ardacigin

If you are hiking a mountain trail and take a tumble or get bitten by a snake, peripheral awareness has failed. If you take a wrong turn and lose the trail, your attention has failed. If you’ve ever mistaken sarcasm for praise (or vice versa), had a salesman’s enthusiasm cause you to overlook a serious problem, or become angry with someone who was trying to help you, you’ve experienced a failure of both. Activities of the mind include things like thinking, listening, remembering, etc. Movements of attention are an activity of the mind, when attention is directed introspectively, that movement replaces all other activity and so it’s all you find. This is how you spend your life without mindfulness. Likewise for overall states of the mind. Mental states are global phenomena, things like agitation, peacefulness, irritation, joy, etc. Attention always isolates some aspect of conscious awareness from the rest, so attention can’t observe mental states directly. Try directing your attention to observe your mental state. Either you won’t be able to find anything, or else you will find a memory trace from peripheral awareness of what your mental state was before you looked. If attention finds the memory trace of a gross mental state like annoyance, it is immediately conceptualized as the thought, “I am annoyed”. This is not mindfulness. All new sensory stimuli, thoughts, and feelings appear first in peripheral awareness where a preliminary evaluation determines which, if any of them, will actually become a focus of attention. Filtering out irrelevant information is one of the main functions of peripheral awareness, and attention depends upon peripheral awareness for the selection of appropriate objects. This is why specific objects often seem to “pop out” of peripheral awareness to become objects of attention. And attention often “browses” the contents of peripheral awareness in search of something relevant or important to focus on as well. Also, whenever your attention is honing in on something, peripheral awareness serves as a watchful alert system to detect anything new or unusual. If some rare or unexpected event is detected, peripheral awareness can disengage and reorient attention. Peripheral awareness allows you to use attention with maximum effectiveness. Without it, attention moves blindly, without guidance and oblivious to the unexpected. Fortunately, not everything that happens needs to be analyzed, otherwise attention would quickly become overwhelmed. Many things, like brushing a fly away from your face, are dealt with entirely in peripheral awareness. And while attention is thorough, it’s also rather slow. Because information processing is not as extensive, peripheral awareness can respond much more quickly. In situations that demand a swift reaction, such as a child running into the street in front of a car, peripheral awareness initiates rapid, automatic responses for which attention would be inadequate. If peripheral awareness fails, attention can’t take over these functions so these events are reacted to in a completely automatic way, without the benefit of conscious processing, or not at all. From this brief overview, you can appreciate how interdependent attention and peripheral awareness really are. Mindfulness can be defined as an optimal interaction between, and even a merging together of attention and peripheral awareness. More specifically, mindfulness involves a conscious experience that is more powerful, with the result that peripheral awareness is clearer and attention gets used in a more appropriate way: purposefully, in the present moment, and without becoming mired in judgment and projection. The other problem in 'normal' non-meditator sober consciousness is that conscious awareness is a limited resource, so there will always be tradeoffs between attention and peripheral awareness. In a relaxed state, awareness tends to open and the intensity of attention dissipates. Relax even more and attention increasingly fades, eventually leading to dullness. This is where balance shifts to a less than ideal state where more attentional focus and energy is required. On the other hand, when attention focuses intensely on an object, peripheral awareness of the background fades. Intensify your focus enough, and the context and guidance provided by peripheral awareness disappears completely. This puts you in highly emotionally charged mental states and your understanding of truth, suffering or insight gets compromised. Try to understand and apply this dynamic in life. Don't wave away 'mindfulness' as something you already know. It has more depth and breadth than you think. Keep investigating your mind with curiosity. Hope this helps Much love,

