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Post by laughter on Aug 13, 2014 12:49:17 GMT -5
There are plenty of people who are actually quite comfortable in their skin, and while I've never done a poll to determine what % meditate, my guess is that there's probably plenty of them. Now that of course is a different question as to whether there's uncomfortable thoughts that arise, whether during meditation or not, and I'd agree that it's probably the rare person that doesn't ever have that happen. But what you wrote originally suggested that meditation involves the effort of dealing with uncomfortable thoughts. Do you take that to be the purpose of meditation? I'll tell you from my experience that uncomfortable thoughts during meditation are quite rare, and the vast majority of times that I've sat they simply don't arise, and my sitting practice has zippo to do with any deliberate effort to confront them or ferret them out. From what I've read I'm not alone on that last point. Lots of people meditate out of curiosity or just for the the meditation as an end in itself. There are hundreds of different forms of meditation. Really what I was talking about there was the self-inquiry arm of Vipassana. Meditation that's purely resting in awareness is cool too. My original point was that for a beginning meditator who's steeped in unconsciousness and strongly identified with thoughts, effort is required to begin seeing even slightly clearer. Part of that effort often has to do with resisting the urge to turn away from what makes us uncomfortable. Another part is resisting the urge to take up residence in Blissville. There are quite a few pitfalls to be aware of and they may require effort. For those who don't want to call that effort, fine. I get the feeling, though, that you're (collective you) adding 'will power' and 'battle' and all sorts of things to the word effort. To me, effort is just a description of that movement that feels contrary to conditioning. My guess is that your description of a beginning meditator's experience is very likely quite common -- you, as the meditation teacher here, should know!  -- but my point is that it doesn't always have to and probably doesn't always spin out like that. Also I'd say that using meditation to dig out demons from their hidey-holes is a fine use of it but that doesn't have anything to do with what E&R refer to as realization. |
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Post by justlikeyou on Aug 13, 2014 12:54:33 GMT -5
If 'I am' means 'I exist', I'd say no. If it means 'I am this or that', then yes. I used to be clear it meant the former until Niz came along, and apparently we don't argue with Niz.  That differential correlates to the two seemingly contradicting ways that Niz used the term, and the answer to Maxy's question depends on what the one experiencing the sense of being takes the I-thought to refer to. Niz: "In this spiritual hierarchy, from the grossest to the subtlest, you are the subtlest. How can this be realized? The very base is that you don’t know you are, and suddenly the feeling of ‘I amness’ appears. The moment it appears you see space, mental space; that subtle sky-like space, stabilize there. You are that. When you are able to stabilize in that space, you are space only. When this space-like identity ‘I am’ disappears, the space will also disappear, there is no space. When that space-like ‘I am’ goes into oblivion, that is the eternal state, ‘nirguna’, no form, no beingness. Actually, what did happen there? This message ‘I am’ was no message. Dealing with this aspect, I cannot talk much because there is no scope to put it in words." |
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Post by laughter on Aug 13, 2014 13:01:03 GMT -5
That differential correlates to the two seemingly contradicting ways that Niz used the term, and the answer to Maxy's question depends on what the one experiencing the sense of being takes the I-thought to refer to. Niz: "In this spiritual hierarchy, from the grossest to the subtlest, you are the subtlest. How can this be realized? The very base is that you don’t know you are, and suddenly the feeling of ‘I amness’ appears. The moment it appears you see space, mental space; that subtle sky-like space, stabilize there. You are that. When you are able to stabilize in that space, you are space only. When this space-like identity ‘I am’ disappears, the space will also disappear, there is no space. When that space-like ‘I am’ goes into oblivion, that is the eternal state, ‘nirguna’, no form, no beingness. Actually, what did happen there? This message ‘I am’ was no message. Dealing with this aspect, I cannot talk much because there is no scope to put it in words." Exactly: if the "I-thought" does not refer to anything expressible by concepts, if it is empty, if there is no identity and the poker game already has ended, then "I Am" is not self-referential ... and yet, there you are, as ever. The contradiction of "beyond being and non-being" is simply a way to point to the indeterminate nature of the void. |
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Post by enigma on Aug 13, 2014 13:20:07 GMT -5
