Justin's Journal 2

Regarding the grimaces, I have experienced them for the last couple of months regularly as well as head shaking. I have, at times of signifigant transformation, experienced this shaking of the head as well as shaking of the arms and legs. For years I had a ball of anxiety present in the stomach and back in the winter I experienced this same sort of twitching in the stomach area. That ball of anxiety has left and I no longer have the twitching arms or legs, but I do still get the head twitch as well as the grimaces. I haven't felt like I've experienced cycling or awareness of nanas for several months so I never chalked the grimaces up to dark night. My theory is that it has to do with remaining remnants of "selfing" in the body. If I feel this in a negative sense it seems to be contained near the eye balls and the grimaces scrunch my skin towards this area. It feels sort of nice, like a massage. This same negative selfing energy could be previously felt in the gut, but since identifcation seems to have left this area of the body, so has the physical movement in this area.

I've been road tripping for the past 11 days. A lot of activity and stimulation and not a lot of awareness.

I have noticed that the grimaces and cycling through states only seems to occur when there is a witness. It seems right now if there is no witness, there is no state cycling.

I seem to be able to access an almost non-state where the witness or perspective is not known. It is like in between "everything is seen" and "don't know mind". Experience is sort of experienced yet maybe only slightly conceptualized. It can't be said whether there is suffering here - there isn't enough perfect lucidity nor enough full conceptualization to call anything suffering.

Its like weak-nonconceptualization/weak-clear seeing/weak-don't know. But even its "weakness" is not really known, so everything is fine.

In any case, its better than 3Cs, grimaces, and other nana garbage.

Is it possible that you are setting up a kind of internal tension? I can see how this could happen because there IS tension between the way things are, the way we perceive them to be and the way we want them to be. Being in the witness might magnify those differences, causing the involuntary movements. And because all of out practice is mainly about self-ing, there can be fear, let alone tension, when that self-ing is being challenged.

I'm just speculating, of course....

I can sort of pulse back and forth between a tension and a non-tension. A dominant characteristic of the tension state is the Witness sense. In the non-tension any Witness sense is fleeting at best.

Further more, from non-tension, I seem unable to Jhana jump. I have to first go to the tension state, then I can Jhana jump, but it is quite unpleasant due to the tension, so I quickly stop doing it and go back to non-tension.

What seems odd about this tension/non-tension shifting is that I cannot recall when this ability or perspective arose. It seems to be a side effect of recognizing the suckiness of jumping into the 3Cs and the sharp contrast that the jumping and its ensuing hangover provides.

I've been playing around with generating moods. I've been doing this from the aforementioned place of "mostly seen" phenomena without a desire for the mood.

Excited joy = surprise + curiosity + experience

Emptiness episode. What is conceptualizable about this moment, exactly as it is being experienced (include any conceptualization occurring in this moment)? BOOM.

Invert the relationship between thoughts and experience. Instead of thinking about experience, experience thinking.

There is a Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle-esque thing here. The experience of a moment cannot be truthfully conceptualized.

1) That concept cannot happen in the same moment as the experience
2) If a concept is the experience, the concept is not fully conceptualizing the experience of itself

"Invert the relationship between thoughts and experience. Instead of thinking about experience, experience thinking."

I love this.

I've been reading a lot of Dzogchen from www.berzinarchives.com/ and paying to bare experience and non-conceptuality.

I have noticed that for most of 24 hours there has been a change in my visual field where characteristics of light and artifacts in my visual field are prominent. Everything has sort of a fuzzy glowing 1st jhana-esque hue to it. Also, if I stare at high contrast text on my screen for long enough, the visual artifacts of horizontal lines overlays my visual field for some time.

I believe I am simply getting closer to the actual visual experience prior to full labeling of things as walls, doors, colors, etc.

There is a splitting of perceptions occurring in my mind. From a thought-free place, I am seeing visual information - colors, shimmering, and then I am separately perceiving the form of an object in an almost synesthesia type of experience.

I am also able to do this with the sense of touch. If I move my hand over my arm the physical sensations of touch are seen as separate from the model of the object that is being touched.

Again, this is all from a thought free state. So this isn't the label of the object, but rather the presently occurring physical model of the object.

This is just my opinion (and I can be a cranky old bastard) but someone in the practical dharma movement needs to draft a very thorough definition of "thought, thinking" because we are all getting confused about it. In my version of thought, anything that you experience with mind is thought and thinking, be it images, sounds, emotions, feelings, what have you. Everything is mediated by mind. Sorry, this is a bugaboo of mine and I really think it confuses a lot of people.

