Justin's Journal 2

Today I noticed that after gross selfing was noticed and fell away, I was able to watch thoughts arise and these were not fundamentally painful.

From that place I began to play with generating thoughts and see what happened. Eventually I just started repeating "gratitude", "gratitude", "gratitude" over and over again while I walked and noticed attention shifting to my chest and a smile to appear on my face. All the while, I was still seeing phenomena arise and not get bound up in them, so "I" was able to generate gratitude without (too often) getting lost back in selfing.

So it was kind of a reverse noting.

The one theoretical danger that occurred to me by this is that by repeating "gratitude" over and over and over again, I may be redefining what "gratitude" means in my conceptual mapping.

Prior to this exercise, I also noticed some attentional twitching that was keeping me from seeing a smooth sequence of moments as perfect...

I observed something else very interesting:

"This moment is perfect."

That is a thought.

If that thought is seen, then it is just phenomena.

I think the conceptual mind and body can believe the thought "This moment is perfect." while still having the experiencing mind know that this is simply phenomena and not be embedded in that thought.

To me, this means that I can have my cake and eat it too.

Practice was a bit more interesting today. While on a walk, I decided to just enjoy all phenomena arising, leaving out nothing, including the enjoyment feeling itself. If there was subtle selfing, this was enjoyed and perhaps sometimes seen and perhaps sometimes not.

I have been able to maintain this pretty strongly into the evening and it seems like a good way to hack awareness through a positive feeling feedback loop. In the present moment, enjoyment is just phenomena, but relatively speaking it is causing some positive hormone release within my brain that should help to condition this behavior more in the future.

Alejandro said: "But the preliminary that catapulted the experience was the bodhisattva vow. As I said in a previous post, shifting from "benefit myself" to "benefiting whatever is within the reach of my awareness" takes the experience to a whole new level."

Gah...see "I" was trying to be enlightened for the sake of sentient beings....<pretends to bash head against desk>

I now see more clearly an aspect of the "union of compassion and emptiness" - again this is all very very practical. Emptiness isn't realized for long unless compassion is existent to keep self contraction at bay - compassion IS a key part of the path...ahh crap.

"compassion IS a key part of the path...ahh crap.
"

You got that right partner

Energy levels seem to be the primary driver of personality and behavior lately. When feeling low energy in social situations I switch to just watching the body sensations and become disengaged socially. I'm working to find tools to be a more positive light to those around me even when I'm extremely tired or overstimulated.

I had a mini breakthrough in the last couple of days. I have been using Nik's posting on moving the sense of self down to the abdomen and some of Antero's comments to learn how to get rid of really harsh buzzing energy.

I am now finding that I can create harsh vibrations on demand by trying to manifest my sense of self in the middle of my head. In recent months this would sometimes happen and I'd simply have to sit with it with equanimity. Now I can consciously move the self sense to the abdomen and the harsh vibrations simply cease to arise.

This technique seems different than the Mahamudra Noting - tension/release/listening which seems to work better for real emotional tension.

Anyway, very happy to have discovered this and it leaves me wondering how much more of negative experience can I cause to cease to arise.

Bhante G: "It is observing how it affects others."

"Mindfulness is the observance of the basic nature of each passing
phenomenon. It is watching the thing arising and passing away. It is seeing how that
thing makes us feel and how we react to it. It is observing how it affects others."

While walking today:

"Ooo I like this song!"

"Who likes this song?!"

(joyful laughter arises)

I had a taste of the intrinsic self-awareness aspect of phenomena today. I believe the term "luminosity" is also used to describe this.

While recognizing awareness, wherein I usually rest somewhat "in between" phenomena, I noticed the typical process of attention become more inclusive of all of the sense doors - going from mostly visual to inclusive of almost all body sensations, sights, and sounds. As this process was occurring (as it often does) I noticed that these new phenomena were not really known but were rather doing the knowing.

There was some stability for a couple of minutes, but then the process of conceptualizing the whole thing kicked in and the moment was gone.

Very low percentage of the time recognizing awareness lately - maybe once ever couple of minutes at best and once per half hour at worst. Durations range from mere seconds to five minutes or so.

No sharp negative emotional fixations stick - they trigger awareness and are dropped. My negative moods now mostly comprise of prolonged tiredness in the body (this has been happening a lot lately).

Generation of dispassion toward becoming seems to be making progress.

Really watching the selfing process seems to be the best way to clean away obscurations - a lot of my other tricks can end up getting stuck in a clouded present moment dualistic witness.

overall happiness level: tired

When will it be the right time that is being waited for?

I was dealing with some pain yesterday when I was tired and thus my concentration was not strong. The pain didn't really *directly* hurt but kept on collapsing my attention back into a dualistic contraction around the pain.

Eventually I remembered Mahamudra Noting, and it worked like an absolute charm, even in my low concentration state. The simple process of cycling from tension/contraction to openness seems to slowly strengthen the concentration until its back up to a point where Rigpa can be maintained.

