ardacigin

Also, there is no such thing as 'being advanced enough that I can drop mindfulness and start self enquiry'. Mindfulness can be infinitely deepened. Self-enquiry is done in a state of deep mindfulness. Peter Ralston is not thinking about what to eat for lunch or how boring contemplation is when he is doing self enquiry. He is in a state of profound presence. Try to change your assumptions towards what self enquiry and mindfulness is supposed to feel like. They all repeatedly direct the attention and awareness to the present moment. When an adept meditator does mindfulness and self enquiry back to back, the transition is barely perceptible. You can't run away from mindful awareness. This is the essence of this work. I understand your current frustration but you need to face these emotions head on rather than going for seemingly the easier path with self-enquiry. Neither path is actually easy. You just need to rewire your existing negative mental reactions to positivity and joy just enough with mindfulness so that present moment awareness is fun and enjoyable like a video game. Self-inquiry won't solve this emotional issue for you unless you actually become awake. And even then, you will need to do deep emotional work regardless because not all craving and suffering will be eliminated in the initial stages of awakening. So keep these in mind while making your decision. Hope this helped

Your mind is experiencing a lack of unification towards meditation and this produces aversion, negative feelings, boredom and frustration. You are also negatively reinforcing this process of attentional training by constantly reacting with negative unwholesome states of minds like frustration and boredom. Try the jhana practice taught by Leigh Brasington for awhile. Learn how to smile properly in meditation. Add and try to look for the joy and happiness (however you can find at this phase of your practice). When the mind's negative momentum towards the present moment is partially undone, you will start to find stable attention more fun and rewarding. At this point, motivation will slightly increase and your practice will go deeper. After stable attention, you'll add metacognitive awareness and whole-body awareness with meditative joy and things will go even deeper. Then profound equanimity will start to develop and things will go even deeper than before. Then the mind will be able to do majority of the insight practices (including self-enquiry and many more) with relative effortlessness, joy and ease. Mindfulness is more of a fundamental skill than self-inquiry in a state of mind wandering. Remember that self-enquiry is an advanced insight practice. It is not designed for people who have fixated thoughts in their minds. (and pervasive self-related negative emotions for that matter) The problem is you haven't quite gone deeper into mindfulness as you potentially could in 5 years. Dropping and changing techniques like that will only make the process take longer and frustrate the mind even more. Find a mindfulness or yoga technique that works for you and develop the skills like stable attention, equanimity, joy and awareness. But feel free to try self-inquiry as well. Hope it works out either way

I've just watched Culadasa's most recent Patreon interview and one of the questions that were asked was his opinions on psychedelics and he mentioned 5 Meo DMT there as well. So I thought people in this forum might be interested in. Culadasa views psychedelics differently than many Buddhist teachers. He views them as plant medicines and he'd tried many different substances in the past. He thinks of them as medicines that literally give you various insight experiences directly. Their effectiveness changes depending on intentions, user's skill level, set and settings. He also views psychedelics to have profound effects on emotional healing as long as the student has the skills to work on this aspect of the practice. His opinions on the psychedelics start at 42:02 minute mark.

Noting is an adept insight practice that enables the meditator to maximize sensory clarity with momentary concentration. It can be done with labeling or just noticing. It is really powerful if you have the proper skills to do it. So TMI stage 6-7 is a good time to try it. Also you can try the labeling version in stage 3 TMI as well. Mantra is too much of a conceptual meditation object for the purposes of developing awareness. It is useful in developing stable attention but its ability to produce insight and develop metacognitive awareness is very low. It is not a technique that is in an adept meditator's toolbox. Initially, it can be useful though. Formal session simply implies sitting practice where your intentions are doing the technique with diligence. Daily practice is your ability to bring that quality in movement. Hope this helps.