Where I entered the conversation is when the comment was made that noticing (realization) requires effort. While the distinction between the effort required in practice, and the effortlessness of realization itself, may seem like a game of semantics to one who's not interested in the distinction, it's important because it means that the seeking effort is the real game. One is manipulating oneself into a position where something can be effortlessly seen. If it is effortless, it can be seen without the self manipulation if there is the willingness to see. If there is not, what is the real aim of the practice? Does one practice in order to become willing to effortlessly see? That game is what makes it complicated. I just want to add two rusty train-mashed cents that as much as I find the 'accident prone' line of thinking elegant and entertaining, it seems to me to add fuel to the fire that Right Effort will lead to a state of effortlessness. Because more effort/practice will make one more accident prone, right?? My guess, not worth even two cents, is that this is wrong and also a distraction. However, I do think that effort in terms of mindfulness and tuning into 'the actual' (minus thoughts) is worthwhile in itself, intrinsically, like riding a bike is or taking a walk in the woods, or drinking a tall glass of cold water. It's clear that effort should never be directed toward the effortless, which is why the distinction is being made. IOW, a practice aimed at any sort of realization is problematic from the start. Practice is in the realm of mind, and so if there is a practice for understanding mind then I'd say this is useful. However, I'm not sure that there is. In the realm of mind, change comes about through understanding. To use Quinn's example, allowing feelings rather than trying to escape them is useful, but it's not really the result of practice but rather understanding how futile and self destructive suppressing emotions is. When mind sees that clearly, it simply doesn't try to escape them, which is not a reconditioning practice. The understanding is what alters the conditioning without any further effort involved. (We could say there is effort involved in understanding) One may gain awareness and understanding through a practice aimed at reconditioning the mind, but it's important to see that changing conditioning is a function of mental clarity and not mental retraining. Mind is functioning far better than ego imagines it does and is always a few steps ahead. It's ego that positions itself as retrainer of mind. Mind isn't being retrained. At best, it is being educated. It's good to take the appearance of effort out of such processes because mind uses the idea in the way you talked about it; as cause for more and more practice, which can become a stalling tactic very quickly. |
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Post by justlikeyou on Aug 13, 2014 13:41:24 GMT -5
There are hundreds of different forms of meditation. Really what I was talking about there was the self-inquiry arm of Vipassana. Meditation that's purely resting in awareness is cool too. My original point was that for a beginning meditator who's steeped in unconsciousness and strongly identified with thoughts, effort is required to begin seeing even slightly clearer. Part of that effort often has to do with resisting the urge to turn away from what makes us uncomfortable. Another part is resisting the urge to take up residence in Blissville. There are quite a few pitfalls to be aware of and they may require effort. For those who don't want to call that effort, fine. I get the feeling, though, that you're (collective you) adding 'will power' and 'battle' and all sorts of things to the word effort. To me, effort is just a description of that movement that feels contrary to conditioning. Here is part of the story of how and why I first picked up meditation: "When I began meditating in 2006 I did so because I was locked into living in a house with a witch of a woman, who could control my emotions, and make me angry and upset with her incessant nonsensical bit*hing and badgering. She could make me want to knock her out and I found that disturbing. Her regular "fits" of rage were so bad that I had to put a lock on the inside of my bedroom door to keep her out. At first I could not resist arguing angrily with her, even through a closed door. Later I resorted to wearing headphones while watching TV in my bedroom to tune out her haranguing until she wore herself out and went to sleep in her room. But it was the painful awareness of not being able to deal with this situation properly that eventually made me realize that until I got control of myself, these angry thoughts and emotions, I could never hope to find peace. So one day I began to meditate with the idea that I must learn the art of separating from my thoughts and emotions, and find the means to gain control over my reactions. Though I did not like the lack of emotional control, the awareness of that lack would eventually morph into a longing for the ability to remain unmoved in the face of torment. So I resolved to sit every morning for 20 or 30 minutes observing my mind stuff. After