Setting Up One Year Off For Self Inquiry

[MiracleMan]

Save Money.  Pay off debt.  Dump girlfriend.  Sell house.  Quit job.  Get ordained or go to retreats.  More retreats.  Do your own retreats.  Profit.  Then realize no profit.

What on earth could possibly go wrong?  Isn't this possibly the most self centered thing I could possibly do?  

[Leo Gura]

That's the paradox of self-transcendence. It requires focusing on yourself.

12 hours ago, MiracleMan said:

Dump girlfriend. 

But this here is a bit heartless. You want to be mindful of how your actions impact other people. Which is not to say you shouldn't end a relationship. Just that you shouldn't be so flippant about it.

Your girlfriend has feelings for you, and you will be breaking here heart. Empathize with her suffering. That is the essence of spirituality.

[MiracleMan]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

That's the paradox of self-transcendence. It requires focusing on yourself.

But this here is a bit heartless. You want to be mindful of how your actions impact other people. Which is not to say you shouldn't end a relationship. Just that you shouldn't be so flippant about it.

Your girlfriend has feelings for you, and you will be breaking here heart. Empathize with her suffering. That is the essence of spirituality.

Yeah, I wouldn't break up with her, hopefully I would get support from her during this time.  

I want the truth, nothing more, nothing less.  You see, Leo, what kind of conundrum this entails, I could very well be deceiving myself:  this "year off" is as dedicated to finding the Truth as it is to running away from a situation I'm resisting.  It seems too convenient.  Life is fucking hard from this point of view, but at least here, in this misery, in this suffering, it's the Truth calling, it's God begging me see that I'm not who I believe myself to be.  I have this conviction, and there is doubt in my mind but not in my heart, not in my guts, not in my belly.

It's ground zero here, a spiritual war zone, with the inescapable physical pain, with depression, with great difficulty waking up in the morning and getting out of bed, with a seeming great weight tying me down, like I'm moving through mud constantly.  And then I ask myself, is the above statement true?  Is this really true or does it just seem so?

There is a struggle with my primary purpose:  do I truly want the Truth, or do i just want to escape pain and suffering?  Are they different goals? Are either truly self centered? 

My practice has been totally derailed but I'm attempting to get back at daily Vipassana routines.

I haven't meditated regularly in probably 6 months, but I had this crazy experience after asking "who am I" for several weeks.  I was doing a bit of breathing meditation before bed, laying on my back.  When I finished and rolled on my side to sleep, with my eyes closed in the darkness, I felt my body expand, I felt a warmth throughout my body, I then felt like i was being dragged along in a flow, like the wake in a river or ocean.  Throughout this entire experience I noticed that my mind had not stopped, it was still hyper active, thoughts and sounds and images just flying a mile a minute it seemed.  I just focused on my breath, I kept feeling "bigger" not like outside of my body, it felt like my body was expanding, like those weird Japanese films where the hero grows 30 feet tall to fight the giant monster attacking the city.  I then felt like i was everywhere in my body, floating above my body, and there was a vibrating quality in this experience, a constant humming or buzzing of my entire body.  I was kind of surprised this occurred, I had always believed that the mind HAD to come to heel, to be silenced to have any sort of experience whatsoever.  This is incorrect.  The mind can be going a thousand miles per second, but it was so peripheral, so outside of my focus.

This experience happened at least 3 more times during night time, during my "before bed" meditation.  I could never induce it, I tried, it just occurs spontaneously.

Some of the other occasions had slightly different sensations.  Other times I would be on my lying on back, head propped upright, and I would feel like I'm being dragged along again.  Then I felt an intense sin wave like pattern going through my body starting at my feet.  Imagine someone taking a towel by the short ends and flapping it up and down to throw the sand off of it, it was like that, very rapidly, up and down, up and down.  I was very excited throughout a lot of these experiences and it didn't diminish them, they ended when they ended, just as they began, spontaneously.  I've had other sensations in sitting meditation where I felt like I was 30 feet tall, just a giant expansion.

Despite these experiences, I've had trouble keeping up a daily practice.  Like I said before, my mind will never be convinced of God, of the fruits of meditation, liberation, any of it, sometimes I think I've "got it" then the doubt surfaces as always.  But I have to start trusting my heart, it's almost bursting, its an overwhelming warmth and pleasant feeling in my solar plexus and gut.  It just fucking knows, I cannot explain it, but my life has been so dictated by my mind for so long, that it's a habit to go with the mind instead of the gut.

I heard a teacher say, if you are sincere about the Truth, really sincere about it, with no interest in getting out of pain or what benefits "you" might receive, it WILL manifest in your life, it will guide you to where you need to be so long as you relentlessly pursue "who am i" and "what is the truth".  It's impossible to forget this pursuit, it's like something flipped on in the background, just something that is constantly questioning the validity of my assumptions surrounding my identity.

 

 

 

Edited March 30, 2018 by MiracleMan

[Space]

On 29/03/2018 at 11:43 PM, MiracleMan said:

Save Money.  Pay off debt.  Dump girlfriend.  Sell house.  Quit job.  Get ordained or go to retreats.  More retreats.  Do your own retreats.  Profit.  Then realize no profit.

What on earth could possibly go wrong?  Isn't this possibly the most self centered thing I could possibly do?  

Start doing self-inquiry now, don't wait until you have a year off to do it. It's very easy and also quite satisfying to imagine yourself taking a year off and pursuing consciousness work full time. But in reality, will you be able to do this? When it comes to sitting down for hours on end, will you be able to do it? Don't underestimate the power of the ego and resistance to this work. I'm not discouraging you from doing it. Quite the opposite in fact. But try to set realistic expectations. 

[YaNanNallari]

If you're this serious I recommend looking into yoga routine Leo recommends. Not that I've tried it, but I'd assume it is very useful

[Ether]

You dont need huge amounts of time to do the work. Just set out 30 mins or 1 hour everyday. Thats enough.

[moon777light]

On 3/30/2018 at 1:03 PM, Leo Gura said:

That's the paradox of self-transcendence. It requires focusing on yourself.

But this here is a bit heartless. You want to be mindful of how your actions impact other people. Which is not to say you shouldn't end a relationship. Just that you shouldn't be so flippant about it.

Your girlfriend has feelings for you, and you will be breaking here heart. Empathize with her suffering. That is the essence of spirituality.

how do we break up with someone without being heartless?

[GrowthPilgrim]

@MiracleMan Are you still planning on doing this?