jgroove practice journal

Greetings, all.
Thought I'd start another practice journal.
Here's a link to the previous one: tinyurl.com/bo8zbdc

What's been going on with jgroove? I've been kind of forced to take a harder look at my intentions over the past few months. Seemed like the SE diagnosis revealed to me that I'd been approaching practice with a huge amount of spiritual materialism. The point of my practice seemed to be about getting and having exotic and interesting meditative experiences a'la Daniel Ingram in MCTB. I'd built SE up into this incredible fantasy land in which my day-to-day experience would be totally transformed, I'd suddenly be able to jhana-jump, blah, blah, blah. The letdown was pretty instructive, but also embarrassing and kind of difficult. It caused me to ask the question "What have I been living my life for?" Yeah, it was all about trying to get to some place in the future: SE.
Rodney Smith talks about the limitations of experience and asks people to contemplate whether they're still trying to seek and find happiness through experience. At a certain point you have to admit that you've been gunning for subtle, pleasant experiences, future attainments and so forth. It's the "I gotta get something other than this moment" thing.
So right now what I'm working with is very concrete stuff. Lots of very strong alcohol cravings, for example. Stuff like this is really what the meditation is all about. It's dependent origination in action: There's some kind of bored and unsatisfied feeling going on; you notice that it's a beautiful Friday afternoon, about 5:30. You remember how you used to drink on days like this. The image of a cold glass full of Wells Bombadier brown ale pops into your head. You think about the downtown bar and your friend who's always up for going there.
Watching that stuff come and go seems to be...

...what I've got to do these days.
I'm also having to take a harder look at my intentions as they play out day to day. I'm pretty frequently choosing noise over silence, activity over stillness. I'm occupying myself with a lot triviality lately--"Words with Friends" on the iPad, SportsCenter, drinking coffee, playing instruments. I have way more opportunity to practice than I'll typically admit. My guess is that my intentions have been a bit corrupt or mixed in this way for years now. Rodney Smith talks about two kinds of fish: There's the fish that just gives up and lets itself get reeled in, and then there's the fish that fights against the inevitable as hard as it can.
I think with these journals I've been logging on and talking about those moments in which I stop fighting, but then I don't necessarily talk about all the actual fighting, dodging, avoiding, that I've been up to. It's probably part of the reason for the slow progress thus far.
Anyway, I'll try to make this more phenomenological in the future, but these are the story lines that have been resonating most for me lately...

We are with you.

Metta

Good to hear from you, Joel. I'd been wondering what was going on, not to mention missing you, and I figured it was some sort of reevaluation. BTW, that image of the tall cold glass was way too evocative--I'm thinking, gotta get me some of that, and it's not even 9:00 a.m. But I digress--

That bored, unsatisfied feeling is what I'm trying to zero in on. In my case, there's a craving for drama, for the pull of something "meaningful" even if it's unpleasant. It's still there, but there's more spaciousness around it. Keep us posted, Metta, Laurel

"I'd built SE up into this incredible fantasy land in which my day-to-day experience would be totally transformed, I'd suddenly be able to jhana-jump, blah, blah, blah. The letdown was pretty instructive, but also embarrassing and kind of difficult. "

Hi Joel. Good to hear from you again. Did you find that SE didn't make as much difference as you'd hoped?
Edit. I guess my question is, did it make any difference?

Sometimes a good restart is exactly what's needed. Being clear on intent is almost the whole battle, it seems to me. Good to hear from you -- and Eric's right, we're rooting for you!

Hi Joel,

Looking back over the timeline of my practice it seems as if about every 3 years I've had to start all over again. It's like I've been building a castle on the beach that's too near the surf. Just when I feel like I've made something special a big wave crashes in to remind me it's all made of sand. Maybe next time I'll have the presence of mind and heart to be with it as it all falls apart.

Good luck!

Welcome back Joel. Glad to see you around again.

Your honesty is moving. It's a real gift to even *see* the crap we dwell in and our evasive maneuvering. Thanks for sharing that, and best wishes for continuing your practice with renewed dedication.

" I guess my question is, did it make any difference?"

Thinking about your post, you've already described a new relationship to habits and intentions, which makes me reflect on my own intentions. I picked up the expectation of some special effects and powers after SE, but betawave's advice that " Being clear on intent is almost the whole battle" is a point well taken.

Thanks for the kind words, everybody. I don't want to be too heavy-handed and negative in characterizing the way I've approached practice thus far. (The spiritual materialism at least spurred me to practice.) I think it just feels more like whatever progress I've made has been more about insight than it has been about the kinds of profound experiences, permanent shifts and the like that I'd read about and imagined. This seems to jibe with the proposition that experience is always limited and never quite lives up to what we want.

Joel, it's really, really great to have you back, and posting no less. You are experiencing things that many of us can relate to. It's all part of the way thing are, the path, being human. Stick around, keep posting and we'll all support each other through the tough times and the good times.

Thanks, Chris!

Good to see you back on here! We missed you.

Your experience feel very, very familiar to me in a lot of ways. The spiritual materialism is something I can really relate to. When I got stream entry, I got a lot of cool experiences, sensations, stillness, bliss, and some of "life is wonderful all the time", but it passed in very short order. It definitely did not match my expectations for the blessed event and the charmed life after.

I'd been expecting so many wonderful things that didn't happen. It took me a while to realize that life had actually turned around for me in many ways before stream entry. When I look back on it now, the passage out of Dark Night and into the first Equanimity (pre-stream entry) was a watershed moment for me. I missed it when it happened because it didn't line up with what I wished to be true.

