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The first 4 jhanas No but might try it out at some point. Let me know how you do it and give me tips with the candle types and techniques etc. How is this possible on 3rd path? Isn't breath sensations almost completely devoid of its aversion and desire component? Also, breath is a highly conceptual object that assumes a body, nose, in and out etc. You need to demolish all of these assumptions first to really meditate on the breath. So I understand why you feel this way. Let me know your thoughts Much love,

Hi everyone. I've taken a break from sharing my journey with you guys. Recently, I've experienced deeper levels of understanding and a lot of stuff happened. So I wanted to write a short update. To summarize, my practice is heavily turning into insight territory. I'm around stage 8-9 in TMI. The equanimity that leads to the realization of not being a separate self is getting easier and easier to align with. The equanimity is starting to get so high that I'm able to say no to the pleasure of meditative joy and yes to raw pain sensations. There is still pleasant and unpleasant sense percepts but the power of anything that arises in conscious experience to attach emotionally to an agent like a self is highly reduced as the emptiness of phenomena more and more becomes clear. This occurs due to unconscious sub-minds revising their perceptions on reality, selfhood, and the illusoriness of conscious experience. Also, the 'sober' reality and 'hallucinated' reality are the same but let's not get ahead of ourselves. I've underestimated how sophisticated TMI was designed until I got to these realizations. Culadasa has deeper wisdom than I've given him credit for. I'm currently working on the realization of the illusoriness of the following key assumptions. The relative embodiment of this realization will result in the first stage of awakening. These are three key assumptions that lays the foundation of your conscious experience, actions, intentions, motivation and belief systems. The truth revealed by spirituality stands in stark contradiction to three key assumptions. 1- I'm a separate self in a world of other distinct entities. 2- My happiness and unhappiness depend on the interaction between myself and those other distinct entities. 3- I rely on my presumed ability to understand and predict how this world works in order to influence those interactions in a way that maximizes my happiness and minimizes my suffering. All three of these assumptions are false. An illusory mental construct of the mind. Here are the insights that directly contradicts these assumptions: 1- I'm adrift in a world where nothing is as it appears. 2- Everything happens due to causes and conditions I have no hope of controlling. Conscious experience doesn't entail a self-agent that can manipulate one's experience let alone other people and external events. 3- No matter what you do to maximize happiness and minimize suffering, the process will lead to more suffering. The assumption that leads to the experience of craving, desire and aversion is a mental construct. You are not a self. Your entire subjective experience of being a person is an illusion so desire and aversion dissolves into meaninglessness. Every distinction is an impermanent process. Everything changes therefore there is nothing to hold onto. 4- Clinging to the self is the cause of desire, aversion and craving. 5- Everything I've ever believed was false. These are traumatic realizations. I'm still on the process of insight realizations. Basically just started this process very lightly. I've barely experienced any negative experiences. Probably because I'm experiencing joy and happiness due to samatha training TMI focuses on. I want this to be a short update. Feel free to let me know how you guys are doing. I've also heard Leo is experiencing chronic fatigue and sickness. Hope he gets better. Much love,

And when stuff gets deeper, you realize that Mike Tyson has just punched air without substance. The construct couldn't even take a hit because there was literally nothing there. Then Mike Tyson's punches dissolves into meaningless and he sits down in a corner and realizes his own delusion about being a self manipulatıng his punches in order to maximize happiness and minimize suffering.

Yes. Do nothing is powerful and can induce high equanimity. Keep it up Attention and awareness are different ways of experiencing consciousness. When the breath is attended by the attention, everything else is left for awareness to develop itself. Rather than seeing breath attention as an annoyance, combine open free floating awareness with attentional stability. Not yet. But If it happens, I'll let everyone know.I can already get an intuitive sense of love as an essential component of this work. The insight into the interconnectedness of all phenomena is deepening which increases compassion and love. So we'll see

For those who might be interested, Culadasa discusses psychedelics in more detail in this Patreon video. He explains the variety of psychedelics he has explored (including 5 meo DMT) and gives further insights into the advantages and disadvantages of using it. He is an advocate of psychedelics and lot of people asked questions about psychedelics in this session. So I thought this video can be pretty cool for this community. Culadasa gives some interesting perspectives into how psychedelic path interacts with the dharma and traditional practices. The conversation starts in 0:56 after the ayahuasca question. Basically the beginning of the video. Listen to the additional commentaries if you are interested. @Leo Gura Also let us know your thoughts about his commentary.

Since I don't know much about Sahdguru, I want to ask to those who know more about him: What are his teaching methods to spirituality? Is it systematic or more general like Eckhart Tole? Any book or series of talks would be appreciated. Thanks.

