Stage 9: Radical Equanimity, No-Self and Deeper Understanding of the Mind-System

[ardacigin]

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,

 

 

Edited July 24, 2020 by ardacigin

[The0Self]

Culadasa, Kenneth Folk, and Rob Burbea (RIP) have the clearest and most effective meditation instructions imo. Glad your practice is really taking-off.

[Mu_]

@ardacigin   Congrats on your progress, lots of juicy insights so far and many surprises ahead I'd imagine.

[Guru Fat Bastard]

7 hours ago, ardacigin said:

5- Everything I've ever believed was false.

Yeah,the experience of this "truth bomb" really shook things up for the "self" construct. Like a Mike Tyson left uppercut from out of nowhere , The construct took a major hit .

[Consilience]

Amazing updates man. Was wondering how you were doing.

Personally I seem to be hovering at a weird intersection of stage 7-8, yet Ive taken a break from TMI, sort of. Recently I had a very powerful intuitive pull to begin working with the do nothing technique, which as best I can tell is the choiceless attention stage 8 practice. I recently had a meditation experience that felt orgasmic for 60 minutes straight, and nearly all of my sessions these days turn into some level of pleasure.

Yet the equanimity and detachment thats building makes me not even care about the pleasure or pain. Even the intention to follow the breath feels like a limit on experience. Just surrendering to being has actually yielded more focus, more introspective awareness, and peripheral awareness than following the breath. After committing to the choiceless attention/do nothing technique, I jumped from stage 5/6 to stage 7/8. It feels kind of off the path of the traditional TMI roadmap but I remember the book it explains not everyone’s meditation path will be exactly the same.

Super happy to hear you’re getting to these deep levels of wisdom. 

Have you had any insight into Love, and what its nature is? 

Edited July 25, 2020 by Consilience

[ardacigin]

9 hours ago, Consilience said:

Recently I had a very powerful intuitive pull to begin working with the do nothing technique, which as best I can tell is the choiceless attention stage 8 practice. I recently had a meditation experience that felt orgasmic for 60 minutes straight, and nearly all of my sessions these days turn into some level of pleasure.

Yes. Do nothing is powerful and can induce high equanimity. Keep it up

 

9 hours ago, Consilience said:

Yet the equanimity and detachment thats building makes me not even care about the pleasure or pain. Even the intention to follow the breath feels like a limit on experience. Just surrendering to being has actually yielded more focus, more introspective awareness, and peripheral awareness than following the breath. After committing to the choiceless attention/do nothing technique, I jumped from stage 5/6 to stage 7/8. It feels kind of off the path of the traditional TMI roadmap but I remember the book it explains not everyone’s meditation path will be exactly the same.

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.

9 hours ago, Consilience said:

Have you had any insight into Love, and what its nature is? 

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

Edited July 25, 2020 by ardacigin

[WaveInTheOcean]

juicy insights, keep it up <3

[ardacigin]

On 25.07.2020 at 7:45 AM, Guru Fat Bastard said:

Yeah,the experience of this "truth bomb" really shook things up for the "self" construct. Like a Mike Tyson left uppercut from out of nowhere , The construct took a major hit .

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.

 

Edited July 26, 2020 by ardacigin

[Display_Name]

@ardacigin Congratulations on your progress. How many jhanas can you do now?

Also, have you ever tried out Fire Kasina?

Technically I'm 3rd Path in all but concentration power (TMI stage 4). Years of nonsecular deconstruction, advaita and some psychedelics  

So I embarked into Theravada and catching up my concentration and jhanic ability a few weeks ago, as a side project.

But I find the breath so immensely boring (not enough clarity yet, I know), I always end up shifting back into resting as emptiness or deconstructive inquiries because it feels much more fruitful, similar to what @Consilience reported. Just focussing on breath definitely feels like a few steps back from that, although shifting into non-dual awareness and becoming the breath, or equalizing the breath with every other sensation, including the sensation of self, can be really good.

But I ran across Ingram's Fire Kasina practice and it's been far more interesting as a concentration practice, so I'm playing around with that now. It's pretty cool already and I only just started.

 

On 7/25/2020 at 0:00 AM, The0Self said:

Culadasa, Kenneth Folk, and Rob Burbea (RIP) have the clearest and most effective meditation instructions imo. Glad your practice is really taking-off.

Culadasa, Folk, Burbea and Ingram. The Four Horsemen of Practical Dharma
 

[ardacigin]

3 hours ago, Display_Name said:

How many jhanas can you do now?

The first 4 jhanas

 

3 hours ago, Display_Name said:

Also, have you ever tried out Fire Kasina?

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.

3 hours ago, Display_Name said:

But I find the breath so immensely boring (not enough clarity yet, I know), I always end up shifting back into resting as emptiness or deconstructive inquiries because it feels much more fruitful, similar to what @Consilience reported. Just focussing on breath definitely feels like a few steps back from that, although shifting into non-dual awareness and becoming the breath, or equalizing the breath with every other sensation, including the sensation of self, can be really good.

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,

Edited July 28, 2020 by ardacigin