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Here is a short lecture from Culadasa which explains the relationship between suffering, craving and the ultimate reality which is infinite.

@Esoteric Awareness and attention dynamic is very important. Great work Recently I've talked to Culadasa about my recent meditative joy development with TMI. He said that my experiences very much sounds like grade 5 fully developed joy. Stage 8-9 territory. That is why meditative joy is so resilient, effortless and moderately intense in daily life. I will post it to the group about it soon.

Isn't that too much tripping? It appears you were going too fast without enough integration. Try to stop doing psychedelics until you feel better.

Watch this:

Robert Greene is mostly an orange/yellow on the SD. He has the more strategic and holistic perspectives (Yellow) on his later books like The Laws of Human Nature and Mastery compared to his earlier books (which are heavy orange) 'The 48 Laws of Power' and The Art of Seduction. He is one of the more developed self-help writers in the industry but has no clue about how deep spirituality and its implications go in shaping one's life. He has a 30 min daily zen practice but that is mostly for improving performance rather than investigating insights towards what is true. Due to his ignorance on the depth of spirituality, his book on the laws of human nature is full of generalization on the assumption that a self that craves and desires is not only natural but also a fundamental aspect of being a healthy human being. Which means he assumes that self is real. And due to this, the book is not well suited for anyone who are on the path to awakening. Many things will rub you the wrong way. He is still relatively orange.

I think that this episode was exceptionally deep even for Leo's standards. I also think that this one video crystallizes the value and importance of psychedelic investigations. I think it a valid path to use psychedelics with weak embodiment for a year or two, using that time to be conscious of all of these 30+ insights. And then going through the meditation/yoga path to strongly embody these insights for the next 30 + years and also doing psychedelics on the side if need be. I think this is not only valid but a solid strategy overall if you can execute it properly. (I'd personally do the psychedelic investigation at this depth AFTER I've relatively mastered the samatha path which usually takes at least 3-8 years of intense hard work. Until then, I'd casually do psychedelics. But I understand that both of these strategies have their own pros and cons.) See if you can combat the certain negative effects psychedelics can have while becoming conscious of those 30 shocking insights in such a short amount of time. The ego backlash, quick psychological dis-integration and energy problems can be 10 times more severe compared to the experiences described in 'The Dark Side of Meditation' episode Leo talks about. Even if you are meditating while becoming conscious of these insights, they can still be very disruptive psychologically and emotionally. Just because Leo is handling it easily doesn't necessarily mean everyone can handle it. So keep that in mind. The only issue I've observed was the claim at the end that 'Becoming conscious of these insights won't solve the problem of emotional mastery. You can still identify with emotions, experience deep sadness etc.) This claim must be said within the confines of the psychedelic-heavy path. Once you have the skills to be conscious of these insights sober (not even embody deeply), your existing skills of emotional mastery MUST be on advanced levels to even start this process of insight enquiry for most of these 30+ insights. On the samatha-vipassana path, your development of emotional mastery comes as a preliminary work prior to insight penetration on suffering, unconditional happiness, love and impermanence. In fact, emotional mastery is the requirement to do long 4-8 hour long SDS sits. It is a mistake to assume people do such practices with a lot of pain or suffering. After mental and physical pliancy develops, you are not nearly aware of the body boundaries as a beginner usually is. Adept meditators not only cultivate unconditional happiness and joy but also delve deeper into some of these 30+ insights within those hours. So if you are at this level, the samatha-vipassana path already trained you deeply in emotional mastery. You are better at handling emotions than 99.9 percent of people at this point. (the rest 0.1% are deeply awakened people who've not only mastered samatha but also embodied the insights). Compared to this weakness of psychedelic-heavy path and dry insight methods, this is one of the major advantages of the samatha path. (Which includes all forms of jhana practices as well) At that level, you could easily deal with any negative emotion by applying many antidotes. Here are a few: 1- There is an automatic mechanism called 'Mind Unification' that develops which creates an overall reduction in resistance to ALL negative experiences. 2- You can do a jhana practice where you cultivate joy and happiness and dwell in it until it intensifies to an anti-depressant- SSRI intensity of pleasure and joy. Cultivating positive mental states has a more radical effect on adept meditators than beginners. This is basically a resilient but temporary form of unconditional happiness. 3- You can turn towards all negative/positive emotions and see their impermanent nature. (This requires sufficient embodiment of impermanence. If you don't have that, you can't do this process reliably.) 4- You can maintain metacognitive awareness on mental states which arises as a reaction to negative emotions. This is a similar insight practice to Mahamudra. You constantly monitor the mind for potential dullness, distractions, aversion, craving and emotional mental states. This introspective awareness can eventually result in insights related to no-self, suffering, emotions and many more. It is a powerful form of meditation. In fact, this is my current primary method of investigating the mind. 5- You can focus on a narrow or broad meditation objects and stay in access concentration with awareness until the negative emotion slowly dissolves due to focusing away from pain. 6- You can get to high levels of equanimity and do noting (not labelling) practices to the negative emotions with detachment. Eventually, the pain wil go away and show its impermanent nature. You can do most of of these antidotes without being conscious of majority of those 30+ insights. As I've explained in previous posts, you don't necessarily need fully embodied awakening to feel radically happier. At the advanced levels, certain skills you've mastered might mimic 'Awakened Consciousness' so much that it might be mistaken that person has deep insight embodiment or is definitely 'woke' (since he/she can do 8 hours of SDS in lotus posture, cultivate joy and happiness in the blink of an eye etc.) An awakening embodiment will make these skills way more deep and powerful. But emotional mastery, in its practical form is possible prior to awakening. In fact, this is one of the biggest reasons people do samatha-vipassana as a path towards awakening.

