first ever practice journal!

My gratitude towards Kenneth exceeds all bounds, because I would never have gotten to this point without his keen and insightful eye, and this is perhaps the most important and pivotal point in my entire life. Even though we no longer see eye-to-eye about what the goal of spirituality is.

Other than that, my practice is sort of discontinuous with what came before. Most of the direct mode experiences / EEs that I attained and described in previous entries are no longer very interesting to me and I no longer try to categorize or record them when they happen. Life is some strange fluctuation between regular experience, EEs which push the bounds of what I thought I could ever reasonably be expected in daily life, and the miscellaneous direct mode stuff that I described previously which now seems quite close to regular experience in comparison. The EEs give me a sense that the world is a magical place filled with wonder and profound richness, though they don't always last long. Regular experience, by contrast, is...unremarkable.

I do recognize in these powerful EEs that the wonderfulness of the senses is contorting the remaining affect into some strange forms. I don't recognize some of the subtle emotions that occur in the EEs. They appear to be extremely desirable albeit foreign and hard to describe, and I have to remind myself to turn towards the senses and away from the affect, and sometimes have trouble seeing which is which fast enough and decisively enough to prevent the EE from degenerating into some kind of maudlin, beautiful feeling. This seems to be the cutting edge of my practice.

Sounds beautiful. Those sort of experiences certainly have some sort of gravitational pull and really seem to validate themselves in terms of worth.

Quick update on recent practice.

I was spending time with some friends having dinner on a porch, and noticed that I was sliding towards a PCE. The most distinctive character of the onset was this increasing sense that the senses were not coming in contact with "me," but somehow going through "me," and I had a strange kind of worry about whether I really could handle this kind of closeness (which passed). The final experience itself was 95% of the way to a PCE, and gave me some clearer insight into what's going on with that mode of perception. The senses are just there, but with almost all of "being" gone, the best way to describe what it's like as some kind of lovemaking between the universe and itself...not in a sexual or loving sense, but in terms of the utter intimacy between the senses as part of this world without 'me' to stand in between.

It reminded me of the famous Dogen quote, "enlightenment is intimacy with all things," which seems pretty apt.

The strangest thing was that at one point it dawned on me that if this state stayed, or if it deepened into a full PCE, and experience was always like that, it really *would* be the end of 'me' and of all perception of self and dualism. And then I had the thought "perhaps that would be bad, no one being in control of experience" and the near-PCE faded into normal perception rather quickly.

This is utterly different than other states that are supposed to be instance in which there's no self and no dualism. The few experiences I've had with "rigpa" (3rd gear outside of DM) are that the experience has a kind of ineffable, mystical character, and that character is so fascinating that there is no worry about 'me' and my fate. (cont)

Rigpa doesn't undermine 'me' but absorbs 'me' into some kind of higher and seemingly more fundamental perspective. So in rigpa there's no basis for a worry about whether I'll be gone forever. The PCE gives no support to the sense of self and threatens to cut it off, and so the underlying psychological tendencies (in this case delusion and aversion) can manifest and put an end to that mode of perception. It looks like some kind of psychological work needs to be done to stabilize it from here.

Apart from that...it strikes me that AF has so dominated the discourse on the PCE that people may be turned away from it. Richard's metaphors may be good ones but don't strike a chord with me in terms of characterizing this experience in ways that will make sense to others. There is so much that can be said about it (and perhaps has been said about it) in religious terms, and perhaps writing about that (in the future) may help people to see that it doesn't have to be the antithesis of all spiritual goals. "Cosmic lovemaking" really is apt in a way. Not between the universe and me, not going on inside of me, not in the process of me merging with the universe, but as the true nature of what everything is, whether or not "I" block the view of it.

This is just a personal reflection, but I hope that someone may be able to relate to it.

I always had an inclination towards spirituality but for most of my life could never see anything in any of the religions or mystical traditions that I knew about which related to what drew me towards spirituality. What drew me towards it was some kind of intuition that there is some other way of seeing things, some other way of viewing the dreary everyday world of ours, which would somehow reveal the Divine (though I would not have used that term)...either within it, or as a part of it, or as it. I had had various experiences in which I saw, in some imperfect and incomplete way, that there was something worth being called Divine, but whatever it was, it was something that was Divine only because of HOW IT MANIFESTED. The manifestation itself, its apparent qualities, was what had to be Divine about it. It was the qualities themselves in which the sacred was bound up.

