first ever practice journal!

Being able to stare at suffering without flinching isn't the fruit of the path. It's a bizarre kind of masochism, unless it's done for a practical reason. I'm not sure I knew why I was doing it at the time, but now I find that all the time I spent with vipassana, practicing the skill in a controlled environment, has been immensely practical. Blocking the instinctive reaction to grasp for pleasure and push away pain, blocking the instinctive reaction to space out in the face of negativity, blocking the instinctive reaction to mindlessly bliss out in the face of happiness, seems to undo those reactions bit by bit, and seems to lead me closer, every day, to a happiness that is truly independent of conditions.

All of us on a forum like this surely know that there is a great deal of suffering in daily life, whether it's the kind that our culture counts as normal, or something more severe. That's what I imagine has driven all of us to take on such a burdensome practice as meditation. Knowing that there is peace at the end of the path, if each of us wants it, is the sweetest sigh of relief.

That said...I shall continue pursuing the PCE, and the only end of suffering in this life that I can see from here. My recent experiences with Antero's practice suggests to me that it's the only one there is.

I should note (about this last reflection) that this is just a cute after-the-fact narrative. I honestly have little idea why I pursued vipassana for so long. Perhaps I had some kind of intuitive understand that the practice would lead to good things. Perhaps I'm just crazy. Perhaps a bit of both!

In any case, I am pleased to say that every day seems to be happier than the last. I'm not an unhappy person by nature (though there have been times in my life when I was deeply unhappy), so this improvement has been making the experience of being alive a very special and worthwhile thing. Which is how it ought to be!

On PCE related questions I suggest you to contact one of the Hamilton Project guys. Nikolay Halay has been very open and most helpful when I have had discussions with him about these matters.

'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.'
- EndInSight

My experience on Silence or Essential nature of mind (or whatever name one wants to call it) has deepened gradually during the past six months. As I did a lot of binary noting silence/noise, at one point my attention naturally started to gravitate to the heart area and this felt very natural and great way to experience the silence of the non-discursive mind. At the same I started getting spontaneous PCEs that were marked with attention moving to the base of the spine, energy draining away from hara region leaving only clarity, pure perception and no affection or sense of being.

At first it was a bit confusing for me to have these two different ways of experiencing Silence. I wondered if the heart area was supposed to be the final destination for my attention. I was feeling open, at ease, accepting and nice indeed. And what was I suppose to do with this other experience of clear and undistracted silence that also sometimes seemed to result from the same practice?

Kenneth helped me to put things in context by walking me through various other possibilities of experiencing non-duality. When the discursive mind fell silent, the experience was markedly different depending on where the attention was resting during that time. It quickly became clear to me that I did not want to choose from any those flavours, but wanted to have all those possibilities open for me.

(Cont.)

(Cont.)

For me non-dual experience has matured slowly and steadily. On one hand progressing through the stages of developmental enlightenment has made non-dual practices easier and easier to access. On the other hand Kenneth's excellent teachings on Mahamudra and Rigpa have enabled to me access the Silence more deeply. I don't think there is any shortcut for developing this type of open awareness, except perhaps one-on-one sessions with Kenneth. His powerful transmission has given me glimpses of certain experiences that have otherwise been unavailable for me at the time.

I just recently finished Ekhart Tolle's The Power of Now and his experiences seem to have a lot in common with mine. You may find that book helpful if you haven't read it already.

These experiences are very recent for me and I am not yet ready to plant the flag and say anything definite about these things. The development seems to have a pace of its own and it will take more maturing before I can say how this all relates to the big picture.

Antero,

Everyone I've spoken to with who is good at attaining PCEs (EDIT: I should say, who is good at attaining PCEs or EEs) says that attention in the PCE does not rest at the base of the spine. That also agrees with my experience. And that's a major cause of my perplexity here. In other words, what are you experiencing, is it the same as what the rest of us are experiencing, is it related, and how to experience it? I can't match your descriptions of the experience *or* your description of the quality of attention in it to what I experience or to what others have said.

Would you be interested in being part of a purely phenomenological exploration of what you're experiencing compared to what I'm experiencing?

EDIT: Even Richard says that attention resting at the spot near the hara (what I think you're talking about) is not a PCE.

