ardacigin

Thanks. I no longer experience brain fog after this profound relaxation. In fact, I never felt this sharp and light my entire life. I've just eaten a sandwich. Zero sleepiness. Alert. I don't think it has to do with my diet. But I'm sure it is effective for some people.

Definitely don't get bummed out about the tension coming back. Keep releasing it. Continuously in each moment. You'll develop mindfulness, sensory clarity and equanimity with this training. Shinzen would be proud

@Igor82 My posture is not perfect Especially after this relaxation business. I can sometimes slouch and completely drop my arms and shoulders down like a dead fish while walking etc, but it feels incredibly restful and rejuvenating. I'll try to balance it out with an acceptable level of muscle tone.

I've basically realized the sleep wasn't refreshing due to lack of rest one gets in daily life. You might think you are relaxed in daily life but really inquire: 'Do I spend each moment regardless of typing, walking talking in a state of profound relaxation?' In fact, sometimes I've started to feel even more relaxed and restful actually sitting upright in meditation compared to my earlier sleeps laying down in bed. This is unbelievable. You might be shocked how one can have more rest sitting cross legged compared to laying down but this tension was so prevalent that I couldn't even rest properly in deep sleep. So, simply try this: 'Maintain introspective awareness of effort and tension in daily life, continuously release it. Immediately observe its positive effects. Repeat' Let me know if this helps.

This realization happened while lot of strain and tension build up after a heated argument. Since I don't normally get angry or violent in daily life, this was a little unexpected. Right after I meditated, I said to myself: 'Wow! What is this tension on my shoulders? Let me intentionally release it every time I'm aware of it.Oh, wait. I can do this while walking talking watching videos, playing games eating food...Wait this tension was always there? Are you serious!' It became second nature afterwards This was a really spontaneous and effortless realization. My mind realized how it was producing this aversion and tension, not the external world and simply dropped it. I always knew tension can be dropped by this time shit got real and my mind dropped it. And it is a process. I can currently feel some tension on my shoulders as I'm writing this due to uncomfortable position the keyboard is in but then I immediately release it to a relaxing posture. My mind is extremely attentive to any strain or muscle tension at this point. I don't know what to say. This was entirely new and shocking to me. My meditations are almost pain free. Allow me to experience some more of this new baseline and I will formulate some advice and tips

No. Teach yourself to enjoy your practice rather than brute-forcing with aversion and resistance.

@Leo Gura

When you play video games in a state of mindfulness, you won't experience guilt. Even when you experience dullness next day, you'll be equipped with the skills to work with it. If it is not possible, due to strict mindfulness training, you'll feel better after a 20 min nap. Playing the games is not the issue. Your mental reaction of guilt after playing is. Be careful how you condition your mind and impute certain emotions with activities. Much love,

Thanks. Glad you liked it. This is something you do when you realize there is an inaccuracy in your worldview. Not always Much love,

You probably do know many things. But do you know what it means to know something? How do we know something to be true or false? Epistemology is the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion. Skepticism as a philosophy is a family of philosophical views that question the possibility of knowledge or its certainty. Philosophical skeptics are often classified into two general categories: Those who deny all possibility of knowledge, and those who advocate for the suspension of judgement due to the inadequacy of evidence. This is modeled after the differences between the Academic Skeptics and the Pyrrhonian Skeptics in ancient Greek Philosophy. Ask yourself these questions and self-reflect: 1- By what process am I making this claim from? What evidence do I have? What is the quality of the evidence? Is it direct or hearsay? 2- How do I know this claim to be true or false? How do I know I’m making an open enquiry without cognitive biases? Remember that true understanding arise through these key modes of perception: 1- Direct Experience 2- Contextual Framing 1- Direct Experience refers to the sort of intuitive and non-conceptual knowledge that arises after deep investigation of your mind and sensory experience. Its awareness is developed in meditation and psychedelics. If any information arises in conscious experience that conflicts with your existing worldview and understanding, you modify or replace your understanding rather than trying to fit your inaccurate wordview with how reality is observed to operate. This is how science is idealized to operate as well. You are merely applying this strategy to mental processes, perception, behaviours and cognition while utilizing attention and awareness in meditation. 2- Contextual Framing refers to the personal interpretation that is required to effectively integrate second hand knowledge to your mental patterns, behaviours and worldview. Verified knowledge is the process of personal verification of the knowledge regardless of the truth property. An information can be accurate and true but it is still second hand information if you don’t verify it. Generalized information needs to be contextualized and modified for your specific mental patterns to utilize the intended benefit. This results in an easier access to deeper levels of understanding. Much love,

