Culadasa: 5 Insights that leads to Awakening - Leo, what are your thoughts?

[ValiantSalvatore]

As a side note annica or impermanence helps to move from stage 7 to 8. This is also explained in the mind illuminated. 

[abrakamowse]

I found the book free at archive.org 

It must be in public domain. Cool. 

I'm reading it.

[Esoteric]

@abrakamowse How have I missed this site? This is a great resource

[abrakamowse]

@Esoteric  I always search there, Gutenberg library is also a great site.  They search for books that are free or that are already in public domain, they have movies too I think, all in public domain. So it is safe to download anything from there.

https://archive.org/

I always search for old books that I need because they can have it for sure, if it is older than 70 years (I am not sure but is close to that) they become "public domain". No one owns the rights and anyone can share them.

There's another one called Project Gutenberg , very cool too... not as extensive as archive.org , more focused on books, but is great too.

https://www.gutenberg.org/

Edited August 3, 2019 by abrakamowse

[ardacigin]

19 hours ago, Esoteric said:

@ardacigin Hey. I've started reading Culadasa's book. Very good so far. One of those books you wished you read at the beginning of your path.

I am going HARD on concentration right now. I also mix in Leo's concentration video. So I came up with the idea of using a vibration wrist clock. So you can set the timer for how many minutes you can focus and increase when you have mastered your set time. So you can use it out in public and work (and at home where there are no distractions of course) and when it's done it just vibrates on your arm without drawing attention. I recommend this for people. It makes it a lot of fun. I see great improvements already and you get used to being centered even in chaotic environments.

That is great. I'm happy for you. I'm re-reading it myself these days to brush up on the fundamentals.

Remember that to develop stable attention properly, you also need to expand the awareness as well. If you try to practice exclusive attention pre-stage 6, you'll fail and instead experience dullness and distractions. Always add in the awareness component (like body noting, scanning, gone technique etc.) while maintaining bright and stable concentration at the tip of nose.

First, start with stable attention and when the mind starts to create dullness and distractions, start expanding introspective and extrospective awareness. 

Good luck  

 

[Aakash]

@ardacigin O M G, What you just said there was brilliant. ? your telling me there’s even more gems like that in this guy’s book! Amazing 

[ardacigin]

19 hours ago, ValiantSalvatore said:

As a side note annica or impermanence helps to move from stage 7 to 8. This is also explained in the mind illuminated. 

Yes but remember how the adept stages work at a fundamental level. They are no longer samadhi practices. One practice can help but it may not be enough.

Culadasa might give the impression that advanced stages don't require that much effort so it is much faster to progress compared to the beginning stages time-wise. It makes sense on paper but this is not true. It is a common misconception.

The effort one puts in to progress after chapter 7 gets lower and lower. That is true and that is because you let the effortless attention develop and become the default operating system. Surrender and non-striving is the name of the game in advanced practice. 

But it takes A LOT of time to re-program the body for stage 7-8-9-10 type of work. As Culadasa mentioned in an interview, A mature stage 8-9 practitioner can do 3-4 hour sits consistently with little to no suffering.  Like daily 3-4 hour sessions. That is some serious mastery in my eyes.

 I can do 2 hour SDS sits. I can also deal with a lot of pain and suffering but I've never attempted a 3-4 hour sit. My equanimity levels are not that high. I still need more work in mental and physical pliancy. My nervous system can't quite work with pain on that level for 3-4 hours. Maybe I can do it on a chair if I really focus.

And lets not forget that at least 1 insight has to be experienced until this point.

These insight experiences are unpredictable and can happen in weird ways. So it takes even more time to understand and experience these insights.

Culadasa also says that even though it is theoretically possible to go all the way up to stage 10 and still not experience any deep insight experience, in practice, most meditators will have at least 1 insight experience sometime in stage 6,7 or 8. Definitely before stage 9.

So if someone claims to solidly attain stage 8-9 and still saying that he didn't have any sort of transitory awakening experience, (or any deep experience like Arising and Passing Away or temporary cessation), then I'd be suspicious. He probably peaked into stage 8-9 and then went back to an early stage as his baseline.

The first stages are actually faster to go through compared to adept stages. Even though you exert more effort, at least the goals are like a to do list. In stage 7 and beyond, everything turns into mastery of the existing skills + insight practice and as a consequence, the nervous system needs even more time and practice to handle the mastery requirements. 