I am sorry if my inaccurate descriptions and inexperience with these practices have caused confusion. When the energy is withdrawn to hara and is out of the system, I seem to use my attention at that area to prolong the state, keeping the energy from coming back. So using the word '˜resting' would not be accurate. I tested this using another way to launch a PCE to make sure it was the same state and '˜resting' was not necessary in that case either.

To be as clear as I can be, my understanding (from my own experience and what others have told me) is that in a PCE, attention (with respect to the kind of attention that can be "on" anything) is nowhere whatsoever, and there is no "attention bounce" at all.

Is that the experience you're describing?

How is the experience of resting your attention on the chest area (or anywhere else at all) similar to what you're describing here? If attention is anywhere (EDIT: i.e. other than the nowhere, everything-at-once quality that I and beoman have described), it seems that it isn't a PCE. And if attention is somewhere (EDIT: on the chest, on the head, on the third eye, 10 inches above the head, on the feet, etc., in whatever sense you mean it), it seems that it isn't PCE-like.

When I've played with this practice recently, when I get to what I consider to be a good EE, wherever my attention was before that is, as far as I can see, totally irrelevant to the quality of the EE experience (EDIT: because the EE has most of the localization-of-attention and attention bounce phenomena gone).

EDIT: As I wrote before, when I place my attention on the area in question, very quickly I get an experience much like your description ("energy" drains away, clarity, silence), in which attention begins to be non-localized and could not rightly said to be resting on that area in the normal way...except that it is vaguely resting there, as evidenced by the continued attention bounce, and as evidenced by the fact that I can discern that it isn't on e.g. my chest, my third eye, or wherever else. (Also, if the experience becomes shaky I can redirect my attention to the area in question and refresh the experience, as you said.) I do not consider that experience to be a PCE or an EE, but some kind of prelude to one. How certain are you that this is not the experience you're talking about?

whenever I pay attention to my experience, I can recognize that, even if "being" is present, even if "being" is distorting sense experiences, sense experience is always nondual and complete. For example, if I listen to music, "being" may make it appear as if the music is heard in relation to 'me,' but if I look closely, 'me' is made of translucent gossamer nothing, and not doing very much to obscure the dancing sensory brilliance which continues on with or without 'me'...

Still using Trent's suggestions, but not solely. There's a certain kind of finesse involved in finding the perceptual states that are in the direction of the PCE. Sometimes that means thinking "WOW". Sometimes it means a subtler approach which is hard to articulate. I can't quite explain how I decide what's appropriate and when it's appropriate, but I trust my intuition about this sort of thing. Most of my success at meditation has come from following my intuitions about what works for me. Eventually I recognized this, and resolved not to second-guess myself anymore. So I generally don't, but occasionally I have to remind myself why I stopped.

In the most general sense, in terms of brain function, it seems like the practice works by getting perception to reach consciousness with less and less emotional and cognitive pre-processing. If you can figure out how to turn off pre-processing in the short term, you get a PCE, but eventually the brain reverts to its previous filtered mode of perception, more or less (but not quite) as before. That's a short-term fluctuation. As I continue this practice over the long-term, the baseline amount of pre-processing and filtration keeps going down, a bit more every day. The further down it goes, the better everything is. The better everything is, the more the practice does itself.

Music is one of the things I like best in life. Always have. Perhaps because of listening to it in an obsessive way for so many years of my life, my default appreciation of it exceeds anything else that might come through the senses. To give you an idea of what that means...to say that it's better than sex might be an exaggeration, but only a slight one. (And there are particular musical experiences I've had that *were* better than sex, by far, absolutely no question about it.)

(cont)

Because of this, I've been using it a lot to head towards deep EE territory. But I think I can also use it to gauge how much pre-processing is obscuring my senses, by seeing how it sounds. The trend seems to be towards a big falling-off of pre-processing. There's still a lot of moment-to-moment variation in that, but the overall thrust is clear.

Just listening to a song on repeat right now, there have been moments where the music is truly extraordinary, resplendent in clarity in a way that defies easy description; far beyond any affective pleasure in value; and yet, my state now is pretty damn far from a PCE. So, given how much room for improvement there is, imagining how things will be in the future as the senses become more and more unfiltered, is...mindblowing.