Gotta take it to outer space

Hi everyone. This is just some of the qualities of what the initial stages of awakening entails. This is not an exhaustive list. Here are some of the key shifts in perception and understanding that occurs with awakening. Interconnectedness & Ego Transcendence: This shift is described as the dissolution of self, merging of the wave in the ocean and union with the infinite. Don’t allow these terms to produce negative mental reactions. This is only an experience you can understand personally. It is a beautiful thing. Timelessness & Spaciousness: No thing or concept remains fixed in time and space. Enlightenment sets into play a moment to moment existence. There is a realization that the present moment is all there is and a sense of fluidity pervades life. Acceptance: This is relaxation or surrender, a revelation or insight that all is transpiring according to a plan or randomness that surpasses the individual will. The struggle ends and gives way to an acceptance of reality free of bondage from and attachment to personal desires, thoughts and feelings. Equanimity: This is profound non-reactivity, a process where one goes beyond pleasure and pain. Awakening can also be described as infinite love and contentment. Sensory Clarity: The awakened mind is spontaneous, immediate and flexible. Thinking is clear without limiting thoughts and beliefs. Thoughts are purposeful and intentional free of extraneous mind chatter that usually pervades our baseline state of consciousness. This clarity pervades to other sense modalities. Much love,

You are welcome

Looking forward to it

Hi everyone. This is a relatively predictable process of evolution our psyche goes through on this path of actualization. Here are the 3 epistemic attitudes one can adopt: #1- Proudly Defending Unexamined Beliefs: This is the stage where the person heavily identifies with belief systems. Notions such as right and wrong are clear and defended dogmatically. No contextual understanding or empathy is practiced. The individual views life in a black and white way. Rules are followed strictly and authority is never questioned. The individual tends to make decisions based on their self interests and acts irrationally when one’s beliefs are challenged. #2- Become A Truth Seeker: Linguistic Knowledge This is the stage where the person values truth seeking more than belief systems. The relative nature of beliefs, ideas and concepts are seen through. Contextual understanding and empathy is heavily practiced. An event is perceived more objectively from multiple angles. The individual makes rational decisions based on what is good for everyone in the long term. Open mindedness is practiced diligently when one’s beliefs are challenged. Less is taken personally. #3- Become A Truth Seeker: Direct Experience This is the stage where the person realizes the limits of thoughts, linguistic knowledge, beliefs ideas, symbols and concepts. Truth is experienced directly without symbols via mindful awareness and consciousness work. Beliefs are hold very lightly. Self-deceptions are mostly seen through. Reason, logic and science is integrated with spirituality, meditation and mindfulness. ---- Each tier has significant depth and breadth. Much love,

Yeah. The source is my life experiences. But there are similar road maps everywhere.

Ah yes. This would coincide with a deep stage in #3 as a natural progression. You are right.

