Villum's further mistakes

"And now, after meeting with kenneth yesterday, and finding out that i forgot at least part of mahamudra - the true peace and rest. Since saturday (see above) i've been having these strange moments of tension relaxing totally away - something that feels like what i think is the effort of the observer/observed split going away.
Anyways, there i was, waiting for the bus this evening, and falling into the clarity and deep peace somewhere in the neighbourhood of mahamudra. And suddenly, i saw, or it seemed to me (still does), that i am (naught but) an expression of the nature of mind, or whatever this unspeakable clarity is. And this is wonderful.
Very nice!"

After this, i couldn't sleep for the energy. Seemed very A&P-ish, and it seemed the meeting with kenneth, or the "i am an expression of the nature of mind" thing got me into cycle-mode hard. Had some periods that were very dark night-ish later saturday, and on sunday.

My daily meditation lately has been half an hour of a combination of Endinsights sutta jhana and insight.
I approach the first jhana, such that the pleasure-that-is-still-and-has-only-vague-location is slightly noticeable.
I notice various disturbing things, then asking myself in thought things like "from what does that arise" "when does this cease" "what is required for this to arise". Now and then i think various preliminary conclusions (this comes about dependent on that), and then go back to looking at how and dependent on what things come and go, occasionally going down a level or two

i've also been looking at how the jhana arises and ceases, weakens and strengthens, emcompasses more or less of the mind.

Today, and probably for a few days before, i have had these blankouts, where i forget what i was gonna say and (there was one) become lost in the senses (it works kinda like becoming lost in thought, you stare into space). The mind goes blank, accompagnied by a flash of light. Perception is very clear today, also, and there has been some bliss on the front of the body. Spontaneous flashes of rigpa, A&P or spontanous pure land jhana are my guesses. Lost in the senses again. happening quite a lot right now.

I can't remember where i was when i saw that nothing has any location.
I think it was today, though

No flashes of light blanking the mind, but still unusually confused.
Sit log: Around noon I did half an hour of the jhana with completely still pleasure. It might be the sutta jhana, and i've called it the EIS jhana. Got deeper than earlier this week, though still working with first jhana. The sense of volition, of actions not arising from the unified bodymind, is clearly a disturbance of the state. Was nicely peaceful and clear afterwards.
Tonight: finally, after over two months, i returned to the Cula-sunnata sutta meditation. Last time was profound, and probably triggered a fear-reaction that made me not practice that or any formless jhanic stuff since then. Managed to get through eighth, through my formless jhanas were rusty. For more about the cula-sunnata sutta, see Nikolai on the Hamilton project, which i'm gonna reread tonight:
thehamiltonproject.blogspot.dk/2012/06/a...a-sunnata-sutta.html

I know my log hasn't exactly been reader-friendly lately. A lot of the time, i write stuff down to remember of what's been happening, and i never get around to the explanation.
Anyways, since yesterday, i've been noticing when there's a belief behind something silly i'm doing, like for example being annoyed at sensations. Then i go: "Does this belief make me happy?" (usually, no) "Is it true?" (no, or it's just something that can be true or false). "Let's drop it" "Ok" And then some bodily tension disappears.
Thanks to Mumuwu for reminding me of the trick

"
Anyways, since yesterday, i've been noticing when there's a belief behind something silly i'm doing, like for example being annoyed at sensations. Then i go: "Does this belief make me happy?" (usually, no) "Is it true?" (no, or it's just something that can be true or false). "Let's drop it" "Ok" And then some bodily tension disappears.
Thanks to Mumuwu for reminding me of the trick"

I like this. All be using this one a bunch. Thanks for posting it.

Half an hour of just sitting. Been a while since i did that. I've got a lot of habits and beliefs about manipulating my experience, so a lot of impulses to not let in to. Working on those, as they seem to mostly just bring suffering.

Here's an interesting belief, about the simplicity and rest of just this: This is not enough. Does that make me happy? It doesn't. Is it true? It's not the kind of thing that can be true, so no. Let's drop it! Ok!