This distinction is very important. I'm not denying the validity of this insight. Sober reality is a controlled hallucination. I'm making a claim about the different natures and depths of insight penetration. These are different issues. The issue on the psychedelic front is that no one so far (from what I've known), has permanently embodied deep insights using only psychedelics. This is for practical purposes. There IS a huge difference between full vs semi embodiment. An embodiment in the sense that how a stream-enterer permanently loses their egoic boundaries. Any afterglow or intermittent experiences of peak states are semi-permanent embodiments. Currently, meditation/yoga path is known for a fact to produce permanent realizations. The psychedelics path has not been observed to create this cognitive shift (even in heavy hitters and long time users) and is always seen as either a good starting point for motivation or for advanced insight recognition. No one uses psychedelics for full embodiment and I think this is not due to fact that all spiritual and enlightened folks are close-minded and dogmatic. I definitely recommend psychedelics. For what it is amazing at: insight recognition and semi-embodiment. But I have to see at least a few human beings who have permanently liberated themselves with psychedelics. I'm always open to be proven wrong. And I think Leo is doing good experimenting with it. But I think there is a deeper reason why more psychedelics (time wise and quantity wise) is not what produces permanent awakening. And we don't know exactly how full embodiment occurs. If it is an accident, meditation makes you accident-prone. Probably the same is true with psychedelics. But until we know exactly how this process unfolds, we'll always be a little in the dark and 'just do more psychedelics and go deeper' mindset won't be enough to produce permanent awakening for the majority of the people.