Had a very stable Rigpa for about 2 hours today brought about by (I think) higher than normal levels of concentration plus contemplating the Bahiya "In the seeing, just the seen". That phrase seems to be phenomenal conceptual medicine - allowing the conceptual mind to shut up and also accept any proto-self-contraction as just the display of awareness.

I feel that the awareness of the cause and effect of today's event may lead to a significant deepening. I'm sure I'll fall back, but it feels like the iterations are digging a level deeper.

I have to say that it's weird, funny and yet spectacular that contemplating a concept can lead to a place with no concepts. I guess that's another odd thing about this practice. Some things are just impossible to anticipate and thus just amazing and wonderful when you see them.

I should flesh out a few more details for accuracy on yesterday's post:

I was practicing concentration for about 20-40 minutes, then shifted into trying to concentrate on the sense of awareness/stabilize the Rigpa. I did this for maybe 20 minutes (while periodically almost falling asleep). During this time when I would feel a tension I would do a quick mahamudra note and open back up and concentrate on awareness.

It was at this point I started contemplating "in the seeing, just the seen" and there was a very subtle shift into a much more stable Rigpa where normally distracting tension was simply self-liberated by seeing it as devoid of essence. The perception shift really occurred when it was noticed that all the phenomena, especially the self-sense, are totally self-arising without origin or reference.

The hangover from this has been great - a really excellent 24 hours with a ton of peace. I've slipped back a little, but with about 5 minutes of recharging the concentration battery I'm able to get back there again.

Hopefully as this fades I'll quickly get sick of samsara and follow the breadcrumbs back here.

I should also note that I redact anything that I previously wrote about Rigpa. I wish there a way to annotate previous posts with that redaction. I now know that any mind state where *all* phenomena do not self-liberate is not Rigpa. Even the subtlest sense of unsatisfactoriness is not Rigpa.

There are many mind-states that are quite close and very good to practice and just need a slight nudge to get there, but they are not it.

Thoroughly excellent day. peace peace peace peace...think think think...wake up...peace peace peace peace

Thought a lot tonight about renouncing conceptualization...oh boy...silly silly brain

Seriously though, this conceptual mind is ready to renounce samsara. You can have my resistance - I really don't need it any more.

Isn't that just another concept?
A conceptual thought thinking about renouncing conceptualization ?
Also, if conceptualization / resistance are empty and not special as anything else, why are they a problem?

These comical thought loops are basically the extent of my current suffering. They are actually quite bizarre - almost egoically suicidal.

I'm looking forward to see what comes next.

Since August I have not had any long lasting afflictive emotions with the exception of a couple of rare moments when I was at the edge of sleep. In particular gross anxiety or stress do not arise for more than a few moments and then vanish.

Very infrequently, strong negative afflictive emotion/thought combinations do arise, but the mind has gotten good at quickly flipping the circuit breaker.

Depression-quality body vibrations with constant negative feeling tone have arisin a couple of times, but they mostly made the body unwilling to be active rather than really causing anxiety in the mind. With knowledge of shifting attention to the navel, these vibrations may be largely cured as well - we'll see.

Most of my current (minor) tension is in the form of either a vague timeless witness tension or self-referential thought loops. From a relative perspective, most of the time these are rather pleasant which often brings me toward complacency.

Bliss, gratitude, and curiosity have replaced last night's more determined mindset which was simply generating thought loops.

The mind seems to not need to be as vigilant and concentrated to maintain this bliss, gratitude, and curiosity.

wonderful. will we get attached?

Quasi real-time update from a really wild ride.

About two hours ago I started feeling intense pressure in my chest, like a constant crushing wave of anxiety. It was really really really unpleasant and was causing constant contraction and thoughts to form about it. I would open up and it would release a little, but then come crushing back. It was so unpleasant but at the same time I was so grateful for it - something meaningful to challenge.

I just let this sit for about 30 minutes while I was cooking and was just trying to surrender, surrender, surrender, but something was still resisting it. I decided to sit down and do shamata and rachet up my concentration to stop the continuous re-contraction, then started looking for the whif of awareness that I can normally find instantly, but it couldn't be clearly found, almost as if it were operating on a different frequency than my mind was used to. I would periodically touch the space/frequency and then fly right past it - tons of confusion.

cntd...

Then I decided to switch to just totally inclusive vipassana and started having an incredibly wild energy ride. The tension would build but my mind could not quite see the tension - again as if it were operating on a different frequency than normal. All of these thoughts and protothoughts would arise about "normal" not existing and resisting the lack of control.

Slowly (yet highly energetically!) the vipassana started cracking things open and I can vaguely remember being in one of the wierdest places I have ever experienced. There was really deeply truly no one home yet there was a sense of phenomena but almost no memory being created. I very vaguely remember picking up a ball that was next to me and squeezing it and moving it around but really nothing was registering. I very vaguely remember a proto-thought about this being somehow really amazing and really not awesome at the same time. The lack of memory creation was just really really weird and this just happened maybe 10 minutes ago.

cntd...