The following technique will enable you to increase mental powers and conscious bandwidth so that generating joy, ease and happiness will become second nature when confronted with a heated argument. (which can be viewed as the more challenging aspects of social life). This is the foundation of meditation in daily life. Both attention and awareness - key modalities of mind perception - relies on a single resource pool: Conscious Bandwidth. There is only so much to go around at any given moment and its batteries can be exhausted in a few minutes or it can be sustained efficiently for 24 hours. It all depends on how much conscious power is available and how efficiently one uses it. Both axioms can be developed to extremely high levels. Being attention-oriented and obsessively focused on an acitivity (TV shows, someone shouting at you, trying to think about a complex topic etc.) immediately drains the conscious bandwidth too quickly and inefficiently. Without the supporting pillar of awareness, you'll feel fatigue, agitation, negative self rumination and a sense of 'I need to protect myself and my ideas'. Conscious bandwidth also has a 'replenishing' factor where even when you feel fatigued, you can bring yourself back to a more efficient state without taking a nap or spending hours in misery. Talking Meditation & Conscious Power Scaling 1- Start by sitting down to have a normal chat with someone close to you. Make sure that this person is not in an overly positive or negative while you attempt this. You'd like this person to be neutral, easy going and receptive as possible. 2- There are two main components you'll need to be aware of while interacting with this person. Think of it as standard procedure in all social contacts regardless of who this person is: Eye contact & No fidgeting. + Eye contact: His or her eyes are where your attention will rest for the entire duration of the conversation as you both listen AND talk to this person. Listening while looking in the eye may be easy but most people can't maintain eye contact while stringing complex thoughts back to back when push comes to shove. Especially, be extra careful to think thoughts and speak while looking someone in the eye. Averting your eyes or struggling to do this brings me to the second component. + No physical fidgeting: Mental challenges regarding thoughts and arguments are normal. However, fidgeting with your gaze or moving your body is not. Just like Strong Determination Sits are done without moving, so can be social interactions. This will generate tranquility and equanimity. Of course, I'm not talking about being a machine. Your face can be reactive. You can make jokes, laugh like crazy etc. In fact, all of this is heavily encouraged. However, if you tighten your shoulders and feel some tension when someone asks you: 'What have you been doing this entire time? Did you throw out the garbage like I said?' Your body needs to rest without physically moving as you are giving your verbal response. Without physical tension or bodily reaction. All answers will be given with words and facial reactions. Add emotions to your presentation but do so without moving the body. This will facilitate tranquility and equanimity. 3- After you make sure eye contact and no fidgeting is stable, move on to spread the awareness to the entire body as your attention dominates your thoughts while looking at someone in the eye. Maintain the form as described in step 2. If you do avert your gaze or your body feels restless, return back to step 2 before spreading awareness back to the body. 4- After body awareness gets stable as you speak and listen to conversations without emotional charge, generate pleasant sensations and joy in your body while continuing to maintain form in step 2. Try to physically smile and find the joy in the conversation. You won't feel anything initially but as your conscious power increases, more energy will be available for pleasure generation. Keep at it and don't feel discouraged. It will get easier as you get more proficient. 5- As you get more skilled, you'll be able to do the same thing while in a heated argument. The structure of practice doesn't change. Merely your skills will improve so much so that while having emotionally charged discussions, it is easy to maintain equanimity and body awareness with form in step 2. Done! ---- Not only you'll become socially charismatic with this technique, you'll eliminate the egoic roadblocks that gets in the way of a true connection with another human being. Your practice will be consistent and permeate your everyday life as you get into the groove of it. Mental fluidity of thoughts and effortless of speaking will resolve by themselves within this practice. Negative mental habits, impatience etc. will be auto-corrected by increased metacognitive awareness and body awareness this practice facilitates. Let me know your thoughts down below after trying it. Much love, Arda

That is not quite the insight. All feelings of separate selfhood are complex and subtle mental constructs that inform the way you feel in your body and perceive the world. What is 'changing' or moving is irrelevant.