Looking at various religions, I saw various reasons to dismiss them. Doctrines about personal gods seemed to have no bearing on my conception of spirituality at all. Many eastern traditions seemed promising at first, but I would later recognize that the most common realization that seemed to underlie its forms was not just irrelevant, but abhorrent to me. To declare that the world of manifestation is unreal or illusory was to miss everything whatsoever that could be good about it. To declare that God exists and nothing else does (as Ramana Maharshi says) seemed like nothing more than an attempt to bury oneself in some bizarre state of consciousness. Nirguna Brahman, the formless qualityless void through which all manifestation is seen to be unreal, was something that was easier to conceive of as an abomination rather than an object of mystical awe. (cont)

Other traditions sang a sweeter tune, but I could never fully relate to any talk about a Buddha Nature or an essence of mind or Awareness that was pure and unstained and *not identical with manifestation* no matter how inseparable it was. All that I ever saw was manifestation. Perhaps there was something good outside of it, but how would I know in advance of seeing it? And perhaps there was something good underlying manifestation albeit bound up with it, but in my honest moments I knew that I had never seen any such thing and whatever first interested me about spirituality could not have been that. I had no otherworldly inclinations whatsoever and felt that being oriented towards anything other than what was here was a rejection of this world and of life and of whatever I intuited must be worthwhile and hoped one day to have eyes to see. If I looked at Eastern texts, I could find things that I could relate to, but I had to pick-and-choose, probably chewing through the original meaning, such as

"That Supreme Self is fire; It is the sun; It is the wind; It is the moon. That Self is the luminous stars; It is the source of all; It is water...You are woman, You are man; You are youth and maiden too. You are an old man tottering along with a staff; it is You alone who, when born, assumes diverse forms. You are the dark blue bee; You are the green parrot with red eyes; You are the thundercloud, the seasons and the seas. You are beginningless and all-pervading. From You all the worlds are born." -Shvetashvatara Upanishad

What value could a creator have if it were other than the creation itself? (cont)

I remember one time, when I spontaneously had an experience that seemed to reveal Divinity in all its glory, a thought dropped over the whole thing, like angels carrying a religious banner written in Latin in the old classical paintings, and it said: "THIS IS THE ABSOLUTE." But as I looked around, I found no such thing. Where was the formless, qualityless Nirguna Brahman? Where was the ground of being? I could see no ground, not even a ground inextricably bound up with things...just being, manifestation, an explosion of characteristics, a cornucopia of forms, wonderful beyond measure, and wonderful precisely in its unimaginable diversity. So I put that thought aside as my mind's attempt to relate this to some mystical nonsense I read in the past. I didn't even know what "the absolute" meant; so how could it apply to this experience?

Fast-forwarding to today, through many confused years of searching...what blinders I must have been wearing. In the PCE I see that all the mystical phrases I might have used or that I might have thought had anything to do with reality--the Absolute, the Dream of God, the Unconceptualizable, that which transcends all boundaries, the Ineffable, the Glory of the Divine--are just referring to this. These qualities, in this universe, perceived by this body. This unbelievable dance of richness and subtlety. All manifestation and *nothing else whatsoever*. THIS IS THE ABSOLUTE.

What a wonder, to see that the Absolute is nothing more than the play of my senses. Samsara is nirvana.

I wrote all that because all of Richard's talk about "being," affectlessness, the actual world, something that is 180 degrees opposite of spirituality etc. are fine as they are, but come from his very particular background, which had a long period of being immersed in what he considers in retrospect to be a delusion, which (at the time) he used traditional religious and mystical language to describe. If you haven't had his experiences, you might not relate to his rejection of the language that you're used to and to the new language that is particular to him. I sure didn't.

I don't see the PCE and whatever it leads to as being 180 degrees opposite of spirituality. The traditional language of various forms of Buddhism fit it just fine. Saguna Brahman? Maybe. I expect that a person more versed in world religions could find many mystical descriptions that fit it. And with this comes the recognition that many (albeit not all) spiritual paths probably *are* talking about it.

In a way, it doesn't matter whether the PCE and religion and mysticism and different paths and whatever are related. It is what it is. Each person will decide for themselves what it's worth to them on its own merits. Some who have it will pursue it, and others who have it won't. But I hope this might give people who are otherwise baffled by actualist language and have never had a PCE some idea of why they might want to see what it's like and why it might be related to their practice and to the reasons they began a practice in the first place.