@Endangered-EGO I hope you are doing well I went through a similar realization recently. To do such a thing, you need to learn effortless attentional stability and metacognitive awareness. Doing the breath all day is possible but it requires a lot of awareness since the object of attention is so narrow. If you are experiencing any joy, you can train yourself to use that as a meditation object. Then develop awareness with the breath, body, mind to while attention is on the joy. But if you can't do it yet, then using breath is a good option in daily life. Just make sure not to over-emphasize the breath too much. Awareness development is necessary here. Regardless, the process to develop metacognitive awareness is the same: Master stability of attention to a sufficient degree. Expand awareness of everything else while holding attention in the same way. Do this at the same time. Become more and more conscious of the reactions and states of your mind. Reduce suffering consistently as egoic habits kick in. You'll be able to do it because mindfulness and metacognitive awareness will monitor for such reactions. Reinforce joy and happiness by smiling and slowing your movements in daily life. Don't let subtle annoyances and frustrations arise on a momentary basis. If they do arise, notice the impatience and aversion. Smile and slow down movements, expand the awareness as usual. Get used to this process and do it on a momentary basis. There is one more challenge. Since you'll be doing this in daily life, you need to change how you do things. You'll be slower than usual to apply mindfulness in this way. Whatever activities you are doing, you need to constantly slow down the movements to develop this awareness. Otherwise, you'll forget again and sink into unconsciousness. Hope this helps. It requires a lot of skill but it is doable in 4-10 years of training.

I watch Sadhguru's videos from time to time but I wanted to know his exact spiritual methods. Lİke Kriya yoga, pranayama etc. What is his main area of focus? Is it as simple as 'just sit and be conscious' or are there other aspects to his teachings?

Hi First of all, I want you to realize that drivenness, fixation and addiction is the operating paradigm of the sense of self. Your extreme indulgence on these thoughts or substances is no different than how people plan what TV shows they are going to watch after coming home from work. At their core, all addiction arises out of one source. The addictions only differ in degree. You are fortunate in the sense that your addictions seriously get in the way of the beauty of life. It is a poignant problem for you. Most people's fixations are distributed over so many different activities that the underlying issue can never be investigated because the suffering is subliminal but enormous. As in your case, the fixation shows itself disturbingly in your addiction to these substances and behaviors so much that you realize that you need to do something about it. And that is why you are pulled towards psychedelics and spirituality in general. So, what can you do about it? The impatience and quick movements are one of those key culprits. There is a reason why meditators do walking meditations (an even breath meditations) in an extremely slow manner. Mindfulness (done properly) dramatically reduces subliminal suffering when you slow down. Walk like an old person. Eat food like an old person. And REALLY see the joy of your hand moving towards the soda to drink it. Slowing down WITH mindfulness will reduce that insatiable desire to drink that sweet soda so much that the 3-4 seconds where the hand moves towards the soda is just as enjoyable as drinking itself. This boils down to consistent production of endorphins and opiates in the brain. The reason why you are addicted is that there is too much anticipation in the mind with a disregard for anything deemed as 'banal' by the mind. There is too much dopamine release with minimal opiate production. That is why opiates like heroin and certain antidepressants are so addictive. I just want you to realize that with a consistent meditation practice in a non-effortful way, joy cultivation, slow movements and unbroken mindfulness in daily life, you can basically live in heaven. You can do this reliably without taking psychedelics, anti-depressants or entertainment industry. Stop listening to people that say awakening is so easy compared to this emotional mastery/ addiction work. Awakening is so radical that this is only the beginning and a lot of people have been doing this 'heaven on earth' practice (jhanas) without awakening. This is just the beginning part of spiritual development. It is like learning a new emotional skill for the brain. Just as any skill, it has a steep learning curve for what I'm describing. But stable attention, peripheral awareness, non-effortful equanimity really goes a long way to develop these circuits in the brain. This is like scales and arpeggios to musicians. Doing even this practice successfully is life-changing in a radical way. Imagine how much your life could change when this becomes the baseline and you are getting into infinity territory. This is a radical shift to your existing life habits. All of your conditioning might scream no at my suggestions for slow movements, meditation etc. but you are suffering at this moment for a reason. This means that your existing strategies are not working and/or not working well enough for this radical cognitive and habitual change. For now, drop all of your existing ideas about how to practice spirituality, meditation, psychedelics etc. and just work on that suffering that you are currently conscious of and work on how to reduce/ eliminate that while keeping in mind the suggestions I've made. When you succeed, the results will be immediate. The blockage of the ego will be significantly weakened on a momentary basis unbroken in 'time' and you'll grow exponentially from there. This is one way to enter true spirituality. It works because it is so primal in the mind system. I wish you the best in your journey. Much love,

There is no easy answer to this. First of all, back off sometimes when challenging material arises. You don't want to create too much aversion to practice. Create more motivation by doing psychedelics, watching videos, reading books etc. Do all this so that the process of sitting down to meditate is less daunting. Again, smile as much as you can. And try to look for the joy as much as possible. This is a legitimate technique for emotional mastery. You do need a lot metacognitive awareness to really go deep with it but anyone can attempt this: Catch yourself feeling some sadness and frustration, smile, look for the joy and try to feel some pleasant sensations.(the attempt is enough) Hold this joyful state of mind in consciousness as much as you can until you forget. Repeat. Meditate lying down to reduce all pressure. You might get sleepy but it matters more to establish that profound relaxation lying down would give you in your situation. Also, feel free to take a break from all this and focus on your hobbies for a while. These are my tips. Hope they help

