Justin's Journal 3

In this moment, have I ever before suffered? No.

This is the realization that keeps bringing me back to "nothing needs to be done". Even if I just had a horrible day / 5 minutes, that past no longer exists and the truth can only be found by querying the present experience.

While walking today, I played around with experiencing other people as already enlightened beings also experiencing the unique preciousness of this moment. It had a wonderful effect - I felt a very warm regard to everyone around me and there was a lot of celebratory joy arising within me. I also noticed that I started perceiving an overlay that corresponded to visualized energy channels of people around me. It was quite spontaneous and natural.

This energy channel visualization has happened to before when I have been wrestling other people in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu with my eyes closed. My perception of the orientations of their body changed to pure light and energy. I wonder if this is a learned visualization or a natural emerging phenomena.

I'm enjoying reading this, Justin. Curious to see where it will go.

Things are kind of weird right now. The deeper I go into "suffering is okay", the more a sense of self gets re-constructed until I hit a point where confusion sets in and I need to really fall into groundless, free-fall, spontaneous, effortless experience to see again that this is the nature of experience and that the groundless, free-fall, spontaneous, effortless experience is free of suffering.

Its like a new kind of cycle, but very very different from my old state-clinging. Its almost like the reverse, but in a way that I can't really articulate.

When I am quite self-contracted, I am also getting the feeling that there is some energetic work that could be done, or some sort of bodily/emotional ignorance that is being held.

Again, this is a bit strange for me as I haven't really seen others on here talking about this.

By the way, totally groundless, free fall, effortless, spontaneous experience is dreadfully scary and wonderful.

I spent the weekend at an Anam Thubten retreat and got a lot of sitting in. I highly recommend him.

I had a nice little realization today - Since my opening in January I have had a hard time finding an "Awareness" object to focus on as I previously had. Today I realized that my perception had been influenced by noting to looking for some sort of arising and vanishing of experience, but this seems to actually just be an assumption.

I think getting good and surrendered was key, but I started to notice that experience doesn't really arise and vanish, it just is. To use a term from xsurf's blog, it appeared that "Presence is Spontaneously Perfected". I think I was missing this before due to trying to use objectification to see everything clearly, especially luminosity, or some notion I had that luminosity must also be some "arisingness" nature of experience. From this current perspective, it does not appear that experience has such an "arisingness" nature and so I was concentrating on some sort of false object. I guess I knew this to be a false object because it would become slippery and unfindable at a certain point, which would distract me from the effortless truth of spontaneous presence.

By building up confidence over a period of hours yesterday that I was as surrendered as I am capable of, I could gaze at luminosity from a platform of surrender and there by see that there is just "Presence" and that selfing doesn't really seem to apply. Even if there was a sense of self, such as a subtle sense of existing, it did not seem to matter since that was simply a part of spontaneous presence, not even a separate arising.

It may have also helped that I had spent some time yesterday loosening the difference between "inner" and "outer" by periodically paying attention to any difference in quality between an inner phenomena such as body sensation and an outer phenomena such as something I was seeing. Not much of a difference could be found...

...so this had a flattening effect.

So, when I started noticing "Presence", this subtle selfing (if there was any) did not seem problematic, I would assume due to this inner/outer flattening.

I will not say that I am at Thusness' Stage 7, but simply "Presence is Spontaneously Perfected" is the most apt way that comes to mind to contrast with "Luminous Phenomena Arises".

I should also note that there is not the profound super-brightness, super-lucidity that I have had during certain peak experiences. This does not feel "peak experiencing". It is generally quite lucid, but not particularly so. It is also not particularly super-special or "wow". It feels like such "wow-ness", if it were occurring, would simply be occurring as a part of spontaneous presence and not as an aspect of it.

Anyway, if this doesn't stick, I am going to have to play around with good concentration + surrender practice some more to bake this in.

There is zero discernible suffering in this mode and it does not appear to be aloof like modes of "Absolute-identification".

I had a wonderful peak experience this morning.

I was on my walk, focusing on surrender and allowing awareness or presence to be an almost objectless object of concentration (sort of?). After about 20 minutes, I sat down on a bench just marinating in surrender. Separation melted further and the heart started to come spontaneously on line, seen as not 'I', but another equal aspect of experience, but it soon started infusing all experience with love. The head space became empty, I became headless, and there was just an energy flowing from heart to root. It was just a beautiful peak experience.

The "headlessness" persisted through the rest of my walk until I got home and needed to start preparing for the class I teach. It is very pleasant to not have a head.

Beautiful! Haha.

I think there were periods of surrendering subtle selfing in my dreams last night. This has not occurred for many months.

Continuing to work on flattening inner vs outer. I have also been lifting weights again, so I can feel a decent amount of energy in my whole body, providing more material to merge/flatten with "outside" experience.

Experiencing a lot of degrees of freedom today. Each moment is a fresh opportunity to be or do, manipulate or drop. Both bliss and pain have freedom beneath them.

Had a very nice brief experience of pure effortless flowing Tao after just dropping everything.

I find these two pointers to allow experience and life to destroy the subtle witness to be interesting lately:

awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2011/11/...no-cold-or-heat.html

AND

From xsurf: "Mindful Living

Mindfulness is called by Buddha the 'direct path' for the overcoming of suffering.

True mindfulness is not a mere alertness or noticing of things as they happen, but also a full embodiment of life. Awareness must be understood in full embracement of whatever arises. The body, the sound, the heat and the cold kills all sense of duality.

Eating food, I fully embody the food I eat, as if I am the food I eat, the chewing, the tasting, the swallowing.

Walking, I fully embody the walking I walk, as if my whole being is the activity, the foot touching the ground, the stepping forward, and so on.

Sitting, I fully embody the breathe I breathe, as if my whole being is the whole breathing. This awareness encompasses as the entire body.

This is just some examples... Of course, there is no "I" to embody, the full embodiment is equivalent to zero self-ness but complete intimacy and total involvement in action."

In spite of any past insights or profound meditative states, I continue to look again and again and find only This.

Yep. THIS is all there is.

Slowly but surely, deepening and learning is occurring. I now feel less and less of a need to conjure up states of the pure seeing of the Bahya Sutta experience and basically just take it for granted. There is no subject, all of this stuff happens spontaneously, and everything "out there" is just the field of consciousness. It is much more automatic to regard objects within the visual field as simply displays of consciousness.

I had one episode lasting a week or so in early December where I was working a lot, not sleeping very well, and not exercising and I got trapped in a persistent state of confusion where a suffering, confused, "me" was temporarily recreated. Even in realizing the suffering, the thought stream was so chaotic that I couldn't maintain recognition of This long enough to unstick the nastiness. Eventually I got sick of the sensation, took a step back, recommitted to practice, sleep, and exercise and within a day or so it resolved itself.

My communication regarding consciousness has likely become more inconsistent and confusing as I care less and less about how I conceptualize all of this and switch lenses at a whim.

There is Only This and the only adequate view is 'Don't Know'. Thinking beyond "Just This" and "Don't Know" is a true act of bravery and vulnerability.

A quote from Greg Goode that resonates: " In this freedom, you will find yourself using language without believing language. Your freedom is non-referential."