Meditation as it is

[JustBe]

@Gem.

In this way of understanding everything you experience, it would pay to be aware it’s all temporary, that should be the first thing people should learn when starting out.

Love and bliss included.

I’ve seen people dancing in the bliss state, all the while I can feel it as not integrated into balance.

I don’t think you can know this unless you’re brought back down to reality in some way.

In my case I had a very logic minded brother who was concerned for me and told me this, very directly. It hit my like a ton of bricks as ‘truth’ and consequently I dropped fast out of it.

I did remain there for some time to tend to things outside of me and inside of me, so it served me well. It gave me a bigger perspective of reality plus I was able to end my religious brainwashing and fears in that. Probably also the biggest marker was letting go of some stuff that was very difficult to let go of.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by JustBe

@Gem.

It would pay to be aware it’s all temporary, that should be the first thing people should learn when starting out. Love and bliss included. Integrated into balance. logic minded brother who was concerned for me and told me this, very directly. It hit my like a ton of bricks as ‘truth’ and consequently I dropped fast out of it.

I wasn't at all sure about where to start out, so I did a post about life circumstances and seeing if it's possible to improve how things are in terms of aligning social life to conditions that are more conducive to a spiritual life.

Even if that pre-meditation preparation is the best step for someone, knowing things change makes you better able to cope with the changes you think are worth making. Often we get stuck and maybe even overly secure with the way things are, so making a positive change is like the fear of losing the unwholesome situation one is currently secure in. Agree, facing the truth that everything is always changing can free you up in a positive way that allows and enables a improvement in conditions, both external and internal.

With my approach, the early period where it's not necessarily pleasant takes advantage of discomfort to train being at peace inside whilst pain is in body. Later on when experience lightens up and there's more pleasure you have already learned the 'observational mindset' and can remain in that 'just observe' zone. The early part is actually a bit easier because you are so fully aware of how adverse reactions relate to unpleasant feelings. It's very obvious. In later part it's much subtler, it's more insidious, because you get a bit intoxicated with things and don't even notice the craven tendencies. The ego can go into overdrive and say 'I'm doing so good, see how spiritual I'm becoming' etc. Hence I think it's great if we start out on the right foot to understand 'observation' and avoid getting tripped up down the track.

It usually gets missed because people think meditation is pleasure, (but life is pleasure and pain); then when they experience discomfort, displeasure, they think they can't meditate like that. Its actually not the unpleasantness that's killing the vibe. It's the adverse reactivity agitating the mind so much you lose the plot. If you can remain still minded, discomforts of the body won't agitate you.

Some the 'rest in awareness' types will think we 'drive through the pain', but actually, life comes with pain and the way you make peace with it is fundamentally optional. I say 'fundamentally' because it's not just a choice. People have their own amounts of how much a koala can bear. When the novice sees the adepts up front of the hall, motionless, peaceful, one might assume they are experiencing a lot of pleasure. The reality is they are going through the waves of pleasure and pain just like everyone else, and the only difference between the novice and the adept is the adept remains unperturbed and sees change as being equal in any case. It's more probable the adepts experience greater extremes of both beyond the coping ability of a novice, because they can remain quiet and aware internally at extremes of experience that would drive a novice mad.

That's why when starting to 'just observe' nature tends to take you an extreme that is your personal limitation. That could be pain or pleasure, but even when pleasure like bliss gets too much it can be more than a koala can bear. It doesn't actually make much sense to imagine pleasure and pain in separate categories because it's one and the same flow of change in a sea that never stays the same.

In my case I was fine with love coming up through me and had no attachments, but another thing showed me how pleasure is the literally the same as pain. I had an energy flow which was so so nice, until it turned up to 11. It wouldn't let up and I could barely cope with it. I just wished it would stop. The same thing was pleasure and also unbearable. I knew my art so I did my best to remain even minded and it all worked out fine because I learned the way of peaceful observation in my early training with discomfort. It's a hard skill to muster, but as far as possible regard whatever feelings just the same. Just as it is.

Be open to change and understand the truth of impermanence, for sure. Nothing can possibly last.

[Gem]

Because I do some hard training everyday and prefer manual labour to indoor work, I experience a lot of discomfort - willingly. I know other people with physical conditions that come with a lot of pain which is not self-imposed. This is why I look across the spectrum of feelings rather than just elating the higher pleasures of spiritual states. Just keepin' it real.