I still do have a lot of expectation. My current working theory is that the next path will open up for me when I'm ready. Being ready means that I need to continue to recognize expectations and wishful thinking, and be able to pay attention to what does happen rather than continuing to look for what I wish to happen.

Sounds good in theory, but you're definitely onto something about the concrete actions. I can only work on what's presenting itself right now. Anything else is venturing into thinking about thinking territory.

Again, great to have you on here again!

Andy

I know what you mean, Andy.
I wouldn't trade the hard, hard slog up to Equanimity for anything in the world. This was the most valuable thing, by far, in my recent practice, and yet this stuff was the opposite of fantasy land. It was all about unpleasant sensations, falling asleep over and over again, confronting my resistance to out-loud noting, forcing myself to make more of an effort, etc. Was my practice still compartmentalized and ambivalent during this time? Yeah, but slogging it out and being present for at least some of the time did seem to make a difference...

Joel, it's great to see you back on these boards. I stopped drinking about 8 months ago, and although I was never a particularly heavy drinker, I do find myself looking at Trappist ales in the supermarket and wondering how I managed to become more austere than the most cloistered of Christian monks!

I also share your mystic envy. My stream entry was so banal that I didn't recognise until 6 months afterwards, and even now I still can't do jhana. But then, the equanimity, the contentment, well, that's less dramatic, but it's worth it.

I've been listening to Rodney Smith's "Fundamentals of the Dharma" series, available here

seattleinsight.org/Talks/BrowseSeries/Se...esID/40/Default.aspx

He's an interesting teacher. It's funny how often he angers people. In one of these talks, he says "the fastest way to put me to sleep is for you to tell me about an awakening experience you had ten years ago." One of the students starts haranguing him about this after the talk.
I've also heard talks by him on dharmaseed where apparently all the retreatants at IMS were really pissed at him. He says something like "Well, I know you're all very upset with me, but..."

I've figured he was a non-dual fundamentalist type, but I've found this series of his to be very challenging and something that forces me to look in the mirror. One of his instructions I've been working with is to go right to whatever is uncomfortable, tense, dull--to really take as object whatever's going on that might be difficult and try to go to it.
I was recently sitting in an Adirondack chair overlooking the ocean. Part of me wanted this to be better than it was and wished for some kind of total absorption in the landscape with its silence and beauty; that wasn't happening, so there was some dissatisfaction happening. I remembered Smith's instruction and went right to the dullness and tension--voila. Big reduction in struggle.

Rule #1 -- follow and investigate any discomfort you feel about anything
Rule #2 -- if you feel no discomfort, wait a couple seconds
Rule #3 -- repeat rule #1

"
Rule #1 -- follow and investigate any discomfort you feel about anything
Rule #2 -- if you feel no discomfort, wait a couple seconds
Rule #3 -- repeat rule #1

"

Ha! This sounds like a formula I should memorize. Thanks, Chris!

I'm a huge Rodney Smith fan too. The dude takes no prisoners. I've been saving one of his quotes for this thread: kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/thread/48...nal+Quotes?offset=20 . (a shameless plug I know.)

One of the things I miss about zen training is that a competent teacher won't hesitate to kick you in the teeth if it helps you to WAKE UP! Rodney has that quality. He's done much palliative and hospice work. As a result (I think) he doesn't mess around. His attitude seems to be that this life is brief, all things change, your story ain't no big deal, so get on with it.

BTW, he's leading a one week retreat at IMS at the end of the year and I'm trying to fix my schedule to be there then. If anyone else is considering doing the same PM me and let's figure out a secret pragmatic dharma hand shake.

Guess it's time to start a thread about the handshake. I'm sure opinions will vary on the most efficacious technique...

Smith has written a great book called "Stepping Out of Self Deception" - highly recommend it if you guys don't already know it. I used to listen to his dharma talks when I was starting out. Yes, he pushes people - one time he was chastising yogis who couldn't be bothered with practicing mindfulness during daily activities.

I used to sit with a group he regularly visits and instructs, but I've never met him.

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll get this book at some point for sure.

I liked this quote from Rodney Smith. Seems like his formulation of the transition from 1st to 3rd gear:

"Mindfulness is the recognition factor of what is occurring while it is occurring. So we have differentiated between mindfulness and awareness. We said that mindfulness'”and this is a homemade definition'”is what the sense of self does to direct its attention to something. If it wants to notice the breath, it directs its attention to the breath, and that is a mindful noting of the breathing as it is occurring.

Awareness is more of a preexisting state that is not under the influence of the sense of a person, and therefore when a person fully relaxes all of the tension and desire for something to happen, what he or she finds himself or herself embodied or fully embraced in is awareness.

And what most of us have to do is to move through the application of mindfulness to discover awareness. That's the journey of Buddhism. So for most of us we start out very determined and individually assertive in the direction in which we place our attention. We begin to develop a little cubbyhole of awareness for ourselves'”on our breath, on our back pain, on our knees, the sounds around us'”and it feels very much under our direction. It feels like a script that is following our particular will. And so if I want to notice my seat on the cushion, I can notice that. If I want to notice the body sensations, I can notice that. I can notice what I want to and it feels very individually determined...[cont]

[cont. from above...]
And as that practice unfolds in its inevitability, you begin to find that what limits the application of mindfulness, [what leads to] the continual forgetting of mindfulness, is the strong sense of will that wants to induce mindfulness. So it starts working counter to its indications, and at that point there needs to be a willingness to back off the strenuous ambition we associate with the mindfulness practice and see what we are bathing in, which has held us all along. And that then takes us to a kind of abiding awareness. So that's the journey of mindfulness."