At some point in your spiritual practice, you’ll experience the manifestations of physical pliancy, such as the absence of ordinary tactile sensations, feelings of weightlessness or floating, and pleasurable sensations throughout the body. When this happens, it is important to ignore (without craving or aversion) all bodily sensations and deepen metacognitive awareness to higher levels to practice self enquiry. Scientists and philosophers have grasped what I'm about to say intellectually. However, these truths have little to no value whatsoever unless it completely transforms the mind fully at the core of the hidden recesses of your psyche. This following practice will provide a mature insight into these truths to be permanently embodied. These are the 3 false perceptions your existing psyche operates on. These are the foundation of all your motivations, beliefs and actions. 1- I'm a separate entity, a Self, in a world of other entities. 2- My emotional states - happiness or unhappiness - depend intimately on the interactions between myself and the other entities/objects/environments. 3- As a self, I rely on my manipulation and survival skills to influence these interactions to satisfy my cravings in the hopes of satisfaction where my happiness will be maximized and suffering will be minimized. --- All 3 of these assumptions are false. The following practice will help you see through this complicated illusion. The Still Point and Self-Enquiry This practice allows us to “step outside” our reactions to the sensory experiences associated with pacification and the arising of bodily sensations of joy and pleasure as a result of your practice. This creates enough detachment and equanimity to let these processes unfold naturally by themselves. Pleasurable sensations still appear in awareness but receive no attention at all. Start your meditation by becoming fully aware of the world around you. Explore your immediate environments with attention. Feel it with your body. Listen to the sounds inside and outside the room you’re sitting in. Sense all of the activity that’s going on. For example, you might hear airplanes flying overhead, traffic noises, birds and dogs, and various human activities. Then, let your mind identify and fill in the source of the sounds you hear. Picture in your mind the cars you hear, the airplanes flying through the sky, and the birds sitting in trees. Expand the scope of your attention to include a visualization of the constant ferment of activity going on all over the world, on land, in the waters, and in the sky. Reflect on the earth as it spins on its axis, moving through space at thousands of miles per hour, surrounded by the constant motion of planets and stars and entire galaxies whirling through the void at inconceivable speeds. While keeping this universe of ceaseless movement and change clear in your awareness, shift your attention to your body, sitting in stillness on the cushion. Allow the contrast between the stillness of your body and the activity of the external world to saturate your consciousness. Keep your attention focused on your body while the rest of the world fills your awareness. Over time, you’ll naturally become aware of movement and activity in the body—breathing, the beating of your heart and pulsing in your arteries, and maybe the energy currents and involuntary movements of piti. Visualize all the other activity you know is taking place in your body—the movement of food through your digestive tract, the flow of blood through tissue, urine collecting in the bladder, and glands secreting substances of all kinds. Once you have a clear, strong sense of your body as a hive of activity, shift the focus of your attention to your mind. Let the hum of activity in your body join the rest of the world in peripheral awareness while attending to the relative peace and quiet of your well-trained mind. Contrast the relative calm and quiet of the mind with all the turmoil, activity, and change in the realm of physical sensations, noting in particular that quality of mental stillness and peace. Allow your attention to dwell on the difference between your mind’s inner stillness and the teeming activity in your body and the world. Inevitably, you start to notice that the mind really isn’t that quiet after all, except when compared to everything outside of it. At the same time, you’ll become aware of an even greater stillness at the core of your moment-to-moment experience. This is called the Still Point. A point where absolutely profound levels of equanimity lie. Find that Still Point, and make its stillness the focus of your attention. Relegate everything else to peripheral awareness, letting things remain or pass away as they will. Enjoy the Still Point, resting in it as often and for as long as you like. The strange sensations of pacification and the energies of pīti will just blend in with everything else in the background of awareness while attention rests unperturbed. Unification will continue. By doing this practice and investigating the Still Point, it becomes obvious that this is where all observation happens. The Still Point, in other words, is the metaphorical “vantage point” from which metacognitive awareness occurs—except that it’s now become the “seat” of metacognitive attention. And the focus of your attention is the subjective experience of looking at the mind and 'the material world' from a totally detached perspective. Suffice to say, this brings equanimity skills to monstrous levels. Equanimity is non-reactivity to both pleasure and pain (not just pain). This is facilitated by powerful awareness and joyful tranquility thanks to your diligent practice. Now it is time to bring in the final component. Self Enquiry Process: As you keep observing, you may also discover the so-called Witness, the subjective experience of a pure, unmoving, and unmoved observer who is unaffected by whatever is observed. A warning is in order here. You will likely feel that you have discovered the true Self, the ultimate ground of all experience. In a sense you have—but it’s not at all what you think! The Witness state is the ultimate ground of your personal experience, but it has arisen in dependence upon the body and the world, and it will disappear with the body. Its real value and significance is that it points toward a much more profound Insight, provided you don’t make the mistake of clinging to it as a Self. Doing so only nourishes the attachment we are all born with to the idea of being a singular, enduring, and separate Self. Mistaking the Witness state for a true Self is what leads some people to claim that Consciousness is the True Self. 'Consciousness' in this case is different from what Leo means by Consciousness. In this case, consciousness has a fixed form, state and duration in time. It appears profound but is still illusory. To properly use the Witness experience, probe more deeply. Go to the Still Point, the place of the Witness, with a question: “Who or what is this witness?” “Who is watching?” “Who is experiencing?” Adamantly refuse to entertain any answers offered by your intellectual, thinking mind. Also, don’t be deceived by your emotional mind, which will try to make you believe you’ve found the answer when you haven’t. Just hold on to the question as you experience the Witness. Don't waver. If and when Insight arises, it will be a profound Insight into the truth of no-Self, and it will be so obvious that you’ll wonder why you never realized it before. With the culmination of such a practice, the first stage of awakening - stream entry - will occur. The first permanent stage of awakening where those 3 false assumptions your life rests on will dissolve.

@BipolarGrowth Glad you got value out of it.

I understand. I've realized this later on that this is a samatha issue. I personally had extreme agitation reactions to sitting in cross legged postures (sweating) + lot of leg pain in mere 10 mins. This goes to show how horrible and negative I've reinforced my habits and had no idea of the attention and awareness dynamic. (Even though I was practicing TMI for 1-2 years at that point). This is a complicated problem you need to solve by developing jhanic factors and reinforcing positive attitudes and immediate relaxation in the face of 5 hindrances or your negative habits. (like sweating, striving, forcing etc). Otherwise, meditation will be torture. Try to bring in the ease you have laying down. The same amount of comfort can be maintain in a cross legged posture with physical pliancy down the road.

You drop into still point by NOT manipulating your experience in absolute equanimity. (Although equanimity is not absolute. It just appears that way since equanimity dial has increased from 2% to 80% in still point). However, this is a slightly pleasant state. Not a neutral one. In the background, joyful tranquility (which should already be developed prior to engaging in this technique) will paint the emotional tone of the practice. Being 'bored' in this process is a sign more Samatha practice is needed to develop more joy and happiness. You can still do this without it, but there are important reasons why I don't recommend going 'dry insight' which I won't go into now. Dropping into it has 2 main components: 1- You need to fuse attention and awareness in a completely open state. Similar to Dzogchen and mahamudra. In TMI, you develop stable attention and strong awareness. It is usually experienced as 2 different modalities of perception. But you need to use them both at the same time. But that changes a lot here. In this case, you expand the attention (the analytical faculty) to the whole body and relegate the awareness with the investigation of mind contents. The distinction between attention and awareness blurs. Both qualities of 'analytical observation' and 'awareness context' is fully present simultaneously. The tendency for attention to contract on an object and turn it into a 'thing' is released constantly and returned back to the open state. Awareness is entirely metacognitive. Practice this deeply and try to understand exactly how this dynamic works. 2- As a result of your practice, you should already have high levels of equanimity. This technique puts you there more deeply by fusing attention and awareness. The equanimity feels like 'I can deal with any and all sensations that might arise right now' sort of proficiency to it. You need to master physical relaxation to extremely high levels at this point. Without inducing dullness or sleepiness. Then you need to develop jhanic factors like happiness and joy. Only then will equanimity be developed guided by joyful tranqıility and relaxation. Ensuring efficient energy use in alert relaxation. --- Hope this helps. Much love