Here are Culadasa's opinions on the importance of permanent insight penetration which is different from all spiritual accomplishments including temporary awakening experiences (psychedelic or sober) regardless of its profundity. Especially on the psychedelic path, you can easily delude yourself that these temporary insight recognitions have delved deeper and transformed the psyche permanently when the insights are still relatively immature and superficial even if the awakening itself is deep. Don't confuse insight embodiment with recognition. If you do, then you'll be deluded. With this delusion, you can slack off in your spiritual practice, cultivate arrogance and aversion towards the path or to other less wholesome insight attainments. Don't put the cart before the horse. You can also mistakenly believe that reading books and designing concepts around these profound insights to develop one's spiritual dimension. All intellectual matters must be put to rest and not be confused with spiritual development. These may be interlinked and important but ultimately are separate from spiritual development. Study spirituality but let that intellectual understanding guide your spiritual development with more effective practice, diligence and deeper spiritual experience. Here is Culadasa's explanation: 'The Buddha went to great effort to make it known that the Wisdom that leads to Awakening cannot be attained by means of intellect alone. Once it is understood that Enlightenment results from liberating cognition, there is a strong tendency to pursue truth through analysis and philosophy. This will not work. True wisdom, of the sort that can overcome the delusion in which we are immersed, must arise in the form of Insight (vipasanna) resulting from mindful awareness (sati-sampajañña) applied in the course of direct experience. Jhāna practice creates the perfect opportunity for that kind of direct experience. Another potential for misunderstanding is that the emphasis on meditation and direct experience can cause the yogi to discount the importance of cognitive transformation in favor of the meditative experiences themselves. This is also futile. Knowing and feeling are two very different things. An experience of no-self for example, of feeling at one with the universe, of being deeply aware that everything is perfect as it is, is just another experience fabricated by the mind – unless it is based on profound Insight. Without wisdom and understanding, a “peak” experience such as this soon becomes only a cherished memory while one continues on as before, immersed in a world of ignorance and inevitable suffering. To pursue jhāna or any other form of meditation as a source of such experiences is to fall into the same error as the Buddha’s predecessors, that of expecting a magical result from dwelling in particular mental states, or from having ‘special’ feelings and experiences. All of human existence is an endless tapestry of states, feelings, and experiences woven together to form the trap of samsara. But through the proper application of mindfulness, wisdom can arise that permanently destroys that trap. Salvation lies not in the experiences themselves, no matter how rewarding, satisfying and ecstatic, but in the power of conscious awareness properly applied to the observation of those experiences.'

@Leo Gura Spontaneous awakenings prove that permanent insight embodiements (ex. Eckhart Tolle's awakening) can be realized without time and deep experience. This tells me that it has to do with some other core factor which appears to me as insight deconstruction. Otherwise, spontaneous awakenings are pure magic and can't be explained by any other way. For some very few people who have a talent for this insight deconstruction, It just happens. Again, time and experience DOES create the ideal environment for insight embodiment. But it appears optional IF you do the insight process successfully. That focal point is the insight deconstruction. Again for 99% of people, that means deliberate practice and time. But that doesn't mean deliberate practice and time produces awakening. Successful insight process produces awakening which may or may not be the result of 10.000 hours of meditation or psychedelics. If you look at many people who had spent hours on these practices actually failed to succesfully embody the insights. Because it is not purely time and experience based. Those are not the core factor, but supplementary ones. This is not just splitting hairs. I'm basically telling that for successful permanent realization, all of our efforts must go towards insight process and not more time with psychedelics or meditation. The importance of using these tools for insight process as quickly as one is able to. That will produce the insight so the 1000 trip psychedelic experiment would not (most likely) pan out just like how 10.000 meditation hours don't pan out for most people.

It brings us to the successful insight practice. Due to those 2 reasons, It is not about the time or the depth of experience. The embodiment is about the successful insight deconstruction of ANY experience. By which I mean you can do 10.000 hours of psychedelics and still have little to no insight embodiment. Because you haven't successfully and sufficiently deconstructed the insight. Or in meditation's case, you can do 10.000 hours of meditation and still have little to no insight embodiment. Because you haven't successfully and sufficiently deconstructed the insight. Or in the case of awakening, you can have zero experience in meditation and psychedelics - 0 hours of meditation and psychedelics - and the insight into no-self can suddenly infuse your life. (Eckhart Tolle awakening) -In other words, no time is necessary and you can access it by ordinary consciousness (no psychedelic experience of depth is needed. This tells me that these 2 are not the key factors for embodiment. But they help the process greatly). More time and experience helps to create the environment necessary to start the insight process. That is why we practice in the first place. But time and depth of experience are not what produces awakening. Insight does. The point must be to learn how to develop the introspective awareness necessary for the insight process. Not merely more meditation time and psychedelics. Insight is what produces awakening and our focus should be insight-oriented rather than more time or experience.

