Equanimity: Stage 9 TMI Practice Strategy- 4rth Jhana

[ardacigin]

Hello everyone! As I've been meditating with diligence these days, I've developed a systematic process of transition that will enable the meditator to develop their mindfulness skills from stage 7-8 to stage 9 in TMI.

Now, as some of you know, I've close to effortless access to meditative joy and stable happiness in my life from waking up to going to bed. To attempt practicing stage 9 level of TMI mastery, something close to 'fully developed' meditative joy is VERY helpful. This facilitates the 4rth jhana levels of equanimity we must develop in stage 9.

You don't have to pervade the joy into your life as I've done. But you must develop and systematically cultivate subtle-low levels of joy and happiness here and there with some amount of stability. Meditative joy can be subtle but it can't be too unpredictable and too inconsistent. If it is, practice more the pleasure jhana described in TMI stage 7.

Now, here are a few skills you already need to be pretty good at before attempting what I'm explaining here.

- Stable Attention + Awareness: You need to have the skill to sustain attention to the breath sensations at the tip of the nose meanwhile the awareness includes the joy, body and mental reactions. In other words, the breath is primary and everything else is secondary.

In reverse, you also need the skill to sustain attention on meditative joy, body or mental reactions meanwhile the awareness includes breath sensations. In other words, meditative joy, metacognitive awareness and body is primary and the breath is secondary.

- Some level of experience in SDS sits: If you can do 60-90 mins long SDS sits with relative equanimity, you can attempt this provided your stable attention and awareness skills are at the level I'm talking about above. The equanimity can be below average and there can be A LOT of pain at the end of SDS sits. That is totally fine. In fact, that is why we are moving towards stage 9. The equanimity gets to extremely profound levels due to the physical and mental pacification of the senses.

That is it.

What I'm going to be explaining here can also be thought of as deep 3rd and 4rth jhana levels of joy and equanimity with powerful mindfulness + effortlessly stable attention and tranquility (all combined at the same time) as TMI advise.

The end result will be physical pliancy and mental pliancy. This will further develop internal meditative joy but most importantly profound equanimity which will give rise to insights of suffering, emptiness, impermanence and no-self.

After you have started to experience low-mid levels of meditative joy with stability, get familiar with this. Spend however days, weeks or months you need until the craving you have towards this intrinsic pleasure is reduced to a degree where you are fine letting go of this profound stable happiness and focusing back on narrow meditation objects like the breath at the tip of the nose.

If you have been doing open awareness practices + meditative joy with open eyes, drop them temporarily. If you want to get to stage 9 equanimity, we are going to change our approach.

We'll do our sits closed eyes as much as we can and our attention and awareness will alternate between the narrow sensations of the breath and the wide open sensations of the whole body + meditative joy in a 90-120 mins SDS sit. 

You'll also be doing all this cross-legged. So if you've been meditating on a chair to facilitate meditative joy, drop that. Again, don't start stage 8 practices towards stage 9 unless you are already familiar with the wonderful meditative joy. 

Technique Explanation:

The Level of Meditative Joy: Do not expect mid-high levels of stable joy and happiness in these sorts of formal sessions. Be content with subtle-low levels of meditative joy because the energy of the mind will be focused more on the breath, equanimity development, and the whole body awareness.

There simply isn't enough conscious bandwidth to sustain crazy levels of meditative joy you are used to experiencing in daily life in a relatively long 2 hour SDS sessions when the attention carefully examines the breath while awareness needs to include both the body and analyze the equanimity levels in real time.

There are only 2 obligations regarding meditative joy:

1- Slight smile: You will slightly smile (without creating tension) because this will facilitate subtle levels of meditative joy and happiness when pain starts to arise in a 2 hours SDS. You have to always smile, however subtle. Depending on how stable the joy is, you can emphasize or de-emphasize the smile as needed. At this point, you need to get comfortable smiling and looking for the joy in meditation. 

2- Subtle levels of meditative joy: You can't emotionally flatline and dive down into drowsiness, dullness, lack of sensory clarity and sleepiness. The antidote to all these is meditative joy and all you need is to maintain subtle levels of joy and happiness. So don't feel pressured to increase joy to high levels. But you must have enough skills to maintain in subtle but perceptible levels.

SDS Movement Restriction: In a cross-legged posture, your only key restriction will be legs. You are allowed to slowly move the upper body occasionally (not always) depending on your level of pain. But you can almost never break the cross-legged posture. 

The reason is that, while developing physical pliancy, you are going to experience RADICAL reductions in pain sensations in an SDS sit. The most noticeable will be the elimination of leg pain.

After sitting cross-legged without high physical pliancy for 90 mins, your legs will be full of unbearable physical pain. That will create a lot of aversion and you'll barely continue the sit while grinding your teeth.

