Villum's further mistakes

@cmarti: Well spotted, and thanks. The primary hindrance at the moment that i can see myself is the manipulating and the expecting. But i will be careful about the investigation, and try to include it in my noting (a paradox, perhaps, but noting something paradoxical did not seem unproductive last time i tried, with the practice noting). I will try the letting go, paradoxically, too, but it is hard for me to do right now, due to all the expectation that happens when i try.

Beginning to note practice stuff again, i see that this is the thing to do right now. Practicing has been distracting me from being present. Being present seems to be understood as practicing.

"Jayson showed me something very nice:
[2:25:06 PM CEST] jaysonbyrne: "how am I experiencing this moment of seeing"
[2:25:16 PM CEST] jaysonbyrne: "how am I experiencing this moment of hearing"
[2:25:26 PM CEST] jaysonbyrne: "how am I experiencing this moment of feeling"
[2:25:51 PM CEST] jaysonbyrne: when the contemplation of one of those is broken by thought - repeat the process asking the next of the three questions
"

I like this, it "works".

Yes, it's a very nice method. The extra stuff to do, with the shifting senses helps you remember to keep it going, and you will probably become better able to tune into some senses you had previously neglected. When i quit smoking, if i use the method, i will probably add the sense of smell.
Only problem i have with the method is that sometimes you get distracted by another sense, and not a thought.

Found something nice and simple to do.
First, do tonglen: www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ptop/A1045784
"The Technique
Visualise the negativity as a cloud of black smoke.
Inhale deeply, drawing the imaginary smoke into your very core.
Let it dissolve the seed of ego-clinging identity, which is trying to protect itself from the negativity.
The smoke dissipates 'into the belly of emptiness', turning into radiant light and compassion.
Exhale this light back to the source of the negativity, where it dissolves the underlying fear and tension."

Then, surrender to the resulting openness and clarity, and let your actions flow from that.
When this seems tiring, and you feel like taking a break, ask, and try to wonder it in your body: "What is true rest?"


Edit: more Tonglen: www.naljorprisondharmaservice.org/pdf/Tonglen.htm
Keep returning to openness and clarity. Let your actions flow from openness and clarity. What is true rest?

Was tired yesterday evening, after keeping the practice going for most of the day. I experienced similar tiredness in the evening when starting up all-day direct mode, so i guess this is par for the course. Still, i should remember to ask, "what is true rest?". After all, apathy is one of my primary problems, and one of the points of this practice is get out of that and surrender into something like right action.

Surrender also to connectedness with other people, to openness to their being good and beautiful and a gift to the world. This seems to work well for creating the compassion that strengthens surrender and openness.
Surrender also to the beauty of the sensate world, and the wonder of a thousand details. This drives present awareness and further surrender and openness.

What is true rest?

Practice still going well. Staying with the practice a good part of the time. For a while, i assumed that the practice had made me confused, slow and clumsy. Maybe it had, but i was also dehydrated.

This pointer just occured to me, and may prove useful in the future. Suggestions for refinement are welcome.
Notice that in the doing there is only the done.
Notice that in the done there is only that it happens.

A month of silence. I have been trying out the tibetan approaches to devotion and compassion, as introduced to me by Alejandro/Apriorikreuz. Not in a very disciplined way, i must admit, but has been good. More on that later. I just wanted to say that:
Today i resume my log. Today is Vesak (according to some calenders), and today for me is Everything-is-Present Day.
When i point out to myself "Notice that everything is present", it becomes for a short while clear to me that everything is present in the same way - that for example feeling and sight has the same status. I have not integrated this understanding, or understood the depths of it, so today i will keep returning to noticing that everything everything is present.

That is all for today.

Edit: "Notice that everyone is present" works too. It does something slightly different. Everyone is seen to be present in the same way and with the same status as me. I can't quite explain this.

The returning to noticing that everything is present went quite well. as i wrote in a later edit, i discovered a nice variant of the pointer, namely "Everyone is present" (implying that everyone you can sense are prese
Cancelnt without any effort or doing on your part, and with the same status as you - that there is nothing in their characteristics that imply that they are less important than you, other than position in the (non-existent, but i'm still working on seeing that sense-field). If you want to work on compassion as a part of the path, this pointer seems useful.