I find the PCE to be nearly impossible to recall when I'm not in a mode of perception close to it, because, as the actualists say, it isn't possible to make sense of via affective remembrance. So I take experiences like this to remind myself of why it's worth pursuing, so that I constantly (many many times per day) re-commit to the practice. This experience doesn't hold a candle to the full PCE...but normal perception doesn't hold a candle to this.

Have you tried using HAIETMOBA exclusively? I tried it again last night. Simply asking that question over and over again at a fairly rapid rate (once a second) forces me into the moment in some weird way. Each time I ask it the attention is pulled back to the senses. Given enough time it's like a concentration exercise in that attention begins to merge with the object (the senses).

I tried HAIETMOBA when I was working on stage 6, but dismissed it because it didn't seem to do any more than what I was already doing.

Trying it again, it doesn't seem to do any more than what I'm doing now. But what I'm doing now is NOT at all the same as what I was doing before. So it seems, perhaps, that HAIETMOBA leads to wherever the cutting edge of my practice is, while the technique itself is completely unchanging.

That's potentially very powerful. Thank you for the suggestion.

Mumuwu, do you ask the question as a verbal thought to yourself? How do you manage to ask it once per second?

Just timed it. It's closer to 3.5 seconds. I ask the question and look, ask the question and look.

Somehow I forgot to mention this. In the past few days, there is an ever increasing sense of openness or vulnerability. It isn't exactly a feeling...there have been many times in my life when, in the face of something I didn't like, I could retreat to this sense of 'me' separate from the world. Things may suck, but 'me' is still here...still solid...some kind of fortress against the world. And in the past few days, it's as if this fortress is just toppling over.

The way it plays out is, sometimes there's a mode of perception that I'd call "spacey", as if 'me' has partially detatched from the body and is flapping around in the aether somewhere. 'me' is the fortress itself, and so as it becomes partially unhinged, there's a sense of vulnerability, as if the remaining parts are exposed and someone or something could crash through the gate anytime. There is an affective part to this experience (the remaining 'me') but I've stayed with it because I think it's a good sign. It's not scary at all, one just has to get used to being vulnerable and not caring. It's ongoing about 80% of the time that I look.

The other way it plays out, which is more recent, is the sudden clear perception that the fabric of reality is nothing more than sense experience, and 'me' is not even real, just some kind of conceit (causing the delusion that 'me' is the only solid, fundamental thing in experience and that the senses are mediated by that fundamental thing...which is exactly opposite of what the case is). This is the sense of openness. Not that 'I' am exposed, but in taking away 'me' there is just empty space, just reality itself (not "underneath," just reality), nothing to expose, nothing to protect. This impression isn't 100%, but I can see that its the direction experience is moving towards. (cont)

Just to be explicit, the "spacey" perception isn't cognitively spacey and doesn't exactly feel spacey...the senses are quite clear, thinking is quite clear...but it reminds me of the feeling of spaceyness somehow.

Also, I realized that my previous taxonomy is not correct; I can have things that I would call EEs that don't have the sense of being withdrawing from the head. So I'm not using any specific taxonomy anymore, and just going to wing it. EEs are anything that's really awesome and lacking a good deal of affect.

Finally, I've gotten the affectively-distorted EEs under control. Haven't had any for awhile. My brain inclines towards them just from having so many in the past. I loved them so much and hated them so much because they were a form of experience that made everything else seem so small and worthless in comparison. And I have a good deal of instinctive craving for them because of that. (Lust for rarefied existence?) But in the past I had no idea what to make of them, whereas now I recognize that they are counterfeit versions of the real thing and not worth having...this forms a kind of pure intent which allows me to reject them and their pull whenever they seem to be arising, and gets me regular EEs instead.

Apart from deciding to reject them, the method I use is to immediately stop looking at "internal" sense experience (my mind generates complicated internal visual / kinaesthetic synaesthesia which is tied to "being" and which fuels the affective distortion, but I can't explain this in a brief way) and simply look at the richness of the senses. I accept in advance that the EE may go away and if so I won't chase it by indulging the affect; but usually the out-of-control affective stuff is what goes away. And thank God. The hangover from those experiences, when they're allowed to spiral out of control, is terrible.

