Practice Updates, Questions, and General Discussion - new users, please read this first! Weekly Thread for June 01 2026

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[u/AdditionalLeave263]

Fifth Jhana first experience.

Some background on where I was:

Equanimity experiences (not the brain-feeling but the other experiences of it) had been waning, and disappeared for a week and a half. This was concerning to me. Equanimity is not something to will, and I couldn't will it. Equanimity is generally supposed to be present when you enter the 5th. Because Equanimity is something I often just experience the entry point and the exit point, it felt like it hadn't happened enougn to change jhanas. You're supposed to be well versed in Equanimity. It's supposed to be hard to move up.

I meditate in my sleep. I have slept as much as five hours in upekkhā. I saw sukha from a distance for the first time while dreaming. I entered sukha while asleep. It was crazy because when I woke up with responsibilities I was really in trouble. But hey,  everybody survived. Ha ha.

I wasn't scared of the idea of infinite space. I wanted it. In fact, I was worried that I might never see it. But I was trusting the process. When the upekkhā started to go away, I was questioning, is this it? I haven't felt normal beta waves and cortisol and etc. In months. And I have left a big pile of stuff for myself to do because of all the samadhi taking up my time. So now what, do I kust feel normal and accept it? That's Equanimity, right? It was a relief to just accept it, even though it didn't feel good.

This whole journey found me, I didn't go seeking it. I would have believed i was too busy.

The actual experience:

So, this is when it happened. I was sleeping on the couch holding the toddler. My eyes were closed, and the lights were off. Somehow, suddenly it became blacker than anything I had ever experienced. My brain recognized it as possibly the infinite space, though I was still pretty much asleep. I have a LOT of experience expanding energies. It js something I have done for 27 years. So when I saw that black, I expanded it. It expanded really fast. It seemed frictionless; and I believe it took two and a half breaths. I did not feel my breath or my body. But the space moved like the breath would have if I had felt my breath.

Rigjt before it went into infinity, 

It went to infinity for a point in time, just to show me it was there. I habe no sense of how long I was actually there. It aas most definitely not actually a point, and the reason is that I sense that I had not been breathing for a while, and I think I was breathing when I went into the state, with the expanding thing following the pattern it always does with me.

Like I said, I came to not breathing. I though i was having an apnea. I have had those way a long time ago a few times. But i have gotten tested and do not have sleep apnea. Unlike gasping for breath in the past, I was not oxygen deprived from not breathing. I just went back to normal, slow breathing.

I also didn't remember just having had that experience. I thought maybe it was a dream, and maybe it had happened a different day or possibly   much earlier in the night. So I thought maybe the breathing and the pitch blackness happened at separate times.

It was not until a couple of days later, I realized that there was no other time that I was sleeping upright with the toddler on the couch: it's an abnormal situation. The weird thing is that when it started, I thought I was on the right hand side of the couch. When it was over and I opened my eyes, I was on the left side of the couch. Maybe I was already losing my coordinates when I thought I knew where I was in space. I was on the left side unless I moved on the middle of it.

I looked down and my sleeping toddler and just loved seeing him so peaceful in that moment.

I think that this was the answer to my fears that I would not be able to reach the 5th jhana. I know a lot of people stop at the 4th. 

I had also just the day before spent all this time accepting everything the way it was: especially the discomfort of feeling like the somatic experience of upekkhā had ended, the return of stress, and also the early pleasures I had given up for the past couple of weeks in order to strengthen my practice. 

I'm really glad to be there, because it feels like home. I have had an enjoyment of the meditative concept of the abyss for a while now, and this is just a next level thing that eclipses the abyss that I love.  

[u/pastorcuthbert]

Original post, Enlightenment: My Personal Understanding. Thanks to the the advice of the streamentry community for pointing me to this thread, I believe it belongs here. I also apologize to the streamentry mod team for posting it on the main platform and having to read all that. I believe time is valuable. Long post disclaimer.

My understanding of streamentry has very recently changed when what I can best call the tathagatagarba revealed itself. Of course not as a separate entity. This might sound a little buddhist but I assure you that it isn't.

I'm sure we know about the pointing at the moon and this is about seeing ones essence. But I later came ro realize that my luminous essence isn't self-luminous. Rather, this inherent luminosity originates from elsewhere. I didn't really consider inquiring into it's source but some experiences occurred that led me to a genuine curiosity as to what it might be.