Hello everyone! I've experienced something really interesting yesterday. This enabled me to contrast my current practice with how my 3 years of spiritual practice was. And I got some important insights into meditative joy and its importance on the spiritual path. I don't know if it has to do with my crazy sleeping schedules but I've felt strong sensations of sleepiness all through out the day and I've felt that something in my brain is literally blocking the arising of meditative joy. But initially, I didn't relate this to sleepiness because I wasn't that dull to want to go to sleep. But I wasn't so energized to combat the dullness as well. It was in an awkward manageable phaseand my whole meditative joy practices were temporarily shut down. That is why I've said that regardless of how profound these are, they are enduring at best, not permanent because they didn't arise due to sufficient insight embodiment. They are dependent on causes and conditions. But that is fine because I've access to happiness and joy on demand effortlessly again. Report: So I've experienced 33 days of stable happiness, easily accessed even after losing it. I've described what this is in the previous posts. Stage 8 mastery of meditative joy in TMI. 34rth day (yesterday) - Experienced unusual fuzziness, dullness, sleepiness and tiredness of mind and body. I don't understand why this happened. Maybe my mind and body simply wanted some break from stable happiness Access to all joy is blocked. But there is still very subtle levels of equanimity. Just to clarify, I was in a state of neutral and persistent dullness related to lack of rest. I haven't spiraled down to negative emotions like sadness, frustration etc. As I've said, these sort of emotions rarely enters my consciousness at this point. Also I can do the usual TMI breath practice just fine. I just completely lack the joy and happiness component and this helped me remember that this is how I've been meditating for the last 3 years of my life before the arising of meditative joy. This enabled me to realize how important meditative joy is. Today: Since I've rested properly yesterday, I've woken up with joy and happiness effortlessly. The blockage I've felt due to fuzziness is gone. Just to make sure, I've refrained from all substances that can alert or dull the mind like caffeine, tea, bread, food in the morning. Basically I'm doing intermittent fasting and things are as smooth and stable as before. This helped me realize that meditative joy and stable happiness is currently the greatest accelerator on the spiritual path that I've experienced. Leo says 'Consciousness is love. Love is consciousness'. I've also heard Culadasa say the exact same thing. Well, guess what? I've realized that your ability and overall chance of accessing the love component of consciousness is directly related to your emotional well-being. This actually applies to all meditation and insights in my experience. A joyful mind and equanimous mind is the ideal mind for all meditative endeavors including psychedelics. Your chances of having a bad trip are also extremely low if you've mastered this meditative joy. What are the chances of a meditator who've flatlined emotionally (neutral - negative states) to be conscious of love? What are the chances of consistent meditation? I'm not even mentioning how this stable happiness transformed my personal relationships, career, hobbies, entertainment and all aspects of life in a radical way. I'm starting to see how meditative joy is not a simple phenomenon. After spending a day without it, I can conclusively say that meditative joy arose in the proper context with stable attention, mindfulness and equanimity results in radical reductions in craving and desire, and increase in contentment and ability to do open spacious awareness practices. (or all meditation practices as a whole.) So get to meditative joy as soon as possible! Work towards it. Do whatever you need to. If you need to, do jhana practice, go do it. Start TMI practices. Read Leigh Brasington's book on Right concentration. Even if your access concentration is not solid, still try the basic technique: - Find a pleasurable sensations in the mind-body, focus on it and stay with it until it increases in intensity. If you lose the subtle pleasurable sensations and flatline, focus on the breath for awhile and come back to the pleasure when it arises. Repeat. (In TMI practice, you can do the same thing stabilizing on the breath first, and look for the pleasure with awareness but that is actually much more challenging before joy develops sufficiently. So directly focus on the body to find some pleasurable sensations and stay with it without craving. For this, you can drop the breath awareness completely or maintain it in the background until meditative joy is stable and strong. Then add the breath component.) More importantly, SMILE!!!!! I wish I've smiled more in meditation these last 3 years. I'd have facilitated meditative joy development properly. I never liked smiling in meditation but it eases the edge of concentration practices and enables some space and mellowness. So force yourself if you have to. Smile slightly without creating tension in the body. Life flows much better when you have meditative joy because it comes usually with some equanimity and contentment which means a directly perceptible reduction in all cravings. Having this as a baseline for all spiritual practices will transform your life. The benefits of internally developed stable happiness are well beyond any 'gimmick' I've tried in meditation. More people must structure their daily session welcoming and facilitating joy and happiness. You'd be glad you did in the future

Happiness and joy is a comprehensive mental state that can be cultivated consistently and is available to a skilled meditator. Equanimity and peace does NOT mean neutrality. The claim 'True happiness is the end of unhappiness' can be interpreted as neutral dullness because that too would be the end of unhappiness. But true happiness is the joy and happiness that arise by eliminating craving and desire. Its mind's natural state to be in when mind unification occurs. I'm talking about that 'giggly' happiness. I also claim that this happiness in the casual sense can be made 100 times more powerful by combining with profound equanimity, mindfulness and peace. These are highly related but distinct lines of spiritual development. I'm pretty sure Rupert Spira experiences the happiness from within. Don't mistake his demeanor with adept stages of spirituality actually being this 'glum' peace without joy and happiness. It is just his style. He is wise and knows what he is talking about. You watch Eckhart Tolle and he emphasizes the joy aspect more by smiling and speaking in less serious undertones. So keep on practicing and cultivating happiness and joy in meditation. If you become too serious, you'll just make the journey harder for yourself. That sort of mindset can 'lock' the emotional states in sleepy neutrality and dullness which is not at all what true happiness is all about. It is also not as helpful in meditation as one might think. That neutrality can induce more equanimity but that is not an accurate description of how an adept meditator lives their lives. Within that neutrality, there is A LOT of aversion. That is why the mind is not happy in the usual sense. Equanimity and neutrality are completely different terms. So, a skilled meditator doesn't experience neutrality with equanimity. They experience profound equanimity with stable joy and happiness. They don't flatline emotionally. These are totally different emotional states.