So it is a mistake to think it is so easy to progress from stage 7 to 8 by doing only one or two practice. That also applies to stage 9 to 10. One's progress will get slower post-stage 6-7.

These adept stages are all very deep attainments and you can spend a year or two for each stage before moving on. And if you did that, you'd have awakening experiences on a consistent basis. And that tends to translate into 7-10  years of diligent practice as Culadasa says in his book. That is a good time frame to expect significant results and transformation. If one doesn't experience these, then they don't do the TMI techniques properly. 

On that level, the bare minimum would be consistent but transient insight experiences and that is way more than what your average meditator experiences after 20-30 years of practice. That is why I recommend Culadasa so much. His methods shave off decades of spiritual anguish with clear skill based goals.

 

 

 

 

Edited August 3, 2019 by ardacigin

[ardacigin]

23 minutes ago, Aakash said:

@ardacigin O M G, What you just said there was brilliant. ? your telling me there’s even more gems like that in this guy’s book! Amazing 

Yes, Culadasa talks about noting, labelling and body scanning but not the Shinzen Young's 'Gone' Technique. I've added that myself. He still has implicit instructions like 'Attend to the beginning, middle and 'end' of breath sensations'. In that instruction, he implicitly talks about the gone technique by focusing on the ending of the breath cycle. So his book does have a lot of amazing techniques. And all of these techniques revolve around the breath mastery. They all interlink because of this centralization.

[Aakash]

@ardacigin yeah they do, in my experience. Breathing can not be separated to concentration. 

Biologically, breathing has to be the most important part of the whole system. Because it can cater for any other imbalances in focus I.e like neurotransmitter or brain chemistry. It can be over powered simply by breathing. 

Once breathing is taken care of then proper focus and samadhi states can take place. This is because concentration is done by god wanting to be conscious through intent of “something”. So this is the gone part. It’s leaving the physical body and going in-wards into consciousness, “gone” but it’s tricky for people to get because they haven’t expanded their awareness and it still relies for them in their brain. Instead of being all around them . Which then needs to be labelled “god” or “awareness” for distinction until it’s corrected as “source” 

I was amazed because of the accuracy of how you denoted it. Will defo have to give this a read sometime in my life. 

[abrakamowse]

@Aakash You can find it free in archive.org. It seems that Culadasa has put the book in "open source" that's free to read. I think he is a real master who wants his teachings to be read for everyone. Not all the masters do that. Here you have the link to the book.

https://archive.org/details/TheMindIlluminatedByCuladasaJohnYatesPh.D.MatthewImmergutJeremyGraves2017

[Aakash]

@abrakamowse thanks so much bro! Much appreciated 

[abrakamowse]

@Aakash ???

[ValiantSalvatore]

@ardacigin I do want to re-listen to the book I just bought a bunch of books, so I bought the audio version and dove into some articles as well as YouTube videos and interviews. I listened to it two times so far, yet with gaps. It is also not spoken by Culadasa, so I am not as moved emotionally, so I am not able to recall as much as I want to. 
 

48 minutes ago, ardacigin said:

The effort one puts in to progress after chapter 7 gets lower and lower. That is true and that is because you let the effortless attention develop and become the default operating system. Surrender and non-striving is the name of the game in advanced practice. 

This is very good to know Shinzen gives a similar advice I am not sure still why he is a materalist his audiobook seem to speak a different tone, so I am a bit doubtful of the critique, and as well as how serious the advice will be taken. He gives the advice that focusing on impermanence develops concentration I was assuming I lack this skill, but I am doing okay, I did not train this, by far my best skill is sensory clarity, then equanmity because I drop into it spontaneously often, once a week or every two weeks, some deeper state which I can't maintain. I did receive conflicting advice on this, Shinzen said you dropped deep, because I specifically said I was not sleepy and he asked, the Zen master I meet said, are you sure you were not sleepy. What I wanted to say / share is that focusing on impermanence can develop concentration and will be helpful for stage 8, reading Wilber today this also would be the subtle stage, or a "white light" he literally describes this as this, and it is a state-stage in wilber language. Other descriptions I heard are illumination jhana etc. But I am unsure on this.
 

48 minutes ago, ardacigin said:

But it takes A LOT of time to re-program the body for stage 7-8-9-10 type of work. As Culadasa mentioned in an interview, A mature stage 8-9 practitioner can do 3-4 hour sits consistently with little to no suffering.  Like daily 3-4 hour sessions. That is some serious mastery in my eyes.