One of the ways noting and vipassana in general is effective, i think, that when you note some mental object, a degree of awareness arises of the sensations that are being interpreted as that object. It is my impression that when our mind creates an object imbued with *meaning*, it does so by taking some sensations as a tacit background to create an overall representation. This representation, the mind can then use as a lens through which to understand further aspects of the world.
Thus we create selves to encounter the world with, just as, when feeling your way around with a cane, after a while, you stop feeling your hand against the handle, and instead start feeling the tip of the cane against the ground, seeming to directly perceive the ground.

In other words, i just found a really cool way of understanding dependent origination through Toulmin's concept of tacit knowing. If you want to know about this tacit knowing and these sorts of projections, you can read the first chapter of Toulmin's The Tacit Dimension. I recommend you ignore the rest of that book, as Toulmin becomes gradually more and more bonkers in the later chapters.

www.chaight.com/Wk%208%20E205B%20Polanyi...0Tacit%20Knowing.pdf

I dont have much to say right now. I just did some "true jhana", exploring the the lesser manifestations of 7th/8th, in an effort to figure out the remnants of some self-hypnotic anesthesia that has until now left much of my face without a proper sense of feeling. I might have opened it up. For now, i'd just want to say this:
Really? The senses are *that* unseperated. Really?
Not-five? Or not-six? nondually?
I don't know right now, but it seems a bit of a surprise to me.
PS: I need to remember, when doing this, that if i look for things with a location, nothing of this will be seen.

What i noticed yesterday, was that the knots of sensations that seem to be related to anesthesia involves, as i thought, sensations hiding in other places in the body, where they manifest as tension. But they also "hide" in the other senses, It might be that there are five senses, but mental phenomena seem to effortlessly shift sense-type. So, to see these things clearly, one can try to be alert about sensations of all five senses. I've tried that, and especially becoming aware of the way subtle mental/visual imaginings shape the way i perceive the world seems to have caused some development and insight.

However, what i discovered yesterday,was that it seems to work better if you just overlap the mental senses. For example, first integrate touch and hearing so that you are aware of touch-sensations through what you used to think of as hearing-sensing as well as hearing-sensing. In this way, integrate all the senses, so that you are noticing sensations with an awareness that does not differentiate between sense-types, nor implicitly mark impressions as belonging to a specific sense.

This allows a mindfulness where the way your mind hides from itself and ties itself in knots becomes much more obvious. As i think i talked about a little bit, if you can then also stop assuming that sensations have a specific location in the way it might seem. At this point, the mind seems to naturally tend to find it's own way out of clinging - the ways you tense and cling, and the way to stop doing it, become much more obvious

At some point in the future, i'm gonna look at the possible nonduality of front/back left/right up/down. There is a sutta (in the Majjhima Nikaya, can't remember the specific sutta) that says to practice so that there is no preference between those pairs.

I seem to have acquired what might be called a small attainment or shift. But let's not get caught up in that sort of thing, or i will just start clinging more than i am already liable to.
The visual field has... changed. There periphery is constantly present to a greater degree than before. This does seem to have actual practical consequences - such as noticing things in the peripheral visual field during my recent vacation that my sister didn't. It also means quicker access to a peace that is found in noticing the entire visual field as effortlesslessly/spontanously present (not as often though, in full-on spontanous-presence awareness, if i even know what that is, but something approaching that.)

Probably related, is the proximity to a state where all senses are present simultanously in something approaching entirety, also resulting in the temporary cessation/reduction/seeing through (variously) of the tendency of attention to jump between senses and seemingly take in one at a time. This falling-into-all-senses-at-once also results in the seeming cessation/reduction of the sense of time, and the sense of there being a past, present and future in any way. At first, the present remained, but that what i thought of as the present seems to have been an additional veil, also now usually dropping away when i go into this five-senses-at-once mode.

I'm sorry for the sentences above. Punctuation is not a strong suit of mine. More to follow.