It just occurs to me that all the stuff Richard talks about during his "enlightenment period" (being Divine Love, etc.) may be similar in spirit if not letter to what I mean when I talk about affectively-distorted EEs. The experiences themselves are truly outrageous, and no language can capture their magnitude...the best I can say is they're like a cross between the good qualities of a PCE, and facing God, or (at the most extreme) becoming God. If I were like Richard, living that all the time instead of being blessed / cursed with having them only every so often, I'm sure I would have as deep a distaste for everything to do with spirituality as he does. Instead, I got to compartmentalize them as some kind of unknown but unbelievable thing that could happen sometimes, maybe some kind of neurological disorder, which I didn't really have to think about, and which I was better off not thinking about, but which gave me a taste for certain kinds of religious language that I didn't quite understand how to use like everyone else (who use it to talk about things beyond manifestation, nirguna brahman, all that incomprehensible stuff).

As I alluded to in a previous post, the major thing that convinced me that actual freedom was worth pursuing was that I had already decided a thousand times over that these bizarre experiences put everything else in life to shame...and the PCE showed me that the affective part of these experience is a grotesque distortion, some terrible stain on what is *really* good and pure and holy, which is just sense experience as-it-is. (cont)

Whatever bad qualities these experiences had, I am ultimately thankful for them, as they were the thing that propelled me towards spirituality, and they were the thing that helped me see that the PCE is not just one more miscellaneous way of being at peace, but is *IT*, beyond anything affective I could dream up (since I had already dreamt up and experienced everything affective that I could conceive of, and more, that might possibly compare to it in a hypothetical match-up).

Starting a retreat late tomorrow (Tuesday).

If, during this retreat, it is at all humanly possible for me to attain AF, be free, lay down the burden, and reach the end of suffering in this life, then I will find a way to make it happen. If it's not possible, no worries; but I will not put this off one second more than I have to.

May this be 'my' epitaph.

Thus I resolve.

Just in case anyone would benefit from a clarfification...the language of the suttas can be misleading in some ways. They seem quite negative, anti-life, anti-enjoyment, and because of that, one who embraces their worldview seems to share the same attitudes.

From my perspective, I consider recognizing that all affective pleasure is suffering not to be negative or positive or anything at all, just seeing an obvious fact about reality that eluded me in the past. If anything, it's a nice realization, because realizing it is a major step towards perfect happiness, and seeing oneself move in that direction is positive.

Just because affective pleasure is suffering, it doesn't mean the experience of it is any worse than it was before. There's nothing *new* that's unpleasant about it. It's been that way all along. It's just...when one recognizes the drawbacks of affect, and discerns an escape from it, why not talk about it as clearly as possible?

My current state is a happy one, sometimes a *very* happy one. This is clearly caused by my practice and commitment to AF / arahantship, and this change is completely different from anything that came before this that I achieved through all my previous practices. It's not the happiness of being able to face conventionally unpleasant things with equanimity (and yet still having them be unpleasant). It's the happiness of...actually being happy all the time. Imagine that!

Back from retreat. I am not yet free, but almost.

Behind all affect, I found a permanent, unchanging, unconditional happiness which is now an unceasing part of my experience. I was not an anagami before but am now. With the partial cessation of ignorance comes the partial cessation of the suffering that it conditions. Wow.

Buddhist teachings regarding suffering are LITERALLY true, but we as a community have grossly misunderstand what those teachings are, and we have been floundering around, lost, because of that. I agree more with Adam West now; actualism is a less sophisticated understanding of things than other traditions, if you care about that sort of thing.

Some of my ideas in the past were right and some were wrong, so don't assume that my previous opinions are still up to date (but the general thrust is the same).

Kenneth's post-4th stages(stages 6 and 7) are real, but mostly irrelevant. If you count those as landmarks, there are about 100 more that I ran into so far. The only major landmark that I have found, post 4th, is anagami. And when one becomes an anagami, and finds unconditional happiness, it is *obvious*.

My personal belief, reflecting on my experience during this last retreat, is that 4th is actually just stream entry in the suttas, but I'm not going to explain or defend this position for now.

Details to follow, eventually.