Practice update. Regular life seems utterly neutral. I have no significant desires towards or away from anything. I just go through the motions. It's been like that more or less ever since the first PCE I described here. It could be a phase. It could be related to the fact that I no longer regard pleasure as anything especially desirable, and that disregard causes a kind of all-pervading disinterest in seeking it out. It could be the attainment of 10-fetter anagami (when sensual desire and ill-will are gone, what motivation is left?), which may or may not have anything to do with Kenneth's 6th (or 7th?) stage of enlightenment, or which may or may not have anything to do with attaining a full PCE (these being the only reasons I would imagine myself as a 10-fetter anagami).

In any case, it's not bad at all. Neither is it good. It's very bland.

Any time that I look, I see "being" (affect), and see how it's standing in the way of the PCE, and simultaneously regard it as something I would be better off without, AND something that allows me to pretend to be able to hide from sensory experience. After my last PCE I have a kind of instinctive recoil from too much intimacy with the senses, which makes no rational sense, but so it seems to be. If the senses are starting to become too intimate, I can throw up "being" in between it all and not have to worry about the closeness. This isn't a way of recoiling from unpleasantness, but from the PCE itself. Very strange. I'm not used to dealing with this kind of psychological crap either, so I'm not sure how to handle it. I think it comes from some kind of affective distortion over the memory of the last PCE; absolutely nothing was wrong with the experience, but some time afterwards, my memory of it took on a ghastly aspect, as if the rawness of the senses was too much for 'me' to want to repeat.

I had some back-and-forth with myself over whether it was worth it to continue posting here.

On one hand, what I'm aiming at in my practice is very different than the main thrust of the board; also, most of my practice is not easy to describe in the way that a practice aimed at attaining paths is. (It seems to be highly psychological, apart from bare reports of "PCE / EE / normal experience".)

On the other hand, I see my experience now as totally continuous with the technical 4-path model, and totally continuous with Kenneth's 7-stage model (but I have no idea what to make of the 8th stage); that's how I got to this point in my practice in the first place, after all!

After some reflection, I realized that the pragmatic dharma community isn't about what models we all buy into or what we're aiming at attaining, but is actually about...pragmatic dharma. Recording our experiences honestly and in detail. Helping each other out and offering friendly (and sometimes critical) suggestions. Eventually, hopefully, we will all have a good understanding of how practice works, where it can go, and how each of us can apply it in our own lives. And we want that because...surprise!...what we all fundamentally want is to improve our perspective on things to make our lives better.

Our collective understanding of what happens post-4th is so thin compared to what we know about pre-4th that I think keeping up my practice journal is very important, whether or not it relates to what other people are doing, just because it documents what post-4th practice is like, and we all need a clearer idea about how that can work out, with more data points. (cont)

It's a way to give back. I have a lot to give back for. I mostly stayed outside of public view when I was working up to 4th, but I would never have gotten there if I wasn't lurking around here and on the DhO and reading other people's records.

Whatever I think about 4th now in context of my current practice and goals, me-today and me-before would agree that 4th is good because everything that comes before it (especially pre-stream entry) sucks in various ways, and getting to 4th makes things progressively better. So I hold it in pretty high regard even though it occurs to me now that 4th is really just the beginning of what I consider to be the real spiritual struggle.

So, again, I have a lot to give back for, and I owe it to the community to keep writing my journal in whatever way I can, even if the only things to write that I can find are just psychology and personal reflection.

It also helps me if I take a long-term view on this. I want to help the other members of this community. (Even though you all may not know me well, I've lurked long enough before I started posting to get a sense of who most of you are and where you're coming from.) But this community also produces a long-term record that will benefit yogis in the future, whoever they may be. and whenever they start their practice. There will probably be more than I imagine. What we write together here are like the Pali suttas of the modern day. It will do more good, beyond what it does here-and-now. Our little debates and arguments are no different from the records of Sariputta and Moggallana and Cunda and Punna and Citta and all the stuff they said to each other. Our records can be equally helpful if we practice diligently and document honestly.

Kenneth came up with the metaphor of the lighting rod for direct mode practice ( kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/page/3rd+...Tolle%2C+and+the+PCE ), which is a very good one, and made an enormous difference for me in my own practice. So I'd like to offer another metaphor, which is how I look at it. I don't consider it to be a different practice than Kenneth's, just a different explanation for it.

Imagine that you're a herder of horses, and you and your horses live in a verdant meadow. The horses aren't well-trained, and you're not that good of a herder, so if you don't watch out, they tend to run around, hurt themselves, poop all over your meadow, make a mess of other people's meadows, and get you in trouble. So you've built a fenced-in enclosure, and you'd like to keep the horses in there so you can enjoy the meadow without the aggravation and poop and worry.