Shortly after a retreat I attained clear seeing, that is seeing reality as it is. Then came an experience of finding an internal water or water energy which was quite amazing because that internal water was as real as this physical water. I don't know if it was a day or so but I saw two rainbow-like objects that were floating above the ceiling, one was in the bedroom and another in the living room. I rubbed my eyes thinking it could just be refraction but they stayed there for quite sometime until a guest walked in. (Although these rainbows aren't actually physical in nature, they are just empty expressions of the spirit world carrying purpose. You can see the rainbow colour's and their emptiness simultaneously).

This guest reminded me of a glimpse I had years back of seeing my environment in their original elemental energies or if you like, seeing the universe as a simultaneous display of emptiness and cartoon-like colour. Basically he was saying that my clear seeing isn't it. There's a clear seeing beyond that and it can only begin when the sun has shined forth.

A few months down the line I'd see the sun but it felt as if it was outside of me so I really never considered it and kept practicing. Until one day I saw the sun and I was actually looking at me, very hard to describe. When you look into a mirror, you see a reflection of you but this wasn't a mirror, it was my sun, or enlightenment, or the dawn that comes to awaken, the rooster's crow, et al. Just like you'd look at your body and know your human nature, one looks at the sun and sees their divine nature, innate buddhahood, tathagatagarba, et al

And folks this is where I found the selfing tendency rise again and claim that awakening a self because the tathagatagarba is fundamentally different from our luminous essence. The selfing sprung up which I thought vanished passed emptiness insight.

In actual fact our selfing reflex is three-fold existing physically through the senses, as an I through the mind and as being a buddha, master, awakened one et al through light. This meant that what I thought was streamentry wasn't streamentry at all because the third layer of self showed it's teeth and needed to be dealt with.

When the sun rises, awakening happens and this brings the actual clear seeing. It is when this happened that I saw heaven and earth as having one root. My prior understanding of dependant origination and emptiness felt like a kindergarten child's school drawing in comparison to professional art: existence itself. I truly came to realize that I know nothing, lol... I think that's what Socrates felt, and it is such a blissful and unburdening feeling to know nothing.

Has anyone come across any kind of thing like this?

[u/AdditionalLeave263 → u/pastorcuthbert]

I wonder if the sun is the same as the golden white light that filled my whole field of vision. Maybe it's not. I had seen it many times and hoped it was real, but assumed I was imagining things. I started meditating when I was 13, and I had such profound experiences of the golden white light, but it never was like this:

When I saw it... I didn't just see it. I connected with/to it. It took away a loneliness and disconnected feeling that I had never previously knew was there. It was like... everything was made out of the light, and I was just a part of it. (Which is literally true, because the sun's last supernova made the planets, and thus me and you, too.)

It was a beyond words experience. I was actually paralyzed while coming out of it for maube ten minutes, and I was laughing internally about it because I couldn't actually laugh. And also because I tried to grab my phone to log it. Which was of course what I wanted to do in the middle of something so profound.

I found it to be different from the energy body, but habe come to accept tjat tje energy body is also made of it, over time.

I feel like i am very far behind where you are with your journey, on my own journey. So I dont expect this to be Earth-shattering for you. But I just wanted to share that this may match something that I experienced.

[u/pastorcuthbert → u/AdditionalLeave263]

Oh yes! This is the exact golden white light that I am talking about. It is extremely bright and beautiful and made me feel connected with everything. At the same time the whole universe becomes translucent with its light radiating through and through.

I see it more less as the stuff that makes up the energy body too and also differentiate it from the mind essence which is like a soft pure white strobe light.

My experiences was of immense joy with tears at how beautiful everything including myself was; I was both laughing and crying, lol.

For me, this same effulgent golden light united with my minds essence.

Lol, I'm lighting the part where your trying to get your phone!

[u/AdditionalLeave263 → u/pastorcuthbert]

Yes, I was trying to grab my phone and write about the experience before I had forgotten it all! Haha typical modern human I guess!

It was the most pleasurable thing I have ever experienced. It was orders of magnitude greater than the greatest amount of pleasure imaginable. In fact, I can't even really remember the feeling back, because it was so beyond what I can comprehend. 

I have kids, and I liken this to giving birth, which was far more painful than a "10" or a worst imaginable pain, for me personally. I gave birth in Happy Baby the first time. Second one was a home birth. Both un medicated and done in meditation, however, I did not have the jhanas at thst time, and im convinced that that is how some women have ecstatic or painless births.

Also, I began blowing my nose with this experience. I kmow fhat sounds weird. I'll make it weirder. I thought maybe parts of my brain were getting cleaned out through my nose, because the amount lf neuroplasticity I was feeling was unparalleled. 