"
My personal belief, reflecting on my experience during this last retreat, is that 4th is actually just stream entry in the suttas, but I'm not going to explain or defend this position for now.
"


Congratulations and thank you for sharing this with us, as we are benefitting from your discoveries as a community. The fact that, according to the Suttas, technical 4th path is actually *stream entry* is also my personal belief. One is freed from the first three fetters, namely the belief in a self that would exist in one of the 5 aggregates (we know that we are not even 'non-dual awareness', which is still part of the aggregate of consciousness); one is also freed from skeptical doubt and from clinging to rites and rituals. That's already a lot, but that's about it.

"The fact that, according to the Suttas, technical 4th path is actually *stream entry* is also my personal belief. One is freed from the first three fetters, namely the belief in a self that would exist in one of the 5 aggregates (we know that we are not even 'non-dual awareness', which is still part of the aggregate of consciousness); one is also freed from skeptical doubt and from clinging to rites and rituals. That's already a lot, but that's about it.
"

One thing I've puzzled over a lot is that some people who get technical stream entry report understanding that there is no self in the aggregates, and some don't. Why the discrepancy? Well, my belief is that some people are good at a specific kind of intellectual analysis and believe in it deeply, and from that first experience of clear seeing they infer that no personality exists there, but other people are less good at it or less inclined to do it or less trusting of its conclusions.

But, there is a world of difference between an intellectual conviction based on clear seeing, and the full ending of the fetter. In a way, it makes no difference whether one has the conviction or not, except that it may aid practice. That explains the discrepancy in people's reported opinions. At 4th, there is the permanent recognition that all this is not self, just arising and ceasing phenomena, and *that* is the cessation of the fetter.

The suttas often say that stream entry means realizing that whatever arises is subject to cessation, and that is also a good description of 4th (every phenomena fluctuates; none is a permanent observer; one can see this clearly for themself at any time; hence no self in the aggregates).

I'm not really sure what to say about skeptical doubt, though, because lots of 4th pathers have doubt that there is anything developmental beyond 4th. I'm not sure what it refers to or how to relate it to what people report. Any thoughts?

Also, the sensual desire and ill will that one might think they are freed from at technical 4th seems like an intellectual or psychological development, not the cessation of the fetter, not even the weakening of the fetter. Recognizing no-self inclines people to avoid certain kinds of unskillful behavior, but this seems to be solely due to rational control of behavior; all the same desires and ill will *can* arise, and can arise to exactly the same magnitude as before, even if that happens less often due to the new insight.

Rational understanding leading to purer sila and less suffering is not the cessation of the fetter or the partial cessation of a fetter. The cessation of the fetter is the permanent non-arising of the experience that the fetter conditions. Its partial cessation is the permanent reduction in some quality of the experience that the fetter conditions. Post 4th, one *can* have the same amount of sensual desire and ill will as before, it's just less common that those happen. So, those fetters are still clearly there, in full force, but are partially circumvented via the previous insight into no-self and the newfound skillful behavior that it makes possible.

By the way, guys...I got to where I am now via VIPASSANA. The same type of practice that got me 4th. I didn't realize this was possible until I had a breakthrough this way and decided to keep trying it. The Theravadins aren't totally confused after all.

Why hasn't anyone else in the pragmatic dharma universe realized this? There are a couple of reasons. One, the insight territory between technical 4th and where I am is about six times as large as the distance between technical stream entry and 4th. Two, the pragmatic dharma universe has a wrong view about what insight is, and may not recognize it when they get some. Three (most importantly), it takes incredible bodhicitta to persevere with this practice. Almost every single moment of the retreat was gut-churning and deeply unpleasant, up until anagami. How badly have any of us wanted insight? Who would persevere through that without believing that something better lies at the end? Who has been willing to die on the cushion for it? I would guess, no one. What we believe lies at the end of insight isn't the kind of thing worth dying for.

But nirvana is worth dying for.

Practicing as if your head is on fire, not as hyperbole, but as if it is actually on fire, leads to a very different practice, and very different results. Each of our heads is on fire. Every second of unenlightened existence is suffering, millions of times per second, conditioned by craving. If you see that or believe that and bring it to your practice, *things will be different*.

I'm not going to write about the practical details of how to do vipassana, but if anyone's interested, feel free to contact me and we can chat about it. (cont)