Your understanding of awakening is limited. Depending on how deeply craving is extinguished, an awakened person can not only say no to heroin but also deal with heroin withdrawal symptoms. I think people don't understand what the elimination of craving actually is. Also, remember that heroin addiction is overcome by people who have NEVER meditated. Just over time, with a lot of resistance, ordinary people do give up this substance. So we are not talking about a level of addiction so high that no ordinary person even has a chance of giving up. All 'addictive' substances (like heroin) has been overcome by ordinary people at some point in their lives. A deeply awakened person can give up any substance (including heroin) without suffering (or if unskilled with minimum suffering). This doesn't mean they wouldn't experience pain. They would. But they would momentarily ease into the experience of pain knowing that sensate reality is impermanent, occurring to no-self, and resistance to this sensation resulting in craving and suffering. If you couldn't deal with extreme cases like heroin addiction, then why even pursue awakening? The end of suffering is not a simple statement. It is a radical statement. A skilled meditator would also experience as much equanimity as possible with meditative joy as well depending on the severity of the pain. And again, depending on your skills, you can experience joy and happiness in spite of great physical and emotional pain. If I've done this with low levels of pain, then someone who is actually awake can do this with great pain. They would also have vastly improved skills in stable attention, mindful awareness, sensory clarity and equanimity than I do. Therefore, skillful practice even in heroin addiction (which has one of the most painful drug withdrawal symptoms out of all drugs) is possible for a deeply awake person.

I have time to work on my career and hobbies like piano and video games aside from spirituality. But my social life takes a hit. That is fine. You can't do everything. I'm not a social butterfly and my desire to socialize is very manageable. I practice a 3-5 hours of daily meditation combined with 60-90 mins formal sessions every day (these days). I do this regardless of how hectic, busy or problematic my life is. I can apply mindfulness really well in times of business crises and stress. My resilience overall is 100 times greater than what it used to be. Depending on how deep mindfulness is, I feel literally invincible in the face of 'bad' life events. (unless they are extremely serious like the death of a family member etc.) Mindfulness is currently the focal point where everything rests on. I no longer experience ego backlash and spirituality has started to become infused to my life thanks to stage 8 TMI practice.

@BecomingBuddha Sure I have 3 tips for you: 1- Read TMI but also listen to its audio book on youtube. There is part 2 to this video as well. 2- Listen to Culadasa's videos on meditation Subscribe to this channel: 3- Read LB's book and do ALL TMI practices with a slight smile on your face without creating tension. Always look for joy and happiness however subtle in the mind and body. If I did that, I'd have progressed faster. Also, meditate for at least 1 hour everyday. 90 mins is preffered on days you are extra motivated. You don't have to do SDS sits. Move when you feel discomfort and continue meditating.

@BecomingBuddhaI have never read LB's book on right concentration before I've attained fully developed meditative joy. My interest in that book rose after I've already attained 1st and 2nd jhana in daily life. This was purely due to TMI. Only after I've stabilized happiness for a few days, I've asked myself: 'Somebody else must also have experienced this' and I've realized what I'm experiencing is a more stable and pervading form of meditative joy similar to jhanas explained in LB's book. To specific, I was doing extrospective awareness of sounds + breath attention in effortlessness for 4 hours. But I was in a state of dullness that day. Even though nothing too significant happened, I remember my concentration to the breath and awareness of sounds being extremely acute. I was unusually focused even in a state of dullness. And I could maintain that quality for 4 hours straight. That is something I've never attempted doing up until that day. I wanted to do this after watching a documentary about solitary confinement. I thought 'lets do a simple solitary confinement experiement and stay in this room for 4 hours while doing TMI practice. I want to see how much I'll suffer' So I had the effortlessness of TMI Stage 7 but I also had the dullness described in stage 6. Even though mindfulness was not optimal, I've managed to do it. My body was creating all sorts of boredom, frustration-like emotions. My mind was in heavy dullness. In spite of all that, I had unusually high concentration to the breath and awareness of external sounds for 4 hours straight. Regardless, this stable happiness and fully developed meditative joy started to pervade my life that night. It was sudden. And I don't remember exactly how it arose in the mind. I've stopped the 4 hour meditation around 5 pm. I felt pretty good. And around 7-8 pm, effortless and intense meditative joy started to pervade my entire life. And ever since that day, I've had close to effortless access to joy and happiness (with varying intensity and depth) in daily life and meditation. Even now, as I'm writing this, my mind is in a state of effortless joy and happiness.