It is interesting because the relationship of self love/ self esteem and maintaining self-esteem whether you accomplish goals are not are actually psychologically valid ideas. Not just spiritually. I can understand how she might not relate to 'Universe is love' but the rest of it aligns with western psychology. High-quality therapy is not easy to find. Also don't expect your psychologist to be on board with no-self, universal love etc. Those psychologists do exist but they are rare. Try to use therapeutic assistance to work on other aspects of development like shadow work, behavior change, addictions, social skills, certain forms of emotional work, procrastination, cognitive behavior therapy etc. These might appear like petty problems but they actually have a deep residual impact in the psyche. The habit forces run deeper than you might think and certain behavioral acts that we default towards would benefit from therapeutic assistance. We all have blind spots, even as spiritual practitioners. You can also maximize the results you get from all western psychology techniques if you do them with diligent mindfulness and psychedelic assistance. So try to get the most of your psychologist's assistance. And try to focus on those aspects where she has some expertise in rather than discussing direct-experience based spiritual concepts with her. I hope this helps

Samatha means calm abiding meditation. It is founded upon positive reinforcement, stable attention and strong mindfulness. As I keep practicing, I can clearly see its benefits. But recently, I've started to get too comfortable and slack off a little too much. I've decided to stop meditating altogether for a while and see what remains. I wanted to stop this meditation business and see what happened to my consciousness and mindfulness. This also includes all the joy and happiness I experience most of the day. I was willing to not cultivate and pay attention to these for a while. I've stopped meditating in any shape or form for about a week or so. I did experience some serious drops in mindfulness and joy on a momentary basis at the end of the week. It felt like a 5-year-old computer trying to run Witcher 3 on high settings. It still gets the job done in very low settings but the high performance I had was gone (temporarily). In this one week period, I've experienced frantic energies, unconscious attentional movements and virtually zero cultivation of joy and happiness with little to no mindfulness of anything for a few consecutive days. If I had the urge to meditate and cultivate some joy, I've distracted myself with other stuff. Talking to people. Thinking about stuff. Reading books etc. Now, my happy personality is still intact. I used to be pretty depressed and I'm glad to say that my 'happy' habitual reactions are still intact. My social skills which have been improved DRAMATICALLY ever since meditative joy occurred 4 months ago are still intact. I make jokes. I enjoy hanging with my family and friends. I'm talkative. I do laugh very often even at silly things. I've realized that even if you don't have stellar mindfulness or joy in the mind, some people can still act this way because these are ingrained personality habits. My personality was shifted deeply in these past 4 months and even without joy and mindfulness (which facilitated the personality improvement in the beginning) was no longer necessary. This made me realize at a core level why taking anti-depressants can be beneficial for highly depressed people in short periods of time. The new interaction methods you learn while you have high dopamine levels tend to create habitual reactions and improve social behaviors on a deep level. Now, mindfulness plays a deep role here and without it, the change may not be deep or lasting. And I don't really want to compare anti-depressants with meditative joy in this context but I can easily see how a depressed person can claim that anti-depressants improve one's personality and social skills. Now that being said, no mindfulness made me lose all internal witnessing of thoughts and emotions. I was doing outer hear, outer sound, unconscious internal thoughts and acting on the unconscious intentions. But I was not doing these in a meditative way. Complete unconsciousness as much as possible. Now, this was a little beneficial in helping me to understand efforting and not efforting. Too much effort can still be a problem after fully developed meditative joy. That sense of creating joy entails some amount of effort and completely dropping it is a challenge. Finally, this experiment helped me to see the disadvantage of samatha. I have to say that a lot of things stuck with me. I can still access joy and powerful mindfulness on demand AS LONG AS I intend to experience joy and maintain mindfulness. And this is the key word: intention. If I don't have that intention, things quickly drop into unconsciousness. It still took a few days but it is relatively quick considering I have been cultivating solid mindfuless and joy for about 4 months. And this is why awakening is different from advanced Samantha states. See, all this joy, reduced craving, reduction in selfhood, feeling of boundaries dissolving, compassion work are extremely important. And you must do this work because there is no better alternative. Unconsciousness is just full of unnecessary suffering and drama. My life is 1000 times better thanks to Samatha work. Once you have these profound states, the understanding can be seen as solid and complete. Awakening is a beast on its own. It is said to be a permanent intuitive understanding of self, reality and world. Samatha states do mimic that. And some amount of insight understanding DOES occur on some level. Samatha and insight practices are not that distinct as one might think. I'm not like who I was 4 years ago in that 1 week period. My personality is already deeply changed. My capacity to love is deeply increased. Fighting with someone or getting into an argument with another is not even slightly in my mind throughout the day. I can still access a lot of joy and happiness with mindfulness right now. I didn't REALLY lose these skills. So I don't want to give the impression that samatha skills are super transient and it is a waste of time to build these skills. Samatha skills have already transformed my life so you have no better alternative than developing this skill. But realizing how these skills are not as permanent and deep as one might think is an important realization as well. There is this deep 'permanency' illusion once you get deep into samatha work. That is not fully wrong but most of your gains, the development of consciousness, is relying on your continuous mindfulness practice. If the intention to meditate goes away for a long time, so will be the gains. Take a long break and the majority of the momentary mindfulness skills will go away temporarily. Then muscle memory kicks in and you are back on track. So doing the insight practices are more important than ever in my current stage of development. To be more precise, samatha starts to bleed into insight territory. These are not just concentration practices anyways. But intention wise, I did get a little comfortable due to nice samatha states. I slacked off in mindfulness and joy cultivation as well. As you see these elements dissolve away, you tend to focus more on the deeper levels of dissatisfaction that arises out of being a separate self, this brings a clearer form of mindfulness and joy. I think that this experiment was healthy for me. So now, I'm starting to see even deeper forms of suffering I've experienced in these samatha states and some serious practice is in order for me to work on these aspects. I have an idea of what to do to progress in the near future and I plan to share the results with you when I experience some sort of a breakthrough. I may not post too much for a while until I make some deeper progress. I hope this was useful for some of you. I'm trying to share my journey as honestly and raw as I can. Let me know how you are doing and feel free to ask me your questions. Much love,

