Markus

I've been considering using SA in addition to meditative practice. What I'm wondering is, what are your experiences as to the amount of time required to actually hack away an assumption? Judging by the stories of Mckenna and the girl in the second book, it would take thousands of hours to destroy enough to become truth-realized, comparable to the time it takes to get enlightened through meditation and self-inquiry. On one hand, meditation has the huge benefit of mindfulness. On the other hand, autolysis has the huge benefit of taking care of a lot of bullshit in your system. A person who had an enlightenment experience through meditation alone will likely still have a lot of neurotic tendencies, habits and beliefs to work through. A person who had an enlightenment experience through autolysis alone would have cleared out the bs but wouldn't be as mindful. McKenna described how he had difficulty meditating washing the dishes.

I've been thinking about this lately. I come from a small nation (ca 1 million people) so there are a lot of ideas about preserving the country, culture, and ethnicity. Personally, I've never resonated with patriotism. I don't think of myself as an Estonian, really. I feel like patriotism and ethnocentrism is divisive. Though technically national pride wouldn't need to mean one thinks their nation is better than others, I think it is an inescapable consequence of such belief. Like Ken Wilber has said, "every boundary line is a potential battle line" and so being a patriot inevitably creates an us vs them mentality, leading to national and ethnic conflict, which isn't much different from religious conflict. Until the majority of the world raises to a worldcentric level, we're bound to have "inside vs outside" problems as opposed to just "inner" problems.

In terms of carryover to daily life, having multiple sessions can certainly be better. Especially as a beginner. When I used to meditate in the mornings, which I no longer do, there was this sense of peace and increased concentration for some time. As I've progressed though I'm more concentrated by default, or at least can produce a higher concentration state just by wanting to. Therefore, I prefer to do a longer continuous sit as sitting for a longer and longer period of time without movement gets you higher and higher concentration, plus I can practice strong determination sitting.

That's an interesting question. The short answer I would instantly want to give is "no". I'm sure Buddhist monks sit down to meditate for longer than an hour each day. Plus they keep meditating through doing everyday tasks like cooking, eating, the laundry, work in the garden. They essentially meditate 24/7. On the other hand, you could "monasticize" your day just like they do. It's not at all only about how much you sit in formal practice, it's about how you bring the concentration, clarity and equanimity developed on the cushion to everyday doings. Unless you're preoccupied with an intellectual task that requires full CPU so to speak, you can keep meditating through walking, driving, eating, having conversations, using the bathroom, taking a shower, brushing the teeth, cleaning the house and so on. Plus you can take retreats every once in a while (10 days per year or 1 day per month) which will help raise your baseline awareness. You could even simply dedicate an entire day to meditating in your own home if you can't go to residential retreats. It should certainly be possible to become deeply enlightened while having a "normal" life.

Hey Leo, do you also combine strong determination sitting with the other techniques you mentioned? Also, do you use any specific approaches (such as "zooming in and out at the same time" or "focusing on the global spread of the pain") to deal with the sensory challenges (pain, mental images and talk) that tend to tangle as the pain gets really bad, or do you just try to bring mindfulness to them? I personally fail very quickly once I'm attacked by a machine-gun fire of mental images about moving my legs.