@Leo Gura Yes. I totally understand the 'time' argument. At a glance, It doesn't seem fair at all. But there appears to be 2 main reasons why doing more psychedelics or meditation (purely time wise) is a terrible metric for embodiment. 1st reason: Amount of time is not the issue for permanent realization. Also the spiritual experience itself is also not the issue. (its depth or ease of access) The deliberate practice and most important the skill at which the insight process is done is what decides the embodiment level. A meditator who had practiced for 40 years who hasn't attained awakening had practiced for 10.000+ hours but the quality of those hours were very low (basically most of those monks in certain monasteries who are really not serious) compared to the amount of time practiced and potential momentum one could have with such a time. Basically a lot of time doesn't equate to skillful practice. 2nd reason: The embodiment is not related to time because some people like Eckhart Tolle can get to the first stages of permanent realization with zero practice. (without any meditation and psychedelics). Instead of pure time, the embodiment depends on how skillfully one can deconstruct the experience and have an insight deep enough to penetrate the entire nervous system. That experience can be banal or ordinary. More psychedelics will only allow for the depth of experience to go deeper. The insight process is dependent on the spiritual student's abilities. One can do it without any depth in spiritual experience as happens with non-spiritual stream enterers. That is why pure time-based metrics are problematic both in meditation and psychedelics for embodiment. It is not about the time or the depth of experience. The embodiment is about the successful insight deconstruction of ANY experience. Both meditation and psychedelics create the ideal environment for awakening to occur. And to go deeper than stream-entry, they must be practiced with diligence post-stream entry. And generally, people on that level of 'non-spiritual stream entry' are already living in the present moment so diligent practice is not a problem for people like Eckhart Tolle. They tend to go deeper naturally as time goes on because their baseline is stream entry. So the real question is: How can I have my first deep and permanent insight embodiment? After the first gateway insight (most likely no-self), it opens up the way to all the other related insights as well. It is much easier and joyful to practice and go deep when the baseline entails no self- lack of boundaries, a significant reduction in suffering, no mind and effortless meditative joy. Especially if you've mastered the samatha path, you'll have effortless meditative joy and no-mind prior to awakening with relative resilience and semi-permanent insight embodiment. That is the ideal environment to start insight practices like self enquiry.

@Leo GuraI actually wanted to clarify 3 different types of spiritual experiences to show what embodiment really means. This is very useful for preventing delusion. 1- Temporary experience: This is your usual psychedelic or meditation high. It doesn't last at all. 100% peak experience. And maybe very little afterglow. This is obviously not embodiment. 2 - Semi-permanent experience: This is the seemingly lasting effect and improvement one experiences with psychedelics and meditation. The effect mimics insight embodiment but is simply a result of cause and effect. The results (ex. awakening-like depth of experience) comes due to causes and conditions (ex. your spiritual practice). It is a conditioned but refined mental state that can maintain its depth and consistency for years until it is seen for what it is, spontaneously dissolves, or goes away when one stops all spiritual practice for lengthy period of time . A temporary insight recognition has occured. But it hasn't fully transformed the depths of one's intuitive understanding of self, truth and reality. 3- Permanent Insight Embodiment: This is permanent. Effortless. Requires no refined mental state. Requires no meditation or psychedelics. (to be conscious of the embodied insight) Your intuitive understanding of that particular insight (ex. no-self, infinity, impermanence etc.) has permanently transformed the mind-body system. You are living from there effortlessly all the time. Your cognition of this world and self have radically changed.

Here is an example that will clarify my point. The experiment to see the difference between embodiment vs recognition must be to stop all spiritual practice (meditation and psychedelics) and see what remains. Do this for 30 days in a solitary confinement-like situation and you'll know for sure which insights are embodied permanently and which are still conditioned, immature or temporary. That is all I'm saying. If the behavior change is maintained in that period of time, that is sufficient embodiment. If the self doesn't show its boundaries, that is the definition of stream-entry right there. Erode the causal relationship and see what remains. If you go back to your depressed teenager self full of cravings, desires and aversions, you must go back to the drawing board and make some deep changes in how you practice and what exact insights are you not only conscious of but also have embodied. If your insight recognition is top-notch, I assure you that the embodiment will be proportionally weaker. This is the dynamic of the psychedelic experience. An experienced 5 meo Dmt user just goes too far, too deep and too fast that it is not humanly possible to embody all of these in such a short period of time. Hence, the importance of embodiment and permanent realization. I've also talked to Martin Ball and also listened to his podcast about his opinions on this matter. Lİke I said, I really like him but he still believes that ego is a permanent companion. He basically says: Temporary transcendence (which can be as long as years) is possible, but the ego will always be there and he usually experiences all the negative effects of the ego like anxiety, fear, suffering etc. He doesn't seem to subscribe to the notion that there is such a thing as a permanent realization. His embodiment is weaker than most people think. Again, I'm not judging him. But I can see certain key problems in his spiritual paradigm. You look at someone with more spiritual embodiment like Peter Ralston, who can do the 'pull my teeth without novacaine' at the dentist's office without suffering and the distinction of insight embodiment and recognition becomes crystal clear. Anyone who denies the importance of this distinction is deluding themselves. This is why Buddha dropped purely ascetic and jhanic practices. Without insight practice, the embodiment doesn't occur. That is all I'm saying.