@moloskuBut a proper well developed stage 9 TMI meditator can actually fo 3-4 hours long SDS sits without too much trouble. So my strategy now is to get used to this meditative joy in stage 8. And figure out how to tap into the spaciousness and high equanimity levels of 4rth jhana. 4rth jhana more of less corresponds to TMI stage 9. I can already do 3rd jhana (even sometimes in daily life) but 4rth jhana is really challenging because equanimity levels must be on INSANE levels. And this must be combined with open awareness. This corresponds to 'Meditating on Mental States' technique described in TMI stage 9. It is described as attention and awareness fusing together so the distinction between them is mostly eliminated. This has an open spacious quality to it. This is in a sense 4rth jhana practice once you get the equanimity to high levels in that fusion of awareness and attention. But I've managed to get there a few times in a formal SDS sit. I just need to practice more. After I get to 4th jhana spaciousness, equanimity and combine that with meditative joy, stable attention, introspective and metacognitive awareness I've already developed, and learn to maintain this without too much effort, awakening will follow after that. I'm pretty sure insights will get easier on that level of mastery. Because at that point, I'd peaking towards stage 10. And I've already had temporary insights that challenged my existing worldview of being a self, so I'm sure things will eventually get to legit permanent stream entry levels once I get to stage 9-10 aspect of the practice.

@molosku There is no loss of return. But the physical pain still interrupts long 2 hour SDS sits. Even with crazy levels of meditative joy (at least as much as I can do), I can pull equanimity to a nice level so that I can do a 90 mins SDS without too much trouble. Depending on how well I've combined equanimity and meditative joy in open spacious awareness, I can go towards 1 hour and 45 mins in an SDS but at this point physical pains starts to screw with equanimity levels. So doing longer SDS sits like 3-4 hours is still not possible for me. I need to develop more physical and mental pliancy. Thankfully, meditative joy makes all this process really fun and enjoyable

@moon777light Hi! It started disappearing radically a month ago when the meditative joy fully developed but I had less resistance in the past 10 months. So this year was way easier and fun. So when you get around stage 6-7 in TMI, your resistance will slowly drop. Once you get to stage 8 solidly, it will drop RADICALLY and your desire to meditate will be huge. This happens due to the effortlessness of stage 7 and the meditative joy of stage 8. I also have certain strategies I plan to do in the future to get to stage 9 equanimity. My meditations are already going in that direction but I need to work with stage 8 for a few more months until I feel ready to do practices for stage 9. I'll share my development with you guys when I feel like I'm solidly in stage 9 territory.

@Serotoninluv As much as I'd like to say I have some sort of genetical advantage, I can't say that with honesty. I've started the path with a lot of frustration. I didn't like meditating. I wasn't spiritually inclined (even though I was interested in psychology and self-development). Most importantly, I had a lot of emotional issues. I wasn't clinically depressed or anything but I certainly was not a 'happy' person. My mood tended to be down and sad most of the time. I had a lot of craving for video games and other pursuits in fixated ways. I had a lot of mind wandering. And I realize only now that I've been reinforcing these moods constantly without knowing. So my genetics was habituated for non-spirituality, negative emotions and ADD before I've started the path. Only recently, these deep habits are unraveling and I'm starting to see how much re-programming is occurring in the unconscious mind. This also enables me to see how much skill development is required vs genetical advantage. The key point for me was finding a systematic practice like TMI. Not everyone will like this style, but it did the trick for me. It enabled me to realize my weak spots and practice with diligence. So the question is 'How can I figure out or study a system of practice that I'll fall in love with?' That is what happened to me with TMI. The first time I've read, I said 'Nice! I think I've found my main practice'. After that initial love and interest, I've started the path with serious diligence and practice. That was 3 years ago and I'm quite happy with my current progress. My practice is very consistent and I go deeper into consciousness every day.