@NahmI understand what you mean See, when you drop all concepts and ideas, strategies and techniques, you can call that 'just being conscious as directly as possible'. And that will feel like it is so effortless and easy and that is how dropping all effort feels like, right? Well, yes and no. Regardless of how little effort is involved, you are still employing a technique by configuring consciousness in a certain way. That is why you feel a radical difference between the normal neurotic state of consciousness and this just be conscious, effortless state. Otherwise, no-meditation you are doing would be exactly the same as the unconsciousness of 99% of society. Just being in the present moment 'without the fluff' and without carefully defined meditation objects in spacious awareness etc. are advanced techniques by themselves. It is just that self-efforting is dramatically reduced, but that doesn't mean no technique, strategy or challenge is involved. So 'do nothing' which is an umbrella term I use to describe all non-effort practices are actual techniques. When I say 'practices' or 'training', I don't always mean effort and hardwork. Effortlessness comes with its own share of challenges that are different than efforting styles of practice. You are still meditating but in a different way. I hope this clarified my usage. I should've explained some of the terms I use more carefully. Thank you for bringing this up

Thank you for the advice Do nothing techniques are good practices. Currently, I'm not doing them but whenever dropping effort becomes too challenging, I do those practices. I'll keep in mind. Thanks!

@Pell Thanks for that blog I'd like to comment on a few things. First of all, going up and down between 1-4 jhanas is a good practice but ultimately one's ability to do that depends on the nature of jhanic factors. Jhanas developed as a result of TMI is different from what Leigh Brasington teaches at its core. They arise due to different causes and they act in a different way when they do arise. Since I've never done any jhanic practices prior to TMI, all of my jhanic abilities came from TMI. In my mind, jhanic factors are not so fleeting. You don't go back and forth between jhanic states. Or to be more precise, that practice doesn't come naturally to me. You are telling me to go back to stage 6-7 from stage 8-9. Go back to effort from effortlessness. That can appear beneficial but it also suggests that each jhanic state is suggestable to dissoving without conscious intentions. So it is not exactly efffortless. Sustaining that in daily life would means a lot of conscious and effortful intentions. That still occurs in my case but when effortlessness kicks in, so does stability. Each state goes above the other one and reduces craving more and more reliably. I see 4 key milestones in jhanic development that can be experienced in one sit: 1- Arising of unstable meditative joy and happiness with energetic sensations 2-Arising of effortlessly stable meditative joy 3- Arising of effortlessly stable meditative joy with contentment (which reduces the bulk of the suffering) 4- Arising of equanimity that results in profound mental and physical pliancy. In TMI, 4 jhanas are experienced a little more like this. And these are more stable states than what Leigh teaches. The first one with energetic sensations go away to be almost never experienced after a while. So I start with unstable 2nd jhana factors and go from there. So practically speaking, I experience the following: - Stabilize and increase the existing amount of meditative joy to a 'sufficient' level (aka until it dominates consciousness). There is always some level of meditative joy in my mind. - Try to maintain it while releasing effort - aka get to effortlessness. This puts you solidly in 2nd jhana. - Add the contentment element - 3rd jhana (this builds a bridge between joy and equanimity) - Get to Equanimity - 4rth jhana Goin back from that equanimity is not a good idea because 4rth jhana is where you want to investigate reality. It already takes quite a bit of time to solidly access that level of equanimity. So It would take an unnecessary effort to go back. You should actually go forward even from the 4rth jhana by making it clearer, by adding the jhanic factors back in without losing that equanimity or with insight practices. I've read the blog and I wanted to comment on this particular passage: 'While these two goals are not mutually exclusive, they do compete for the meditator's time. In my case, I have the luck of being able to sit for 2 hours straight, which I do on a daily basis. You'd think that this is more than enough time to fully cultivate both samatha and insight. But I actually don't think it is. In my case, I spend the first 20 minutes or so settling in, primarily doing "Do Nothing" practice. I then shift to 20-30 minutes of classic mindfulness of breath practice. With a more collected mind, I shift to Jhana, during which I go from first to fourth Jhana, then back down and back up. This takes another good 30 minutes. Upon emerging from 4th Jhana, I'm left with about 40 minutes, which I then fully devote to some kind of insight practice (I rotate between still point, Do Nothing, Self-Inquiry and Shinzen style noting). This may seem to be enough to fully develop samatha and vipassana, but I've noticed that with this approach my concentration practice isn't getting developed as much as my insight practice' Okay, so I think that underlying problem for this meditator is too much rotation of techniques especially in the samatha stage. 2 hours might appear like a long time but since he is playing around with techniques like do nothing, breath and jhana ascend + descend, he struggles getting to stage 8 effortlessness in TMI. Due t lack of effortless stability, he feels that his samatha stage was not as beneficial as it could be. It would be more efficient for him to get to jhanic elements faster, develop it and get to profound equanimity and stay there rather than descending back. Do nothing and breath are beneficial but you should stick with one progression path (like TMI breath or jhanas). Since he adds too much practices, his samatha practice ironically gets unstable. Starting with breath and changing to jhanas is also possible but you'll make that transition faster each time you practice and the breath will no longer be necessary after a while. Changing techniques when it comes to insight within the boundaries of 4rth jhana elements are more effective in my opinion. Letting the mind explore consciousness without too much technique restraints is a good idea when it comes to insight. But that must ideally be done when you are solidly in 4rth jhana which is not a small thing. See, there are degrees within each jhana. 4rth jhana can be explored further. I wanted to comment on that practice path he was describing and I hope it was beneficial