If you are having a truly thought free state, really and truly thought free, you are either in a very deep sleep, drugged, or dead

I'm being an *******, but this is important, I think.

Justin -- - getting off my soapbox now -- what you seem to be describing is very familiar, but it's not something that sticks around forever. At some point the perception of objects as first a sense contact then a conception (or idea or model) will fade and be absorbed into the way you naturally see things. It will be assumed to be the way things just are. You will be able to deconstruct those phases at will (this is all part of the process of dependent origination) if you want to, but your baseline operating mode will be different. That has been my experience.

"
This is just my opinion (and I can be a cranky old bastard) but someone in the practical dharma movement needs to draft a very thorough definition of "thought, thinking" because we are all getting confused about it. In my version of thought, anything that you experience with mind is thought and thinking, be it images, sounds, emotions, feelings, what have you. Everything is mediated by mind. Sorry, this is a bugaboo of mine and I really think it confuses a lot of people.

If you are having a truly thought free state, really and truly thought free, you are either in a very deep sleep, drugged, or dead

I'm being an *******, but this is important, I think.

"

Well, my working vocabulary is that a "thought" is gross verbal chatter or a visual image. I would call the ability to recognize a shape or object without necessarily labeling it to be "conceptualization" or "subtle conceptualization" or "object recognition"

Thanks for sharing your experience.

Right now it seems like subtle conceptualization or object/shape recognition is co-arising, but subtly separate from the arising of color and shadow. This (apparent) co-arising makes this seem different from the type of conceptualization in the chain of DO. But again, this is all very fuzzy and subtle, so it is probably folly to make any conclusions about this...

"... the type of conceptualization in the chain of DO..."
"

To be clear, literally everything that arises is part of DO. It cannot be otherwise.

Still constant fuzzing in the visual field today.

I felt compelled to watch vanishings of phenomena for a while. Perception quickly became highly vibratory and discontinuous. Attention started pulling to right behind the eyes and there was further deep gapping and discontinuity with some twitching. Eventually attention went back online in a more "normal" fashion and was just seeing fuzzing phenomena again, but there was absolutely no agency for an unknown number of minutes - just sitting there. An intention would start to arise, but it would be seen and vanish.

I can't come up with much feeling tone for the whole experience - it was neither positive nor negative, though the tensions would probably be best interpreted as negative.

The visual field changes have become less prominent but can still be called up at will.

There have been some moments of seeking energy but are seen as silly and disappear once the thought loop is noticed.

The witness sense continues to become increasingly elusive.

The mind is no longer much inclined to impute an awareness separate from experience. "luminosity" feels like a better word than "awareness" right now.

Experience has been a bit dry and bland lately. Trying to remember gratitude.

There was a subtle pervasive dukkha last night, so I sat.

Kryas, crying, and a feeling of total helplessness. It wasn't all that painful, but it is making me quite sad with compassion to remember.

A lot of random emotional upwelling. A lot of tension in the chest and heart area. I have no clue what is triggering it and am attempting to analyze it as little as possible and just be with the experience. It is, however, very strange and confusing.

I went to a Yoga class. Junk is no longer arising.

Conceptualizing an Awareness is the same as conceptualizing a "luminosity aspect of phenomena". The latter may be more truthy, but the former is easier for the mind to accept.

My experience of paying bare attention to senses today is only very slightly different from my experiences of Recognizing Awareness a year ago.

Emptiness realization brings about a sort of belief structure of equanimity toward belief structures.

Just as the Witness can have equanimity towards appearances, the Thinker can have equanimity towards itself if it has been informed by direct experience of realizing emptiness.

As Nikolai has pointed to recently, the seeing, hearing, feeling, etc. needs no equanimity as it just IS.

But, I will rank emptiness realization as more important.

When the feeling, seeing, hearing is not seeing itself as such and Awareness is divided...

then the divided Witness has an opportunity to observe with equanimity, but failing in this, the suffering Thinker...

can still remember and experientially manifest the fact that this experienced suffering is still empty and everything is perfect exactly as it is.

I have been playing the game Diablo 3 a lot lately and it has absolutely destroyed my mindfulness. I think it has something to do with generating craving/desire - the brain wants more of the dopamine hits of the rewards from playing the game.

On the plus side, I had a horribly painfully paralyzing heartburn episode last night and though the body writhed in torment, there was gratitude and equanimity none-the-less.