Theorizing...
Devotion and belief seems to be a potentially powerful factor in the process of awakening The Tibetans call on the buddhas to purify them 100.000 times in the ngondro. Mages call up their Holy Guardian Angel (awakened future self) to guide them through the process of awakening. I recall several people saying either here or on the DhO that getting 4th path takes as long as you believe it will take. At the same time, we have been wondering why the mindfulness people don't cross the A&P.
Could it be that we in the pragmatic world practice our own form of devotion. We do talk about surrendering to the natural process. About awakening taking care of itself after a certain point, once you get out of the way. In a way, the answer seems to
I don't think you get only what you optimize for, or what you believe in, but there does seem to be a strong element of that as well.

Interesting!
Now, if we believe in this theory.
How do we aquire a belief or devotion if we do not already have it?
As a "rational sceptic"?
Iit is like "surrender". It is clearly not enough to just say "Ok, ok, I surrender. Now what?"...

Well, when i started doing compassion practice this spring, i adapted some of the tibetan preliminary practices (ngondro). This, however, required a transcendent buddha to take refuge in, one who i could eventually realize was not different from my own mind. I had previously made up a goddess from a figure that appeared in some of my drawings - "the goddess beyond all essences". Since i couldn't relate to the strange tibetan buddhas at the time, i used said goddess, and cultivated surrender and the gratitude that follows. I eventually had an insight where i saw that she was everything i experienced (though it didn't truly take hold).

So, to a degree, you can make something up and then build up devotion to it. Apriorikreuz tells me that it's important that the object of devotion is perfected in some sense, such that it can seem like the kind of thing that can purify your habits and virtues. I also think the perfection might be important to avoid your mind playing tricks on you and making the object of your devotion into a slightly malevolent trickster figure. Also, the buddha element is important in that you start out seeing the object of devotion as empty in the mahayana sense - not possessing any persisting essence apart or any characteristics that are truly seperate from the nature of mind.

However, you already have a belief and probably some sort of devotion in the pragmatic process, i think. So i don't think you really need it. If you wanted to do some devotion practice, you could sort-of antromorphize the pragmatic process, and perhaps hybridize it with the buddha. You can probably pray and take refuge in thatin a way where a gratitude reaction arises, which seems to be an important element in the process.

I think you are right, Villum, in that such an object of surrender can't be just any old thing, but has to be "special" in order for such a game to work. It has to embody the intention fully, not half-heartedly. Interesting version you invented.

ETA: Thus a guru or deity can work IF for the person involved sees it as such an embodiment. "Reality just as it is" can be a less anthropomorphized focus for surrender I suppose, which may work just fine for many people. "Allowing everything to be just as it is without trying to change it" is surrender, no? Every arising desire to change it (grasping, aversion) is not surrender... Seems a useful way to think of it, but I may be clumsy in expressing it. Thoughts?

"Allowing everything to be just as it is" is surrender, but there does not seem to be the element of devotion to something perfected. Now if you believe in some variant of the buddha-nature of all things, that would be different. And i think some version of that is commonly in play with that kind of practice, especially if your views have been shaped by such things as Mahamudra practice.
One might also say that surrendering to everything just as it is is the more advanced practice - there is no longer seemingly dualistic object of devotion, and it would seem that some kind of deep trust would be involved.

I do think the "allow everything to be just as it is" can be done (imperfectly, and without necessarily really getting it) as a practice even before more advanced stages. In a baby-steps sort of way. Like just allowing the breath to be as it is, coming and going. If distracted, return to allowing the breath to be as it is as a focus of attention. ?

In any case, I have found devotional practices rather central to my own practice, so always interesting to see how others engage with it. Trying to think of how devotion tweaks surrender exactly. Not sure. Sorry to sidetrack your practice thread.

" "Reality just as it is" can be a less anthropomorphized focus for surrender I suppose, which may work just fine for many people. "Allowing everything to be just as it is without trying to change it" is surrender, no? ... Thoughts?"

