Justin's Journal 3

Well, things have settled enough where I feel done with my previous phase and have entered a new one. I can now say that "enlightenment happened to me", though it hasn't been an event, but rather a settling process of previous events. Along the way was a tipping point of sorts where previously doubts and questions ruled, but now they may arise but lose the battle.

Most practice has been to simply recognize Awareness throughout the day and (attempt to) ban thought during my frequent walks (every other day?). I did, perhaps, only 20 hours of sitting, which was critical, though, for my "in the seeing, just the seen" realization.

Here is a review of what happened in Justin's Journal 2:

Post #8 - Aug 30, 2011 - This is where cracks start to appear in the Witness and glimpses of something more pure start occurring. In this case, the cracks occur from vippassana.

Post #13 - Sept 5, 2011 - During this period I am struggling to find motivation for practice. Compassion is tossed out as a possible reason, but never really sticks. #27 & #28 also discuss this.

Post #21 - Sept 29, 2011 - I am observing a way to induce strong kryas by "trying to look backwards in reality frames". (current take: I can reproduce kryas in this way, but again, the effort to direct attention in this way as seen as pointless and is dropped, causing the kryas to go away)

Post #25 & #26 - Oct 7, 2011 - I am starting to see how relative experience can be manipulated while still maintaining a deeper perspective of peace. This idea of "having your cake and eating it too" has become increasingly rich since then.

Post #30 - Nov 13, 2011 - I am starting to recognize that sleep, diet, and exercise are primary determinants of personality and the perception of happiness. (current take: Deep peace alone isn't enough for relative happiness, at least not yet)

Post #31, Nov 17, 2011 - During this important phase I figure out how to manifest and turn off "harsh vibrations". Later, in posts XX and XX, when I am playing around with jhana jumping I reexplore this same territory and now believe these "harsh vibrations" to be the third nana. To me, these vibrations are a horrible, horrible experience that I can't imagine living my life stuck in.

Post #34, #38, #40-#42 - During a weekend Dzogchen retreat I learn to concentrate on Awareness/luminosity and for the first time, see clearly "in the seeing, only the seen". This has been the most important realization experience to date. There is no 'I' that is Awareness, there is simply experience that is somehow known without an experiencer. I do not think this realization would have occurred without the few prolonged sits that helped ratchet up concentration enough to see clearly.

Post #49-#58 - "I guess this is what an anxiety attack feels like when there is no one to be anxious.". This was an incredible experience that I feel was a part of some deep neurological rewiring. It was a very strong glimpse of heaven-in-hell.

#61-#65, Jan, 2012 - A battle between the conceptual mind looking for answers and the truth of realization starts to occur. During this period, the thought structures are still winning as they are not satisfied with the answers.

#67-#77, Jan 2012 - The conceptual mind is working to manipulate experience with its meditative powers. Experience sucks a decent amount during this period.

#83, Feb 1, 2012 - "Clear seeing is effortless surrender". This is another big realization that has since then allowed the mind to exit all sorts of ugly states where there was a subtle unseen tension or selfing.

#86, Feb 20, 2012 - A dear friend committed suicide. Through the suffering of that process realized how much the emotional pain of others affects ones own body. Mood does not come from stillness, it comes from the realm of humanity.

#87, Feb 20 2012- "The sense of the witness seems to be slowly fading. It seems to be an unnecessary reference point." The stick that is stirring the fire is being consumed.

#89-#97, March 9, 2012 - Attachment to Nirvana is starting to loosen. I am starting to see that non-suffering vs suffering is simply a conceptual aesthetic choice and is thus empty. Living in the world is becoming easier.

#100 - #150 Mar & April, 2012 - Another phase of annoying energetic phenomena, kryas, and facial grimaces.

#118 - March 16, 2012 - "Another peak experience going on tonight. The Witness is dropped. There is just phenomena. There is no meditation to be done. There is the thought of being quite comfortable with the Dzogchen view. There are no mind states even as I am jamming out to music, it is just hearing and body sensations/reactions."

#126 - Mar 28, 2012 - I start playing around with falling asleep

#140 - Mar 30, 2012 - "There is awareness and/or phenomena is luminous. There is no separation."

#152 - April 26, 2012 - I finally figure out that the kryas and grimaces require a Witness sense. Combined with "clear seeing is effortless surrender", the mind figures out how to look for any sense of self and abort the annoying energetic experiences.

#156 - April 30, 2012 - "Instead of thinking about experience, experience thinking."

#160-#166, May 1, 2012 - There is a change in my visual field due to paying even closer attention to the immediacy of the senses. (current take: The change was temporary but can now be recalled at will)

#170-#172, May 11 2012 - Random emotional stuff solved with a Yoga class - "Kryas, crying, and a feeling of total helplessness. It wasn't all that painful, but it is making me quite sad with compassion to remember." - "I went to a Yoga class. Junk is no longer arising."