Hi @Pell Let me explain. I have been doing insight practices but not being able to sit for a very long time in cross-legged postures for 3-4 hours due to lack of physical pliancy is creating a lot of unforeseen problems. Physical pliancy is important for a few reasons but mostly it enables consistent access to 4th jhana levels of equanimity. And that is incredibly important. First of all, I can do 90 mins SDS without too much trouble and I can sometimes push it to 2 hours. But to do that, I need to really focus and strengthen my intentions. It doesn't happen effortlessly and there is a huge difference between pushing past 2 hours with ease and barely making through it. I'll be doing 2 hour+ SDS sits for my formal sits to develop physical pliancy. Since I needed to develop mental pliancy until now, I've taken a long break from long SDS sits. Now I'm coming back to it. After this sort of daily training, things will dramatically change because it is already easier to sit for long hours due to mental pliancy. Once I'm able to sit for 3-4 hours with minimal physical pain and some level of piti + profound equanimity where body awareness is very light, I'll be solidly in stage 9 TMI territory. I've basically realized that without enough samadhi development in TMI stages, insight practices are extremely ineffective. In fact, deep Stage 9 is so mind blowing that you don't even have to ask 'Who am ı?' etc. The self boundaries are already quite unstable and fuzzy in the first place. Joy development in stage 8 on its own does not guarantee this level of physical pliancy. It does help a lot but I still need to sit for long hours just like everybody else to get used to long sessions. Let's back up a little bit. When meditative joy has occurred around 4 months ago, in any given day, I could sit for an hour and at the end, I would feel quite a bit of mental joy and pleasant sensations (with instability), so that is good. But there were some serious physical pain around my legs. Physical pliancy was fairly immature and mental pliancy has just started to develop. 4 months have passed, mental pliancy is fairly well developed. I can access piti on demand both in daily life and in formal sits. Physical pliancy is also improved but not so much in proportion to how much mental joy has progressed. Since I know how valuable it is to sit for long hours at this point, the first milestone is to develop physical pliancy to a point where I can do 3-4 hours long SDS sits with ease. That is not an easy thing. I need to do these 3-4 hour sessions In a state where physical pain is almost absent from awareness akin to 4rth jhana. This is not possible to do unless you have some really solid mental pliancy. I did experience these states fleetingly in stages 7-8 but you can't maintain that stage 9 quality consistently without profound physical pliancy that enables the meditator to sit for 3-4 hours with ease. Physical pliancy is developed after fullly developed meditative joy. And until you develop this, insight practices will always seriously suffer. Even with a lot of joy. That profound equanimity that breaks down self-boundaries, eliminates physical pain and invites that spaciousness is the most important state once can access in formal sits for insight attainment. So, that will be my first milestone. As to insight practice, I'll just do self enquiry, TMI instructions on stages 7-10, joy cultivation as needed etc. Actually, the bulk of the work is to develop that level of physical pliancy. That is the bottleneck issue that severely limits my ability to access any sort of insight. I'm currently working on this aspect of the practice. Once I experience stage 9 quality consistently, I'll post an update and share my experiences on this forum Hope this was useful.

I see what you mean. That is the insight component of the practice. Getting 'stuck' in jhanas is first of all not a 'danger' on the path. Daniel is overbowing the dangers of jhanas. As a meditator, you see deeper levels of dissatisfaction in jhanas and want to go deeper with insight attainment. Jhanas, themselves are actually a form of insight practice (when done right) and they are healing in many ways. Is it possible to be stuck on jhanas forever? Maybe. But as long as you know about the fact that there can be permanent realizations, jhanas will always bug you here and there due to their impermanent nature (at their core). And that feeling will gently push towards insight. Remember that this realization happens in states of profound joy and happiness. So this form of suffering is subtler than what people experience as depression or sadness. Seeing through both pleasant and unpleasant sensations as sensations in profound equanimity is more effective in insight practice. That is why 4rth jhana exists in the first place. But I understand what you mean. Jhanas must be eventually combined with insight methods like self enquiry to increase their effectiveness. Some level of attachment to joy ALWAYS does occur prior to awakening. That sort of equanimity is attained post-awakening. So it is best to let the meditator's intuition kick in and help him guide the insight territory after some proficiency in jhanas. More you become adept in the Samatha path, the less challenging experiences you'll have in your insight journey. So it is never a complete waste of time. At the very least, it is emotional purification on a deep level when you sustain jhanic factors all day long. These are all important on the spiritual path.

