Antero's practice journal 4

Very interesting, Antero. Do you find yourself to be in this continuously transcended mind state seamlessly? I'm aware that subtlety becomes an issue later in the path so if its not possible to answer in a clear way, just ignore it. As always, happy to read more.

"Very interesting, Antero. Do you find yourself to be in this continuously transcended mind state seamlessly? I'm aware that subtlety becomes an issue later in the path so if its not possible to answer in a clear way, just ignore it. As always, happy to read more.
- WF566163"

This state is very subtle, almost impossible to describe, but it is becoming more seamless with increasing level ofawareness. The way this is unfolding for me is more aptly described as non-meditation than meditation: totally unfabricated mind with awareness that does not stray from it even one millimetre.

Phenomenologically the best I can do is this:
At the lower spectrum of this integrated state of mindfulness there is spontaneous and complete awareness of every single thought (of all the categories [1]) from the moment they arise to the moment they cease. This instant recognition of their true nature makes them dissolve immediately leaving the mind still again.

At the high end of the spectrum all mental movement is at rest, so no thought of any kind arises, not even proto thoughts.

The most interesting feature of this journey is that a whole unexplored continent may suddenly come into view just when you thought that you have seen it all. Experiencing all sensations and the whole experience as manifestation of the mind identical to dream state is the latest such development for me.

[Edited for clarity]

[1] Non-exhaustive list of categories of thoughts

Analyzing thoughts
Seems to be a result of conscious reasoning, analyzing a problem
'˜Why is this washing machine not working? Perhaps the power chord is not plugged in.'

Categorizing thoughts
Recognizing objects or situations
Mental image of the object when hearing sounds
Could also be a word or a sentence
'˜The program of the washing machine seems to have ended'

Narrative thoughts
Planning or remembering, always about '˜me'
'˜I must go hanging the laundry, what a drag!'

Mental images
Single short lived image flashing in the mind forming no story
This is how planning happens to me these days.
An image of myself hanging the laundry flashes in my head telling me that I should do that soon.

Hypnagogic images
Half formed dream sequences or whole scenes making it possible to move around and interact in them.

Proto thoughts
Fragments of mental images or words making no sense.

These descriptions are fascinating Antero. Thank you for answering my question, and clearly.

Antero,
Would you mind saying a little bit about the effects of these changes on the mundane aspects of your life?
Such as relationships, jobs, and so on

"Antero,
Would you mind saying a little bit about the effects of these changes on the mundane aspects of your life?
Such as relationships, jobs, and so on
- Yadid"

The changes that have happened as a result of recent deepening are more subtle than the major changes after Unbinding (to borrow the term from Judson Brewer) that are more or less covered in posts# 10, 31, 40 and 69. Some of these features described below have been developing for a longer period of time but becoming more pronounced recently.

Job
In my line of work there is never enough time to take care of all the issues that one should to make sure that major projects flow smoothly, so prioritation is the key issue. I nowadays seem to take all necessary actions in correct order without going through a conscious analysis phase. There is often this feeling of being in synchrony with everything.

When I am solving a problem there is no narrative monologue going on in my head. I stand back and watch how the problem solves itself, neatly arranging itself spontaneously.

The amnesia is as bad as ever and when a sudden mental image that has to do with my work momenarily lights up in my consciousness I have approximately 15 seconds to write it down before the memory of it is gone. Since I have the habit of writing down everything worth remembering, it is not hampering my effectiveness in any way.

Stilness makes it much more easier to do multitasking in hectic situations, stay on track of anything I am directing my attention to and as I seem to come to right conclusions much faster than before, making me more effective at work.

At negotions I have very little at stake personally but somehow people often make descicions in my favor (and the company I represent) without me having to try to influence them like I used to.

(cont.)

Social relations
Even though moods have been absent for many months, I have noticed something interesting lately. New lightness and ease has developed in social situations. I am taking more interest in other peoples everyday concerns asking them questions and being more considerate instead of being somewhat distant and floating to a mental state of blankness where small talk is not happening easily. This was probably a result of a slightly unbalanced practice tha emphasized the emptiness aspect of everything. I was not aware of this imbalance (because everything was ok from my point of view) until afterwards as I can compare it with my current mind state.

My mind is now even stiller but there is new potential for spontaneity in that void making it easier to help other people to get the feeling of social acceptance they need using various expressions and gestures. These social nuances probably make me more relatable to them. I believe this development to be one aspect of increasing compassion and kindness.