Right now the horses are running around wild. Putting your attention on your emotions is leading the horses to the enclosure.

If you attend to some of your emotions, but not all of them, there are still horses running wild outside of the enclosure.

If you don't recognize some of your emotions and can't put your attention on all of them because of that, you haven't counted how many horses you have and don't have the vantage point to see the ones outside the enclosure, and so can't figure out why there's still poop and property damage despite all the horses you know of being enclosed; you conclude that it's not the horses that are responsible, but the nature of meadows: they must spontaneously generate poop or something. (cont)

Once you put your attention on all your emotions, all the horses have returned to the enclosure; they're still jittery and there's still poop, but it's confined to the enclosure.

If you put your attention on all your emotions, but then interact with them in any way beyond that, you're running around swinging a big stick at the horses, or tempting them with a lump of sugar; eventually they'll get antsy and jump over the fence, maybe when you're not looking.

If all you do is lead them to the enclosure and let them be, once they calm down and forget their wild past, they will eventually go to sleep for a while, and you can enjoy your meadow in peace.

Had a very very strong but short EE while listening to music. In the few moments before, the music seemed very rich and delicate; at the onset of the EE, almost all of the affect receded to reveal the music as a fantastic intermingling of qualities in my senses; about 10 seconds later, back to the plain-old rich music.

As it was going on I had the thought "Good, an EE! I hope it stays!" and started trying to figure out how I could make it stay. I think the problem here is that the desire to keep it is incompatible with actually keeping it. "I" can't experience perfection, but if my habitual thinking is that perfection is something for "me" to possess and relish, then whenever those thought tendencies manifest, the previously-apparent wonder vanishes as soon as "I" re-arise to look for and grab at it.

My new taxonomy is as follows.

All the state 6 / state 7 stuff from before...uncategorized direct mode. Up to everything seeming rich, clear, and wonderful in an everyday sort of way.

EE...so much affect is gone that it seems that there is some kind of missing space where my head is. The missing space is where affective feelings in my head would otherwise be, and it seems "missing" because there are still some affective feelings in my body. If I had to quantify this somehow I would say this is up to 85% of affect gone. The richness is extraordinary, and the strongest EEs (far different from normal experience) have a sense of all the senses dancing and intermingling throughout the vast experiential field while a nearly-gone 'me' looks on from the infinitesimally small corner it has been constrained to. These often have a sense that perception is teetering between 'actuality' and affect, which can be slightly disorienting.The weakest EEs are simply richer versions of uncategorized direct mode experiences, with the sense of the lack of affect in the head.

PCE...all / nearly all affect is gone from my head and body. Perfection or close. I see no need to distinguish near-PCEs from full-PCEs, I'm honestly not sure how accurately I can assess them.

Affective distortions of EEs...they vary a lot, but are typically heady, mystical-seeming, and leave me hung over when the affective part is very strong. They are fantastic beyond anything in normal experience, but they also show clearly how all affect is suffering compared to the regular EE or PCE. I've had WAY too many in my life so I'm trying very hard to avoid any more. Without getting too personal, I can't put the ways I've yearned for them and been dragged through heaven and hell by them into words. (The temptation is that they really are better than normal experience BY FAR, and they happen somewhat spontaneously for me.)

Nothing really to report except that I've gotten a lot of spontaneous and very striking cessations in the last few days (the kind that would have been major path-moments for me before I got technical 4th path), except they aren't path-moments and don't seem to lead to any changes afterwards.

My experience seems to have shifted at some point, probably yesterday, into a mode that is nearly always direct mode. It isn't EE-like (it's decidedly in the miscellaneous category), but I seem to be always present, always appreciative of sensory experience in some way, and always perceiving experience as a bit more "now"-like rather than segmented into moments. There's still lots of affect but it seems a bit less important than usual. I think it's possible for experience to go back to normal, but I don't know to what extent. (I'll look out for normal moments in case I find them.)

It strikes me that this is perhaps what 10-fetter anagami means. I don't look forward to sensual pleasures, I don't feel any inclination to dislike anyone (or anything), and, as direct mode is always happening to some extent, the last five fetters are weakened by the very fact of having a mode of perception like that. I'm not sure, but it's a possibility. If so, this makes a stronger case that technical 4th path is sutta sakadagami. We'll have to see if this change is permanent or just a phase.