I only sat once for that long I tried a weekend retreat but I failed I want to stretch myself first so I can sit in a lotus than it will be easier, I can do it in a chair, but I only did it twice, exactly one time 1h and 53minutes and once longer in a retreat, so I potentially sat with moving because my back hurts at one point and that is the point where the lotus becomes more comfortable than a chair for 3-4h. Shinzens programm run 1h30, 1h break 1h30 then some break and again the same segements of allocated time described above. 

I don't think it is that difficult but I am aware of the setbacks, for me crying and intense emotions, the sitting is less of a problem the pain is okay, I am not very well with that but I trained with the pain processing algorithm of shinzen to deal with that specifically, but at one point my brain literally burns and I take a break, it does not feel healthy. 

48 minutes ago, ardacigin said:

I can do 2 hour SDS sits. I can also deal with a lot of pain and suffering but I've never attempted a 3-4 hour sit. My nervous system can't quite work with pain with skill on that level. And lets not forget that at least 1 insight has to be experienced until this point.

I did not know that but I am a bit confused with the word insight, I am not that knowledgable about meditation as you, especially not with Culadasa since I've known him only since you introduced him, also thank you for that ! I did have a kriya experience where my nervous system was involved so I can relate a lot there. 
 

48 minutes ago, ardacigin said:

The first stages are actually faster to go through compared to adept stages. Even though you exert more effort, at least the goals are like a to do list. In stage 7 and beyond, everything turns into mastery of the existing skills + insight practice and as a consequence, the nervous system needs even more time and practice to handle the mastery requirements. 

That is very good to know I feel so much pain around the plexus even with the kriya experience (which cleansed it) where the whole plexus and I am saying that in the literal definition of the word moved up and down, intensly releasing emotions, I looked into it. The vagus nerve is also involved which reaches into the brain and IRRC releases hormons such as serotonin etc or transports them there. So, it's no wonder that I feel a lot of stirring around my brain stem. It is comforting to know that the nervous system needs some time to handle that let alone that some says that the nervous system is involved makes me happy, that someone took the time to go to such depth and ask why. etc

I will attend a weekend retreat with shinzen focusing 4h on rest I hope this will give me some insights into no-self or illumination jhanas aka white light. 

Also, I can't focus very well on my breathing I never tried the technique for long besides two or three weeks at the very beginning, I never developed much concentration therefore it is still my weakest skill, yet I assume I am training it with focusing on impermanence a lot, and with longer sits. Also, I don't feel my breath a lot because a scar contorts my body, I can therefore but focus very well on the expansion and contraction but it does become painful from time to time. So, I am mainly looking for princples and commonalities since breath techniques are uncomfortable for me and I am a bit biased against them, because of my scar. It feels very odd, I could puke sometimes, or have an orgasm that is the best I can describe it. 

I also do notice naturally through shinzens techniques advice given in the mind illuminated for instance around the 6 or 7 stage the natural jerking movement of the breath, this mostly occurs for me around the solar plexus. I wondered why this happend last year ago or so but forgot. 

Anyway, that is about it. I'll hope the retreat will bear some more fruits. I am quite sure I am around stage 7 low to mid, with insights into stage 8 illumination jhanas (pleasure) I could be wrong I do have these for about half a year or 8 months or so, but I am lacking most likely concentration. I trained this for sometime but apparently not deep and well enough or long enough. (2-3 months iirc) 

There is a lot of crying currently with old wounds and thoughts which normally don't show up showing up, I do hope this is a good sign. 


Also everything that is undulating, vibrating, changing is impermanence, the speed of internal talk, the vibration of my laptop, the sound of the birds, cars vibrating by, emotions, etc. Or the slowing down of something and fading away till "gone" occures. Also focusing on rest will evoke I assume! pleasure jhanas which are associated with impermanence vibrations etc. So, potentially this helps. 







 

Edited August 3, 2019 by ValiantSalvatore

[Esoteric]

@abrakamowse Cool, thanks

[Esoteric]

10 hours ago, ardacigin said:

That is great. I'm happy for you. I'm re-reading it myself these days to brush up on the fundamentals.

Remember that to develop stable attention properly, you also need to expand the awareness as well. If you try to practice exclusive attention pre-stage 6, you'll fail and instead experience dullness and distractions. Always add in the awareness component (like body noting, scanning, gone technique etc.) while maintaining bright and stable concentration at the tip of nose.