Retreat intensity of practice is not easy. But to grow our psychospiritual muscles, we need to partake in intense and long durations of practice. But this is not usually possible for many people. Sitting for 10-12 hours a day in high-quality meditation is not entirely structured for the beginner-intermediate meditators. That schedule already assumes the meditator can access joy on demand, deep mindfulness and equanimity deeply in each sit without fail. You can thrive if you have these skills. You can maybe survive the day with a lot of negative sensations if you are on the intermediate range. But in the beginning, you can barely experience any joy or deep equanimity in any of your sits. Frustration, boredom, and sadness tend to be the main emotional dynamic. So what are we going to do? It is a catch 22. You need that intensity but you can't do that training before you are quite advanced. But you need to do that intensity to get advanced. The answer lies in 'light retreat practice'. You incrementally increase the pressure and intensity of retreat practice. Here is an example of what I've done today. This is a solid way to develop retreat muscles. It doesn't burn you out and it gives strong training in terms of emotional duration and nervous system familiarity you'll need in long retreats. 1 hour daily practice is good but to learn the retreat rhythm, you need AT LEAST 4-5 hours of back to back sits. But they don't have to be rigid or frustrating like in formal retreat centers. In fact, it is better to loosen up on the 'requirements' so that the nervous system gets used to sitting for long hours. Here is what I've done to test the light retreat process. 1- Start the day normally. Don't force yourself to meditate unless you feel an inclination and motivation to start the process. Drink your coffee etc. Don't start too late or early. Get a good night's sleep and eat well. 2- When you do start, realize that the first 2-3 sits are going to be the most challenging. You'll meditate 45-60 mins per session. The first 30 mins of the 1st sit is probably going to be relatively easy. Slowly you'll feel frustration nearing the end of 60 mins. That wraps up the first sit. It is the warm-up round. Hopefully, some amount of joy was produced. Equanimity is not going to increase to deep levels in the first sit. Frustration basically arises due to lack of equanimity. You need to meditate more for an hour or two until you get really deep into equanimity and effortlessness. The 2nd sit tends to be the hardest. You feel the frustration at the end of the first sit. Joy may or may not be too strong at this time. Equanimity also tends to be weak. You are highly susceptible to negative emotions like boredom and anxiety. But if you can push through the next 60 mins with joy and increased equanimity, a shift tend to occur. This equanimity shift tend to occur in the 2nd, 3rd or 4th sit in my experiences. It depends on your skills but It rarely happens in my first sit. Here is how to know you are in equanimity shift: - Sitting to meditate is extremely easy. Almost effortless. You can barely feel any pain in the legs. You barely sweat or feel negative sensations. Even if you feel anxiety, they are weak and the compulsion to quit the retreat and play video games is dramatically reduced. - It is easier to focus on joy. Easier to smile. Easier to watch the mind. Thoughts are reduced significantly. The body feels hollow in the inside as if it is made out of light hollow ether. The heavy body load you tend to feel all the time in daily life is gone. Once you experience this equanimity shift, you'll meditate for 2 more sessions. You have 2 options for these sessions. Option 1: Samatha Heavy Insight Route - You focus on the whole body, joy, equanimity levels at the same time and reduce craving if necessary when egoic effort kicks in. You basically watch the mind system do its thing while maintaining the profound equanimity and physical pliancy you've accessed. Take extra care not to think about thoughts. Try to maintain pure equanimity with raw emotions with a heavy emphasis on whole-body/ self-body boundaries. Option 2: Insight Heavy Route - First, you use the silent no-mind and equanimity you've developed until now as access to insight practices. If there is too much joy, reduce it to start this process. You don't want distracting levels of meditative joy. You only want profound equanimity and some stable levels of joy to support this mental landscape. Very little pain or aversion producing sensations must be present in the body. Then ask the question: 'What are these sensations and what is the knowing of the sensations?' Let the awareness soak in the entire mind-body. Make that distinction first. Then ask: 'Is there an experiencer besides the knowing of the sensations and the sensations themselves?' Try to find that experiencer of sensations until awakening occurs. ---- Option 1 tends to be the easier route that still has some insight potential. Option 2 is the harder one since it can be accessed properly if you are already deep into Option 1. All in all, this is around 4-5 sits back to back. You can do 10-15 mins walking meditation or laying down in between formal sits. You do both of these with formal mindfulness attitude. Here is how to choose which to do. - If you are tired, sleepy and dull, do 10-15 mins walking meditation until you feel alert again. Don't start the formal sit until you feel sufficiently alert. - If you are agitated, burned out and fatigued from meditation, lay down with eyes open while maintaining the technique. You can accidentally sleep if you close the eyes. Lay down until you feel refreshed enough for another 45-60 mins session. Obviously, we are training ourselves so if you feel too much resistance and want to quit. Simply listen to music. Watch dharma related videos and continue the entire schedule. In fact, I highly recommend that you do this in the first few sits. Here is the rule: Until you get to equanimity shift I've described, you are allowed to do anything as long as you are doing the formal technique and maintaining the cross legged posture. You can get your lapop and watch Leo's videos. You can close your eyes and listen to some jazz. Whatever passive activity you want to do to reduce pressure is allowed as long as you practice the technique and get to equanimity shift. So video games are out. Probably you can't maintain the technique when you are playing smash bros so do only passive activities like watching spiritual videos and listening to music. Don't read books. This process should be enough to reduce the pressure of sitting still in a cross-legged posture. When you do get to equanimity shift, you will have to stop watching and listening stuff since we'll get serious and do some insight practice. You can continue to listen to spiritual podcasts or guided meditations to help you. Again, this is light retreat training. As long as you follow the basic rules, you can do the entire retreat while listening to podcasts and jazz. Retreat quality will suffer a little bit if you do that but the nervous system will get used to meditating for long hours without feeling trapped and bored out of its mind. The Equanimity shift will also be accessed and maintained for 1-2 hours before the day ends. So at this point, you'll meditate for a total of 5-6 hours. That can sound low for some people but again, this is preparation for actual retreats. We are constantly reducing the pressure to create a positive feedback loop so that the meditator can enjoy the process. The rest of the day is free. Do whatever you want but try to let the momentum of equanimity to affect the rest of the day. Reward yourself and pat yourself on the back for not quitting. You are done. I've tried this today myself and found this to be very effective. Let me know your thoughts down below. I hope this schedule helps you train more efficiently and effectively. Much love,