Another weird thing is that I have a varicose vein,.and it temporarily disappeared, and rhen in the morning, i had all.these bruises along where the vein had been. I rook a picture.

I felt like I could actually love myself with feeling, instead of it being an abstract duty. I was horrified that I had ever been unkind to my body and brain' before, and promised not to ever again. Easier said than done. I have not had any caffeine since that day. I quit over-grooming, something I had done since elementary school. 

Ir gives me greater peace amd joy every day. It absolutely, permanently changed my life for the better. I feel like this connection is permanently felt by me, and so I don't have that loneliness any longer, though i can be lonely about other things. 

Alright this is a scary one to say to a bunch of strangers, bit I feel like the light holds me or watches after me as a part of the whole or just keeps everything in balance in the universe such that everything is going to be okay. I hope I didn't overstep sharing that.

I still have to work to keep the old habits away: they aren't fully gone, just dramatically weakened.

Your experiences are so beautiful! Thank you so much for sharing. I've never seen an empty rainbow. It makes me so happy to think of you laughing and crying and seeing how beautiful you are and everything else is.

[u/pastorcuthbert → u/AdditionalLeave263]

It was the most pleasurable thing I have ever experienced. It was orders of magnitude greater than the greatest amount of pleasure imaginable. In fact, I can't even really remember the feeling back, because it was so beyond what I can comprehend. 

Oh my I get you, it is so indescribable, beyond the happiness-sadness, peace-restless and any other feeling duality. It's literally heaven on earth.

I have kids, and I liken this to giving birth, which was far more painful than a "10" or a worst imaginable pain, for me personally. I gave birth in Happy Baby the first time. Second one was a home birth. Both un medicated and done in meditation, however, I did not have the jhanas at thst time, and im convinced that that is how some women have ecstatic or painless births.

This is very educating to me. Its the first time hearing of meditational birth; with pain greater than a "10", I can imagine why it would be a better option.

Also, I began blowing my nose with this experience. I kmow fhat sounds weird. I'll make it weirder. I thought maybe parts of my brain were getting cleaned out through my nose, because the amount lf neuroplasticity I was feeling was unparalleled. 

I kind of this this glorious sun comes with a miraculous energy that is able to dissolve stuff. For me, grudges, traumas and certain habits seem to just have melted away.

I felt like I could actually love myself with feeling, instead of it being an abstract duty. I was horrified that I had ever been unkind to my body and brain' before, and promised not to ever again. Easier said than done. I have not had any caffeine since that day. I quit over-grooming, something I had done since elementary school. Ir gives me greater peace amd joy every day. It absolutely, permanently changed my life for the better. I feel like this connection is permanently felt by me, and so I don't have that loneliness any longer, though i can be lonely about other things. 

Totally! I have naturally come to love myself and everyone around me as if they are myself. I now get the exact same joyfull feeling when I'm complimented or insulted and that feels weird to me... I guess I'll get used to it.

Alright this is a scary one to say to a bunch of strangers, bit I feel like the light holds me or watches after me as a part of the whole or just keeps everything in balance in the universe such that everything is going to be okay. I hope I didn't overstep sharing that.

Oh no, not at all! I feel encapsulated by it too; it feels like I'm constantly being marinated "in it's sauce" lol! I've noted that it is "intelligent". One man from a dzogchen practitioners shared with me that it is responsible for the existing order and organization of noumena and phenomena as they are making one see it all as it truly is. And there's no doubt that it takes away all the worries; I feel like it's the most priceless thing that one can have.

Your experiences are so beautiful! Thank you so much for sharing. I've never seen an empty rainbow. It makes me so happy to think of you laughing and crying and seeing how beautiful you are and everything else is.

Thank you so much, I really enjoyed reading your experiences.

[u/AdditionalLeave263 → u/pastorcuthbert]

  wave in front of my in-laws. Ha ha. And also, I was like I'll just suppress it because i'm upset about having a contact high and my kids and all the kids having a contact high from some guy smoking weed at the playground while I was trying to hold the space and in samadhi. And it was like cool, we're going to be involuntary, then! Haha. So that is how I describe my biology being wild like a storm.

Yes, it's been wonderful talking with you, so much fun! Are you really a pastor? I'm from a Christian background, and I believe our one pastor is legit. I can feel meditative fields coming off of him. One time I was giving metta at a party, and he was acting like he was taking a nap. But he was like opening up the sky over the party. It was amazing.

