beoman journal 2

"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..."

it's just that this equanimous state i'm in is generally tinged white or blue-ish.

i know what you mean about the white flash. i thought it was a fruition first, now i think it's just an A&P into dissolution (which i think ive mistaken for fruition a bunch), but maybe it happens around some fruitions too sometimes

mm what aaam i missing? just getting bored in equanimity now. so much of it, never seems to end. that is a cue i can up the energy though, which seemed to push it into a fruition.. but no shift after fruition, left me feeling like i missed something

"mm what aaam i missing? just getting bored in equanimity now. so much of it, never seems to end. that is a cue i can up the energy though, which seemed to push it into a fruition.. but no shift after fruition, left me feeling like i missed something "

I'm really going for dispassion. If I'm bored, I'm not dispassionate.

Also I'm checking out the white light thing. For me it is like energy accumulating in the third-eye chakra, turning soft and blissy, and there will be white flashes.

"For me it is like energy accumulating in the third-eye chakra, turning soft and blissy, and there will be white flashes."

I get what you're talking about here, Bruno. Do you find these flashes appear in quite a panoramic way rather than that sort of centralized light noticed around the A&P?

it seems attention isnt 'me', either. it moves without 'me' wanting to, all the time! this should have been obvious with the way jhanas work, i suppose.

i've been trying to cultivate mindfulness. i take not-mindful to be when my mind just wanders off or i'm distracted, and mindful is simply when my thoughts are together and i am keeping track of my attention in some way. it's actually really palpable. what's interesting is that in the 'mindful' state i get a sense of 'me' being mindful, of 'me' as a benign entity carefully watching things. it feels like 'me', like who-i-am, to a very personal degree.

not sure what it is. or what mindfulness is, or what attention is, really. it is fascinating to investigate, though

man my body starts pulsating with heat when i sit down and meditate. waves of heat all over. as soon as i stop it dies down, to the point where i'm chilly before and after (AC'ed room) but too hot during. anyone else notice this?

i'm starting to get the sense that meditating is like a power. like i just incline my mind and i start feeling chi, or space starts shifting, or visual field starts shifting, interesting things come up, etc. it's kind of cool in a way and also kind of ordinary in another.

I also get the body heating up when I sit sometimes.. I usually take off my shirt at the beginning of sittings due to this, hehe!
Heat is fine, but I cant stand the intense energy going through my feet when I go to bed nowadays :/

I decided to try Kenneth's binary approach, but with each of the 7 factors of enlightenment. I didn't focus on just one at a time but kind of mixed - not sure if single-focus would be better, but possibly. When I was focusing on each one, though, I'd incline the mind towards the factor, and then note as often as I could any minute difference in that factor. e.g., with joy, I first noted not-joy, not-joy. then i felt a bit of warmth somewhere in my body, i noted joy, then it faded, not-joy. soon more warmth came, chest started feeling nice, joy, joy, when that faded a bit, not-joy, etc. i don't have to do anything besides notice and the mind inclination does the rest.

basically i would try to notice the lack of any factor, and if so, spend a little time with it. joy i already mentioned. mindfulness - if my mind was wandering into past or present or conceptual thought, not-mindful, not-mindful. when on the present moment and focused, mindful. equanimity - when feeling an emotion or pain and i noticed that i was spiraling into feeling it more, not-equanimous, not-equanimous. when i was not being pulled by it - equanimous. tranquility - when unpleasant states arose, like an emotion or pain, not-tranquil. when unpleasant state diminished, tranquil. i distinguish this from equanimity in that equanimity is a not-spiraling-into the unpleasant state, and tranquility is its absence. energy - when feeling sluggish or reluctant, no-energy. when bright and alter, energy. concentration i didn't actually work with, nor investigation of reality - i don't think those are quite lacking yet.

after doing this for a bit i got into some really really pleasant state, which i took to be when they were in relative harmony, for a few seconds here and there. i suspect if i work on it more that will happen more often, and that state seems a wonderful platform for launching into investigation of reality.

interesting sit last night. was able to tune into the sensations in my head and actually make them switch from rough, vibrating, unpleasant blobs, to calm smooth pretty blobs. as they went back to unpleasant, i noticed it and took it to pleasant. might have been the border between re-obs and equanimity.

it was much easier to observe them (or be the observing of them =P) when they were like that. and then energy channels started opening up in my head, some very subtly (meaning there wasn't much blockage there probably), others more roughly. but whenever it opened i was able to stabilize it. this is essentially what i used to do before except i would really really really force it through and cause lots of pain. much better this way!

interesting that as i went further up, at each point (there were a lot of points), i would start having some amazingly clinging thoughts about practicing and about 'me', and they seemed so real. yet when i was able to let it go it disappeared and i realized it was just another channel opening.

i tried to get it to go all the way up and then back down to the heart, and maybe i succeeded, but not sure. has anybody actually gotten 4th path that way - by actually seeking to complete the circuit? i ask cause i have felt i completed the circuit that way before, ending in a fruition, but no 4th path shift. what i was doing now with this flavor of energy, though, felt different. essentially it seems the sensations in my head are blockages, and unblocking them sounds like a good idea

also had my most terrifying fruition yet. i was just nodding off, falling asleep, some idle thoughts wandering, imagining a robot talking or a newspaper being read with words, or something, then i immediately and viscerally realized that that voice that was reading the words was ME! then a fruition (i think). it felt so WRONG..