This is the fundamental mistake everyone does. You burn yourself out in the first few sits and the rest of the day is spent in frustration, pain and agitation. Try this training method and let me know how it goes

Short Answer: Yes. I've talked about how my emotional baseline and overall mood has been dramatically elevated about 4 months ago after a hardcore meditation session. You can find my earlier posts if you are interested in this I'll just update a few things I've learned while getting to know this joy and happiness more in these last few months. I forget to remind people (sometimes even myself) that I used to be quite depressed. Now, it is more apparent how depressed I was but even then, I always asked: ' I'm so sick of boredom, impatience, sadness and loneliness. All this meditation is good but why are my overall emotional states are so fucked up? There must be some really deep shit in my psyche since happiness seems so hard to experience let alone sustain. I wish I knew a way to consistently increase happiness and contentment without drugs or psychedelics. Meditation is not really helping me...' There used to be permanent levels of low-key anxiety all the time. My mood was dipping below neutral very consistently and happy moments where I truly smiled were few and far between. I wasn't clinically depressed but I was inclining towards that line. Now, I can't quite remember those times. I feel so radically content and happy all the time that anxiety and depression eludes me in their strong forms. If I'm having a confrontation with someone, anxiety can come up in a subtle way, resulting in forgetting joy, muscle contractions, sweaty palms etc. but the fight or flight response is extremely weak and short-lasting. This response coincides with all this joy and happiness in the mind so there is a positive overall tone within anxiety. It feels closer to 'bouncy excitement' when I experience the same emotion I've called 'anxiety' due to all this joy and happiness. So my experience of negative emotions are being contextualized within a joyful mind. I can't hold on to negative states like anger and frustration towards people. The moment my mind goes idle, my mind starts to produce pleasant sensations in my head area, I start to smile a little bit and joyful responses to people and events starts to arise. The opposite of clinical depression starts to occur. Happiness goes into a vicious cycle and even without drug levels of pleasant sensations, you are still in a joyful state of mind with contentment and equanimity. This means that happiness is not tiring and actually changes depending on your intentions. Slowly my personality is being re-shaped in real-time and deeper emotional purification occurs. Again, if you are interested in this, I recommend reading my earlier posts. I just wanted to update the report since some of you guys might want to know how lasting this happiness and joy is. There are still moments where I forget the joy. In those moments, I also forget mindfulness. But these are few and far between. I still experience more joy and happiness than someone who takes strong anti-depressants as long as I'm mindful and I have strong intentions to look for the joy. Smiling is enough to support this process. My mind is already habituated into joy so much that I wake up with quite a bit of happiness. A few smiles to strengthen the joy is all I need to experience more happiness with more stability than someone who takes Xanax. So drop the existing paradigms you've developed in times of depression and sadness. The mind can train itself to radical happiness with jhanic practices. Emotional work lays very deep in the psyche and your insight practices suffer for the lack of care you give to these emotional processes. More mindfulness and effort to reverse the negative cycle must be exercised until you get to effortlessness. Every single moment is tainted with frustration and aversion. Those little reactions you give to people. Walking to the fridge to eat some chocolate. Speaking to someone even if you don't really feel like talking. Life is full of these small moments of aversion. Imagine that you rarely experience these moments of aversion. And replace those with joy, happiness, contentment and equanimity. That is what slowly leads to deep emotional purification. Self boundaries goes down. What Leo describes as 'Godhead' already requires all this emotional purification as a requirement to access such advanced states in the first place. Your insight attainment potential is being limited by subtle traumas and emotional dysfunctions in the psyche. Working through these layers (which I'm still going through) is actually a part of insight attainment. Don't downplay emotional purifications. Don't just 'note' and move on. Rewire those layers, reduce craving and smile more. If you experience persistent dark night symptoms down the line, realize that you do so because you've neglected the emotional purification process. I hope this helps or inspires some of you. Feel free to ask me questions and let me know how you are feeling day to day Much love,