Try to combine some level of relaxation by using back pillows and 'loose cross legged' posture. You need some level of discomfort to get feedback on how high equanimity levels are. That is why meditation is not usually taught lying down. That is the most 'comfortable' posture but it induces sleepiness and doesn't give enough feedback on your relationship to pain. Veneer towards relaxation but maintain a cross legged posture. You'll know growth is occuring as you'll start to transcend leg pain. Unless you do full lotus, you won't damage your knees. Don't worry. Much love, Arda

While conquering solipsism, try to to see the faulty perception which resides in solipsism. Awakening doesn't have this sort of solipsism you are implying subtly. In that definition, you pulled: 'Self' (or True Self) is only thing that we can know to exist. To combat this, your mind requires an understanding where the subtlest levels of 'Self' that you ascribe to your identity to and from which you perceive loneliness from is a mind-generated illusion as well. Loneliness, by itself, is a blatant illusion which arises from separation , craving and self-clinging. And that separation is intimately linked with immature insights revolving no-self. Solipsism is just a temporary phase. You shouldn't try to 'integrate' it. It is false. See through it with meditation and continue your insight practice.

The Path to Mastery: Energy Efficiency and Effortless Ease If you want to get anywhere on the spiritual path , understanding energy efficieny and effortless ease are absolutely fundamental. Let’s call this dysfuntion of physical and mental tension that pervades each moment as ‘The Spiritual Block’ – TSB. There are highly unconscious aspects of TSB which is manifested as mental effort without awareness and physical tension. In simple terms, this is why you feel chronic fatigue. Especially the deep sort where no amount of ‘detox’ protocols or diet changes have any perceptible effect. This is why you can’t look people in the eye. Your shoulders and body tense up and feel this anxiety that appears to have invaded your DNA. This is why just the act of going to the fridge and getting a soda is such a tiring and ‘high effort-no reward’ activity filled with aversion, boredom and lack of motivation. So how do we deal with it? TSB is a form of complex suffering that certain forms of art has tried to address in order to optimize performance. Martial arts is a very clear and masterful sport that incorporates deep spiritual systems in its core operating system. You use the momentum of the opponent to conserve as much energy as possible while only utilizing muscles that needs to be contracted for the completion of the movement and completely relaxing all the other muscle groups that is not necessary for the task at hand. Which in turn conserves more energy and increases efficiency. When you look at any master at any field, you see that they have this inspiring energy efficiency. Not loose relaxation but the perfect levels of tension and relaxation dancing within. Relaxed Alertness is a requirement to the path to mastery. So here is a very tangible practice regimen to practice relaxed alertness. 1- When you are doing any form of passive acitivity (watching TV, Youtube sitting down, laying down etc), make sure that your entire body, especially shoulders, arms and torso are completely relaxed and restful. Not even a little bit of tension should be allowed. Drop them down if you tighten up. 2- When you are doing any form of active movement-related activity (having converstion with someone, playing video games, typing on keyboard etc.) make sure that only the muscle groups that is required for the activity is used and all the other muscle groups are fully relaxed and restful. Not even a little bit of tension should be allowed. If you can drop it, then practice dropping it. In active movements, energy efficiency and tension becomes a deeper issue that requires careful investigation. Here is an example: When you are typing on a keyboard, you don’t want to unnecessarily spend energy with shoulder tension, legs, stomach convulsing as you are thinking about a complex topic. The only muscle group that needs to be used is fingers, hand and elbow. Even then, you should make sure you are not tightening the shoulders to hold the weight of your hands. This is an example when even when you are using the required muscle groups, you need to utilize as much efficiency as possible. Efficiency is defined as the least amount of effort and energy needed to complete any given task. When you see the ‘efficiency’ switch in your nervous system, integration of this efficiency to all life activities will get easier. To see this switch, you need to practice much more physical relaxation. You need to see tension in each movement. And you need to see that 'you' are generating it. Not the external circumstances and people. If you think ‘Oh yeah! I’ve heard of this a million times. I’m doing it but it is not working so well’, just accept that you aren’t practicing any of this to the level that you need to experience any of the benefits that this practice offers. You need to develop this continuous introspective awareness of tension and relaxation and that will lead to positive feedback loop. Let the masters of their respective fields provide you with inspiration. Always attend to how such a high level they’ve mastered energy efficiency and relaxed alertness. Meditation is actually the deepest form of mastery where you can bring this relaxed alertness axiom of mastery to all activities of life. To all young people, ask yourself the question: Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could play Red Dead Redemption 2 like Mozart playing the piano? To all adults, ask yourself this question: Wouldn't it be amazing to attend that social event your boss forces you to in a state of bliss and joy? Not dreading what you are going to say if you see this or that person. Well, you can do that with spiritual training. Do the process I’ve described for all passive and active states in daily life for as much as you can do, slowly your conscious power and awareness will heighten to extremely impressive levels. To such a level that your aura in life will tranform and people's perception of you will dramatically change. Take this very seriously and practice it with resolve. Much love, Arda