a while noticed a growth in increasing objectivity to things inside and out. In some ways it seemed like putting on a kind of armour in preparation to deal with whatever awaited me "out there" in the world beyond my waking meditation and bedroom door. I persisted in my meditation and one day began to notice a clearly increasing immunity to this womans angry, jealous, possessive and hateful words and antics.. Gradually but inexorably she disturbed me less and less as I learned to stop resenting her and began to use, almost look forward to, her antics as daily practice in remaining quietly detached. My progress did not escape her notice. I continued to get better at enduring her outlandishness calmly and soon that `calm' had unexpected results. First, in spite of herself, I saw that she found it increasingly difficult to react badly for long...her bouts of rage became less intense, and less long lasting. She would retreat to her room faster, more often and for longer periods of time, leaving me with more and more peace. I could see that she was discovering the feedback of "pain and fear" that emotional non-reaction can wreak, and it wasn't long before she was compelled, by her own behest, to move out of my home and thus resolving the issue for me without effort on my part." |
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Post by justlikeyou on Aug 13, 2014 14:02:16 GMT -5
Niz: "In this spiritual hierarchy, from the grossest to the subtlest, you are the subtlest. How can this be realized? The very base is that you don’t know you are, and suddenly the feeling of ‘I amness’ appears. The moment it appears you see space, mental space; that subtle sky-like space, stabilize there. You are that. When you are able to stabilize in that space, you are space only. When this space-like identity ‘I am’ disappears, the space will also disappear, there is no space. When that space-like ‘I am’ goes into oblivion, that is the eternal state, ‘nirguna’, no form, no beingness. Actually, what did happen there? This message ‘I am’ was no message. Dealing with this aspect, I cannot talk much because there is no scope to put it in words." Exactly: if the "I-thought" does not refer to anything expressible by concepts, if it is empty, if there is no identity and the poker game already has ended, then "I Am" is not self-referential ... and yet, there you are, as ever. The contradiction of "beyond being and non-being" is simply a way to point to the indeterminate nature of the void. Ah, but I see something else here as well. For the child there is no thought. He isn't capable of thought. He doesn't yet know a single word and therefore can not form a thought. But the child one day suddenly "feels" or "senses" that he is. It is the felt sense of being that Tolle also refers to. This wordless sensation arose out of No-thingness and in the return to No-thingness, this sensation or feeling I AM, the very root of personhood, goes too. Here is where the mind stops. It can not conceive how that could be so. But if one is to follow the I AM to its Source, what will be found? It can not be explained or rationalized in any way but it can be realized. |
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Post by enigma on Aug 13, 2014 14:04:01 GMT -5
Is it a misunderstanding to believe that Tolle and folks like him with massive deep Awakenings simply don't experience this type of shift anymore? There's just an abiding now and no more 'coming out of' something else? Or is it that there is no more resistance to the ongoing shifting, no more 'sh!t I've been daydreaming'? All we can ever really write about for sure on this is our own experience and from reading what you've wrote in the past few years it seems that ours is similar. Mine was of a sudden and massive reduction in the time and intensity spent thinking when the self-referential thoughts were seen for what they are, which is, that they literally refer to nothing. Some of that came back over time but it's never been the same since in terms of the way that it's taken, which is to say, not all that seriously when self-reference is noticed, and of course, I can't be conscious of what I'm unconscious of. The intensity and time spent thinking also has never returned back to where it was before "the event". That's a good example of what I was referring to about conditioning changing through understanding rather than practice. That brings up another key distinction. Thought, or thinking, as such, isn't a problem. The problem is self reference, which may constitute the vast majority of thought for many, but only because of the out of proportion self interest. |
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Post by enigma on Aug 13, 2014 14:05:03 GMT -5
If 'I am' means 'I exist', I'd say no. If it means 'I am this or that', then yes. I used to be clear it meant the former until Niz came along, and apparently we don't argue with Niz. That differential correlates to the two seemingly contradicting ways that Niz used the term, and the answer to Maxy's question depends on what the one experiencing the sense of being takes the I-thought to refer to. Yup |