#174, May 20, 2012 - An important conceptual synthesis of the experience over the previous months:

"Emptiness realization brings about a sort of belief structure of equanimity toward belief structures.

Just as the Witness can have equanimity towards appearances, the Thinker can have equanimity towards itself if it has been informed by direct experience of realizing emptiness.

As Nikolai has pointed to recently, the seeing, hearing, feeling, etc. needs no equanimity as it just IS.

But, I will rank emptiness realization as more important.

When the feeling, seeing, hearing is not seeing itself as such and Awareness is divided...

then the divided Witness has an opportunity to observe with equanimity, but failing in this, the suffering Thinker...

can still remember and experientially manifest the fact that this experienced suffering is still empty and everything is perfect exactly as it is."

#175-#200 May & June, 2012 - Many physical problems highlight how mood and personality are not derived from stillness, but rather from relative conditions of the body. "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."

#181, June 9, 2012. "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.". This is a new level beyond experience, awareness, and luminosity that starts to show the mind how even experiencing is optional. This is deeper than "In the seeing, just the seen".

During this period there was also a lot of thinking about the aesthetics of awakening and a realization that suffering vs non-suffering, heaven vs hell, transcendence vs humanity are all empty, conceptual distinctions. There is no need to achieve some ultimate goal such as 24/7 abiding in "in the seeing, just the seen." At this point, I have decided to suffer more in order to be more human and more emotionally connected. There are times when this suffering is too much and the mind retreats back to no-self.

What is left is a vulnerable human being whose perspective is none-the-less fundamentally altered.

Justin's Journal 2 is at:

kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/thread/47...2/Justin's+Journal+2

What a nice way to read. Thanks for putting this out for others. I was particularly struck by the last line.

Wow what a journey Justin. Great inspiration! Curious question have you worked out all this just practicing and getting advice from forums and so on. Or have you had contact with a teacher?

Justin, thank you for posting that. It's marvelous!

JYET: I worked with Kenneth to get Stream Entry, which, I think was critical. After that, I felt that most of my suffering was under control, so during the last year it has mostly been through reading the ideas and experiences of the wonderful people on this forum. I read a couple of Dzogchen books and went to a Dzogchen retreat, which I think was very helpful on settling on a View.

Thanks Justin. Have heard great things about Dzogchen. Leigh Brasington, did 1 month with him this year, said it was one of the best insight technique's he has come across.

Will look in to it. But I think it's best to clear some paths first.

The teacher's I've had always emphasized how important it is to surrender to the Guru. I have a hard time to do that. But a strong drive to practice. So It's good to hear that it can bear fruit anyway. Work with Ron now and I like the informality of it. Just meditation instruction's. No crazy wisdom, cooking or pointer's on how to live my life.

Erik

Beautiful.

"I read a couple of Dzogchen books and went to a Dzogchen retreat, which I think was very helpful on settling on a View." -orasis

Can you speak more on this point? The idea of settling on a "View"? Why it seemed important and how it changed your relationship to experience, or other things?

""I read a couple of Dzogchen books and went to a Dzogchen retreat, which I think was very helpful on settling on a View." -orasis

Can you speak more on this point? The idea of settling on a "View"? Why it seemed important and how it changed your relationship to experience, or other things?"

Settling on a View was useful because it gives the conceptual mind a simple model of reality so it doesn't need figure things out anymore. If the conceptual mind is still struggling to try to understand reality, it can't feel very settled. The conceptual mind has "faith" in this view, so doubt need not arise.

The massively oversimplified Dzogchen View that my mind has settled on is:

- There is, undeniably, experience that is known, or put another way, luminous phenomena, or Awareness. There is no experiencer required or "I" that is Awareness.
- The nature of this experience is Emptiness. It cannot be said to either exist or not exist or have any fundamental meaning or essence. This can be verified experientially by seeing that meaningness is not required for experience to be known.
- Rigpa is the natural state that is free of suffering and naturally gives arise to the above realizations. Rigpa is awakeness or enlightenment in that moment.

Thats pretty much it. When my thinking mind gets in a tizzy, I just look up at This and these concepts are re-verified experientially.

Dzogchen certainly has a lot more to it, but the two points of Emptiness/Awareness are constantly re-emphasized. A great site for reading about this is: www.berzinarchives.com/web/en/archives/a...uction_dzogchen.html

The mind started scripting experience again over the last week or so. This started to cause some dryness and resistance. It was compounded by the fact that the mind is mostly unwilling to manipulate experience, so I think states have become more sticky and less amenable to manipulation.