@Consilience That is right Ethan The more you realize those subliminal tensions are of your own doing, the more you get confused: 'Why the hell am I doing this to myself?' Then the trick is to connect this reduced craving to the self who is behind this entire process. Self-clinging reduces along with craving and some real progress is made towards awakening. But this entire exercise is worth it on its own. You'll get the reduced craving and higher potential of happiness through systematic relaxation. Unlike certain other techniques in zen or Self-enquiry where unless you absolutely succeed, you are left with little to nothing. But if they do work, they REALLY work. All strategies have their pros and cons.

I suggest not making assumptions. 'Happiness' and being 'present' have a deep continuum of range and scale. Both depth and breadth. You might feel that currently, everything is fine, I'm happy and present but then a circumstance arises which makes you doubt the stability, mastery or the experience 'happiness' or 'presence'. As more skill and awareness is gained, the more you work through the kinks in the armour and the further potential is seen left unexplored. Then you say 'I was nowhere near done'. The value of this exercise will be seen after you put in the work to develop the awareness. As Consilience has pointed out, you are already intervening and micro-managing by generating unconscious physical and mental tension. This practice allows you to let go of that and change the core programming with time by making the process more conscious. Then you realize you didn't even know what effortlessness, happiness or presence was prior to engaging in complex looking practices like this one. It is much less 'systematic' or 'complex' than it sounds. Just try practicing relaxation and keep my suggestions in mind. Hope this helps, Much love,

No spoilers! Don't worry I've recently played The last of us 2 on PS5 which is a Sony exclusive AAA game on vengeance, regret and empathy. It was one of the most psychologically and spiritually profound gaming experiences of my life. This will be a quick no-spoiler post on the themes of the game and why you should play if you are on the spiritual path. By the way, you should play Last of us 1 prior to this game. See, video games are an interactive medium that has the potential to provide a narrative above and beyond what movies or books can do. IF done right. I think LoU 2 did just that. Created a unique experience that requires Stage Yellow paradigm (in spiral dynamics) to even appreciate it as a baseline. It requires doing deliberate psychoanalysis to understand each character and their motivations. To empathize with each and concurrently piece together the puzzle parts into a coherent whole as the narrative is broken up into non-linear chapters and flashback. This is not an easy experience to digest and understand. You also need good skills as a player to enjoy the combat. It is so easy to just slice up zombies and call it day. This is not a game you can enjoy with a casual gamer mindset. It is a realistic story that has grey characters with no perceptible villain. It requires some deep understanding of how trauma psychology works to get a sense of why characters do the things they do. The themes of vengeance, regret and empathy is explored in such a way that since it is an interactive video game, it makes the package so profound and deep. Something that can't be experienced with a movie or a TV show. This is all I can say without spoiling anything. Do yourself a favour and play this game with an open mind. You'll come to see all the hate and negativity that surrounds this game is absolutely unfounded which is a testament to its core audience which are high conscious individuals. And this is rare thing in an industry where each high quality AAA takes about 100-200 million dollars to create. Taking such risks in a beloved franchise is very bold. And for that, I congratulate Naughty dog. And that is why I loved this game miles better than Last of Us 1. I personally took a deep look at my life and saw how the self-other duality was getting in the way of true compassion and empathy towards the 'other'. That bias towards 'my life' is such an entrenched thing that it made me loosen up some of my self boundaries and approach my close friends and family with significantly more empathy and understanding regarding their suffering and problems. Especially towards people I don't subtly like or secretly judge. It made me see certain traumatic underpinnings of my pscyhe and I'm looking into working through them as well. If experienced deeply, this game is a great trigger to do deep spiritual, psychological and philosophical investigation. Definitely one of my most profound cinematic story experiences of my gaming career. It took me a good 7 days after finishing the game to digest and explore its themes deeply within myself and internalize some of its lessons. Let me know your thoughts down below and how it impacted your spiritual evolution. Without spoiling anything. Much love, Arda