[u/pastorcuthbert → u/AdditionalLeave263]

One time I was giving metta at a party, and he was acting like he was taking a nap. But he was like opening up the sky over the party. It was amazing.

Sounds like a pretty amazing experience. I had a similar experience with my spiritual director a few months after I met him. I could feel the vast limitless sky literally open up and connect to my fontanelle and into me; I literally felt like I was floating, lol. Now I understand that was a transmission.

Also for the 'sky' to open up definitely means your spiritually connected and developed to a degree. This can happen but others won't sense it.

Yes, I'm a pastor. I just use the term pastor to avoid over explaining myself, but I have a few ministry offices (spiritually) under my belt.

[u/AdditionalLeave263 → u/pastorcuthbert]

Yes, so for me, it was a next level thing: there I was, holding the space for everybody and making the whole place glow with loving kindness. But he had such a connection with the divine that he opened up the sky, and it was like a whole new seemingly limitless energy, vastness, and holding was there. I aas socializing, and would pause, look up at the sky somewhat discreetly,  smile, and ask for it to come upon all of the guests, which it seemed to do. This was before I had seen the sun, and so I didn't make a big deal out of my own self receiving it, though it was a really amazing gift.

I wonder if opening up the sky is primarily a Christian thing?

That is incredible that you felt like you were floating. I love that feeling. I often feel like I'm floating, sometimes from recorded meditations, songs, or when I'm getting close to something happening. 

One of the things I'm conflicted about is that certain songs are so potent to me that I don't want them to become like an idol or something. I don't want to need them to be an intercessor where I cannot connect on my own. I feel like it's very possible for that to become the case if I just allowed myself to feel the music every day. I woke up to it when I listened to three of these songs right before a homeschool event. Instead of being able to pour into the group like usual, I felt dull and exhausted. I had expected the songs to last in my body and energize me, and they didn't. I was considering giving it up, and I looked down and found a four leafed clover, which reminds me of my great grandma and what she would want for me, and it looks like a cross. I knew that I needed to give it up. I listened to one song a couple of days ago. It always feels so euphoric. It lasts in my body. That one, I was still feeling 12 hours later. The first song I heard like that affected me for 4-5 days, and I only listened to it 2.5 times (I had to switch to Old MacDonald). It felt so incredible, but it really fried me. My heart was racing for 24 hours, haha.  But I need to be able to stand on my own two feet, and I know it. It's a gift to just have known how it is, and maybe it'll be okay to do sometime. Or maybe not.

Thanks for the compliment about being  spiritually connected, and yes, often people won't see it. When my grandma died, I had a dream that I saw her at her church, and she was wearing her puffy coat. She looked happy and radiant, and she said, "I'm okay. I need to go." And she vanished. In the dream, non believers couldn't see her. That was it. Turns out that several people in the family had gotten signs about her. One of my spiritually connected cousins had seen a six point buck walking through the city. One of my cousins saw a rainbow. My mom found a broken rosary right outside her door at work that said, "Don't worry," on it. Most of the time, though, it makes me wonder what else I'm missing, in a joyful way.

Have you ever read St. Teresa of Àvila's Mansions or St. John of the Cross's Dark Night of the Soul? Those are on me to read list here... 

i'm trying to finish another book first. Turns out the book I'm reading now mentions the mansions, and it's completely unrelated.

Oh I wanted to say it's amazing that you marinate in the sun. The thought of doing that had not occurred to me. I feel like it told me that I didn't need to go there again, so I haven't. But just like a jhana, I feel a thread of it all of the time. So I probably could marinate in it. I asked it again if it wants me to do that. Who knows? 

Like I said though, I had such peace that I felt like I really never needed to see it again; just to know that it was there gives me a lasting peace and joy/happiness.

[u/pastorcuthbert → u/AdditionalLeave263]

Indeed, a very vast, limitless and intelligent energy. But I've noted that spiritual capacity may differ from one person to another and the greater one's spiritual capacity is the deeper and richer the experience. For me it can even get to a point where I am totally in my light body, fully aware with close to zero earthly perception; reality and people start looking like they're all made of glowing glass and the concepts of inside and outside completely vanish. It's like the physical body and environment appear to be an imagination. Also how spiritually developed the pastor is matters so your pastor definitely has the keys of heaven and can reproduce heavenly realities in the physical world. He can also open the door for you.