Just to clarify, I'm not strictly talking about psychedelics here. And I'm an advocate of both psychedelic usage and meditation. The issue here is whatever path you take (you might do both as I do), the insight 'not fading' is the delusion I'm talking about. For the insight to not fade, it must pervade your entire life. It must not be dependent on cause and effect. It must not be dependent on external circumstances. This is not a simple claim. This is a radical claim. The afterglow of an experience (psychedelics or sober) can appear not only strong but also consistent. Yet this is an illusion if this 'afterglow' has not arisen due to insight embodiment. Otherwise, it is only intermittently present if you examine your experience carefully. The effect might be maintained with relative consistency for years. But it will drop completely at some point since your worldview is not transformed deeply in an intuitive manner. There are just too many examples. Take Martin Ball. A respected 5 meo Dmt user. Probably he did hundreds of trips on this substance alone. Years of experimentation. Yet he is still suffering just as much as the next guy when the extreme waves of insomnia hits. All oneness disappears. The rigid self comes back. I'm giving him as an example because he is one of the psychedelic users who claimed permanent realization is possible with 5 meo dmt. So I'm not saying this to criticize him in any way. I had an interview with him myself. He is a great guy. But this is not embodied awakening. This is an insight experience not integrated well enough to be embodied. The same thing happens with Samatha meditators. All spiritual practitioners using any method experience this. Therefore, the importance of permanent realization which pervades your entire life is all the more important. Psychedelics are not an exception to the rule. Making remarks like 'Once you go so deep with psychedelics, the distinction between ' insight embodiment - permanent' vs 'temporary' disappears because time is an illusion etc..' - This is a problematic statement. The insight is true. Time is a mental fabrication. But to see the delusion here, I invite the person to examine their direct experience. Is time an illusion right now? How deeply did this insight REALLY embodied in your life? To say such things, you can't still experience time as a reality. Forget about time for now, can you even experience the self as an illusion and break your self boundaries in the blink of an eye? If so, can you live there permanently? What I'm trying to say is that psychedelics have the tendency to make these insights a little to easy to recognize. And this deludes the person into thinking that embodiment can also eventually occur after 100s of trips. That is why Ram Dass, after countless LSD trips, realized that psychedelics don't produce permanent insight embodiment. You can try to prove Ram Dass wrong by doing 500 trips but I don't think the problem is the lack of quantity and quality of the trips. There is a deeper dynamic at play here. Someone who never practiced spirituality or had psychedelics (pre-awakening) like Eckhart Tolle can all of a sudden find themselves integrating no-self on a permanent level, therefore attaining stream-entry. Experiencing the 'banal' and 'ordinary' consciousness skillfully to produce insight. The problem is not the depth of the spiritual experience. It is about how skillfully the experience is used as an insight practice. On the meditation's case, this is like the jhana meditator who consistently lives in a state of joy and happiness for 10+ years thinking that this is embodied awakening. The emotional state can mimic awakening but it doesn't change the fact that after enough external conditions to erode your samadhi, (the death of a loved one, house burns down, traffic accident etc.) the mind will revert back to its usual egoic operating system. Just knowing that the insight is true is not enough as I've explained. That is still semi-intellectual and not experiential enough. The insight must be embodied to be permanent. Only then the true understanding arise.