Hi everyone! I wanted to give a quick tip for those who are struggling to live their spirituality day to day. The frustration of this spiritual ideal and real life can be challenging to reconcile. You need to understand that it is normal once you use powerful entheogenic substances and experience such profound realizations that your state of consciousness in daily life will start to dissatisfy you by producing craving and aversion due to your existing state of consciousness. The mind desperately wants to elevate the consciousness back to those peak experiences so that you break through the delusions once again. Unfortunately, this entire process resolves around tendencies of dissatisfaction, self, desire, aversion and ultimately duality. If you want a consistent strategy you can use to elevate your consciousness in the long term, keep this in mind: 1- Desire and aversion empower self-clinging. Self-clinging also empowers desire and aversion. Once you break one cycle in this chain, the other chain also breaks with time. 2- Whenever you become aware of ANY desire or aversion towards ANYTHING, consistently train the mind to accept the momentary experience and increase contentment for your existing state of consciousness. For instance: This is a usual negative mental habit cultivation people experience in daily life. Before my practice deepened, this was my life: - You wake up at 11 am. You feel grogginess and guilt for not waking up earlier. Now you'll need to skip meditation quickly so that you can start doing your daily activities as soon as possible. - You wash your face in this subtle planning mode and all of a sudden you feel this itching sensation in your hair. You certainly can't work like this and scratching doesn't help. You'll need to take a shower but it is already 11 am. So you start to feel conflicted. You know that a shower would make you feel good on the long term but it has an upfront cost of time and possible energy decrease after the shower. Now, there is no reason to go further from here. Just in these few mental reactions, significant amounts of desire and aversion has been produced unconsciously by the sub-minds. One of the effective methods this cycle can be understood is to produce a state of mind in formal meditation where desire and aversion is subdued temporarily. Now if you have depression, you can't do something like this. Your meditation skills are almost certainly not developed to this degree. So the next best thing is to investigate whatever gives you some level of joy, satisfaction and contentment in life. Look at your hobbies. Even if you believe that life is torture - nothing ever makes me happy, I assure you that there is at least one subject matter your mind finds some level of fulfillment while engaging in it. If you still can't find it, just create the external conditions as an anchor for motivation. If the hobby is playing guitar but you can't even get yourself to sit up straight to play it, watch inspirational music from your favorite musicians. Remember, it can be anything you find some joy in. Don't moralize and judge your hobbies. Now, as you do this activity, you need to have some mindfulness to discern what exactly is different right now vs in a state of craving an hour ago. Realize introspectively that the mind is relatively content as you do this activity. Of course, you are not blessing out like a yogi or anything. Our objective here is to realize how our usual daily experience of craving tends to disappear slightly while we engage with our favourite subject. Investigate that mental state and the next time you meditate, try to bring that state of mind to the forefront of your mind. Just as your mind reduced craving in that activity, it can do the same while observing the breath. Once you get a sense of how this is possible, keep being aware whenever the mind produces desire and aversion. When you become more discontent, just relax, re-balance attention-awareness and produce that contentment through the same process. ---- Now this is your formal practice, How will you bring this to daily life? Well, you'll need to train yourself to produce this state of mind with awareness while attention moves from object to object. In daily life, one's attention rarely stabilizes on a single object for long periods of time. Your job in formal sessions is to strengthen introspective awareness by stabilizing attention so that even when attention moves from object to object, awareness can still know if the mind is content or in a state of craving. Focus on this awareness angle in meditation. And then in daily life, whenever you become aware of discontentment while attention moves around, remind yourself the flow state and attempt to perceive, produce and sustain that state of mind in daily life. Regardless of how 'busy' or 'impatient' you may feel at the time. You need to pick up your phone to answer that text message and you become aware of this craving. Don't skip this moment. Don't downplay the moment. Attempt the produce this contentment as you reach for your phone. With this modification, you slowly reduce craving and self-clinging in each moment. Extrapolate this state of mind to months and years with consistent application and you have an extremely powerful systematic practice. Hope this helps and opens up new investigation paths in your practice. Much love,

Yes. Try to be aware of mental reactions in daily life that you intuit originates from these traumas. This often express itself in some form in conscious awareness. The first step is to be aware of these mental reactions. The second is to continuously maintain mindfulness of mental states so that you can break the cycle before the trauma's side effect kicks in. In formal sits, as you go deeper, the trauma is seen through as it is with the insights you have. The process of healing starts to occur.