@Serotoninluv Nice insights. Just make sure not to lump in 'meditative joy' I'm talking about with any sort of happiness or joy that might arise in daily life. This is a strict meditation related development. What you described still applies though. You can easily get addicted to this internally created joy and happiness. Meditative joy also arises with high levels of equanimity, tranquility and contentment. So basically you are getting closer to the extinction of all craving. But this highly refined state hasn't yet facilitated permanent realization so is dependent upon causes and conditions. The 'space' aspect you are talking about is included in what I'm talking about. Open spacious awareness, joy, happiness, tranquility, energy, stable attention, metacognitive awareness, introspective awareness - all of these constitute powerful mindfulness at adept levels of practice. So without joy and happiness, the emotional state has 2 other possible states to be in: neutrality and negativity. Neutrality, unless it arises due to dullness and sleepiness, can be used skilfully in mindfulness. But this requires 4rth jhana levels of equanimity. (a lot of equanimity) with stable attention and powerful mindfulness. The catch 22 here is that if you had these aspects of the practice, joy and happiness would slowly develop effortlessly. So neutrality is a temporarily phase you are going through in the development of samatha. If your overall emotional tone is described as negative emotions, that points to obvious aversion and craving. This will only create problems in insight investigation. So meditative joy is a profound development because it is the only line of development (besides equanimity) that enables the ideal environments for awakening. Can you spend the rest of your life stuck in neutral-negative mental states and hope for the best with insight practices like self enquiry? Sure. Many dry insight meditators do this. But what powerful mindfulness, stable attention with joy, equanimity and happiness not only brings you closer to awakening (due to radical reductions in craving) but also increases life satisfaction. It eliminates resistance to practice. It super-charges motivation. It turns you into someone pleasant to be around. See, the more I've glimpsed the adept stages of samatha, the more I realize 'dry insight' approach where you don't develop these skills until stream entry is an unskilful and short term approach. Lets say you become a stream enterer using primarily self enquiry in 5-10 years which is a reasonable amount of time for committed meditators. That is only first path. The initial stages of awakening. Self enquiry won't take you deeper into the hidden recesses of the no-self. It won't eliminate all the subtle remaining aspects of craving. It won't arise insight into love aspect of consciousness. Its ability to produce insight is limited to no-self. And even that won't be fully grasped with just one insight question like: Who am I? There are MANY more aspects you must develop spiritually speaking. All these aspects Leo talks about can not be understood simply by using self enquiry for 10 years. With adept levels of mindfulness mastery however, you can do many insight practices (including self enquiry) and go deeper into many aspects Leo talks about. It is overall MUCH more useful skill than being a better self enquiry meditator. So this meditative joy, however conditioned, is very important. Everything is conditioned before awakening. The question is: What state of mind actually gets me closer to awakening? Unsurprisingly, the state of mind that IS closest to awakening. That has the minimum levels of craving and maximum levels of equanimity. That cultivates maximum levels of love, joy and happiness and minimum levels of aversion and negativity. That state of mind has the highest chance of experiencing insight that leads to permanent realizations. You can get there with deep samatha practice. Because you systematically develop mindfulness in all aspects. But that requires more work and discipline than sitting on a cushion and asking the question 'Who am ı?' in a state of craving and mind wandering.