The seemingly permanent refined state of 'increased consciousness' is due to the momentum of the practice. Don't confuse that as a permanent improvement. It is conditioned and it is the result of cause and effect. So there is an increase in consciousness but it is temporary. This is true for both psychedelics and sober meditation. Unless it is a permanent insight penetration, it will always be temporary and erode slowly due to causes and conditions if you stop using psychedelics or meditating any lengthy period of time. That is why habits and daily mindfulness cultivation is so essential. Many psychedelic users slack off and get stuck in a 'good' place. They continue to suffer but then rationalize as 'I know that suffering is an illusion, self is an illusion and everything is one...' Well, let's call it for what it is. Right now, in your direct experience, suffering is not an illusion, self is not an illusion and everything is not one. These are not simple awakenings that you can brush off and say 'Oh I know these already, next!' True knowing means embodiment, not recognition and peak experience. That feeling of oneness is a memory (both emotional and thought-based) of a legit psychedelic awakening. If it is directly experienced 24/7, then you can say that insight is sufficiently embodied. The same delusion can occur with a temporary sober awakening experience. With this arrogance, then the student does not actually do the practices to be aware of these insights on a deep level. That motivation to practice with diligence is gone. That is the fundamental problem of meditating or doing psychedelics irresponsibly. It deludes you into thinking you know more than you have actually embodied.

Yes. Do intense sessions where you walk, lay down and sit (3 postures with rotation) in 4 hours and try to maintain awareness and stable attention with those postures. When you get bored or frustrated, just change to an easier posture. Once you feel better, get back to sitting. Ocassionally doing something like this will give a retreat effect due to uninterrupted application of mindfulness. That is how bringing into the daily life will get easier. Next time you stabilize attention on the breath (which can take a really long time depending on your skill level), drop the breath for a moment and try to get the attention on the external sounds (cars, traffic, bird noises etc.) Once you are comfortable with that. Put the attention back on the breath. Stabilize it again but this time see if you can experience the in breath with attention and AT THE SAME TIME experience the external sound of bird's chirping. Instead of going back and forth with attention, see if attention can experience the breath clearly and at the same time awareness can also experience the sound. Both has to be experienced together as a cohesive whole. Don't move the attention quickly back and forth. That is only an illusion of awareness. Try this technique of harmonizing sound and breath. Try to maintain it. This was my epiphany on what awareness is in the first year of my TMI practice. This is extrospective awareness to be more precise.

The negative and unwholesome mental states like frustration, boredom, anxiety, sadness, depression, meaninglessness are all a temporary process where you become more and more aware of the unconscious mind's projections. There are a lot of challenging emotions to deal with. This is the bulk of the suffering. And this purification process usually takes a few years before joy and happiness arise. If you don't cultivate joy and happiness every day regardless of these emotions (the attempt is enough) and just let these negative states take over in meditation and daily life, your integration and progress on the path will come significantly to a halt. Here is my post about this if you want further help:

Yeah. I meant that to develop the equanimity to do longer sits, you need longer training sessions with the minimum of 20 mins to get the momentum going.

10 mins is short even for beginners. Read The Mind Illuminated for a more detailed and structured practice method. Also consider not being in postures that facilitate anxiety and discomfort so much (like 90 degrees upright full lotus etc.)

Read Leigh's book on 'The Right Concentration' to learn about jhanas. Unless there is happiness, joy and pleasurable sensations (piti and sukha) in the body, that is not the 1st jhana. In fact, the 1st jhana is usually very intense. You must feel this as an altered state of consciousness meaning it is not subtle. If you ask: Is it a jhana? Then it is too subtle to be a 1st jhana. If it is subtle joy, you might have skipped and went to the 2nd jhana but that means there is no longer any thought activity. If you weren't experiencing no-mind with moderate levels of joy, then it wasn't the 2nd jhana either. And if you drop out of it in a matter of few minutes and can't maintain it for at least 15 mins, then you don't have enough access concentration. Go back to the pleasant sensations and/or to your normal meditation object. (like the breath)