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Post by enigma on Aug 13, 2014 14:13:22 GMT -5
Sticking with the willingness theme, the seeker sees that there is no willingness to change whatever he thinks needs to change, and so the idea occurs that there is a conditioned one who is working in opposition to the one who wants change, and so a battle of some sort must ensue. So the imagined person imagines a second person to battle with in hopes of changing one's own mind in ways that one clearly doesn't want to happen. This can result in a rather lengthy seeking effort, but at least one can be assured of not accidentally losing one's imaginary self as long as the battle continues.  What an ingenious design!  It really is, which is why conscious mind doesn't have a chance in winning the mind games that are being played out on less than conscious levels of mind. At some point, I began to see deeper, spontaneous levels of mind as the direct expression of Intelligence in innocent self delusion, and you can't win playing by God's rules. |
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Post by enigma on Aug 13, 2014 14:20:31 GMT -5
There are plenty of people who are actually quite comfortable in their skin, and while I've never done a poll to determine what % meditate, my guess is that there's probably plenty of them. Now that of course is a different question as to whether there's uncomfortable thoughts that arise, whether during meditation or not, and I'd agree that it's probably the rare person that doesn't ever have that happen. But what you wrote originally suggested that meditation involves the effort of dealing with uncomfortable thoughts. Do you take that to be the purpose of meditation? I'll tell you from my experience that uncomfortable thoughts during meditation are quite rare, and the vast majority of times that I've sat they simply don't arise, and my sitting practice has zippo to do with any deliberate effort to confront them or ferret them out. From what I've read I'm not alone on that last point. Lots of people meditate out of curiosity or just for the the meditation as an end in itself. There are hundreds of different forms of meditation. Really what I was talking about there was the self-inquiry arm of Vipassana. Meditation that's purely resting in awareness is cool too. My original point was that for a beginning meditator who's steeped in unconsciousness and strongly identified with thoughts, effort is required to begin seeing even slightly clearer. Part of that effort often has to do with resisting the urge to turn away from what makes us uncomfortable. Another part is resisting the urge to take up residence in Blissville. There are quite a few pitfalls to be aware of and they may require effort. For those who don't want to call that effort, fine. I get the feeling, though, that you're (collective you) adding 'will power' and 'battle' and all sorts of things to the word effort. To me, effort is just a description of that movement that feels contrary to conditioning.That's what it is to me too. One you is conditioned to move against another you, and that's a split mind mind game. I don't have a problem calling that effort. |
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Post by quinn on Aug 13, 2014 15:27:13 GMT -5
I just want to add two rusty train-mashed cents that as much as I find the 'accident prone' line of thinking elegant and entertaining, it seems to me to add fuel to the fire that Right Effort will lead to a state of effortlessness. Because more effort/practice will make one more accident prone, right?? My guess, not worth even two cents, is that this is wrong and also a distraction. However, I do think that effort in terms of mindfulness and tuning into 'the actual' (minus thoughts) is worthwhile in itself, intrinsically, like riding a bike is or taking a walk in the woods, or drinking a tall glass of cold water. It's clear that effort should never be directed toward the effortless, which is why the distinction is being made. IOW, a practice aimed at any sort of realization is problematic from the start. Practice is in the realm of mind, and so if there is a practice for understanding mind then I'd say this is useful. However, I'm not sure that there is. In the realm of mind, change comes about through understanding. To use Quinn's example, allowing feelings rather than trying to escape them is useful, but it's not really the result of practice but rather understanding how futile and self destructive suppressing emotions is. When mind sees that clearly, it simply doesn't try to escape them, which is not a reconditioning practice. The understanding is what alters the conditioning without any further effort involved. (We could say there is effort involved in understanding) One may gain awareness and understanding through a practice aimed at reconditioning the mind, but it's important to see that changing conditioning is a function of mental clarity and not mental retraining. Mind is functioning far better than ego imagines it does and is always a few steps ahead. It's ego that positions itself as retrainer of mind. Mind isn't being retrained. At best, it is being educated. It's good to take the appearance of effort out of such processes because mind uses the idea in the way you talked about it; as cause for more and more practice, which can become a stalling tactic very quickly. Maybe it can happen that way and maybe not. For me, it was the opposite of what you wrote. The understanding came after the experience of allowing. It became something I realized was true, not because someone told me or I read it somewhere but because I experienced it. And I experienced it because I practiced sitting there - for 1 second, then 5 seconds, etc, until I stopped running scared and faced it. Then, of course, it was quite laughable.   |