Since pain comes with a stronger reaction, when you read what I write it sounds like I bang on about discomfort because that part of what I say has a greater psychological impact, but the reality is almost everything I talk about covers both pleasure and discomfort. It's just that discomfort is more associated with dislike and that's how the external experience disturbs you internqally

Having done meditation a continuous practice, I've watched as different kinds of feelings come and go, so from my perspective there is continuum of change and at any one time 'this is what it's like'.

During training I might have to do 15 reps. It starts to hurt on rep 8 and my mind is like, OMG there's 7 more of these! The last rep is more like searing pain, but I'm trained to be accustomed to it. I accept it is part and parcel of how I live my life, and it is necessary for the benefits I gain.

My labour is also uncomfortable because the weather gets hot and it's strenuous, which most would regard as displeasure, but it is the process of creating beautiful landscapes. Even a mother knows how much it hurts to create something you really care about, and if we really want value in the external life, there's a painful process of creating it.

It might not be a great analogy for an office worker with a sedentary lifestyle because such folk don't experience significant discomfort on a regular daily basis, but I think it's easy to imagine the picture.

I'm sorry I'm not reaching to the highlights of spirituality, but I find I'm more interested in the 'path' than the outcome. It's because I believe that enlightenment is you as you are now, including emotional blocks, impurities, tendencies and what have you, and enlightenment isn't a special person you might hope to one day become.

On that basis, there's the truth of your presence that's here right now, and there's the truth of what this current experience is like. I can only advocate looking into the truth to gain a deeper insight into it.

As regular people we are going find things we don't like about ourselves, emotional baggage, self-destructive tendencies, temper and similar hard truths. These sorts of things are also manifest physically and can be noticed as feelings in the body. Hencewhy while sitting upright and meditating deliberately, if it's going swimmingly, everything's fine, but you probably at times notice some discomfort you don't like and the way you react to it with aversion. It's manifestation or LOA or whatever you want to call it, but it works both ways as mind creates matter while matter creates mind.

Because of this, whereas it's grand to focus on any sort of object in meditation, focusing on what things feel like brings attention to the mind/body interface where suffering is created.

I said all that because it is the reason behind 'how to practice'. It's an understanding that you have to self-determine your approach. It's the difference between doing what you read about or were told to do and discerning for yourself based on your own understanding.

[Gem]

I suppose it's obsessive to do my second post on the same day.

You open the meditation thread and think it's something you do. Usually it is an activity because the teacher says do this or that, breathe deeply, repeat a mantra, imagine prana etc. I've been all over the internet and every place you go, that's what you get. From this standpoint, based on that assumption, we get the usual sayings like, 'whatever works for you','different things work for better people', 'the master gave different meditations based on the individual seeker' and so on.

I've come across all that in the past, but I'm of the view that nature works in the same way for everyone. For example, there is a particular way people generate their own suffering. Everyone does that the same way. Or, we might say there's kamma and that's true for everyone.

What I mean is it has nothing to do with anything you do and everything to do with nature's way..

From the outset the whole argument is flawed because it's about something you do. It doesn't make sense because this is about about not doing the things you've been doing all this time, like avoiding, resisting, craving, clinging and pursuing; and instead; just stopping to look.

Don't do anything. Just be aware of what's happening and see what happens next.

'Just observe'. See how nature does it.

From that standpoint, it makes no sense to say there's different paths for different people. That can and does make sense regarding the things people do, but it makes no sense when you stop, remain aware, and leave it all to nature.

[Unseeking Seeker]

Originally Posted by Gem

Don't do anything, just be aware of what's happening and see what happens next.

'Just observe' ~ See how nature does it.

From that standpoint, it makes no sense to say there's different paths for different people; that can and does make sense regarding the things people do, but it makes no sense when you stop, remain aware, and leave it all to nature.

That’s it!

[JustBe]

Originally Posted by Gem

Whatever happens is opportunity to strengthen your ability for neutral awareness - no matter what it is that happens.

Yes that’s the key, as I see it.

And if we look at this from a real life practice, you develop a strength that supports how you engage with the world around you. Non reactive and neutral presence in the face of everyday life where things activate you, not so favourably.