I'm a stage 7-8 meditator using TMI's technique. I've been using primarily these techniques for 2 years now. As a beginner, your daily practice length is good. But if you want to stop dealing with monkey mind and forgetting, you have to stop this idea that '1 hour session. Done for the day. Can't maintain mindfulness, Back to ordinary consciousness' This is THE most important paradigm shift you need to adapt as soon as possible. The faster you realize that 'My entire life needs to be structured so that I practice 4+ hours a day including informal sessions like walking, eating, resting, watching videos meditations. This attitude shift will enable you to experience mind unification and joyful states exponentially faster than even 10 year long meditators trying this or that technique without intense and structured practice. The other advice is that awareness matters more than attention. As Culadasa says, you need to find an optimal balance between attention and awareness. But realize that the development of attentional stability of the breath is only a means to an end. We develop concentration so that we can deeply develop introspective and metacognitive awareness for insight practices like self enquiry, Someone who has mastered stage 8 can only use awareness with minimal one-pointed attention to go all the way to awakening. (and also cultivations of persistent equanimity and joyful states.) Breath is only an effective tool for awareness development. That is why add extra emphasis on extrospective and introspective when the attention on the breath stabilized. Notice mind states when you get frustrated as you are watching the breath. Notice sounds acutely when you are watching the breath. You want more sensory clarity with awareness. This also will enable you to experience joyful states called jhanas as described in TMI. There is a pleasant jhana described in stage 7. This is basically cultivating unconditional happiness. To do these sort of practices (and more), awareness must be developed as the core focus after developing stable attention to the breath. Frustration and negative mental states don't help. In fact, that produces huge amounts of suffering and gets in the way of mind unification where you experience joy and happiness for most of the day. Unless that is occurring, that means the conflicted sub-minds are not unified. To combat this negative spiral, read Leigh's book 'The Right Concentration' and watch this video on joyful states and jhana. This compliments TMI so you can do it after your formal breath practice.

If it is effortless, then that is great. It is basically TMI practice. But I've observed that both jhanic meditative joy and breath can be simultaneously experienced with attention and awareness. It is better and more wholesome to experience the meditation object with at least some amount of perceptible joy. The spontaneous arising of Joy is an important event in the progress of meditation practice, the final stages in particular. The 8th stage involves being able to consistently experience the full development of Meditative Joy. Meditative Joy, sometimes referred to as rapture, is one of the Seven Factors of Awakening taught by the Buddha: 1. Energy (viriya); 2. Investigation of phenomena (dhamma vicaya); 3.Concentration (samadhi); 4. Mindful Awareness (sati); 5.Joy (piti); 6. Tranquility (passaddhi); and 7. Equanimity (upekkha). It can be said that, “Awakening is the result of an energetic (1) investigation of phenomena (2) by a mind that is skilled in concentration (3) and mindful awareness (4), and imbued with the qualities of joy (5), tranquility (6), and equanimity

Some spiritual practitioners often look at celebrities and famous people on social media. See them socializing. Traveling to different places. Doing variety of activities. Laughing and enjoying life. And then they look at their own lives. Trying to meditate every day. Not feeling joy and happiness. Struggling. Feeling boredom and sadness. Not concentrating. Not feeling enough equanimity. And they hear monks and awakened people say: 'Meditation can induce unconditional happiness' And you think 'Well, I can't even cultivate happiness and joy. This whole process is really dry, involves a lot of suffering and simply not that fun. Maybe unconditional happiness is possible for spiritual experts. But from where I'm standing, meditation results in states of no-mind and neutrality. I do experience some tranquil states but there is no happiness and joy. This is one of the reasons I've started this path and I can't even make myself happy. I feel sleepy, dull and neutral most of the day. In fact, I get more depressed after I've started meditation than before. I'm going to quit. What is wrong with me?' If this is what you are thinking, I'm here to help you and show you one of the ways that helped me manage these sorts of negative ruminations and overall negative mind states. Ever since I've understood how joyful states work and how to cultivate in the nervous system, I've found the answer to managing sadness, depression and neutrality one encounters on the spiritual path. If you've started to path to reduce suffering, then this is going to be a significant and powerful development towards that goal. Not only we will be reducing suffering but also increasing satisfaction one experiences from pleasurable sensations. If you have extreme problems like 'The Dark Night', then cultivating joyful states may not help without prior training. I've never experienced such intensities so I don't have much advice about that. But if you have the common spiritual depression I've mentioned above, then the jhana practice has the potential to transform your emotional states and be that 'solution' you are looking for. You don't need awakening per se to feel happier in your life. You don't even need awakening to feel RADICALLY happier in your life. Happiness is just an emotion. It can be cultivated skillfully with the right concentration, mindfulness and jhanic practices. You can take this conditioned positive state to an anti-depressant level (and also beyond) and let it pervade your not entire life (not just when you meditate). Here is my latest post explaining how to do this: Also here is Culadasa's lectures on jhanas. Jhanas are actually culminations of the samatha practice. Just know that this depression is a negative mental state you've cultivated for decades. Or maybe it is neutrality for you (not equanimity). But joy is a distinct and highly positive emotional state. Its cultivation will result in an overall increase in one's happiness. How can one glean more satisfaction from pleasures? Well, this is one way. Hope this inspires some of you who are feeling depressed and feel like spirituality is not helping you.