noted for 30 minutes. stuff that happened:

immediately got some sense of spaciousness-spaciousness. noting in-breaths and out-breaths. very quickly the pressure in my head grew really really intense, noted pressure-unpleasant pressure-unpleasant. this time it wasn't in the middle fo the brain area but around my cheekbones. pressure-unpleasant, really quite unpleasant. noted lots of practice-thoughts and where-i-am-thoughts. lots of mental chatter about where i might actually be on the path, which i figured out that i should also just note and that it didn't really matter that i was thinking it.

some mild bliss at some point.

at some point i got very OK with the pressure being there. it seemed to recede in the background though there it was. later on i started noting how there seemed to be blips of intention hardening-softening it in various places.

visually not much going on, except light wisps of blue-white color. sometimes was a ring of white around my periphery , after that was just general blue-whiteness. at some point the background seemed to fill in with colored points and shapes, and then it started wavering around and breaking down.

lots of little jolts in this area in which i'd be looking at something, then there'd be like a jolt or reset and i'd realize that the looking at something was also an object.

interesting thing at one point where i noticed blip-blip-blips of attention focusing in on various parts of the visual field

Yep, I know exactly what you mean about that sort of fruition. The same thing happened to me a few months back and scared me sh*tless, I thought I'd done something really, really wrong!

interesting sit last nite. started off with really intense cheek-pressure again. noted lots and lots of unpleasant stuff (noting during the day, the vedana-note would almost always be 'unpleasant'). the room was completely dark and there wasn't much going on visually at all, just darkness, which felt like it was taking shapes at some point.

as i noted more i got finer details on the pressure and it seemed to break up into little blips of pressure, still relatively coarse, but at least blips and not an entire thing.

then i decided to tune into selflessness and drop the noting, but just see the selfless (happening-on-its-own/causal) aspects of experience. was quite fascinating. the pressure lost its edge and it was just things happening. then i was able to observe how attention is drawn in, looks at a particular thing, then draws back, all selfless without me doing anything. it turns out that 'i' am not necessary at all for investigation! it was fun to just watch the investigation happening.

every few seconds here i'd have kind of a jolt where an aspect would reveal itself as selfless whereas before i was taking myself to be that aspect. got very airy here. sit ended without much ado.

man i think i really getting the hang of 2nd gear. i think it's what i used to do when getting jhanas really nicely, but i didn't recognize it as such. basically now i can sit and tune into the 'me-ness' of it, just being the thing that's watching everything. so everywhere i look, it's just me watching! it's like such a wonderfully delightful state. but not in the sense of jhanic bliss, more in the sense of wonder and delight.

from here got into some interesting absorptive states. the main one was where its like i hooked onto the entire visual field, was the whole field, and there was a vast sphere in the center, along with edges to it. it was interesting cause the edges were remarkably well-defined, and the sphere was, as well. maybe 3rd jhana?

from here it was then like i could step into the middle of the visual field, go into it more. it became really insubstantial, kind of like a veil, and i felt i could part it. i might have gone through it and out the other side with a fruition in the cross-over point but i'm not confident enough to say, for sure.

it seems like if i hang out here long enough, making sure to pay attention to that sense of being there instead of being blind to it, then lots of interesting things will happen.

i also feel like i can access that delightful quality to it with eyes open

ah the whoel field is causal! even that annoying tstuff in the middle!

whatever is happening is happening now. whatever truth i find - i find it now. the only input i can ossibly get is from my day to day experience.

and it's the entire field.

THE KNOWING. THE *#($%(*# KNOWING! that **** is also causal, also not 'me'.

and consciousness. awareness. wtf is it? it's not an entity being aware.. it's just this self-reflective delightfully aware system that is aware of itself.. and that is wonderful.

and then there's this 'me' gunking up the works, have to get rid of that one

haha most awesome type of fruition, ever. just eyes closed, meditating. an image of me appears somewhere in my visual field, along with a light switch, and flicks it back and forth. fruition happens with the flicking. its like a part of my brain has been snagged. then it's clear that before the fruition, i felt like 'i' was flicking the light switch, myself, causing it to happen - after it's seen that it just happened on its own, and that neither point of view is technically 'wrong' as the same thing happened either way

4th? Maybe? Hopefully?

"4th? Maybe? Hopefully?"

Not to be a wet blanket, but let's not be too eager to jump to conclusions, EndInSight. We don't have nearly enough info to diagnose this yet.

(If we get into the habit of endorsing people as 4th Path every time they have an deep insight, our gold KFD 4th Path lapel pins will become worthless.) ;-D

Seriously, though, I think a community has to maintain its integrity, and we do that be keeping high standards and waiting for evidence as best we can.

Kenneth

Of course, I agree with you, Kenneth. My intent was actually just to ask what beoman thought, not to offer my own opinion about what he described. (Except for "hopefully"; I think I can say that we all hope that each of us attains insight as quickly as possible.)

"Of course, I agree with you, Kenneth. My intent was actually just to ask what beoman thought, not to offer my own opinion about what he described. (Except for "hopefully"; I think I can say that we all hope that each of us attains insight as quickly as possible.)"

oh hehe, i thought it was rhetorical =P.

too early to say. the fruition i mentioned, i just mentioned, cause i thought it was cool - it itself wasn't the shift. i am getting lots of neat insights, though, and seems easier to get into really really far EE mode.

hmm well my reason to pursue 4th was: so i wouldn't want to anymore (no insight problem). to make sure i'm not missing anything. and to make it easier to pursue AF.

now: i'm really handy with EE. not quite PCE but i get to places i might have considered PCE before. i don't desire to seek 4th path anymore. basically i dont feel like i'm missing out.

so regardless of whether i got 4th or not, i will no longer be pursuing it! =)