Justin's Journal 2

I slept for 15 hours after the previous post. My attention is no longer being hooked and drawn in. Most resistance is now being seen except for perhaps some evasive background resistance. I am able to again read and type from a perspective of panoramic awareness.

Bonus trick: I was able to keep myself asleep if I kept my eye focus in sort of a stretched 2nd jhana perspective to the point where it caused some tension toward the outer edges of the eyes, There was also a non-conceptual orientation of my attention within this perspective to keep my thinking mind from assuming it was awake. I am able to recall it right now and almost feel like I could put myself back to sleep.

Justin, you have discovered a little known benefit of a deep practice! Sleeping, or rather the ability to sleep pretty much at will.

Chris: do you have any other pointers for instantly falling asleep?

I was detecting residual resistance this afternoon so I began asking "What is wrong?" and then later on "What is it in Awareness that is not perfect?". Within 20 minutes or so, the source of the resistance was seen and now can no longer be found.

I am pretty sure that I was clinging to a state again and that my resistance was the mismatch between the memory or projection of the state and what my actual state was.

"Chris: do you have any other pointers for instantly falling asleep?"

Here's what works for me -- I lay down and get relaxed, breathe from the stomach for a few breaths and then take on a very wide angle attention. To do that I expand my virtual field of vision from side to side. Then I tune the mind into the fuzzy jhana-like background "noise" I can sense mentally. Nature takes its course after that gets tuned and locked into, which probably takes about two minutes, maybe more or less depending on how active I've been or how tired I am at the time. But that's just me and I suspect, Jason, that there are many ways to do this.

Interesting - I never thought about the method, though I do pretty much fall asleep at will, and anywhere. Imagining it for a moment, I think I do a sort of wide soft attention and then add a gentle sense of sinking or drifting. I may state "go to sleep now." I do sometimes sleep and maintain some level of awareness, or at least hang in that state for a while before a deeper sleep, but the range of sleep-like states all seem effective enough to count as "sleep."

More bouts of extreme face contortions. They are occurring now randomly and even out in public. They are such strong grimaces that they are physically painful and last from 20 seconds to a couple of minutes. While it is occurring I cannot detect any resistance to them other than some scattered confused thoughts trying to rationalize what is going on.

Is Icarus flying too close to the sun? Meh.

Sat formally. Lots of cycling, both new style and the way it did before 1st path. I saw a solid ball of tension that was clearly suffering, but the mind did not seem able to resolve it. Can't find it right now.

There were tastes of "in the seeing, just the seen", but very flickery and no discernible suffering in those flickers. Can't really note mind states right now.

The tension ball seems to be a good target for formal sitting. We'll see what I do over the next few days.

I was hoping to replicate the impenetrable tension ball again today, but it is not arising.

Conclusions:

1) Suffering and tension can still arise that is beyond my minds ability to manipulate or surrender to. But, perhaps this tension was fabricated merely by an "I" desiring to have a challenge to rise up to meet.

2) Maps and concepts of enlightenment cause me more suffering than not at this point. If my thoughts feel like considering myself enlightened, thats fine. I can now understand why many yogis become averse to the term "enlightenment".

Again I find the Dzogchen conceptual model of simply resting in the natural state to be a soothing balm.

Listening to this while reading your journal -figured I'd post it here for you:

"I was hoping to replicate the impenetrable tension ball again today, but it is not arising.

Conclusions:

1) Suffering and tension can still arise that is beyond my minds ability to manipulate or surrender to..."

I find this to be the case, myself - as if there is a process running that "I" have no part in. Experience can change radically day to day or week to week: from a sort of magnetic equanimity that simply doesn't *allow* any tension or even much thought, to tumultuous flickering inner noise of an abstract sort, which can trigger spates of memories, images, thoughts or kriyas (including that really painful face scrunching one). It doesn't make a difference what practice I do - the changes come and go on their own, as if they have a plan I am not party to. The only thing that seems counterproductive is trying to intervene in the process, as that adds a layer of struggling. Surrender/resting with what is (whether noisy or still) seems the best course for me currently.

Thank you for sharing that giragirasol. It feels good to have comrades in the process.

"Abandon the literal knowledge of the scriptures that you have learned and accept new interpretations if they seem reasonable. To learn Buddhisn is to be free from the world and attain the Way. To think that you have studied much and for long, and that you cannot abandon it, is to be bound by illusion. Consider this well." Dogen in Zuimonki Part 3

"I was hoping to replicate the impenetrable tension ball again today, but it is not arising.