I haven't done a proper Strong determination sit in a year or two. After having developed more equanimity, joy and insight attainment with jhanas and overall samatha development, I've decided to do my first SDS sit yesterday. The rule was not to move, obviously. But I also was to refrain from any overt generation of pleasure in my body. The whole purpose was to experience pain with as little pre-processing as possible, with clarity and accuracy. Without self-bias. And boy was there a lot of pain suffused in the entirety of my body. Well, it was a failure. So let's wrap up the mat, right? Well...not exactly. This SDS sit was the most profound SDS sit of my entire life. Here is what happened. To understand what happened, we need to back up to 2 days ago. For some reason I can't remember, suddenly, my mind has shifted its operating system to no-self in my visual perception. Attention to any given object is crystal clear and the peripheral awareness of the visual field is also spacious, clear and large. Well, guess what happened after this shift? My sense of self observing the object has reduced, my mental energy and daily focus while doing anything has increased significantly (while watching videos, listening to people etc) and equanimity towards sensations and life has significantly increased. My self boundaries didnt completely dissolve but it was an incredibly distinct and noticable reduction in self perception of the world. This is called an insight experience. Thankfully, I could easily get into the same mental perception and repeat this insight many times through out the day. Then I've inquired and reduced this sense of craving for things to be different and that also reduced my sense of perceiving and controlling further. Now I was like: 'Cool! This is very liberating. I don't crave for joy or pleasant sensations at all. And this no-self shift is very stable' Then I remembered Shinzen's litmus test. When you spend a lot of time working with a certain flavour, it is always important to work with the opposite one. So it was time to get intimate with excruciating levels of physical pain. Lets see how my unconscious mind responds to such stimulus after this subtle no-self shift. Again, just to clarify, my entire self perception haven't absolutely dissolved. But my mind can reduce it significantly by dynamically playing with attention and awareness along with equanimity. So let's give it a go. Since it was my first SDS sit after close to 2 years, I wanted to go slow. I set the time to 2 hours just in case I decide to go further. But I was completely content just doing 20 mins. I had no expectations. I dropped into a cross legged posture and instantly felt a difference. I don't seem to experience too many pain sense percepts. But that was only a facade. As time went on, since I wasnt intending for pleasure, significant levels of leg pain started to come up. My back started to hurt, my hands were sweating, lots of agitation and by the end of it, I had close to fainting levels of physical pain. This all sounds close to what everybody experiences in a SDS sit. Nothing special. And I only meditated around 1 hour and 40 mins. Nothing overly crazy or inhumane. I'm sure many people achieved 90 min SDS sits here and there even with a lot of pain etc. So haven't I learned anything in the last 2 years? Well, yes. First of all, the way I was experiencing pain was mediated by equanimity in the sense that; 1- Pain sensations arrive. 2- I experience its solidity and thingness for a while. 3- I zoom out and contextualize it with no self. I do the visual attention and awareness shift and get my mind to reduce craving. 4- The pain has a tendency to flow and move which reduces suffering and self-clinging instantly. This is not something I could reliably do at any point in my 2+ hour sits back in the day. It was always about grinning my teeths and trying to bear through this stupid leg pain until the bell rings. Holding for dear life hoping for some revelation to save me. That wasn't needed anymore. The no-self shift allows me to do this process naturally. The second watershed moment is that the amount of pain I'm experiencing at the 1 hour and 30 min mark is significant. Due to wrong posture sit, I was putting a little too much pressure on my left leg the entire time. Since I can't move, I didn't adjust for it. If I could, I would easily go beyond 2 hours. That particular pressure created a block of pain in my left leg. It was solid and unchanging. The rest of my body has already transmuted a lot of pain and it subsided again. But this leg pain occurs due to pressure on nerves. I also kinda got scared. So I've decided to finish it here. But I don't like to end things on a sour note. I had to break up this block of pain prior to ending the sit. So I developed some joy in my head area (only place I could at the time) and rest my attention on there. Since my attention has an exclusive quality at this point, the block of pain fizzled in and out and started to move. I could continue at this point, but I didn't want to overly exert myself since this is my first SDS sit in a long time. I felt like my legs were going to so sour a few days if I push further. Now, I could end the sit on a pleasant note The final difference was that the amount of suffering I experienced was extremely and I mean EXTREMELY low. Especially compared to fainting levels of physical pain I was experiencing. The end was basically torture levels of pain but I had a smile on my face. My entire body was relaxed. I could still generate some low degree of pleasure in my head. But I didnt even need to do that. This no-self shift was making this pain just fine. I didn't crave for a pleasant state. I was so not there that the pain sensations all over my body didn't impute as suffering as their nature. They were just as non-alluring as sitting in a chair. Just neutral. Easy to deal with. Even the part where the pain was really becoming torture levels, I was like: 'That is all right. It can stay in the background'. The no-self ensued while a shitstorm was happening back there. ---- This helped me to see that the length of an SDS sit is not important. At least not while learning these insights. I have done these sits longer and more frequently back in the day and none of these insights had occured. I was just in abject suffering. In fact, those SDS sits did create psychological issues and physical digestive issues since I was dealing with a lot of pain. It also doesnt condition the mind well prior to some sort of insight. Pain can become perpetual and ever lasting without realizing. It is a traumatic experience to do SDS and one's skill level also needs to be on par to glean benefit let alone deal with its negative after effects. I don't recommend it to beginners. Absolutely not. It will just make you hate meditation and develop negative habits like agitation and tension. But if you are developing well with samatha and ready for some insights through pain investigation, it is a great technique. Just take it easy for a little while afterwards. Don't injure yourself. Both physically and psychologically. These are my experiences. This entire no-self shift in visual field needs its own explanation but thanks to that, I had my most profound SDS sit of my life. My unconscious mind has for the 1st time, realized how torture levels of pain can be equanimzed into 'No big deal. Let's smile and rest as no self' perception. I didn't think so much pain can be transmuted like that for extended periods of time. So, that changed my assumptions about what is possible on the spiritual path. Anyways, hope this was useful. Let me know youe thoughts below. Much love, Arda

