Villum's thousand and one mistakes

EndInSight is a supervillain constructing elaborate death traps in order to show me the emptiness of all things. In other news, my dreams are really strange these days. That's the fourth pragmatic dharma guide/teacher type figure i've dreamt of recently.

From mumuwu - very nice one:
Notice you are aware. Then look for anything that can take you out of that state

"
EndInSight is a supervillain constructing elaborate death traps in order to show me the emptiness of all things. In other news, my dreams are really strange these days. That's the fourth pragmatic dharma guide/teacher type figure i've dreamt of recently."

!!!

Apart from that...how is the jhana practice that I described to you going?

Haven't been practicing it much, there has been some flailing, practice-wise. Anyway, it seems to help to recognize that i am already aware, in order to tune into what i think is vedana. This induces a shift inau focus where the outside becomes more prominent than the inside "world". This outside seems to include a kind of aura-like body feel that does not involve tension, but can involve pleasure. Attempting to tune into this pleasure and increase it, i everything becomes still, and i feel kinda like a fly caught in amber . not in terms of feeling caught, but in the way the pleasure an senses present in stillness without much "inner-world"(this seems to be fabrication) stuff. I can't really distinguish any jhanas clearly, but there do seem to be some shifts towards subtler pleasure.
The afterglow has the same kind of feel. Stillness, not much inner-world stuff, recognizing awareness/what-i-call-rigpa is easier.
That sounds like the right direction? And btw, how is the writeup you were talking about going

Been experimenting with turning fear into amusement through vedana-hacking today. It works nicely for path-fear, but i'm not sure its a good idea as a general strategy. Might miss some insights?

The beatiful part of sadness is a gate to it's clear-light-nature, at least it looks that way to me through the transmutation techniques

Just did with a bunch of things.
Call up an aspect of identity. embrace it, love it, say goodbye to it. See it as empty and luminous. release it into clarity. recognize awareness.

Saying goodbye is letting things go. Say goodbye to everything.

"That sounds like the right direction?"

Yes.

"And btw, how is the writeup you were talking about going "

It isn't really going. I have thought about things and see little point to saying anything more than I already have, i.e. there is a kind of "still" physical pleasure that is different from what people normally cultivate, and if one cultivates it to the maximum degree, novel things may happen which match really well with the descriptions of jhana in the suttas.

There's no secret information beyond that, just repetition: "no, the feeling of emotional bliss isn't it...no, that vibrating experience isn't it...no, looking at the shape of attention is going in the wrong direction..."

But, you should feel free to PM me (or ask on DhO) if you have any questions.

Seemingly some review cycling going on. This fits with earlier when my witness riding suddenly went very strange. Not entirely sure, will try to check better if i don't fall asleep some first.

Reviewing confirmed.
Third gear add-on questions:
"Is there anything i can do to stop everything being already perfect"(use when not in third gear)
"Is there anything i can do to stop everything including myself being something that arises as awareness"

Is there any thought that is more vibrant, more compelling, more satisfying , etc. than the sensory experience on top of which the thought appears to arise?

I've been seriously neglecting my sitting practice. So from today i start a daily timed sitting practice again, starting at 1x30 minutes and ramping up.
I will be practicing EndInSight's PCE-oriented jhana variant.
Today's practice was nice, but pleasure was not that strong, and the witness kept coming up. No very long periods of full stillness, as expected. I am aiming towards nonreflective still pleasure, fullbodied, with no "inner life" at all. Today's practice was probably disturbed by my still being in review phase A (i think).

Edit: This jhana-practice, as usual, has a very nice afterglow of stillness, and today, mild pleasure. I need to figure out whether i will be sitting with open or closed eyes.

Jayson talking about Jean Klein
4:30:28 PM CEST] jaysonbyrne: it is amazing
[4:30:48 PM CEST] jaysonbyrne: you trying to do something with the tension is counter-productive in a sense
[4:31:14 PM CEST] Villum Wendelboe Lassen: yeah
[4:31:22 PM CEST] Villum Wendelboe Lassen: can be a good step on the way
[4:31:24 PM CEST] jaysonbyrne: simply return to the fact that the tension is known without effort
[4:31:36 PM CEST] jaysonbyrne: and it will dissolve as it is getting no support
[4:32:30 PM CEST] Villum Wendelboe Lassen: that's an amazing pointer
[4:32:36 PM CEST] Villum Wendelboe Lassen: that i was kinda missing
[4:32:46 PM CEST] jaysonbyrne: "looking for something, expecting something, hoping to acheive something, are all movements away from your axis to the periphery, from global consciousness to a point of view"

"Edit: This jhana-practice, as usual, has a very nice afterglow of stillness, and today, mild pleasure."

That is an indication of having done it right. It is the opposite of the "hangover" that one often gets from affective concentration (a feeling of dissociation or out-of-sync-ness).

"I need to figure out whether i will be sitting with open or closed eyes."

I recommend closed eyes. I found that every little moment of visual recognition ("that is a chair; that is a wall...") causes the mind to jump a bit, disturbing concentration.