EDIT: This part of the path is a happy one. A little direct mode is good; a lot is better. The suttas say over and over that following the dharma is a joyful, pleasant thing. Climbing through the progress of insight (which isn't in the suttas and which I think can't be derived from them, now that we see that technical 4th path isn't what the suttas are aiming at) is not pleasant, but is a f*cked-up rollercoaster kind of thing. But effective. Mahasi Sayadaw's system is a good tool if one is inclined towards it so long as one sees that it's only part of the path to nirvana. I will never recommend that anyone practice in that way ever again in my life unless they're serious about spirituality and want peace ASAP. No need to suffer except for a reason.

Also, a reflection.

When I read through my journal, and recollect the things it talks about, I see that I've made a lot of progress, very quickly. It would be easy to get the impression that I'm a gifted yogi or have some inclination towards meditation. But the opposite is true. When I started (pre-path), my mind was a cluttered, scattered, uncontrollable torrent of stuff, I was constantly distracted and living in the clouds 99% of the time, and was a very moody and reactive person on top of it all. I have the wrong kind of mind to benefit from meditation. I did anapanasati for years, got no paths, and never even got a lowly A&P through it.

The way I actually made progress was, if I knew what step I had to take to move a little bit beyond where I was, I could find some absurd, awkward, contorted way of making it happen. My "drunken vipassana fist" method of noting is not a good way to note, but was the best way *for me* to note given the limitations of my own mind. My "overstimulation anxiety" method of getting direct mode to stick is not a good way to practice direct mode, but was the best way for *me* to practice it given the limitations of my own mind. So, I don't have any special meditative disposition, but I'm very clever and into problem solving and don't mind trying weird sh*t. Most people can do better than I did.

It also helped me to believe that my experience was hell compared to what lay ahead. No one wants to be in hell. If you think you're in hell, you'll do whatever crazy sh*t you need to do to get out. I *never* made progress unless I truly believed that I was in hell in some way. After 4th path, I couldn't see anything better ahead, so I thought "this must be the best there is" and didn't make any progress for a whole year until Kenneth set me straight.

The belief that this is hell is the most important thing, in my opinion.

Had a meditation dream. Someone in it told me "your mind isn't one moment before perception [of experiential objects], you have to see that it's exactly simultaneously with it," so I meditated on that, had a jarring cessation, then found myself in some kind of deep direct mode that I couldn't get out of. Not a PCE. but maybe close. Evaluating it in dreams is hard. Interestingly, in the dream I recognized to some extent that I was in a dream (actually thinking "I can't evaluate this state well in a dream.")

This morning I tried Trent's advice ( www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discu...ards/message/2085369 ), to specifically cultivate an attitude of fascination (like I-have-to-keep-my-eyes-on-this, every-moment-could-be-amazing). Just sitting here, listening to music, I see that this method is very powerful (went from tired / moody to a good EE in a few minutes), probably much better than what I was doing before (cultivating present-ness and now-ness and trying to shed affect). It also lets me employ my meta-method of brute force (I can look at experience and think "WOW" until experience is actually WOW...fake-it-till-you-make-it). So I'll make this my default practice for a while.

This reminds me of what one of the most defining qualities of the PCE is: naked perception. Naked perception is RAW. That's why I was surprised by what the PCE was when I was trying to cultivate it for the first time; without affect, I assumed it would be a quiet affair. Sitting with attention resting on the lower spine (as Antero had discussed in the thread "Relating Buddhism and the PCE") does not really share that much with it, except for the quietness that does comes from having less affect. The best metaphor is one I've used before, cosmic lovemaking. In 'my' absence, the senses are revealed to be having an orgy. Not quiet. RAW.

Here are the complete instructions I received these from Nick, but it is originally by Tarin. Once I got the hang of it, just moving the attention to the base of the spine caused PCE. Hope this helps.

'Follow the energy down the chakras until it is then seen to sit a the hara. Focus at a spot of nothing just below the hara above the genitals. You will have to explore within the body in that area to find a small point of nothing. There are no sensations there. Then when the energy feels like it pours from the hara into that point , visualize it pouring out of the body to end up in the earth. A PCE usually results from this exercise. Kenneth was tuaght it by Tarin. Tarin also taught it to me. It works. The best way to trigger a PCE is to be in a felicitous state. As from there to attentiveness and then apperception is much, much easier. The technique above with the spot of nothing, takes you to felicitous feelings to launch into a pce where those felicitous feeling s go into abeyance"

"Here are the complete instructions I received these from Nick, but it is originally by Tarin. Once I got the hang of it, just moving the attention to the base of the spine caused PCE. Hope this helps.