Hi everyone! I've started to ponder how an accomplished 70-year-old zen master can do a 10 hour SDS sit in perfect posture. Without suffering. With a smile on the face. What exact ingredients wouid he concoct in his mind body system where this torturous sounding practice could be liberating with a smile on the face. Of course, these people being massively awake with lots of integrated insight do help a lot. But as a beginner on the path, can I get a sense of how he might generate these sensations which he spends 10 hours in? After all, once you get the insight that pain is mentally generated, you realize that it is the same with pleasure. In the previous SDS sit where everything was dominated by pain, I had the interesting insight afterwards: 'Why did I experience so much pain?...Oh right. Because that is exactly what I intended to investigate and generated my attitude coming off the practice' There was this 'I need to see how I react to pain' mentality prior to the sit. And that is exactly what my mind provided me with. As a samatha practitioner, my mind is extremely susceptible to suggestions and intentions it generates. It is not an exact fool proof science but as long as it is within my conditioning, through mindfulness, it is more likely that the results will be in favour of these intentions. So, it is only natural that I try the same SDS sit with pleasure. Why wouldn't an SDS be filled with amplified pleasure? Why do we assume that it will be full of pain? Of course, I'm not going to assume absolute bliss to arise just because I've formed strong intentions for it to arise. But I can observe to what degree I can do this with my existing understanding and skills. The most pain arose in my legs the earlier sit. With that in mind, this was going to be my overall strategy. 1- Generate any sensation of pleasure in my body with my mind. 2- Ampilify it enough with attention and then spread it to my legs prior to any pain settling in. I can also spread it everwhere else but the legs are a priority. 3- If any pain already set in, attempt to transmute it to pleasurable sensations as best the mind can. 4- Hold a whole body metacognitive awareness of other body parts of pleasure even when pain arises at any location. 5- Whenever an opportunity is found, experience the entire mind body system from no-self perception as the generation of pleasure ensues. 6- Observe the tranquility and equanimity this provides and reinforce this perception as much as possible. ----- As a rule, I also couldn't generate any perceptible pleasure before I start the sit. Everything would be done starting from the cross-legged posture from a neutral emotional state. And in a 1 hour SDS sit, I BARELY experienced any pain. Especially not the 'leg pain' I perceived as so ingrained and had to do with pressure between nerves. None of that registered any overt pain sensations in my mind. I downregulated most of the pain receptors in my brain with a strong intention. In fact, there was this perceptible pleasure in my legs and head area momentarily with each inhale and exhale the entire sit once the momentum set in. There was no pleasure in my torso area with very little tint of pleasantness in my arms and hands. I'll definitely work on spreading it deeply to my torso in the future. I assume there is some unconscious tension and blockage there. I did feel some agitation and sweating at some points but due to the attitude of my mind, it transmuted into excitement and energy somewhat coagulated into perceptible pleasure in my legs and head area. Which made those sensations pleasurable to experience. I only felt this neutral feel to my entire back and torso as a whole. I feel like there are some physical and mental knots there. But there was no significant pain at all. I'd regard all 60 min of this sit to be 99% pleasant and pain free. Not orgasmically pleasant but pleasant nonetheless. And it was all because I did go through that 6 step process outlined above with a strong intention to do it. ---- After I got this, I assume that this is second nature to a 70 year old zen master doing 10 hour SDS sits with ease. Not only do they have the insights, but they have trained their minds to generate either pleasure or pain depending on what they want to investigate. This is all mental work I've done with this sit. It wasn't 'physical pain' and paraesthesia spreading my legs. I had a completely different experience sinking into pleasure. The zen master don't suffer as a self anyways but this idea that the entire sit is working through pain sensations is not accurate in my opinion. Just as one can train to maintain perfect equanimity in a lot of pain, the same can be done with pleasure. Both are liberating in different taste palates. A zen master must definitely has complete access to all 3 flavours of experience and can see through them with equal clarity and skill: neutral, painful and pleasurable sensations. ---- Hope this helps. It was an eye-opening sit in regards to the forming of intentions of my mind and how they shape up my experience so directly at this phase of my practice. Let me know your thoughts. Much love,

The experience of even the slightest of cravings reinforces self-clinging. It is the immediate cause of suffering. Each micro moment of a normal person's life is filled with enormous levels of craving he or she is unaware of. The more it is seen to be case with observation, the more you want to take measures to reduce it. The source is always the self, of course. So you focus on this insight. And slowly you develop etc. It unravels the process and gets your foot in the door. Working through craving is one of the most direct but emotionally disturbing ways of working in my observation. Then you do self enquiry and things click.