Before I start this post, I wanted to clarify that I've waited for more than 30 days to explore this dramatic increase in my baseline happiness, joy and equanimity for the purposes of not misdirecting anyone. I wanted to make sure this is not some simple meditation high before I've explained people what this is all about. I wanted to see how the mind adapts after the initial effortlessness of joy and happiness. Since I've completed the integration period in these 30 days, I can speak about what happened with good authority. I can conclusively claim that I've significantly altered my emotional circuits for pleasure, happiness, joy and equanimity. In Buddhist terms, I have close to effortless access to many of the pleasure jhanas explained in the literature. (Especially 2nd and 3rd jhana) So about 30 days ago, I've decided to do a 4 hours long uninterrupted TMI meditation. This is not a SDS sit. I've allowed myself to move. In fact, I had the allowance to rotate between these 3 postures while maintaining mindfulness: sitting cross legged, laying down and walking. The 4 hour session was all right. I was extremely concentrated but was in a state of dullness right from the beginning. In fact, that is why I've decided to do walking sessions. I normally never do stuff like that. Nothing too unusual happened apart from a few psychedelic levels of visual fluidity around 3 hour mark. I didn't had any memorable experiences beyond that. Just to clarify, I've never seriously tried jhana meditation or never even intentionally cultivated feelings of happiness and joy in meditation. I was just doing the practices with as much equanimity as I could do. But that night, all of a sudden, I was pervaded by high levels of happiness and joy. These feelings were hitting me left and right. My head area is raptured with bliss and joy. This is apparently what is called 'fully developed meditative joy' explained in TMI. From the explanation, I'd never think that this would be so stable, pervasive, high and in one's conscious intentional control. In a sense, I'm 'willing' happiness and joy into existence. I imagine ( aka consciously intend) for happiness and my mind gives it to me in a stable and high degree. If you've ever taken SSRI, the pleasure you get out of that is not even comparable to meditative joy. Even if we assumed that due to a high dose of SSRI, you've managed to feel more pleasure than meditative joy, the contentment, mindfulness and equanimity element is not there. Also this is dependent on an external chemical. Meditative joy is an internal development (even if it is still conditioned). Jhana practice is much more than simply intending to have pleasurable experiences. Actually managing to develop meditative joy effortlessly to this level I've attained is no small thing. But it is possible for many meditators who practice diligently with the right methods for them. If you are one of those people who wondered: 'Is stable happiness and joy possible similar to anti-depressants?' The answer is: 'Yes, and don't undersell what spirituality can accomplish.' You actually experience more joy and happiness with contentment with 10 times more stability (compared to anti-depressants) because this is internally produced by the mind. It becomes more conditioned and stable after a while. You are not dependent on a chemical externally. Stability and independence is the problem in SSRI's. Very few depressed people who take 'potent' SSRI's report experiencing the bliss of happiness and contentment on stable and high levels ALL the time starting from waking up and going bed. But meditation has currently got me to that level. And I know for a fact that this refined state of mind could be developed infinitely since mindfulness itself can be infinitely developed. But to do that in daily life, I need to do 2 things. 1- Get to effortlessness of happiness and joy with strong equanimity in a formal session. Depending on my mental state, this can take as little as 5-10 mins or 1 hour. 2- Maintain a strong intention to continue this refined state of mind with metacognitive awareness in daily life. Otherwise, both happiness and contentment can go down to subtle-low levels depending on how demanding the task I'm doing. There is a difference between listening to cool music and dealing with a business crisis. Although I can maintain subtle-low levels of happiness in both scenarios, I can't maintain the peak of the formal session if I don't have a strong intention to maintain it in a business crisis. In other words, My current experience of daily life is filled with stable feelings of happiness with contentment in a joyful state of mind. A joyful state of mind creates feelings of happiness mentally and physically. The degree of happiness is more than if you've taken an average dose of a relatively strong anti-depressant. Let me clear on that. You can abuse these drugs but like I said, even if you were to experience more pleasure and bliss, the contentment and equanimity which creates both the stability and satisfaction won't be there. Then you add powerful introspective awareness in a state of open awareness with stable attention on top of all this joy, contentment and happiness. The end result is pure bliss in a highly refined state of samatha. The perfect state of mind to do investigation towards reality. In a formal session, I can sometimes boost it to that level of refinement. But in daily sessions, the baseline is low levels of joy and happiness all day long (starting from the moment I wake up to going bed) with low levels of contentment and equanimity. That is my lowest point while actually meditating. If I'm awfully dull or tired, The low levels of joy and happiness can go down to subtle levels. If I completely stop meditating for a long time, the joy and happiness is no longer perceptible. Equanimity goes down a lot. But the good news is that it takes less than 5 mins to get to subtle-low levels of stable joy and happiness. My nervous system has changed its primary operating system to 'anti-depressant' levels of happiness and joy. I can stabilize my consciousness in strong joy and happiness for more than 12+ hours regardless of thinking, talking or formally meditating in silence. This is stage 8-9 area of mastery of meditative joy in TMI stages of meditation. This one development has been the most enduring development of my entire meditation training. My whole life satisfaction is increased by 50 times. Momentarily I'm tasting the satisfaction of internally cultivated joy and happiness. So if you want to know if this is possible, I'm here to say 'Yes!!!!! but it will take work on your part.' Don't listen to people who say samatha or jhana meditation doesn't lead anywhere. I'd bet that certain people who've experienced legit awakenings still might not have stabilized jhanic factors to the degree I'm talking about in this post. I'm talking about almost effortless access to jhanas in daily life. Not formal sessions. And I consider myself not awake by insight meditation standards. I've only developed this highly refined state of mind by working with TMI for 4 years. I still need to be conscious of infinite insights from this point onwards. But my emotional mastery line of development is close to awakening levels due to this meditative joy. The key difference is that samatha is a conditioned state and will disappear if I stop the practice. But awakening will result in a permanent intuitive shift in my understanding of suffering, self and reality. So far, that hasn't occurred to that degree. But for what I've accomplished with TMI in only 3-4 years is nothing less than life-changing. When your practice starts to lean deeper towards stage 8-9, meditative joy and happiness will literally start to consume your life. My ability to hold on to negative unwholesome states of minds like frustration, boredom, anger, sadness etc. is little to none. I need to put a lot of intentional effort to feel anger at somebody. Or sadness. Or loneliness. I hope this helped some of you who are struggling with motivation. Keep working and practicing diligently. Feel free to ask me your questions as well

@Sev Definitely start reading TMI if you are interested. The systematic structure itself will slowly increase motivation. It is one of my favorite meditation books. It helped me get through many beginner traps like moving attention, lack of awareness development and dullness in a rather short amount of time. I'd think of my current 3-year-long TMI practice as the shaved off version of a 10-year non-systematic meditation. TMI instructions helped me that much.