The mediative joy's fundamental insight is that the joy is unconditionally cultivated with regards to external circumstances. It is still a conditioned state (like all samatha states are) but once you generate the joy, it can be maintained effortlessly regardless of external circumstances. This is the foundation of unconditional happiness. I've realized these past 7 days that I've been cultivating dry, neutral, dull and negative mind states 80% of my day and I wasn't aware how much suffering I was experiencing due to that. Now I wake up in the morning, not groggy and tired but with joy and equanimity. My craving for sensory pleasures like coffee, video games, music etc. have been reduced to a healthy degree. I still can do them and enjoy them but I'm already in a happy place. This relationship with craving can be a foundational insight towards awakening. So this is not a separate practice from meditation, insight practice or self enquiry. Also, you are developing awareness and concentration with joy. The other advantage is you are meditating on mind states. Introspective awareness which is THE most important form of awareness for awakening is being developed as you constantly keep in touch with joy in the mind. Jhana practice is not only intrinsically pleasurable and rewarding, can induce unconditional happiness if stabilized and also has the potential for awakening and insight if practiced in a skillful way. This is the culmination of samatha practice due to mind unification. Cultivation of meditative joy must be one of every samatha practitioner's goals as they progress on the path of insight. The likelihood of awakenning is increased in a state of joy. This is a very specific kind of joy. Different from what you experience when you do things you enjoy. Hope this clarified the your confusion

The mind blowing thing was it was effortlessly maintained in daily life. I wasn't even sitting I still effortlessly maintain sukha and piti but those first 2 days was ORGASMIC levels of sukha and piti. Like hardcore dose of anti-depressant constantly hitting your head. You constantly feel this giggly happiness. Nowadays, it is moderate-low levels of joy effortlessly cultivated. This is still great. My only problem is dullness and I still don't know how to deal with the loss of meditative joy with dullness. Neutral tranquility sets in and joy disappears. Thankfully I rarely get dull in daily life. I'll just continue to cultivate joy and hopefully I'll figure out what to do with dullness in the meantime. I also primarily experience the happiness and pleasure in my head area. Once I supplement that with a smile, I can get a low-moderate levels of pleasant sensations. If I don't strive, energize the mind and put my attention with stability, it goes intense and I can cultivate it effortlessly. That is FANTASTIC. Quite similar to what I experience. Keep it up and you can maintain that intensity in daily life too. That is when this whole spiritual path starts to get sweet. And this is only the start for us. Even if we've mastered these jhanas and let them infuse our daily life, there is still awakenings to be had and more to be conscious of. I'm really starting to appreciate these joyful states and I'll be focusing on skillful cultivation for a few more months until I feel confident that I start to literally 'live' in meditative joy. I'll also try to learn the 3rd and 4rth jhana after I go deep and integrate the sukha and piti of jhana 1 and 2. I don't feel rushed at all because jhana 1 and 2 is already pretty sweet and satisfying for me. Let me explain how nice it is with an example: If someone was given the option to experience this level of meditative joy everyday for long hours (like I do these past 6 days) but be forced to give up 5 years of their lives, they would choose the meditative joy. EASILY. It increases one's fulfillment out of life in terms of momentary quality so much that it is worth giving up 5 years of ordinary consciousness with suffering. Hope this motivates you