Conclusions:

1) Suffering and tension can still arise that is beyond my minds ability to manipulate or surrender to. But, perhaps this tension was fabricated merely by an "I" desiring to have a challenge to rise up to meet.

2) Maps and concepts of enlightenment cause me more suffering than not at this point. If my thoughts feel like considering myself enlightened, thats fine. I can now understand why many yogis become averse to the term "enlightenment".

Again I find the Dzogchen conceptual model of simply resting in the natural state to be a soothing balm."

Sounds familiar

For me all tension and unpleasantness always boils down to this: What am I adding to this moment? When that seen and automatically dropped, there is no longer need to think anymore, just letting the mind rest is enough.

I have noticed that all kinds of conceptual practices simply feel contrived and painful at this point and the perfect mindfulness is the result of dropping all techniques, maps, concepts and effort.

This is an awesome thread, thank you Justin for sharing!

There is awareness and/or phenomena is luminous. There is no separation.

The last update was written during a peak experience of non-seperation. March 30 & 31, and April 1 were quite wonderful - I had surrendered manipulation and got a big prize as a result. The next 4 or 5 days I came down and it really sucked. My contracted self was still thinking non-manipulation, but that kept me stuck in some subconscious attachment to the previous peak experience.

In the past 24 hours, I have just been looking at desire and pointedly working not to assume that any other states are available to me. Experience is much more mundane, normal, and pleasant. There is a witness-like separation again, but it is basically fine. I have also been paying attention to body signals such as headache to make sure I am staying properly hydrated and well-rested - I think I was ignoring all body signals in the totally undivided state.

As Nirmala says: Desire for the present moment is gratitude.

Great stuff. I can relate with much in your last two posts. I had a very drastic experience in the non-conceptual, non-separate, impersonal realm lasting several days followed by a falling out that was quite painful. The experience totally changed the way I thought of practice/everything. In the months following I've noticed that experience becoming slowly integrated and normalized(in a good way) and balancing with the conceptual. Its really nice as I don't feel the pull to throw anything away and the sense of well being is wonderful. But the initial after effects came as quite a shock and were really disorienting. Wish you well and look forward to seeing where this heads.

Bill

Stupid Yogi Trick du jour - I think I am now able to find the A&P immediately and blast with in milliseconds past to strong facial grimaces that I am now associating with the dark night nanas. Some please correct me if you think I'm wrong on my nana mapping.

To normalize this seemingly bizarre stuff, I have posted a YouTube video of what happens when I do it:

You didn't.

That looks incredibly painful! I hope your experience wasn't as bad as it seemed.

I know this isnt helpful but WOW

Interesting. I'm curious about something, though. I notice your eyes roll up just before the grimace starts. Is this intentional, or is part of the same reaction?

Also, how do you get to A&P so quickly?

Thankfully, its not mentally painful at all! The only thing unpleasant about it is the actual crampy tightness of the face muscles.

Based on some comments from Kenneth, I would guess this is Review Phase A of some path, since I seem to just be cycling from this to EQ and back around if I avert my mind in this way.

But then again, I could be way off on the nana territory here.

I know its quite odd but perhaps its helpful to normalize for someone else who happens to experience the same thing. *shrug*

andy: Well, it just kind of occurred to me from some of the conversations on A&P around here recently that I've been noticing the vibrations, pulsing flashing lights and just decided to try averting my mind directly to it and it seemed to work.

I am not quite intentionally rolling my eyes, but it seems almost instantly correlated with averting to the A&P.

I'm honestly not sure that any of this is at all useful as after doing this about 5 times straight while writing this message I now feel like I'm in some dirty low EQ.

It was suggested that rather than Review Phase A, this is instead Jhana jumping, which I was informed has a negative side effect of a kind of depleted feeling, which I can definitely attest to.

I experimented around with this some more, and I was able to jump directly into the grimaces (dark night) without hitting the A&P and hop around to the first four jhanas. I also jumped into the solidity of the 3Cs and I have to say I have sooooo much compassion for the yogis that are stuck there - the heaviness and solidity of it really really really sucks. Keep moving forward guys, you'll be free of it soon!

I feel kind of nauseous still from the 3Cs hangover.

But, this moment is perfect as it is - curiosity, gratitude, curiosity, gratitude, ...