Okay. I've started reading that article. I'm not too familiar with vipassana jhanas. Daniel says: 'The vipassana jhanas are a way of describing the stages of insight that is a bit broader than the map that breaks the stages down into sixteen ñanas. They are two descriptions of the same territory, and both have their uses. The vipassana jhanas differ from the shamatha jhanas in that they include the perception of the three characteristics, rather than the “pure” shamatha jhanas, which require ignoring the three characteristics to get the meditation object to appear stably and vividly. However, the two may share many qualities, including very similar breadths of attention and other aspects.' I kind of agree with this 'ignoring the 3 characteristics to stabilize and clarify'. For me, it definitely feels like I'm creating stabilization in my emotional circuits. And sometimes I may not be too willing to see into the 3 characteristics (no self, impermanence, emptiness). That is definitely a challenge in Samatha style work. But there are also payoffs like emotional purification. Insight process will also significantly differ in samatha path vs pure insight. But I think that vipassana jhanas are quite similar to samatha jhanas with an emphasis on insight attainment. So in my mind, you use these practices with 2 main goals. 1- Samatha jhanas: Emotional work, stable attention, powerful awareness. 2- Vipassana jhanas: Insight attainment. They are not as distinct and unrelated as one might think but they have different strong suits. I'm interested in trying vipassana jhanas. But Daniel's idea of 'cycling after awakening' seems wrong to me. You do cycle the insight stages until awakening. But once you are sufficiently awake, the cycling process stops and you are in equanimity. He seems to claim that you go through challenging cycles even after awakening. I understand what he is saying but that seems incomplete to me. I'm not awake to that level but that doesn't line up with my experiences or some of the other teachers I learn from. Both Culadasa and Shinzen denies that this happens. Also, they claim that Daniel needlessly emphasizes dark night aspects as if they are too common, extreme and life-debilitating. Dark night is more of a rare but extreme condition of not being able to integrate spiritual insights. But the knowledges of suffering is a process within insight cycle. It can be super gentle for Samata meditators. Some people experience it for a few moments before getting to equanimity. Daniel seems to teach as if this happens too dramatically for a long time and happens often in a meditator's life. In my experiences, once sufficient equanimity arises, knowledges of suffering are rarely dramatic. And things must be even less dramatic after awakening. So I don't understand why he is so fixated on these negative experiences after equanimity. That creates the wrong expectations for most people. Maybe pure insight path is so dramatic like that but samatha-vipassana tends to have a different process of insight cycle. Especially equanimity is more stable prior to awakening. I can tell you that much.

@PenguinPabloIn my experiences, you need to get to that equanimity shift and stay with these emotions for long periods of time until they disappear to do deep purification. Otherwise, they come back over and over again until you can stay with it and watch it go away. Dark night-like symptoms are really demotivating. I understand you. You need to push through without burning out. It is quite worth it to rewire the emotional circuits. I speak from personal experience. I'm tripping steadily for 4 months straight due to TMI meditation.

@AwakenedSoul444The Mind Illuminated by John Yates, Culadasa. Start reading the book and do the practices. Let me know how it goes

@Buba Yes. I need to do some concentration on the joy and pleasant sensations until the joy becomes stable and effortless. When I wake up, there is an ample amount of joy and happiness. So I don't need to re-create joyful or pleasant sensations too much. But it is unstable because of sleepiness, lack of attentional stability. metacognitive awareness etc. So while I'm drinking coffee, I also stabilize the joy. The crux of the matter is to do some of this awareness of joy while moving and talking to people. So first, I try to slow down movements and maintain the joy while walking. And then I try to do it while talking to someone. If I can manage to all of this, the rest is relatively effortless. Negative states of mind like sadness, anger, anxiety, etc are virtually non-existent after this point. Like I said, even if anxiety would occur, I experience it as 'bouncy excitement' rather than anxiety. Same with sadness. If sadness occurs, it is sweet melancholy rather than depressing sadness. I practice all the time. I can't compartmentalize my life to meditate at this point. If you want to maintain joy and happiness like I'm doing prior to awakening, you need industrial-strength level practice. Maintain the joy all day until you go to sleep. And go deeper with equanimity in formal sits. Maybe add insight practices etc. But the baseline joy cultivation in informal daily life must be a foundation. And this is a powerful practice in and of itself.

Hi @loub. Hope you are well. Let me help you as much as I can. Firstly, what exact technique are you using for concentration? Keep in mind that in a retreat-like setting, too much contracted attention on any object without broader awareness is eventually going to create frustration, agitation and negative emotional sensations. Use stable attention to develop awareness. The type of awareness can be anything. Outer sounds. Outer sight. Whole body awareness. Joy development. Equanimity development. From there you can drop the breath and ask 'Who am I' after stabilizing in high equanimity. So don't spend all your time doing contracted concentration. Always stabilize attention with spacious awareness. If attention gets too restricting, dullness and negative emotions will arise. You want to constantly be aware of that tendency and revert back to equanimity and awareness. 12 hours a day is not easy. To deal with such a schedule, your formal sits must be top tier quality. So, I suggest relaxing both in the formal sit and schedule intensity. You don't want to burn yourself out if too much pressure builds up over time. Don't worry too much about finishing 12 hours. Unbroken practice for 6 hours is more effective than 12 hours of broken and inconsistent practice. Add a lot of walking meditations between formal sits. Do walking meditation slowly whenever sleepiness or agitation gets overwhelming. Once you feel better, get back to the sit. What matters is not the posture but the unbroken practice. In one day, you need to do some amount of samatha and insight practice. I don't know how good you are in either practice but I personally do some samatha practice on joy and breath for a while. Then I do insight practice like self-enquiry until my psyche gets destabilized a little bit. Some deep experiences happen at this point. Then I balance those with jhanic qualities like happiness and joy by smiling. Relax a little bit with walking meditation. And then I continue the sit. All this time, you maintain a technique without interruptions. I hope this helps. Good luck!