Doing metta meditation still does not produce any felt feelings in the body but there is an unmistakeable increase of clarity of the nonconceptual awareness. These two seem to be linked.

Sleeping
I am no longer tiring easily even after 16 hour workdays. The need for sleep is reduced and I sleep lighter, so I may wake up one or two hours before the alarm clock. I am always immediately wide awake without any transition phase. About the changes in dream life see post #127.

I spent big part of the last night in a spontaneous lucid dream investigating how experience in dream and waking differ. It seems that the differences are only superficial.

In a lucid dream there is no doubt that everyhting around me is just the manifestation of the mind. When awake, at times everything seems solid but at other times unreal dream-like nature of reality is clearly seen.

Walking and looking around I become aware how the mental construction of the entire environment extends to all directions around me, so instead of reality I am mostly watching mind space that is sometimes modulated by real world objects and events. This virtual mental model that structures our surroundings and makes it intelligible to us is inherently no different from thinking and therefore entirely mental phenomenon.

When observing body sensations I become aware how mental processes are pulling the strings together to form a coherent picture giving the impression of a single body experiencing the sensations.

It is interesting how seeing the mental nature of experience in a dream makes it more apparent in daily life also. I no longer wonder why Tibetans teach dream yoga as advanced practice.

I guess I can see what you mean.
As I'm typing this, I see a small portion of the visual field sharply, the rest is quite blurry. The sounds of the people behind me trigger vague almost unnoticed simulations of the environment. The simulation is continuously adjusted by what is actually going on. Most of the time all this is not experienced as a simulation. The questioning of its accuracy is quite interesting though.

Despite the reluctance to do formal practice or write about it, I try to log something about this phase for future reference.

Things are getting all the time more subtle and I would have to be a poet to do it any justice. I stumbled across a phrase 'embracing the emptiness' and that seems to capture this stage pretty well.

Every time I notice the unbounded consciousness being responsible for the still bright emptiness that is the nature of mind between thoughts and the same field of luminosity in motion when thoughts occur or the strangely surreal dream like nature of all experience surrounding me at all times, tensions dissolve and fluctuations cease.

"Despite the reluctance to do formal practice or write about it, I try to log something about this phase for future reference."

Glad to see there is someone else in the same sort of pickle. I have no desire to sit, either, though I often do out of habit or an odd sort of guilt. And despite the sitting or not sitting, the dharma continues to deepen. It seems to do so no matter what "I" do or do not do. It's not my choice, or my intent, or my will, and at this point it's quite obvious those three things are just mirages, anyway. Experience gets ever thinner and misty.

Thanks, Antero.

Antero, I ask this question not intending to be obnoxious - speaking to the thinking mind, are you enlightened?

If so, at what point were you enlightened, if not why not?

I am actually a bit embarrassed asking this, because it is such a complex paradoxical question, but I feel that the answer may be useful, so I'll go ahead and pose it.

Sincere gratitude,

-Justin

@cmarti

That describes the situatios pretty well for me too.

@orasis

No Problem, Justin.

I am more awake than at the start of this journey I thought I will get, even thought I realize that I am still at the shallow end of the pool.

This may sound like I am dodging the question, but you see, I don't know what 'enlightened' is

Feel free to rephrase the question if you think like I am missing the point.

"This may sound like I am dodging the question, but you see, I don't know what 'enlightened' is
"

I don't know what it is either. I'm trying to tease apart whether 'enlightened' is an in-dwelling confidence or it is rather simply a label used for the skillful benefit of others.

Over time and development, do we gain more confidence in our insights or actually less?

You asked Antero but I can't resist -- more. Want to see evidence? Watch what happens on dharma message boards. You can almost always correlate experience/confidence with the ability to express your practice experience, answer dharma questions, and just generally converse about the dharma in your own words.

BTW, I don't like the word "enlightenment." I think the word "awakening" is much more descriptive and accurate. I think there is a process of deepening awakening that happens over almost infinite time scales for each practitioner, and each layer of experience is peeled back to reveal more and deeper detail revealing the workings of the mind/brain/body complex.

JHMO, and sorry to interrupt.

"I don't know what it is either. I'm trying to tease apart whether 'enlightened' is an in-dwelling confidence or it is rather simply a label used for the skillful benefit of others.

Over time and development, do we gain more confidence in our insights or actually less?

- orasis
"



@cmarti

Don't be sorry Chris, I have always appreciated the wisdom of your comments.



@orasis

The way I understand your question is whether enlightened persons as such exist or is there just enlightened activity by various individuals.