Think of it this way: your mind is like a person having a bad drug experience. What it needs is to be left alone in a quiet place so it can relax. All stimulation is contraindicated...including things that would normally not be considered a big deal. Because even innocuous things can be disturbing to someone who's having that kind of experience.

Tried 20 minutes with closed eyes, before i was nodding off (would not normally happen, but unfortunate circumstances apply)
There is less stimulation, however, closing the eyes, in addition to provoking tirednes, seems to kick the "inner life" up a notch, which also tends to disturb the stillness.
Edit: i suspect the solution to both problems of sitting with closed eyes will come as i get better at generating pleasure.

In an older DhO post you mentioned taking (prescription) Dexedrine, and that it helped concentration. Could you describe what effect it has on this practice? I'd like to get a sense of what the relationship between stimulants and this particular practice may be.

In my experience, caffeine is very helpful for concentration.

I'm not on any stimulants at the moment, as me and the doctor are attempting to reestablish what the unmedicated baseline is. Also, Dexedrine gets you habituated, at least it did for me. So i can't help you right now. Will get back to you on that if/when i start taking stimulants again.

Drink lots of coffee But i seem to be having something like a depression at the moment, though missing the sadness part. Working on it.

sat roughly 45 minutes. Had set timer to 45 but didnt hear ending bell.
Bit of a muddled sit, trying to combine pleasure and stillness, trying various methods.
Possibilities: noticing that pleasure is made of awareness. noticing awareness (rigpa). breathing through stillness to let pleasure arise.

Breathing in general, however, seems to cause disturbance. Probably too used to focusing on it. subtly vibrations kept being active all over body

There is something that seems to be being-quite-secluded-from-worldly-pleasures that is important. It is a kind of being frozen that i like to find a way to tune into that doesn't cause disturbance.

Edit: There indeed seems to be a tradeoff involved in sitting with closed eyes, in that sitting with closed eyes creates more inner-world stuff. I think i should probably go back to sitting with open eyes.
Edit2: Afterglow not as nice today. Stillness not clearly present.
Edit3: Will try to draw upon "noticing that everything is already perfect" for tomorrow's sit.Will also try: 1: remember PCE, 2: notice awareness, 3: notice pleasure

"
Edit: There indeed seems to be a tradeoff involved in sitting with closed eyes, in that sitting with closed eyes creates more inner-world stuff. I think i should probably go back to sitting with open eyes."

Maybe you could start with open eyes, and switch to closed eyes if / when there is a large amount of pleasure (which should stabilize things).

On the other hand, the transition itself could be disturbing (don't know).

When you sit with open eyes, what are you facing? If I was going to do this practice with open eyes, I would stare at a blank wall.

EDIT:

"Possibilities: noticing that pleasure is made of awareness."

I would say, once you get pleasure, this is probably superfluous. The key thing about pleasure is that, if it's strong enough, it separates itself from the attention wave in some way, and it's this separation that you want to tune into.

It can sometimes seem that the pleasure exists "behind the veil", i.e. the illusory veil that the PCE peels away. except that in the process of cultivating pleasure, there are still two sides of a veil perceived. If you can get this, just tune into the pleasure side.

Villum and EndInSight, thanks for posting this discussion in the open. I'm finding it quite helpful.

"I would say, once you get pleasure, this is probably superfluous. The key thing about pleasure is that, if it's strong enough, it separates itself from the attention wave in some way, and it's this separation that you want to tune into.

It can sometimes seem that the pleasure exists "behind the veil", i.e. the illusory veil that the PCE peels away. except that in the process of cultivating pleasure, there are still two sides of a veil perceived. If you can get this, just tune into the pleasure side."


I have probably been focusing too much on keeping the stillness present from the start. Switching to purer pleasure-focus at the start next time. Quick tests seem to show that i should be able to do it that way and build some more serious pleasure.

Thanks for the help.

double post

Good. Jhana-factors before jhana.

FYI, it can sometimes happen that your mind wanders to jhana 4 territory before you've cultivated very much pleasure (i.e. "attention wave jhana 4"). In that case, you will be cultivating "neutral feeling"...which is still a positive experience in some way. It's hard to explain how to cultivate neutral feeling, apart from saying that it's analogous to cultivating pleasure. (It's behind the illusory veil.) But, the point is, I say "pleasure" by default because most of the time this won't happen.

45 minutes. still working on cultivating pleasure, though it went better than yesterday. Tried closing my eyes after generating pleasure, which does seem to help, but i think more is needed in order to shut down the inner life. I don't think i got out of first jhana, or even got first properly established. Got to see how the pleasure seperates from the attention wave, and the tendency for it to drop away. But still have a very hard time not getting caught up in the attention wave. Im thinking practice is the key

45 minutes. Closing eyes pretty quickly seemed natural. While stillness seems to come more easily with open eyes, building pleasure comes more quickly with closed eyes. Afterglow still not as strong as when i focused more on the stillness. However, while intermittent thoughts, restlessness and focusing came up throughout the sit, it seems reduced since friday's sit. There were some changes in the nature of pleasure that seem to indicate i might have touched some of the territory of third jhana. Witness-tensions continue to be an inttermittent distraction, but all in all, things seem to be improving
I need to find a way to sit that doesn't kill my knees as much, working on that too.