I had originally decided to go back to straight direct mode this tuesday, and had started, but thursday Apriorikreuz introduced me to an aspect of the nature of mind called Sambhogakaya in the tibetan tradition. Since i noticed this aspect of mind, a lot of energy stuff has been going on, as "knots" and tensions in the body/mind seem to unravel more readily. Also, what i experience when using a pointer for the nature of mind (such as "what is not experienced") seems to have changed subtly since then. Finally, Friday, the day after, i had a lot of what i call "energy heat", which seems to be a symptom of tensions and similar stuff unraveling and opening up (heat manifesting when this happens through a resistance.
Apriorikreuz/Alejandro says he had similar experiences just after seeing this Sambhogakaya.

So, how to see this Sambhogakaya. Alejandro explained it to me with this metaphor. Think of all experience as a movie in the cinema. Then, Emptiness(Dharmakaya) is the screen and Form (Nirmanakaya) is the pictures. The Sambhogakaya, however, is the light which makes pictures (Form) possible at all. When you see that everything there is is experienced, things become open and clear, there is nothing that has any essence or nature such that it could truly be clung to (Your Experience May Vary). (continued)

This is Emptiness, i think, or more precisely, a part of beginning to see emptiness in everything. It is an experience that resonates of silence and stillness and peace. The sambhogakaya aspect, is a different way of seeing everything esperienced, the nature of mind, et.c. It is that there are yet arising, that the experiential world does not collapse into emptiness. It is that everything is open and empty, yet dynamically appearing as experienced, completely arbitrary yet playful and and joyful. See that everything is experienced not just as empty but also as continiously appearing, as dynamic possibility.

I don't know if anyone can understand what i'm talking about from this. But wanted to try and describe it

Over the summer, my practice kind of fell into a hole, and i spent a lot of time caught up in old patterns. There were improvements that kept going through that, particularly in regard to mood. I've slowly been returning to a more mindful way of being, with the attendant improvements.

Lately, i've been doing body awareness, somewhat in the style of direct mode, feeling the entire body and "delocalizing" any gatherings of attention. I've also over the last week been allowing things most of the time when i noticed resistance or the urge to apply "practice" to manipulate my current experience. When something is itching, or being annoying, or being avoided, i say "it's ok for that to be here", and try to carry on. I've tried to be especially mindful of the contractions of attention (feels somewhat like physical force) that indicate that i'm shutting something out - the mess in my room, for instance. While this works somewhat, and i'm getting better at not avoiding things that remind me of unpleasant stuff, i still need to work on allowing the acting on unpleasant stuff to follow from the awareness of it. I tend to stay in avoidant patterns and then go back to not shutting out awareness of the way my room is messy.

I've also in the last weeks started doing a bit more third-gearish stuff, mostly using the pointer "everything is always already experience", and trying to notice the always-already-present qualities of "humility", "joy", "compassion" and "free spacious passionate flow".

Continued from last message
These qualities are not the ordinary emotions, but qualities which the development of these emotions can make more apparent - a vajrayana way of thinking about these things that i've been talking about with Apriorikreuz. The motivation of this has been that the third gear for me has tended to the passive, and with what i think should be called emptiness being the most apparent quality. by this i mean spaciousness, non-solidity, peace (sometimes with a mild tinge of sweetness), rest and arising things not pulling on anything (this can be apparent in degrees, with respect to specific things, or apparent except for specific things).

Anyways, late last week, my third-gearish practice (which may not qualify as third gear all the time, formally) began to seem a little cold - there was clarity and openness, but no or little bliss, and when i wasn't in third gear (ie - most of the time, a lot of (emotional/affective) stuff was felt mostly as (hard) physical tensions - similar to an incomplete direct mode, where things are felt only in the body, but not delocalized into one big blob (see kenneth's lava lamp metaphor).

So this weekend, i took up my compassion practice, which i've been learning and doing in the spring, and neglecting to write about here.

To be continued.
EDIT: I'm trying to say too many things in these two messages, as i've been gone for so long and have a lot to say and am out of practice with writing about it. working on fixing that.

Good to have you back Villum!

All the best Villum!