In the usual sober state of consciousness, one's unconscious discriminating and sensory sub-minds process information and constructs a world from it. A perception where a constant vantage point boots selfhood and cohesion to sustain the 'realness' of any given experience. It polarizes and generates the self who is conscious and the object of consciousness - cuts away any interconnectedness, regards it as self-other and imputes a self-existing nature to it along with a sense of suffering. Which all are experienced to be absolutely false when you attain insight into how it actually works by examining your mind at deeper levels. SDS is a good technique that forces your hand. It has a lot more potential for insight than I initially experienced. You still need to do the actual work and develop the skills but SDS is a good aid and support structure to push you into unexpected territory.

About the not moving rule, there is an extreme important and deep reason why it is trained that way in Japan and with monks etc. I've realized its potential and purpose with this sit as well. See, the 'rigid' not moving postures for long hours producing tension and craving, resistance and all these sufferings are absolutely mental. Like not just a little mental. Full mental. You can breakthrough these resistances in a second if you are porous, conscious, transparent and embody absolute effortless non-resistance through no self. Now that is the ideal. But through this training, you embody that ideal I've just portrayed. You have this instant feedback where you suffer and experience more duality. Then you say: ' Okay. Craving occurred again which polarized consciousness through self-perception. This made the pain unbearable. Let's modulate perception again and glean deeper insights.' It forces your hand actually the longer you do it. It forces your perception go there as long as you want to absolutely not suffer. Because that is the only way. Can't continue the same operating system when your entire body is filled with pain. I have more respect for the practice after understanding what its intentions are. I can see why it is widely used in Japan.

Even in fainting levels of pain, you are not passing out. You are fully and acutely conscious. But there is no longer a selfhood to react to sensations. A zen master should be able to break through that sort of pain in mere seconds. But there is a catch here. A well trained zen master with decades of experience probably wouldn't experience so much pain regardless of how long the SDS sit is since his body and mind would automatically block pain sense percepts (weaken their pre-processing) and amplify pleasure and joy. IF they want to of course. But they also could work through convulsing levels of pain. I'd assume that a master wouldn't let things go that extreme though. If they did, it would be a conscious decision to work with pain. I don't think they would work on the body level anymore. Everything would be porous and they would merely investigate reality and mind deeply for hours on end with an SDS sit with effortless ease. Which means this person can do 10 hour SDS sit with ease. Depending on how awake and skilled you are, that seems to be possible from my experience. Of course, I can't do it but on a theoretical level, I can see a master with 40 years of experience doing it. I've tasted its core operating strategy with this sit. And if I could with a very beginner level insight attainment, so could an adept with ease. I'm sure Shinzen knows such masters from his asian training in Japan etc.

I'm not sure that would reliably produce a breakthrough since you are introducing a substance to the mix. But of course, within the right perimeters, everything is possible. As long as you condition your mind with advanced mindfulness, equanimity and a strong intention to investigate the sensations prior to this challenge, it could be beneficial. But I'd not recommend it nonetheless since it is not a practice, just an interesting challenge. I recommend doing the SDS sit laying down. After drinking coffee to prevent dullness as much as possible. It will be an easier SDS but you can work on length. For instance, doing a 5 Hour SDS laying down on bed with high alertness and joy and mindfulness is pretty impressive and has its own challenges. You can use the ceiling wall to merge with. Eyes need to be fully open, somewhat defocused the entire time though. You can't close your eyes for dullness reasons. But it is a good challenge really. Just by telling you this kind of gave me a motivation to try it out myself haha :)) Hope this helps.

@Endangered-EGO I understand. You actually are training lots of equanimity with SDS but you should be ready for it. These are the exact cases where I may not recommend SDS :)) But it is still extremely beneficial to do it sometimes to see how you've been developing with other techniques like psychedelics, samatha etc.

That is very typical. But I suggest not being too occupied with both vibration and or happy mood swings unless they arise after an insight realization. That is why it feels so hit and miss. Has this 'Why can't I replicate it?' sort of frustration. It is better to learn 'How can I get my mind to perceive life in a certain way so that I can experience joy and vibrations more easily?' That perception change is what an SDS sit primarily wants you to integrate. Because if the idea is to just feel more pleasantness and happiness, it is better to condition the mind in those flavours of experience directly in jhanic concentration.

It has a 'This will wipe out your sense of a self and destroy all thingness' quality to it. It is really in your face and intimate. And if you still cling to a 'meditator trying to deal with pain sensations', you are left with torture levels of suffering. But if you can perceive things differently, it has a significantly empowering quality. More so than many practices I've tried. I can see myself doing this a lot longer after I develop myself further

Here is Shinzen's explanation of SDS: He fetishizes a little here and boosts motivation as a result. Just make sure to not overly exert yourself

If you are a beginner or struggle like this, don't do SDS sits. Or do them in short sessions like 10-20 mins. The idea is to change your relationship to pain or unpleasantness. But it is obviously challenging and potentially traumatic. Try to prioritize comfort as much as possible in daily sessions. Smile frequently. Make this an easy going and enjoyable practice.