
unconscious competence - something flips, and anatta is now the default.

"it basically came into really clear focus how some sensation in the head was set up. there was a thin tendril, like a string, coming from somewhere in the head and going to the top, connected to a blob of sensation on top. i felt like a disc of nothingness (of awareness) started to cut it from right to left. i made some volitional inclination of some kind to just move that disc all over and cut it, and it seemed like the disc went from left to right and that the tie between top blob sensation and thin tendril sensation was cut. they were just separate sensations - nothing fundamentally connected about them.
"

hehe i wonder if i just performed brain surgery on myself, the thin tendril being the brainstem and the big blob being the rest of the brain.

well though at the start of the day there weren't many head-sensations, they slowly crept up over the past hour or two. it seems (and ive realized this before) that thinking im done causes them to subside, but when i dont think im done they arise.. which is really frickin annoying. =P

so i was compelled to sit just now. somewhere mid-sit i noticed that i was looking as if from 'here' into somewhere else in an unseen front for an answer. i decided to instead try seeing everything happening as causal, which kind of shifted it to me 'back here' looking at stuff happening over there in a seen front, which seems a better perspective.

think i had a fruition, a minor one, (or maybe just a blip), then shortly after that a shift, also seemed minor, no blip, nothing really moved or blinked in and out but it was like what i was seeing was replaced by the same thing only a little different (reminded me of my entrance to 3rd path), which was immediately followed by tons of fast vibrating visual field and increase in energy - hadn't gotten such a sudden shift in a while. kept going, not sure if things are different or not

i did notice while sitting down that thoughts seem emptier in a way. like i was sitting and then something was annoying so i noted 'scathing', but after the fact it seemed like i had completely seen the annoying thing arising + the 'scathing' thought (which in the moment i mistook for 'me' thinking that) as something that had just happened.

i read Owen (i think) saying that kenneth finished 4th path by hanging out in 'the white light'. anyone know which light that is? i do notice how in this equanimity, seeing everything as causal, taking it all as object, a white light does pervade

hmm well, starting to see all sensations as sensations. the suffering-indicating ones are just sensations, too! no need to react so much to them.

few things i've noticed:
* useful to contemplate 'what is causing the suffering?' this prevents me from raging all-out as when the raging starts to happen it is noticed as a little thing.
* useful to contemplate the arising & passing of everything, together with the question 'what is knowing this?' and noticing how it happens on its own.
* it seems like there is nothing 'out there' that im missing. no special sensation that i will find that will cause this to unravel. so that means there isn't anything to look for in that way. which means all i have to look at is what i'm actually looking at!
* experience starts off rough, then it gets nice and calm, then it goes back to being rough but layered on top of calm. i used to think i would cycle to equanimity then re-cycle on top of the equanimity layer (cycles in cycles), but now i wonder if i just get into a nice jhana (not sure which - 2nd or 4th). certainly helps

"i read Owen (i think) saying that kenneth finished 4th path by hanging out in 'the white light'. anyone know which light that is? i do notice how in this equanimity, seeing everything as causal, taking it all as object, a white light does pervade"

Kenneth should be able to answer I do get a white light sometimes, just a tiny flash, in or around fruition, it seems to be the moment when something is resolved, is that it? I was never able to extend it though...