[JustBe]

Originally Posted by Gem

I
From that standpoint, it makes no sense to say there's different paths for different people. That can and does make sense regarding the things people do, but it makes no sense when you stop, remain aware, and leave it all to nature.

As I see it all paths lead you back to you anyway, so this is sound advice.

I think people who are starting out as spiritual seekers, without the awareness why they are seeking initially, would also do well to understand they are seeking themselves, rather than the ‘experience’ itself.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by JustBe

As I see it all paths lead you back to you anyway, so this is sound advice. I think people who are starting out as spiritual seekers, without the awareness why they are seeking initially, would also do well to understand they are seeking themselves, rather than the ‘experience’ itself.

It's not against all the practices which are different strokes for different folks, as they have their own purposes and benefits, but I remember Ramana saying something like, all that will end in 'self inquiry' (that's what he calls his approach) so why waste time with other practices when you can start self inquiry right now. I agree with Ramana. His approach seems excellent.

The way I look at an approach is the full spectrum of body/mind/spirit. Even though self-inquiry is the absolute bomb, it ignores the body. The masters of self inquiry seem to have an unusually high incidence of cancer, which Ramana also died of, and I sometimes wonder if that has anything to do with neglecting the body purification part of the equation.

Since the mind and body are intertwined, going through the body automatically purifies the mind. It's a holistic purification. The attention rests at the interface where mind/body 'manifestion' happens, which is the sensations you feel. Since psychological blocks and trauma and the like are tangled up like knots in the body, when these things become disentangled, you physically feel it leave as the minds is freed. Then you feel less choked and dense, and more lighter, a bit happier and more alive.

By this stage someone will think they have to do something to make it happen, but the big love is like gravity. If you let go you fall. It's not something extra one does to make it happen; it's stop doing the gripping that you are doing now.

IRL it's a bit harder because they don't call it 'trauma' for nothing. That call it that because it's too hard to handle. It's stuck. Opening a jar is very simple, but IRL the lid is too tight. But if one persists and continues to get stronger, they increase their capacity to let it come out.

I like to talk about the skill one needs: acute conscious awareness with equanimity of the mind. This enables people to allow the "gravity" of nature - in her own time in her own way.

[JustBe]

Yes. I’ve walked many different paths but I’ve always been one for self enquiry as deep as you can go. If anything those paths taught me they were tools to create environments and reactions in me to notice things in myself. To enquire what it all meant, to let go of stuff that I needed to let go of.

Yeah I’m with you on the full body spectrum. It’s important if you want to be in the world, move around, be healthy and actively engaged in life. I’ve seen some local spiritual devotees here who didn’t look after the physicality and they regret that choice. One particular woman who I met years ago in an art therapy class, spent lengthy periods in India as a devotee, and her focus was there entirely. Her physical body at that time was not important in her, I could see this. She is now in a nursing home sadly and not that old.

I did a yin yoga, massage class tonight and my goal was to check into my mind/body through the lengthy period of time we hold poses. I want to see where I’m tight and tense, not relaxed in my body, understand what’s going on inside the body. I’m not consciously chasing it, more finding that deeper place of relaxation so I can notice and be aware, be informed what’s going on. Understand myself when I stop, be still and feel things that might be uncomfortable. All in all I felt pretty clear.

I like how you’ve described the processors. .

[Gem]

I think the main thrust is like that saying, Let go and let God. People love that because is fuzzy and wise and you don't really have to think about it. My brain is very complex so I have no use for fuzzy and wise. I like it just as much as the next bloke, but it always sounds a bit silly to me.

Once you realise 'let God' implies you don't get to control it, that it's in God's hands, that becomes very disarming because it's a matter of trust.

Since it's a spiritual thing, a natural thing which you don't 'make happen' but rather watch happen, there has to be some faith that leaving it to nature is for the best. Like they say, 'The fates guide those who go willingly', but if fate takes you to 'the pain of the cross' so to speak, going willingly is harder that it first sounds.

Willingness lets the path unfold in the way you see it unfolding, but it's not passive. It's trusting that nature works for your overall benefit and leads into awareness of one's enlightened quality.

It's taoistic, but the way to control everything is to not control anything. Being willing is self control, whereas being willful is being out of control, and right now when one stops to be aware of 'this experience', as it is, merely by noticing what it's like, everything is as 'God intends'.

(I don't believe in God, BTW, but it's a handy figure of speech)