Starting last night, the mind was spontaneously noticing the total unscriptability and unexpectedness of experiencing and things have become nicer this morning.

On most days I am doing my walks and no formal sitting.

I feel like I am entering a more blended stage of experience where expansiveness vs self-contraction and authenticity vs manipulation are all being held with equal weighting. Neither is ultimately preferable to any other except for when they clash with the complexity of deep (conceptual) values.

For perhaps the last couple of months, manipulation of experience has become increasingly challenging - the mind has simply been unwilling to do it. Any time there is too much pain, the mind habitually looks for the selfing areas in the head and shuts down the sense of agency.

This appears to be loosening a bit, allowing me to again manipulate my experience towards spontaneous ecstatic joy for short periods of time.

I predict that I will again become somewhat addicted to this state manipulation and there will be an inevitable backlash to non-manipulation as I fail to achieve the desired states/experiences. But for now, this is what it is, and I am happy.

Presence/experience is becoming lighter, more spontaneous, more of a flavor of "acting" than "being" or "observing". The difference is very subtle and difficult to describe.

I may have gotten a taste of the entrance into NS thanks to Nadav's pointers at dinner at the BG conference. I half fell out of my chair as consciousness began to collapse and got quite a chuckle out of it.

Another participant at the BG conference helped make the connection why I feel a deep need to maintain my Brazilian Jiu Jitsu practice and why I feel quite agitated after 4 or so days without training. He believes that awareness practices create a rising energy that becomes very imbalanced unless grounded back in the body. Since my default is awareness practice, my body automatically knows that it needs jiu jitsu as a balance. I am now much more interested in energy practices to achieve more smooth operation within this organism and am thankful for the pointer.

This insight of "Maha" apparently evades my current experience:

"Yet this '˜ungraspability and unlocatabilty' nature is not all there is; there is also this Maha, this great without boundaries feeling of 'interconnectedness'. When someone hits a bell, the person, the stick, the bell, the vibration of the air, the ears and then the magically appearance of sound -- 'Tongsss'¦re-sounding'¦' is all a seamless one happening, one experience. When breathing, it is just this one whole entire breath; it is all causes and conditions coming together to give rise to this entire sensation of breath as if the whole of universe is doing this breathing. The significance of this Maha experience is not in words; in my opinion, without this experience, there is no true experience of 'interconnectedness' and non-dual presence is incomplete."

from:

awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2009/03/...and-spontaneous.html

I had a bonk on the head tonight of another conceptual basis for understanding emptiness:

If experience arises solely due to causes and conditions, then the meaning of THIS (experience) can only be THIS (experience) itself. The definition or meaning of THIS can only be contained in the totality of its causes and conditions, so no simple meaning applies, and certainly not something as simple as a thought or word.

Put another way:

Reality, in this moment, is the chain reaction of causality rippling or, you could say, even "computing" the next moment of reality. Since each moment is simply the result of the computation of the previous, there is no underlying meaning, there simply is THIS. NOW.

Re-aquainting with the freedom of unsupportedness. To what extent am I fabricating a Here and Now unnecessarily?

awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2011/02/...enetrate-deeply.html

Intellectual views are creeping in and inhibiting seeing the empty nature of experience. Luminosity is still immediate, but there is some karmic movement towards ignorance the last couple of days.

I've been paying attention to effortlessness. Emptiness becomes more clear, or rather, non-emptiness becomes more unclear. Effortlessness does not seem to imply bliss - just reality.

Effortlessness is also allowing clinging to be seen more clearly and experience can immediately go from suffering to no-suffering as clinging is re-abandoned for effortlessness. Paying attention to effortlessness seems to leave self-vs-no-self completely out of the picture, most of the time I could not tell you whether or not there is any selfing as effortlessness is paid attention to.

I have been seeing how a single moment of conceptualization immediately creates a tangible reality. I can be sitting thought-free for some minutes, and then a thought arises that says that I have been physically uncomfortable for some minutes. The mind immediately takes this moment of conceptualization as true, even though my experience was not unpleasant prior to that.

Its basically as if our thoughts can re-write history through the creation of an idea of time.

Linking to the pure gold that is Antero's Spontaneous Presence Meditation:

kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/thread/49...+Presence+Meditation

I've been becoming more comfortable with a more "normal" mode of egoic being and allowing my perspective to shift as it will between the relative world and awareness. When I'm in a neutral mood I've been experimenting with manipulating mood to create a positive, outgoing personality/energy. When things get uncomfortable, I've been shifting back to noticing effortlessness of experience.

I find working on my personality and the positivity I bring to this world to be more interesting lately than meditative insights.