That is what a pre-stage 7-8 meditator feels before developing physical pliancy. So to get to stage 9 equanimity, you need to pacify the senses so that the actual pain sensations in the legs go WAY down and the equanimity towards existing pain sensations go WAY up.

Attention and Awareness: You'll do the entire session closed eyes. 

At the first 30 mins, get to effortlessness in TMI stage 7 in the following manner:

- Effortlessly Stable Attention is on the breath at the nose meanwhile, subtle meditative joy + body awareness is covered by awareness at the same time.

Once you've stabilized the breath effortlessly with high levels of sensory, do the opposite

- Effortlessly stabilize attention on meditative joy + body awareness meanwhile breath is covered by awareness in the background.

Don't forget to adjust meditative joy accordingly with smiling. Be content with subtle levels of meditative joy.

At this point, you'll be around 60 mins mark. Continue going back and forth between breath narrow attention and open body awareness. But this time add the contentment element going forward because at this point physical pain might usually get noticeable.

Try to let go of the breath and put the attention more to the meditative joy and equanimity. But still, hold on to breath sensations in awareness with vividness.

Then the next step is adding open body awareness more.

Basically, let the awareness and attention experience 4 different elements in this sequence.  The left side is attention and the right side is awareness.

Attention /// Awareness

1- Breath + Meditative joy

2- Meditative Joy + Breath

3- Breath + Meditative Joy + Equanimity and Contentment 

4- Breath + Meditative Joy + Equanimity and Contentment + Whole Body Awareness

As long as you do this transition process with the tips I've recommended, you'll start to experience deeper physical pliancy and profound equanimity going towards stage 9 TMI mastery.

Practice well  

 

[Raptorsin7]

Very cool. I like your posts about using meditation for joy and happiness, that is what i'm trying to do right now with my meditation. I will keep following you, and i want to try these techniques. Thanks (:

[ardacigin]

19 hours ago, Raptorsin7 said:

Very cool. I like your posts about using meditation for joy and happiness, that is what i'm trying to do right now with my meditation. I will keep following you, and i want to try these techniques. Thanks (:

You are welcome! Keep going and be consistent. Emotional mastery is very important.

[Consilience]

Thank you for this. Your posts are always uber helpful, as a fellow TMI practitioner. Unfortunately Im still battling subtle distractions in stage 6 so Ill have to revisit this post again in the future once my mind is more unified... But still helpful nonetheless.

Interestingly, I started incorporating the smile with my sits and Ive already experienced a noticeable increase in joy, happiness, and pleasure. Joy has been the slowest and most subtle result of the smile, but it’s funny how effective such a small change has made. The good news about the subtle distractions is that even though they continue to be projected into consciousness, the speed at which attention autocorrects itself back to the meditation object continues to increase. Hopefully Ill be able to start cultivating effortlessness soon. 

[ardacigin]

1 hour ago, Consilience said:

Thank you for this. Your posts are always uber helpful, as a fellow TMI practitioner. Unfortunately Im still battling subtle distractions in stage 6 so Ill have to revisit this post again in the future once my mind is more unified... But still helpful nonetheless.

Interestingly, I started incorporating the smile with my sits and Ive already experienced a noticeable increase in joy, happiness, and pleasure. Joy has been the slowest and most subtle result of the smile, but it’s funny how effective such a small change has made. The good news about the subtle distractions is that even though they continue to be projected into consciousness, the speed at which attention autocorrects itself back to the meditation object continues to increase. Hopefully Ill be able to start cultivating effortlessness soon. 

That is great. Exactly what I've should have done. I wish I've learned how to smile in meditation and also in daily life looking for the joy and equanimity. 

Recently, I've been experimenting more with meditative joy and the reason I've found it so profound was not the pleasure itself. I've gotten used to experiencing meditative joy with solid levels of equanimity. That equanimity component was making the whole experience profound and more stable.

I've tried to drop equanimity and just focus on meditative joy and the mindfulness collapses much faster. The joy is challenging to access AND maintain at the same time.

It is great that you are seeing some effects of smiling. Subtle is significant. 

Stage 6 is fairly frustrating. Subtle dullness is not a show stopper but Subtle distractions are pretty important. Don't be paranoid about it but try to relax into the present moment with diligence whenever you are aware that the mind goes back and forth between distractions. 

As I've mentioned before, my development towards stage 7-8 occured in a state of heavy dullness (not even subtle) but diligent TMI attentional training in a 4 hour session without interruptions. Subtle distractions were mostly overcome. I've gotten to the effortlessness of stage 7 with a lot of dullness and maintained that for the entirety of those 4 hours. Even if this is not ideal, it still did the trick. On that night, I've started accessing meditative joy on demand.

So keep building the attention with the breath. I've used extrospective awareness of sounds mostly in stage 6.

Let me know your practice goes

 

 

 

Edited November 29, 2019 by ardacigin