Justin's Journal 2

Practiced placing attention where the thoughts form - searching for thoughts, a lot of pressure building at the back of the head. A fruition with a dirty feel to it, weird dull state with a lot of head tingling afterword.

Bringing attention back down to the abdomen. Less head tingling, a bit more brightness and clarity.

Had some really long days of intense conceptual thought (software development), which brought be back a couple of pegs into contraction.

This gave this contracted self the opportunity tonight to listen to Kenneth's 20 stratum of mind talk and go along for the ride.

The biggest thing I noticed is that each and everyone of those stratum simply SUCKED other than what I think was a pure land with spontaneous gratitude. I don't know if I was actually accessing any pure lands but there was a lot of stuff that felt various degrees between the Witness and Rigpa with various focuses and energy signatures.

Most surprising to me was actually Equanimity as it was now manifesting as buzzing/hazy contraction that wasn't bugged by anything other than its buzzing/haziness. From the perspective of a normal monkey mind, equanimity used to be such a huge relief. Now it just seems dirty compared to recent clarity.

I am bit concerned that playing around with these jhanas may actually taint the minds ability to access and abide in Ripga...

I should note that the last couple of days before this I was feeling spontaneous tender sadness arise every once in a while that seemed to be aimed toward the losing of the old me. Its like my body is now starting to catch up to what is going on...

What does an enlightened pirate wear?

An Arrrr-hat!

Nice. This place does feel awfully serious sometimes.

I can relate very much to post #78. I've had that experience to differing degrees all along the way.

"What does an enlightened pirate wear?

An Arrrr-hat!"

!

Falling from grace More thought identification, less momentum. I'm kind of enjoying this though - its so obvious that one can't just hit a new peak and remain there - things must oscillate. This oscillation - not so bad.

Inclining the mind toward recognizing awareness has been hitting slightly the wrong frequency the last couple of days.

Last night and today I switched to just trying to "see everything" - working to be aware of every phenomena occurring in each moment. The mind has to let go of thoughts and tensions in order to do this, otherwise there is something there that is not seen. If I am contracted when I begin this, there are some kryas as the mind lets go and tunes in. This feels good.

I don't know who said "Clear seeing is effortless surrender", but it describes this perfectly.

The breath is prominent. Pressures are moving around in the top of the head, trying to decide if they are painful or not. Eventually it is unknown whether they are painful and there is relief. Still undulating pressures, but more like a massage of the brain - some dynamic equilibrium that poises between the verge of being settled or springing out of control.

Memories of a perfect moment relaxing on a couch at a lake cabin many years ago...

Speed reading a book while attention rests on the breath and a wide visual field. Individual words are not so much seen, but I think the pertinent information is still absorbed.

I was around people I love who were dealing with an tremendous amount of emotional pain this week. Especially the first two days I worked to maintain awareness as nearly continuously as I could to embrace and support that pain. I won't go into the details and just focus on the relevant data.

On Monday night, I stayed up all night to be present with people. Strong emotions such as sadness, anger, and even joy would periodically erupt but mostly there was calm attentiveness. By midday Tuesday kryas would start up spontaneously fairly frequently.

By Tuesday evening, still mostly in awareness, and overall at peace, my jaw would start clenching and unclenching spontaneously. I later on had to remove myself from people to just sit. As soon as I sat and just let things happen, quite violent head shaking kryas with animalistic teeth gnashing took place for about five minutes.

Basically, even though the mind and the thoughts were equanimous to the situation, the body was still taking in and responding to the enormous amount of emotional pain around me in a very raw animalistic way.

Eventually as the week wore on, lack of sleep, no exercise, and poor diet started to catch up and my concentration waned, leaving less awareness and a lot of dull agitation read as sleepiness. After a couple of days of rest, I feel great again.

The sense of the witness seems to be slowly fading. It seems to be an unnecessary reference point.

Having difficulty unpacking the difference between sadness and tiredness.

I've been focusing on curiosity lately and using that to let go of attachment to expansive states. Instead of shifting from narrative mode to awareness, I just get really curious about the thoughts and experience.

This has led to a couple of recent situations where there was a decent amount of negative feeling tone, but the curiosity couldn't find anything fundamentally wrong other than the persistent negative feeling tone and some complaining thoughts (which were seen as only partially substantial).

Things have been very interesting lately. I have let go a lot of expansive states and am defaulting more to contraction. I still recognize awareness many times per hour, but I honestly cannot recall any suffering in the contraction.

I have done various unskillful things such as yell at my kids, but even these negative emotional moments cannot be seen as suffering. Basically, as soon as there is any mindfulness, I recognize that even the immediate past is a fiction and any thought loops I have about it are ******** and everything is seen as perfection.