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Post by quinn on Aug 13, 2014 15:44:49 GMT -5
There are hundreds of different forms of meditation. Really what I was talking about there was the self-inquiry arm of Vipassana. Meditation that's purely resting in awareness is cool too. My original point was that for a beginning meditator who's steeped in unconsciousness and strongly identified with thoughts, effort is required to begin seeing even slightly clearer. Part of that effort often has to do with resisting the urge to turn away from what makes us uncomfortable. Another part is resisting the urge to take up residence in Blissville. There are quite a few pitfalls to be aware of and they may require effort. For those who don't want to call that effort, fine. I get the feeling, though, that you're (collective you) adding 'will power' and 'battle' and all sorts of things to the word effort. To me, effort is just a description of that movement that feels contrary to conditioning.That's what it is to me too. One you is conditioned to move against another you, and that's a split mind mind game. I don't have a problem calling that effort. Then I would say it's a fruitful game, using one to dislodge the other. The first disappears when the second does. |
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Post by enigma on Aug 13, 2014 15:48:10 GMT -5
Yes, the redirecting of attention is an effortless noticing, in this case the realization that one has been caught in thought. The realization is effortless and the redirecting is effortless. What requires effort is attending to thought streams, and so the redirecting of attention is the ending of effort. Holding one's breath to "remain present" and finding disappointment in the noticing obviously is what it is but it seems to me that the curiosity about WIBIGO underlying that scenario is some sort of a sign of willingness! Yeah, obviously willingness isn't a black and white thang, either. |
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Post by enigma on Aug 13, 2014 15:50:57 GMT -5
There are hundreds of different forms of meditation. Really what I was talking about there was the self-inquiry arm of Vipassana. Meditation that's purely resting in awareness is cool too. My original point was that for a beginning meditator who's steeped in unconsciousness and strongly identified with thoughts, effort is required to begin seeing even slightly clearer. Part of that effort often has to do with resisting the urge to turn away from what makes us uncomfortable. Another part is resisting the urge to take up residence in Blissville. There are quite a few pitfalls to be aware of and they may require effort. For those who don't want to call that effort, fine. I get the feeling, though, that you're (collective you) adding 'will power' and 'battle' and all sorts of things to the word effort. To me, effort is just a description of that movement that feels contrary to conditioning. My guess is that your description of a beginning meditator's experience is very likely quite common -- you, as the meditation teacher here, should know! -- but my point is that it doesn't always have to and probably doesn't always spin out like that. Also I'd say that using meditation to dig out demons from their hidey-holes is a fine use of it but that doesn't have anything to do with what E&R refer to as realization. Yeah, Quinn and I have apparently been talking about different uses of meditation, which is fine. |
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Post by quinn on Aug 13, 2014 16:09:14 GMT -5
My guess is that your description of a beginning meditator's experience is very likely quite common -- you, as the meditation teacher here, should know! -- but my point is that it doesn't always have to and probably doesn't always spin out like that. Also I'd say that using meditation to dig out demons from their hidey-holes is a fine use of it but that doesn't have anything to do with what E&R refer to as realization. Yeah, Quinn and I have apparently been talking about different uses of meditation, which is fine.  I thought we were talking about effort (using an example from meditation) and whether it's applicable to reducing zombie-hood (becoming more conscious). |
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-- but my point is that it doesn't always have to and probably doesn't always spin out like that. Also I'd say that using meditation to dig out demons from their hidey-holes is a fine use of it but that doesn't have anything to do with what E&R refer to as realization.