Hi Everyone! I wanted to tell you guys about one of the unconscious traumas I've been conscious of while realizing these spiritual insights. This experience coincides well with Leo's video on 'The Dark side of Meditation'. It is a common experience but the underlying assumption that lead to this trauma is challenged by spiritual insights. So it is more important to realize the insight itsef as there can be infinite different ways the mind can negatively react. If you become conscious of such subliminal reactions as a meditator, don't allow attention to point fingers at other people or circumstances. Look inwards directly at your assumptions. Even if you think you are correct, don't point fingers. Just to give a quick background, I'm a fairly laid back guy. In fact, due to Samatha and jhana training I've undergone all these years, I'm experiencing joy and reduced self-clinging on a momentary basis and the ability of any negative emotion to stabilize itself for long periods of time is very limited. In this process, as my awareness got more and more metacognitive, certain subliminal traumas start to bubble up to consciousness. Stuff in your unconsciousness. Make no mistake, these traumatic perceptions and assumptions significantly alter your worldview in a flawed manner. If you believe you have no traumatic stuff to deal with, think again. These traumas are not possible to work with unless they bubble up to consciousness. But before they bubble up, you can't know about the trauma's existence since it is unconscious. This means there is significant material you are not even aware of in the unconscious mind. Therefore, you can delude yourself into thinking that you've healed all of your trauma. Coming back to my trauma: I was in my parent's house while this happened and at the time, they adopted a cute kitten. They live on the 5th floor. And it is pretty hot in this season. I think you know where this is going. Since it is so hot, all windows are open. The balcony is open. And the kitten wants to explore and go everywhere. Since I've talked with Vets about this, they've told me that cats can easily fall down from balconies and windows so as their owner, it is your responsibility to take care of them. And since we are on the 5th floor, the cat will suffer, if not die, if it falls. No doubt about it. Since the insight into interconnectedness was getting stronger, I've started to really merge with this cat. (But conveniently I was not merging with my parents ) I'm more than willing to sit in a hot room than to risk the cat's health with opening windows and balconies. But my parents didn't really care or listen to the vets who warned them. Again, I'm a really loving and laid back guy. I smile and laugh often. I've warned my parent's about this but their nonchalant and arrogant attitude started to really bug me after a while. They kept putting the cat's life in danger so one day, I've started to yell at them and really lash out my anger. Now the reason at the time was that since I'm experiencing so much joy, anger can't quite hold onto my consciousness. Anger comes up, express itself and then dissolves to be replaced by joy. My strategy was to express my discontent and let people know that this is a bad idea. But I've underestimated the links of dependent origination. All intentions follow a relatively predictable process of unfolding. The links of dependent origination goes in this sequence: Contact (thoughts and sensations) --- feeling (pleasant, unpleasant, neutral) --- Craving (desire and aversion) -- Intention (to act or not to act) --- Action (mental or physical) -Repeat As the anger started to arise, it started to reduce mindfulness and joy slowly, Thoughts started to get more and more self-oriented. The tendency to approach sensations with joy and equanimity was down-regulated. My mind was justifying anger in the name of protecting this cat. My initial intent was to show some discontent to my parents and to stop them from putting the cat's life in danger but I've realized after a deep meditation session that the source of this anger was different. I've realized that I had an unconscious trauma about my parent's influence on me when I was a child. When you are young, your parents tend to make decisions for you. But at a certain point, the child starts to make their own decisions. When the parents consciously or unconsciously force the child to do certain things in this critical period, it is possible an unconscious resentment can be formed deep into the child's psyche. I've been playing basketball professionally since 8-9 years old but while was in 4-5th grade in middle school, I've started to really hate basketball. I wanted to stop and spend more time reading books and developing myself in other ways but I couldn't say no to my parents so I've participated in daily practice sessions until I've dislocated my shoulder in 9th grade while playing basketball. Now, I know what you are thinking. How horrible, right? Well, no! This was a blessing in disguise. After this event, my parent's backed off on this whole basketball business and since I've had a break from basketball for 3 months due to this injury, It was really easy to tell my parents I didn't want to play basketball anymore. I've had a lot of free time after school to do whatever I wanted. It was an amazing discovery period in my life. I'm thankful for that injury. So that was the first resentment that started to build up. Maybe my parent's decisions were not always the most objective? I was significantly better off after stop playing basketball. Maybe the authority I've given them was misplaced as a child? The next one was about my initial struggles in building a business. My parents didn't quite support me in this pursuit and didn't frankly believe in me while I was going through the ups and downs but after I've succeeded, they've started to go: 'Oh, we've always known you'd make it. You were working really hard. We're proud of you etc' - That is all great but my psyche hasn't interpreted this reaction positively at the time. In fact, I've developed more resentment towards my parents since they weren't supportive of me while I was building the business and only after I've had success with it, they approved and reacted more positively to me. This vibe of conditional love bugged me even further on an unconscious level. These are the 2 key moments where this unconscious trauma started to develop.The true source of my anger towards my parents were triggered in these moments, not out of genuine desire to care for the well being of this cat. Yes, I did care for this cat deeply but that was only a convenient story covering up this trauma. Now, this is the most important part of this story. The conclusion. The trigger that produced the initial anger stands in contradiction with this insight: Emptiness Emptiness is the realization that nothing that arises in consciousness has a nature of being self-existent. It is 'empty' of substance. Everything that arises in conscious experience is a mental construct. The way things appear to be stands in stark contradiction to how things actually are. Your mind imputes a particular nature to people- objects and actively constructs this reality. All of our minds do this in a different way. That is why each individual can perceive something radically different. The way that your mind perceives reality is unique to your own. Once this inherent subjectivity is realized, the anger that I've built up towards my parents dissipated. In their constructed reality, they've decided that me playing basketball was a beneficial thing. Not being too supportive of my business project was to reduce a potential disappointment I might have in the case of a failure. Once I've had a chat with my parents and delved deeper into this trauma in meditation, my faulty assumptions that my trauma rested upon dissolved into meaningless and my anger dissipated. Now everything is better than ever with my parents. And the trauma that was affecting the way I perceived life was reconciled with the insights I've been having at the time. I hope this report was helpful to some of you. Feel free to comment. Much love,

