Justin's Journal 2

Experience has been pretty mundane lately. Sometimes there is mindfulness, sometimes there is not. Sometimes there are rambling chains of thought, sometimes not.

Krya episodes have died down quite a bit as I'm able to hit the circuit breaker by noticing if there is any witness sense.

There is an ability to be in the perfect empty wakefulness of a moment, but there is also no real problem if I am not.

I am having a lot of physical pain from getting my neck tweaked two days ago. This is periodically manifesting as mental resistance which is then leading to a chain of kryas and facial grimaces. The process feels very similar to when I was around a lot of people's emotional pain a couple of months ago following a close friend's death.

The body (understandably) really doesn't like pain and then the mind wants to be averse to the present situation. The aversion then hurts even more which is then seen by the mind and thankfully let go of. The whole process is quite chaotic and and leaves me unable to be fully attentive and present to those around me. But, thats just whats happening, so I'm not fighting it.

curiosity & gratitude

I'm excited to have some suffering again to remind the mind why selfing simply sucks.

The pain in my neck is continuous and is a great trigger for bringing up aversion. The aversion annihilates the mindfulness and brings about self-referencing narrative and seeking the future. Such rich opportunity for further practice.

While walking today, I was paying attention to the totally spontaneous, unscripted, unpredictable nature of all arising experience, including thoughts, emotional reactions, visual forms, etc.

This led to a dropping of the witness, and more interestingly, a temporary dropping of the sense of agency.

If experience is utterly lucid and utterly unpredictable and thus unconceptualizable, how can there be agency?

Wow. I feel really good. I've been sticking with this practice of just recognizing awareness/luminosity and paying attention to the fact that I have no clue what experience is going to arise next. Its like "don't know" infused with a wonderful curiosity. But, since my mind state is often able to objectify a large amount of the field of experience, if there were a feeling of curiosity then that would be objectified and seen as a suprising arising too.

My neck still hurts like hell and the pain is noticed every couple of seconds, but the mind is not fixating and when a moment of pain is gone, it is utterly gone without a trace.

My mindfulness or attentiveness to this practice isn't totally continuous. I am still getting constantly lost and then coming back. But, I think there is enough momentum that the periods of being lost are not bad.

I have also been catching up on my sleep lately.

I've been letting go completely of the expectation that "experiencing" will occur, yet it still occurs all by itself. This has been reliably leading to no sense of agency, ownership, etc.

Can you expand on this a little, Justin? What do you mean by "experiencing"?

I get what Justin is saying but I'll let him reply

This is going to be a toughy to explain, so I expect that this will be rife with misinterpretation.

I've noticed that any sense of expectation is a form of conceptualization.

This can occur at a gross level, such as "I expect there will be brightness and lucidity and freedom from suffering when I incline my mind a certain way." If experience doesn't match up to that expected brightness and lucidity, then there is a subtle or not-so-subtle resistance to present experience.

This can occur at a more subtle level, such as "I expect my attention to not bounce around". Then, when attention bounces, I have a subtle resistance.

I had noticed in the last year there were various times when I was absolutely fully present to every sensation in every moment with zero expectation and zero conceptual overlay, this was always my most pure and pristine experiences.

I started playing with not expecting or not anticipating what my next experience would be, and this worked sometimes, but I noticed that there was still a very subtle expectation that there would be a next experience and that it would have some sort of sanity or cohesiveness to it.

While I was falling asleep, I let go of any expectation that experience would occur. As things became more dreamlike, experience became totally insane, random, incoherent - totally impossible to derive any meaning from. During this process there seemed to be gaps in experiencing, so the mind became receptive to the notion that experiencing may or may not occur in the next moment.

Now, I just sort of recognize awareness/luminosity then let go of any expectation of experiencing...I almost dare experience to not arise, and yet it does. And then there is a curiosity about what this body is going to do, and it seems to do totally normal stuff like brushing its teeth, responding to people, etc.

I'm not doing this 100% of the time, and I'm still getting hooked in thought loops, but the result is pretty dang compelling, so I'll just stick with this until it wears out.

I also was not able to write the above from that place. It seems easier to speak spontaneously to a person than write spontaneously. This is maybe due to a habit of self-editing in written communication.

Thanks. I knew what you were getting at, but wanted to hear more.

I'm actually a bit scared by this spontaneity. I keep pulling back in social situations because there is the thought that I'm going to do something really really weird if my conceptual filters aren't keeping things in check. Yup, fear.

There is very little confidence here...falling, falling, falling again into a new unknown.

Either lack of sleep or this practice is causing my emotional reactivity to be a lot higher than normal.

As of this morning, my mind had lost its circuit breaker that has been running continuously for many months and there was some actual self-contracted suffering. Various factors that could possibly contribute.

I have been injured and in near constant pain for over a week. I have not been exercising. I have not been sleeping well. I have been doing this "don't expect experience" practice. I have been brain storming a lot.

I got some sleep and the circuit breakers seem to be working again. Knowledge of that makes me feel quite weird - apparently my "unconditional" happiness requires the condition of sleep.

I've been playing around with the 3rd person witnessing perspective and it is quite fascinating. It is basically generating an out-of-body experience for me with a slight conceptual overlay that is taking in the entire scene that I am participating in.

It seems like a really great way to be in conversation or any sort of social setting. I can almost "see" the mood of the entire social dynamic and my identity is as the scene as a whole.

I'm continuing to do the non-experiencing practice while falling asleep, but not so much during the day - its too weird for me right now.

Looking in the mirror from this 3rd person perspective is kind of fascinating. Its actually hard to tell which one is "me". Somehow the brain is able to project its perspective out of the body and into this neutral space.

At the same time, this is not unfamiliar, since video games induce this type of perspective shifting all the time. Its just surprising the effect of doing this in normal life.

Since Tuesday things have just been more and more peaceful, with less thoughts by default. I am still thinking a lot about various projects, but when I put away the computer, its almost instantly back to the experience of life.

I just wanted to highlight something that xsurf posted:

In the Dzogchen tradition, there's a very beautiful saying '“ very simple but very beautiful. And it says, 'trust your experience, but keep refining your view.'

Periods of mind shattering pain brought about by severe nerve impingement. Writhing, moaning, mumbling. No problem. That first arrow can still hurt like a sonofabitch.

I remembered Nirmala's practice of paying attention to curiosity and gratitude today while still experiencing severe pain. There were some very beautiful moments.

There has been a shift that seems to be still playing itself out. A much wider range of experience, especially "negative" is now included. There is more deep peace that is accepting and allowing greater surface turmoil.

This body has been suffering a lot of physical pain due to a severe nerve impingement, and despite the fundamental peace, this body and personality are shockingly influenced by pain and the side effects of drugs such as Prednisone. This organism is not "happy" lately, yet each moment is inescapably empty.

The experience of this shift is maybe best described as a deepening confidence of emptiness or alternatively a surrender to emptiness. Desire to manipulate immediate experience grows weaker. If there is anger, frustration, irritation, so be it.

The thinking mind and socially aware mind will continue to work on character flaws, but that process is now seen as separate from This.

I predict that as the body heals, it will become very happy and pleasant to be around when combined with this new level of immediacy and depth.

As I write this, I feel sadness - perfectly accepted sadness as it is.

Are you okay? Talk of "severe nerve impingement" makes me concerned.

Thank you. I think it has been getting better. It has been very informative to watch how much of mood and personality is derived from the body.

You mean from the mind/body, right?