First, start with stable attention and when the mind starts to create dullness and distractions, start expanding introspective and extrospective awareness. 

Good luck  

 

Thanks! I have done a fair bit of scanning due to my Goenka retreats so that will probably be my go to technique. I am early in the book so I guess more will make sense when I go deeper in it. But it raises the question, why divide your attention like that? Isn't the goal to reach one-pointed concentration, so why divide it using more than one technique? To keep the mind busier? Also what do you mean with introspective and extrospective awareness?

[abrakamowse]

47 minutes ago, Esoteric said:

@abrakamowse Cool, thanks

You are welcome!

[ardacigin]

6 hours ago, Esoteric said:

Thanks! I have done a fair bit of scanning due to my Goenka retreats so that will probably be my go to technique. I am early in the book so I guess more will make sense when I go deeper in it. But it raises the question, why divide your attention like that? Isn't the goal to reach one-pointed concentration, so why divide it using more than one technique? To keep the mind busier? Also what do you mean with introspective and extrospective awareness?

No. That is straight out false. It is a common misconception. The goal of the teaching is not to reach one-pointed concentration. That is a dead end. Stable attention and its development is a tool for awareness development. The advanced stages are more about awareness based practices than attention. The point is to develop strong (sensorily clear) metacognitive, introspective and extrospective awareness using stable attention and reach a state of mental proficiency capable of experiencing permanent insights and awakenings. 

You don't divide your attention. Attention and awareness are different processes in sensory experience until they fuse into each other in stage 9-10. Until then, you will subjectively experience attention and awareness as separate processes. And they actually have neuroscientific reasons as to make this distinction let alone the meditation mastery this understanding brings.

Introspective awareness is inner awareness of mental talk, sights, memories, intentions, emotions, and feelings. Extrospective awareness is outer awareness of sights, sounds and touch. 

You use various techniques targeted at different things in TMI to improve the conscious power of both attention and awareness so that mindfulness gets deeper and deeper as you master each stage.

There is a reason why a beginner meditator sits down to focus on the present moment and experiences little to no significant and deep experiences. When someone who is awake like Eckhart Tolle tells you to focus on the present moment, they are actually applying mindfulness at a MUCH deeper level than a newbie meditator. That is because the conscious power of attention and awareness in awake people are significantly heightened. They straight on experience psychedelic-like states effortlessly. 

It is like the technical scale mastery of Mozart - Beethoven compared to the 'musician' who has started taking piano lessons 6 months ago. They both know the scales. But they can't apply them at the same depth and skill. 

 

 

Edited August 4, 2019 by ardacigin

[Esoteric]

2 hours ago, ardacigin said:

No. That is straight out false. It is a common misconception. The goal of the teaching is not to reach one-pointed concentration. That is a dead end. Stable attention and its development is a tool for awareness development. The advanced stages are more about awareness based practices than attention. The point is to develop strong (sensorily clear) metacognitive, introspective and extrospective awareness using stable attention and reach a state of mental proficiency capable of experiencing permanent insights and awakenings. 

You don't divide your attention. Attention and awareness are different processes in sensory experience until they fuse into each other in stage 9-10. Until then, you will subjectively experience attention and awareness as separate processes. And they actually have neuroscientific reasons as to make this distinction let alone the meditation mastery this understanding brings.

Introspective awareness is inner awareness of mental talk, sights, memories, intentions, emotions, and feelings. Extrospective awareness is outer awareness of sights, sounds and touch. 

You use various techniques targeted at different things in TMI to improve the conscious power of both attention and awareness so that mindfulness gets deeper and deeper as you master each stage.

There is a reason why a beginner meditator sits down to focus on the present moment and experiences little to no significant and deep experiences. When someone who is awake like Eckhart Tolle tells you to focus on the present moment, they are actually applying mindfulness at a MUCH deeper level than a newbie meditator. That is because the conscious power of attention and awareness in awake people are significantly heightened. They straight on experience psychedelic-like states effortlessly. 

It is like the technical scale mastery of Mozart - Beethoven compared to the 'musician' who has started taking piano lessons 6 months ago. They both know the scales. But they can't apply them at the same depth and skill. 

 

 

Thanks, very interesting stuff! I will dive deeper into the book.

[abrakamowse]

Thanks @ardacigin for this post. Really Culadasa is so good at explaining the "steps" to enlightenment. I am reading his book and is really very valuable. Thanks again!