'Follow the energy down the chakras until it is then seen to sit a the hara. Focus at a spot of nothing just below the hara above the genitals. You will have to explore within the body in that area to find a small point of nothing. There are no sensations there. Then when the energy feels like it pours from the hara into that point , visualize it pouring out of the body to end up in the earth. A PCE usually results from this exercise. Kenneth was tuaght it by Tarin. Tarin also taught it to me. It works. The best way to trigger a PCE is to be in a felicitous state. As from there to attentiveness and then apperception is much, much easier. The technique above with the spot of nothing, takes you to felicitous feelings to launch into a pce where those felicitous feeling s go into abeyance"

"

Does attention rest on the base of the spine for you during a PCE? (EDIT: Is there "attention bounce" or anything like it during a PCE?)

Also, what was the learning curve for this practice like...is it just a matter of attaining a PCE this way over and over, until the transition becomes very fast?

Thanks!

ALSO...with an eye towards trying the practice of attaining PCE-like experience with attention on different places, any pointers for how to produce the experience without having attention end up "nowhere" before the experience starts? As I discussed on the original thread, I find no way to go from attention-on-X-place to an EE, much less a PCE, without attention ending up nowhere first. And if I get to an EE and put it somewhere, the EE ends.

When I do this practice right now, there is a nearly instant transition between attention on the area you described and attention beginning to be nowhere in particular. The experience that results at that exact transition point is something that gets filed under the "miscellaneous" category in my taxonomy (less than an EE). From there, it can go to various deeper places, but not with attention anywhere in particular. At the transition point, athough there is no gross perception of attention being anywhere, there is still "attention bounce" between something and experience (not easy for me to discern what). What I call a PCE has no attention bounce that I can discern.

I'd really like to match up experiences with you, because what you talked about in your journal regarding final resting places of attention makes no experiential sense to me.

Antero, I'm sitting here waiting for someone, just listening to music, having an EE that varies in intensity, and at the highest points it's as if the entire experiential field is one beginningless, endless, ecstastic scream...the ecstasy being the multifaceted, changing sensory qualities themselves.

In terms of my own experience, I can't make any sense of your description:

'Base of the spine
Energy going down, draining out, small muscles in the face relax, all tension going away, clearness, pure silence, absence of vibration and affection, polite aloofness, clarity'

Sorry to harp on this point, but I'm so eager to figure out what you're talking about ("more varieties of PCE-like experience? YES, I want that!") and drawing a complete blank. The only thing I associate your description with is the pre-EE experience I mentioned. But it's not an especially interesting experience in the grand scheme of things so I imagine it's likely you're not talking about that. Maybe we have really different ways of describing the same thing. I dunno. But I'd like to find out. I'm just trying to throw information your way, hoping that if you get enough of it, you can give me some kind of clue.

It's hard to be awake when your current experience is painful. I struggled with this for a long time. Why stare suffering in the face? Hiding from it doesn't make it go away, but no amount of recognizing that removes the basic instinct to shy away from it, space out, or dissociate.

Building equanimity is a nice trick. With enough vipassana under your belt, you can force yourself to stare at suffering...and keep staring...and keep staring. Sometimes it goes away. Sometimes it doesn't. If it doesn't, you keep staring anyway. Attaining paths for me was like suddenly discovering that I had the power to suppress more and more of my instinct to look away away from what I didn't like. As if, at some point, I could finally force open my eyes and *see* the flames of hell surrounding me, rather than the vague blurry brightness which is all that comes through squinted eyelids.

Not looking away is never guaranteed to make suffering into pleasure. Sometimes, all looking does is convince you beyond a doubt that what you're looking at sucks. Sure, reacting on the basis of instinct is a kind of suffering, but the thing that's being reacted to is often the greater of the two. The flames of hell are hot no matter what you think of them, and flinching at them is the least of your worries, unless you flinch so hard that you crack a rib.

As my life gets better and better, as every day is a bit more wonderful than the last, it strikes me that the real value to me of being able to suppress reactions was that, once I got inhumanly good at it (compared to my pre-path standards), marching through the flames to find something better turned out to be no big deal. Undoing the causes of suffering wasn't so hard as it sounded once I recognized that everything I had faced before this was worse, and that I had been able to handle those things with grace. (cont)