Ah Yes. That is correct. I meant deep in the sense that a trauma rising from the unconscious blind spots in your psyche. Not in terms of intensity or extremity of the content of the experience. In that case, this is surely a micro trauma. Not all of us had extreme traumas but we all have these micro-traumas so they can all subtly add up to equate enormous levels of subliminal suffering. Subtle is significant. Much love,

Well, this was a result of my practice. I did do a 4-hour straight non-interrupted meditation a year ago (not strong determination sitting) and that night, the joy has appeared out of nowhere. At the time prior to this, I wasn't depressed per se, but I certainly wasn't happy or content with my life. I often had negative thoughts about myself, life and others. But after this change, there were some significantly stressful moments in my life where this joy was still present in full force. What is true is that if this internally cultivated equanimity is not utilized in daily life consistently, you can lose some of the effortlessness, mindfulness and equanimity that this practice brings. But this is not at all because of external pressures, but due to lack of internal cultivation and mindfulness. Now, if the external pressure becomes something like physical torture, permanent awakening would be needed to see through the nature of these sensations consistently. But this is an extreme example. Samatha is still very resilient for almost any 'stressful' label we ascribe to circumstances in life. Maintaining this state of mind entire day gives you other advantages as well. Mindfulness and stable attention develop to advanced levels if you can do this from the moment you wake up to going to sleep. The mindfulness here refers to mindfulness of emotional states, craving, thoughts, intentions and self-clinging that arises in each moment. This skill develops extremely quickly once you do this absorption with joy. And it is a requirement to develop this sort of mindfulness. You might think the mind is already craving for joy so focusing on it for hours must be easy, right? Well, it is easy in a sense in formal sits but in daily life, there are too much variables that intervenes. If you want to stabilize attention to joy even in these circumstances for long hours uninterruptedly, very strong mindfulness is needed. Not only that but your mind also needs to be habituated to joy and pleasant sensations. This is what jhana practice does in a nutshell. It develops these physical pathways in the brain. By doing this process, this also builds mindfulness to that strong level. So it is positive feedback loop. You can't maintain this state of mind in each moment unless you have very strong mindfulness. (even if it is pleasant sensations). But to have this mindfulness, it is a useful strategy to stabilize attention to joy in each moment. You can also do the same with breath sensations. But it requires even more skill and mindfulness to do this process to neutral sensations. But anything is possible if the metacognitive awareness and body awareness is strong. You can literally pick any object of attention. To get to this point, jhana practice where you focus on the breath first, (TMI style) and then to joy (jhana path) is the most effective strategy I've experienced so far. Or in my case, it can happen just by doing TMI breath meditation. So the key is to do this process for long hours and then let the mind go to places it wants to explore. Hope this helps. Feel free to ask for clarification. Much love,

Focus on integrating mindfulness in daily life so that you don't have to make this choice. You can take all of this action and maintain a certain depth of practice momentum. Since you already have some nice training background, you are better off focusing on 'How can I progress spiritually in daily life?' rather than 'I need to drop everything and focus on formal sits'. It is ideal to do both but the former strategy will enable you to take actions while ensuring some level of spiritual development occurs. Hope this helps. Much love,

Glad to answer your questions @fi1ghtclub I've been meditating for 5 years. I've started accessing jhanas a year ago. My current meditation experience is one of effortlessly stabilized attention to the sensation of joy with an expanded awareness of the body and mind. In a formal sit, I go deeper from this baseline, bask in silence and strengthen attention and awareness to investigate my conscious experience. I meditate at least 2 hours every day. In daily life, I stabilize attention to equanimity and joy continuously in each moment (while in movement as well) and expand extrospective awareness when my eyes are open. Hope this helps Much love,

Thanks.