@Areis Thank you for your answer. I hope your meditations will go deeper. It sounds like you are on the right track. Psychedelics are definitely helping you on this journey. Here is a video on this meditative joy I'm talking about from Culadasa himself. This is currently the most enduring and powerful cognitive change I've experienced that would combat aversion and craving (which is the basis of all unwholesome negative mind states) apart from the effects of permanent awakening.

@Sev I know what you mean. I've never tried SSRI but my brother is using it and after asking what sort of effect it has I was shocked to hear it didn't enable this stable happiness I got from TMI and jhana meditation. I thought that was THE reason why people used SSRI and by that I mean the effects would be deeper and more lasting than they really are coming from depression. Apparently, in a normal dose, they manage some increase in happiness at certain times while preventing emotional crashes. Otherwise, it takes you back to 'normal' neurotic human condition from impulsive suicidal thoughts and constant major depression. Realizing that helped me to see how it differs from meditative joy. But the best understanding would come from the experience of both. Someone who've used SSRI for a long time and also experienced this fully developed meditative joy can describe it with more accuracy. I also don't know how much long term use of SSRI would make it harder or easier to attain jhanas. I do have my own speculations but I'm certainly not an authority on the subject since I'm not a doctor and I've never used one. I'd be glad if someone who'd used SSRI for a long time can comment on their emotional health after stopping the use of the drug As of now, I observe my brother very often and even if he shows a lot of beneficial positive emotional enhancement due to SSRI, what I observe is still not even close to what I'm experiencing. And he is using Paxera for his major depression. It is not a weak SSRI by industry standards.

@Consilience 1 hour a day is enough if you can spend that time properly and make the most of it. Provided that you have a strong daily practice. Otherwise it is not enough. I wanted to say that I did 1 hour a day and focused intensely on daily practice. I also had a 6 month period time where I did 90-120 mins SDS sits back to back with an emphasis on daily practice. My daily practice has always been stronger than many meditators because I never had the opportunity to go to a retreat. Either I had to learn to meditate in life, or I was screwed. Even 2 hours a day is not enough. If those 2 hours are REALLY high quality, that will already affect the next 2-3 hours. But you still need to maintain high quality of mindfulness more hours interruptedly. While watching Leo's videos. Playing video games, Working on the business, career stuff. Talking to people. etc. You have to integrate the rest of your life for mindfulness application. As a lay practitioner like I am, everyone requires this integration as quickly as possible. Some days I don't even do formal sits, but I have effortless access to formal sit quality. And I can maintain that for many hours if I get to effortlessness described in stage 7 TMI. You can get to effortless access concentration with the breath sensations or the happiness and joy in jhana practice. Currently I do both with an emphasis on jhanas. Either way, you are developing the same skill. And the faster you get to effortlessness, the less inconsistent your practice will become.

@Aeris Wonderful questions. Let me help you. My current meditation involve further stabilization of the jhanic factors (happiness and joy) with equanimity and contentment in stable spacious open awareness where my usual sense of being a separate self is blurry. If I can maintain it to a sufficient degree, I move forward with mahamudra like investigation and/or self enquiry. But majority of the sit involves stabilization rather than investigation. This will change as I go further in my practice. My current meditation object is contentment, equanimity levels, mind states and positive emotions. As TMI advise, I stabilize attention to the breath and develop awareness on these introspective elements. My thought activity is low if I go deep into formal session. But the joy and happiness I'm describing here have nothing to do with thought activity. In fact, I can argue that thought activity stimulates high energy in the mind which increases the joy and happiness. Rather than being an obstacle, it can aid my jhanic practices. I can maintain this with or without thought. Compared to an average meditator, I have less thoughts overall. I don't use supplement. In fact, I don't have the healthiest diet currently. One would think that lack of nutrition would disable certain hormones which take a role in jhanas but even in intermittent fasting sort of circumstances, meditation quality is very high. Happiness and joy is very profound. Other than dullness issues which are ascribed to carbohydrates, I don't experience any ill effects of low-quality food. But don't get me wrong. Eating healthy is still important. This is just a phase in my life where I don't focus too much on what I eat. Long term, TMI like systematic instructions saved my meditation practice. I don't understand what you mean by 'relative stage of practice' I've had insight experiences prior to meditation joy mastery where my intuitive understanding of being a separate self was temporarily shut down. I was in sober meditation. It happened 3 times while going to sleep. I lost my boundaries - the point where my skin ends and outside stuff starts. I also had slightly less profound experiences in where a reduction in self rigidity occured. This happened a few times. The point is that all of this was temporary. And as I've mentioned, the most enduring aspect of my practice has been the development of meditative joy. My life has changed in a fundamental way. I currently understand what people mean by meditation can produce literal ecstasy.

