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Old 21-12-2022, 04:50 AM
Gem Gem is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ThatMan
What about when the "moment" itself is no more, when the sense of time is no more? There will be no such things as unbearable or pleasant, there will only be consciousness, only yourself, pure awareness and this in itself and by itself is pure joy.
If you are asking literally, then this is my reply. If the question is rhetorical, then just ignore the below.

The moment is without a sense of time and there's no duration of experience, but that's still a state of sense consciousness, and not a state which is oblivious all content. Generally speaking, a practitioner will go into 'oblivious states' (which I think people call 'pure consciousness'), but their attention soon returns to dense physicality including hard discomforts and impurities in general.

Pure awareness, I feel, is often misconstrued as a state without content, but I think 'pure awareness' is regardless of content, no content or the nature of content, be it mundane or exquisite.

In the first instance we are tested mostly by hard, dense discomforts, which elicit adverse reactions that incite the avoid/resist volitions that generate misery and perpetuate ego from one moment to the next, thus creating the illusion of an enduring being in time. The idea is to cease reaction, thus volitions, and thus undermine the delusion of the enduring self. At this stage it's unlikely that a practitioner will see the 'one who reacts', but they will start to subdue the reactive tendency that causes their suffering.

It doesn't take long to overcome psychological reaction to physical discomfort, so the practitioner can be still and see quite intense sensations coming and going without being disturbed. Having that improved stability brings on a slightly more difficult emotional phase depending on the severity of ones trauma. At this point one can start to feel some parts of the body becoming light and dynamic while other parts are still dense and blocked up, and other parts still painful, and yet other parts remain dull and hard to feel at all. But the process continues: just watch, don't react with craving or aversions, don't give special preference to particular kinds of feeling, and since old emotions that were once unbearable can now enter conscious awareness without any revolt, no reaction at all, they resolve themselves in your conscious awareness of dissolving blocks and dense areas of the body.

Then the something starts moving and the feelings which used to be solidified are more like vibrations, waves or flows, and rather than the body feeling different in different places like it used to, with some places having little to no feeling, it starts to feel light and vibrant and pretty much the same all over, and that's usually when the big-love starts rising in the heart. We generally consider this to be a risky stage because we tend to become enamored by pleasures and lose our ability for neutral observation. However we can realise a bit of impatience happening in us, with that desire to have a bit more, and thereby continue to be vigilant about maintaining our equanimity. If we don't balance things out properly the next phase (if it happens) can be rough.

When everything speeds up it's hard to keep level-headed. It gets intense and it won't let up, which is rough on anyone, but especially people who don't have stable equanimity.

Awareness with equanimity is pure awareness...

Once the intensity subsides, we might start to have momentary experience, wherein there is no pain, though I wouldn't say it isn't pleasurable. It's very pleasant, but I don't know if we can live a life there, or, do we have to resume a denser level to survive in the physical. I don't know that answer. I know that I have always come back to hard physical with its density and pain, and I think it is because the purification is not complete.

Here it becomes a more obscure part of the process, but I'm going to say there is an awakening when you see that 'the one that reacts' is 'not me' - and I am the one aware. The one aware is free, so not preoccupied with purification in the sense that it is the only thing to do, but we understand that we don't make that happen... though we can be deliberate about it... which sounds paradoxical... but 'just observe' and let dhamma do the rest.

I think the advanced stage is purely balance. You are conscious of a very subtle and delicate tipping point that is unbalanced by even the slightest psychological disturbance.. and the stability of that fulcrum is the essence of equanimity. The middle way.

On a side note, There's what I call 'the great outpouring' - the source of bliss - but that's not pertinent or related to this process as if that's the end game. That's more like you just the way you you are now. From that perspective, which is this one, I get the sense that the purification removes the obstacles and opens the channel for the love of the universe to flow from the great outpouring through the life-form to manifest in every expression of our lives - but that's only the sense I have. I'm not saying it's true.
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Last edited by Gem : 22-12-2022 at 01:05 AM.
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