This is something I can understand, an even "do". I has just not occured to me it can be called "surrender".

"I do think the "allow everything to be just as it is" can be done (imperfectly, and without necessarily really getting it) as a practice even before more advanced stages. In a baby-steps sort of way. Like just allowing the breath to be as it is, coming and going. If distracted, return to allowing the breath to be as it is as a focus of attention. ?

In any case, I have found devotional practices rather central to my own practice, so always interesting to see how others engage with it. Trying to think of how devotion tweaks surrender exactly. Not sure. Sorry to sidetrack your practice thread. "

I agree that it is also something you can do in the beginning. The reason i said it could also be seen as the more advanced practice was mostly that i didn't want to say it was a beginner thing, which might be the conclusion of the preceding paragraph.

In regard to how devotion tweaks surrender. How does trust and gratitude tweak surrender? Those are phenomena that follow from devotion for me, and to make surrendering easier. They also seem to make the surrender become more of an ongoing process, somehow, but i'm not sure. thoughts?

Ah, that does seem true. Trust and gratitude are a big part of devotion for me. Love, too. A feeling of smallness, too - of being just a part of everything rather than some self-centered thing around which the world should turn. I think devotion is both aspirational and affirmational - that is, by doing devotional practices one cultivates trust, gratitude, love, humility; but when those things arise I also feel drawn to devotional practice as a way of celebrating or affirming them. Does that make sense?

"Ah, that does seem true. Trust and gratitude are a big part of devotion for me. Love, too. A feeling of smallness, too - of being just a part of everything rather than some self-centered thing around which the world should turn. I think devotion is both aspirational and affirmational - that is, by doing devotional practices one cultivates trust, gratitude, love, humility; but when those things arise I also feel drawn to devotional practice as a way of celebrating or affirming them. Does that make sense?"

Totally. Still working on the self-centeredness thing, but yeah. also the both aspirational and affirmational bit
Humility is important too, yeah. Compassion in the form of vulnerability, for me, too. And honesty, to some degree. But some of that is because of deliberate bits of my devotion practice, so i don't know how general it is.

Kenneth has me doing a trinary noting: thinking, not thinking, flow. Flow is a state described by Michel Czikmiyalgoddamnrussiannames, having to do with the correct combination of difficulty and skill for a task, along with involvement such that everything flows naturally from the skilled-situated-presence. I use a variant understanding here, a state of ease-in-activity, situational openness and lack of doubt. Thinking and not-thinking (i note "not", as i find not thinking too long) are to be understood as the presence or absence of linear (visual/auditory) thought that tends to take the center of attention(optionally of a narrativ, self-involved thought), as opposed to the more parallel conceptualizing/image-arising/dividing/interpreting that's going on most of the time (at the moment, my tendency is to include most of tensions/overlay/reality-shaping under thought, but that's not so useful for noting)

Anyways, i'm really out of practice with the noting. Last time i did serious noting practice was late winter, while noting emotions in direct mode quite a bit. Perhaps as a result of the lack of practice, the noting often feels like an effort, and there is some resistance to practicing it. Also, noting the absence of something (linear thinking) seems harder than just noting things that are present. I've experimented with synchronizing the noting with the end of the in-breath, which seems possibly useful, as i can then just note whatever is there when it's time to note.

A part of karma is this: To have peace of mind, i must be at peace with the world. Hiding from responsibilities and demands, like i am currently, i am not at peace with the world. Not being at peace with the world, i suffer from anxiety, depression, laziness. My apartment grows cluttered. Now, i am not at peace in my apartment. I hide from my apartment being dirty and cluttered.
So, to start. Take refuge. Clean up apartment. Dedicate merit to all sentient beings. Practice right action that works efficiently towards being at peace with the world. Confess failings to begin to change.

Hiding from responsibilitiess, i have acted wrongly and reaped the results of wrong action. Wrong action leads to suffering upon suffering. Time for a change.