@themovement I did put about 3 years of exclusive effort into TMI practices and studying. I meditate 1-2 hours in formal sessions normally.But some days, I only practice 20-30 mins. My daily meditation are always strong though. I put extra effort into maintaining at least mid-levels of joy with powerful mindfulness at least 3+ hours every day. If that ability is hindered in anyway, I focus more on formal session and start doing SDS sessions. I've started straight on with 1-hour session 3 years ago. Because I had 1 year of meditation experience before than. It was very inconsistent and I didn't have a nice manual like TMI back then. So I was meditating the first year purely because Leo was talking about it and I was reading the scientific benefits of mindfulness. That and Shinzen Young were also providing motivation. Until I've read TMI, I was not a committed meditator or a spiritual practitioner. I've never done ANY retreats in my life. I did do retreats at home but never more than 2 days. I maintain a business and where I live, I don't have easy access to retreat centers. I plan to do one at some point in the future. They are definitely valuable if you can do it. But realize that I've accomplished all this with daily formal sits with an INTENSE emphasis on daily cultivation. Of course TMI instructions were invaluable. If I didn't focus so much on daily meditation, I'd never progress to this level. I also had a period of time in my life where I was meditating 90-120 mins in SDS every morning and doing 6+ hours of hardcore mindfulness in daily life that same day for 6 months straight. That improved my practice a lot and one can argue that this gave me the retreat effect in a lighter way. Hope this was useful

@Mada_ I've responded to your text

So if you are wondering if it is possible to experience happiness comparable to taking Paxera or other strong anti-depressants, the answer is ' Yes and don't undersell what meditation can do :)' You actually experience more joy and happiness with contentment with 10 times more stability (compared to anti-depressants) because this is internally produced by the mind. It becomes more conditioned and stable after a while. You are not dependent on a chemical externally. Stability and independence is the problem in SSRI's. Very few depressed people who take 'potent' SSRI's report experiencing the bliss of happiness and contentment on stable and high levels ALL the time starting from waking up and going bed. But meditation has currently got me to that level. But to do that in daily life interacting with people and doing productive stuff that requires cognitive performance, I need to do 2 things. 1- Get to effortlessness of happiness and joy with strong equanimity in a formal session. Depending on my mental state, this can take as little as 5-10 mins or 1 hour. 2- Maintain a strong intention to continue this refined state of mind with metacognitive awareness in daily life. Otherwise, both happiness and contentment can go down to subtle-low levels depending on how demanding the task I'm doing. There is a difference between listening to cool music and dealing with a business crisis. Although I can maintain subtle-low levels of happiness in both scenarios. Just not the peak of the formal session I'm talking about if I don't have a strong intention to maintain it in the business crisis.

You haven't described what these numbers corresponds to. Is a '1' major depression and negative thoughts or borderline suicidal tendencies. Is '10' the bliss of awakening or high levels of a feeling of stable happiness with contentment which is a by-product of a joyful state of mind. If we peg awakening and its result of contentment and happiness a '10' and if we peg the most stable, content and equanimious happiness and joy using jhanas pre-awakening a '9' Then I would peg myself an 8.0 in daily life. And 8.5 in formal session. In other words, My current experience of daily life is filled with stable feelings of happiness with contentment in a joyful state of mind. A joyful state of mind creates feelings of happiness mentally and physically. The degree of happiness is more than if you've taken an anti-depressant. Not just due to the joy and happiness levels, but in skillful meditation, you also add the contentment and equanimity which is the other side of the equation in jhanic factors like happiness and joy. Then you add powerful introspective awareness in a state of open awareness with stable attention on top of all this joy, contentment and happiness. The end result is pure bliss in a highly refined state of samatha. The perfect state of mind to do investigation towards reality. In a formal session, I can sometimes boost it to that level of refinement. But in daily sessions, the baseline is low levels of joy and happiness all day long (starting from the moment I wake up to going bed) with low levels of contentment and equanimity. That is my lowest point while actually meditating. If I'm awfully dull or tired, The low levels of joy and happiness can go down to subtle levels. If I completely stop meditating for a long time, the joy and happiness is no longer perceptible. Equanimity goes down a lot. But the good news is that it takes less than 5 mins to get to subtle-low levels of stable joy and happiness. My nervous system has changed its primary operating system to 'anti-depressant' levels of happiness and joy. I can stabilize my consciousness in strong joy and happiness for more than 12+ hours regardless of thinking, talking or formally meditating in silence. This is stage 8-9 area of mastery of meditative joy in TMI stages of meditation.