Its a paradoxical situation. So perhaps there are moments, while contracted, that I suffered, but I honestly cannot recall any moments of suffering in the last couple of weeks.

I also feel very re-energized about engaging in the world, working, etc. I can spin in concepts but laugh about their illusory nature.

Fun.

So curious to see how long this phase lasts and what is coming next.

Hi Justin,

Regarding your previous post - Do you believe your kids may have suffered as a consequence of you yelling at them?

Hi, Yadid.

Seems to me that your question is bit like asking Justin when he stopped beating his wife. The question appears to me to have a motivation behind it.

Hi Chris,
You're right, basically, what was going through my head when I read Justin's latest post was:
He's talking about not suffering, and then mentions doing something he defines as an "unskillful act", which was yelling at his kids.
And also mentions negative emotional moments that cannot be seen as suffering.

This perplexes me, and so I asked, whether he thinks his kids suffered as a result of his self-reported yelling at them, to see what he thinks about that.
While I do think it is possible to yell at one's kids out of compassion for them, he didnt say this was the case, and actually mentioned that act as 'unskillful', ie - done as a result of a negative mind.

I personally find that I make my loved ones suffer only when I am suffering myself , and so I am wondering how Justin explains it differently.

What do you think Chris?

I think we all say things here that can personal and sensitive. I have four kids and I've yelled at all of them at one time or another. I yelled at my youngest just this week. Why? The answer is situational/contextual, like everything else is. Parenting is a bit like a dangerous high wire act. You can not yell when yelling is called for (and sometimes it IS called for and is what I'd call skillful) and then you can yell when yelling is not skillful. We're human beings and as such and by nature imperfect.We do stuff we regret later. Justin says he sees all of that, and more, and that's what practice is supposed to do - allow us to see that which was previously unseen, assumed, not acknowledge or recognized.

Justin is admitting the paradox in what he posted so he's already seen the conundrum. So in my view Justin was explaining something that is very personal, very disconcerting in some ways and yet very advanced in others. I relate to that as a person and as a meditator. I'm inclined to give folks the benefit of the doubt.

Hope this makes some sense.

It does make some sense.

Hi guys, I have no problem with answering this, but I would caution that a year ago this type of question would have been fairly uncomfortable, so is likely not great to ask of most people. I think Yadid is probably taking the overall context of my journal into consideration and is aware of this.

Like Chris mentioned, parenting is like a dangerous high wire act, you are rarely ever (never?) totally correct in what you are doing. On the order of dozens of times per day, *every* *single* *day* I need to respond to some situation with imperfect skill where the best possible outcomes are usually shades of bad to neutral.

I certainly often react in ways where I immediately regret my action. This I would label unskillful. This also applies to moments where I have been expansive, allowing, and peaceful, yet the situation called for action and intervention and the mind also recognizes this as unskillful.

What has changed for me is that there seems(?) to be no suffering in hindsight. (I cannot say with 100% certainty, it is just how it seems)

- Son bites daughter on the face, the second time he has bit her that day
- She starts shrieking in pain, I experience heart break for her pain and shock at the action
- I yell very loudly - "I DO NOT LIKE IT WHEN YOU BITE!!!!! YOU ARE ON TIME OUT, RIGHT NOW!!!"
- My son is shocked by the tone of my voice, he immediately bursts into agonizing tears. He is clearly in pain
- I see his reaction and immediately feel pain again that he is hurting and shame that my response caused it

At this point the action is done. Since shame arose at the pain of my action I label it unskillful, but its done, and immediately becomes a story and somehow recognized as such.

Another way to explain this is that my life seems very normal and human right now, yet there is an underlying layer of resistance that is missing. Not all resistance is missing, just a nice big fat juicy layer is missing.

When narrative attempts to reestablish this resistance the mind just sort of laughs at itself as it recognizes that attempt as simply experience arising in this moment.

"I personally find that I make my loved ones suffer only when I am suffering myself , and so I am wondering how Justin explains it differently."

So I think this is the meat of your question. When interacting with well-adjusted adults on an equal peer basis I would generally agree your statement.

I do not agree in situations, such as parenting and managing employees, where other people have created a dependency of their behavior and emotional states to your action or inaction. As the complexity of the situations increases, there are more lose-lose scenarios where someone is guaranteed to suffer.

Justin,
Thanks for taking the time to explain this to me, highly appreciated.

You explained the whole thing in very clear terms.

Had a very hectic fast paced day yesterday. As I was falling asleep I was just paying attention to experience. Lots of strong kryas, then an intense facial expression of disgust, and an intense facial expression of fear - I can't say that I noticed much of a mental component during those phases.