Although like Chris I prefer to use the word 'awakening' instead of enlightenment, in my experience both of the statements are true.

No doubt about, Irreversible Awakening has taken place as a result of the favourable conditions created by my practice. IMO having doubts means that the realization needs to get deepened and the measure of this realization is how useful one is to other people.

Does this answer you question in any way? I would also be interested to hear what is the motivation behind your question, having doubts youself? If this is tuning into an interesting existential question, maybe we can split this off to a new thread for others to comment as well

The motivation behind the question is going to be difficult to articulate.

My mind has not yet reified its relationship with thoughts and I'm curious what direction this is going. I'll try to make a concrete example.

If someone were to ask me if I knew what a "tree" was I could either say: "Its a green thing with leaves" or I could say "Frankly, I have no freaking clue what a tree is". If I said the former, then it would be a concept, "tree", referring to other concepts, "green", and "leaves" so it would be a true statement in a purely conceptual way and this would be okay with the thinking mind. The latter would be a reflection of the thinking mind now becoming aware that it lacks the ability to capture the reality of momentary experience and really ultimately doesn't know what anything is.

So my experience lately has been less and less confidence in my thoughts. So I guess I'm basically curious if there is a reintegration that occurs or if the mind continues in the direction of less and less knowing, or perhaps both.

The way this has been manifesting experientially is that my personality acts just as confident as always, but I will often spontaneously laugh out loud at what I just thought or said after immediately seeing how silly it is. The relationship between that which is aware and thought is now filled with irony and humor.

I'll create a new thread for this.

Lately I have been using Mahamudra inspired pointers and techniques of investigation to be mindful of the essential aspects of Awareness at all times. During the past couple of days this has not been necessary.

It feels like the mind has established itself in a stable situation where it prefers not to move away from, so there is just resting in this vast non-conceptual emptiness where all sense objects are perceived to be flowing and dream-like instead of being heavy and solid. For the time being I am throwing all, even the most subtle pointers away as they feel like unnecessary conceptual crutches and try to keep this mindfulness fresh and non-artificial.

And not even trying to understand it

Last night I walked the streets of the city of my childhood in a vivid lucid dream and tried to see how that differed from waking experience.

* The scene and its inhabitants appeared to be just as real.
* There were no inconsistensies or surreal elements to be seen (except for the market square that was almost totally covered with pies (local speciality), but I reasoned that there must have been some kind of pie-fair going on .
* Light and shadows, textures and materials were totally convincing as the sun shone through the foliage.
* The sensations of the body were mostly absent.
* Thinking happened just the same way, but access to memory was not functioning properly as I had really hard time telling if the buildings were correct or not.
* Senses were brighter. There was a delicious scent of freshly baked bread coming from the bakery nearby and as I wondered how that bread would taste like in a dream, instantly the feel and taste of the bread was in my mouth.

""There was a delicious scent of freshly baked bread coming from the bakery nearby and as I wondered how that bread would taste like in a dream, instantly the feel and taste of the bread was in my mouth."

"


Interesting. It is one of the characteristics of the normal dreamstate that certain senses are not represented in it and the dreamer is not irritated by (normally one does not even notice) that loss. the olfactory sense is one of them. It seems that lucid dreaming is closer to awake consciousness and makes smelling in a dream possible.

"
Interesting. It is one of the characteristics of the normal dreamstate that certain senses are not represented in it and the dreamer is not irritated by (normally one does not even notice) that loss. the olfactory sense is one of them. It seems that lucid dreaming is closer to awake consciousness and makes smelling in a dream possible.

- LocoAustriaco"

Lucid dreaming seems to be very close to awake consciousness, except for the inability to access memory that perhaps explains the lack of mental clarity and why it is so hard to make sense of time passing.

I think in lucid dreams we can really experience the how our mental spatial constructs [1] are made of. The dream city seems convincing enough to walk around, but closer scrutiny reveals that the facades of the buildings are do not match their real counterparts. In waking life the narrow tube of our attention gets real time updates from every part of the surroundings that we are interested in, but in dream world we'll have to do with those files that already exist on the hard drive. [2]

[1] Mental constructs, see post #157
[2] The relationship between internal and external realities, see posts #116 '“ 117

I am beginning to see where this streamlining and dropping of concepts is leading me:

This moment.

(Sorry about being so unoriginal ) Right now anything else feels like striving.


Edited to add: It is fascinating how one stumbles on these very basic insights over and over again and sees them like it was the first time.

Haha!

I get it, and it's not unoriginal - it's an insight that's original to YOU right now