Compassion, as i see it, relates to third gear when is it understood as a kind of vulnerability. It is the gentleness that allows things to be as they are, and openness that allows suffering to be seen clearly. It starts as a kind of tenderness of the heart, but eventually tends towards being a quality of experience itself - the light touch that allows the mind to stay with primordial awareness. It remains compassion, in that it tends to dissolve the projections through which we perceive others, and see them gently, as perfect and flawed.
I am very far from having developed these qualities, but the potential seems obvious to me.
tbc with actual practice notes about compassion.

a two-part pointer: I will remember everything that happens in this moment -> Notice that everything (that is remembered) is always already experience(d)
bits in paranthesis are optional, not necessarily together.
edit: The kind of mindfulness and clarity that results from invoking memory in this way seems to me to be a very good door to (something like) third gear. Works nice in testing, at least.

Mostly just to remind myself, a possibly useful part-way pointer for me: Notice that even the real is experience, always already experience

EDIT: Been doing improvised (and somewhat frantic) insight practice, with "dzogchen" and "AF" elements, and got myself into a powerful and subtle fear-response (what else is new?). Anyways, here's and a more idiosyncratic pointer, which probably will make no sense to me tomorrow. Should it still work, i'll try to translate: Beyond time, everything is always already compassion.
EDIT2: Some Eis-jhana helped with the franticness and fear. I've been wanting to get back into it, but had forgotten how hard it actually is, so practice is good.

Something strange has been happening this last week. Like i'm slowly waking from a daze, or growing up. i don't want to overthink it, but i hope it lasts, it's quite nice to suddenly feel like cleaning up my apartment. It might have to do with doing some vipassana on my computer addiction and partly breaking it, but will be keeping it up today, and tomorrow, i will do what i do tomorrow to keep it going (the idea of deciding what to do tomorrow seems somehow... wrong)

edit: The part where i, this specific evening, feel like a numinous and clear beneficient presence likely won't last, but enjoying it while it lasts

A variant of the above two-part pointer, this one leading more towards something pce-ish. Thanks to jwhooper for this one.
Say to yourself: i will remember all of this moment tomorrow. Begin trying to memorize everything. While doing that, notice that this moment (even if the idea of a moment makes little sense) is far too vast to ever be held in memory or described in concepts.
Then fall into wonder.

This one works particularly well for me, as the "observer" is quickly overwhelmed and the moment becomes an enchanted flow.

Surrendering to what seems to me the remnants of my self-hypnotic anesthesia, which, as i earlier suspected (unless i'm projecting), seems to have mixed up with the sense of self and self-presence, as well as what seems to be a whole mess of dissociation of various things.
Should probably find some help clearing this up.

Are there things, or are there, in the perception of things, the implicitly assumed generalization? Are there things apart from the category arising along with the mental dividing-up of the world?

Right now, it seems to me that the sense of doing is a strange doubling of what is happening, there's this sense of a cloudy additional thing, an image the mind wants to inhabit
edit: everything is always already just this, and free, and nothing else
edit2: of course, i immediately start *doing* stuff to deepen the insight

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. 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!

Haven't had the initiative to write, but here's what's been going on.
The insight about the sense of doing (two posts up), came about after i had been investigation the various visual-thought constructions that seem to make up a part of body image (as the overlay over sensations), thought-space (the impression that thoughts occur in a seperate kind of dimension inside my head). The various consciousnesses (eye-consciousness et.c.) that come after name-and-form in dependent origination might also be of this kind. there's also the impression of this ball of light that seems to travel through the chakras and often feel like me in some way.
All these visual-thoughts/imagined things are given a sense of real location and cloudy substance by being associated with touch-sensations, and the (overlap) of these imagined spaces/substances and the body seems to create tension in that area.
Actually, it seems that whenever a (precise) location is attributed to some sensation, tension results.
Some sensations (touch) seem to have naturally a vague location on the body, while others (auditory thought, sound-thought) seem to have none at all.

I've been looking at these on and off in such a way as to see that the imagined thing has no location. Then, it seems, it is seen that it was not(never?) a thing, and wasn't seen where it seemed to be. the pointer "stop trying to see this as not having a location" seems to help enter the kind of seeing where the location isn't clung to.