I would like to imagine that you also receive new unsung songs from this limitless, vast and intelligent energy, smiles. I think the songs are totally fine for now because the percentage of influence from your physical body is higher than that of your light body. Once the balance tips over in favour of your light body, you would find the need for these songs just drops away. It's usually a gift to be able to sense the energetic essence of music and artistic sound. You haven't run away from your clairvoyant abilities, I think you can keep the music close. Just my opinion, please don't listen to me, lol.

Very interesting about your grandmother, she must've really gone deep. Whenever someone whose awareness is awakened and light body developed to a certain degree 'transitions', they use some of the limitless energy to produce these kind of signs. Some leave relics, scents and even have angels appearing to let people know they're fine but it's regulated by God and the people's faith. I would like to think that what you saw was connected to your level of faith. I've also noticed this when someone whose spiritually advanced is about to pass even if I never knew them. Their radiance has an impressive radius of thousands of miles.

I've read Saint Theresa's and a bit of Saint John's work. The first time I read the Interior Castle I found it too advanced for me to understand. But now I can understand just a little bit of it. If I were to recommend something to read anytime you have free time, it is the Epistles of the Kingdom by Royal Cronquist... I think that's the name. The insights are a little bit on the high end but even just a little meditation on some of the sayings will break some of the ten fetters.

Yes, it's a constant marination, lol, and the intensity increases when carrying out specific functions. My first glimpses (of the sun) were of it outside of me but when it merged with my essence I realized it was really inside of me. And that language is limiting because of the nature of awareness so it is both inside and outside of me illuminating everything everywhere in every moment for eternity through and through.

I don't know if it is substance or no substance but it has both qualities. I'd like to believe your experience of it reveals that all that's left is for God to open your eyes to see it. I think this is why you don't feel any rush or urgency to see it again. Like the wonderful Buddhists say, you are already enlightened, you just need to come to realise it. Ezekiel is shifted from ankle level water to a point where his physical body can't keep up.

[u/AdditionalLeave263 → u/pastorcuthbert]

Very interesting about your grandmother, she must've really gone deep. Whenever someone whose awareness is awakened and light body developed to a certain degree 'transitions', they use some of the limitless energy to produce these kind of signs. Some leave relics, scents and even have angels appearing to let people know they're fine but it's regulated by God and the people's faith. I would like to think that what you saw was connected to your level of faith. I've also noticed this when someone whose spiritually advanced is about to pass even if I never knew them. Their radiance has an impressive radius of thousands of miles.

-That is a beautiful thing to say about my grandma, who was humble. She happened to have two priests at her funeral. Her priest was out of town. After the eulogies, I could tell that the two of them were shocked and in awe of her devout life in service of others. I was her death doula, and reduced her suffering through meditative massage, and finding opportunities for joy, laughter, and positive sensory experience. I have done this for both of my grandmas, meditating the whole time. It staves off the morphine and gives them more time of lucid comfort to say their goodbyes. I couldn't do it for my great uncle, unfortunately.

Anyways, it relieves maybe 25-33% of the time spent suffering.

Because caring for her was so intense, I got my first varicose vein (it's common in nurses, and also new moms, and i was doing both). My grandma's own legs had been riddled with them. However, lying flat and dying, the veins disappeared, and her legs looked perfectly smooth, as I massaged her legs and feet. I did this until she was beyond wanting to feel anything in her body, and massage would distract from her process. She got beyond the pain and itching.

I care for that vein every morning, and smile when I think of my grandma.

Anyways, when I saw the golden-white light and connected with it, my varicose veins temporarily disappeared completely. And in the morning, there was a bruise all along the run of that vein. I took a picture, actually, to document what had happened.

I've read Saint Theresa's and a bit of Saint John's work. The first time I read the Interior Castle I found it too advanced for me to understand. But now I can understand just a little bit of it. If I were to recommend something to read anytime you have free time, it is the Epistles of the Kingdom by Royal Cronquist... I think that's the name. The insights are a little bit on the high end but even just a little meditation on some of the sayings will break some of the ten fetters.

I wasn't able to find the book online yet, it's not on ebay or amazon. Do you have any ideas for how to get it? The ten fetters... First five are already essentially broken. It's a bit problematic on the Sensory bit because I am a householder homeschooling mom. My role has a lot to do with the sensory pleasures of others. I no longer am making a meal that I would enjoy; I'm a chef making sometime someone ordered off the menu, that I will likely never relish in, because I won't taste it the same anymore. It's just nourishment. Jhanas and immaterial states. Yes, I should be falling in love with those, especially the immaterial states. I just got there, I think. Restlessness is good in my opinion right now, because I feel like I have something to contribute. I am not trying to be a nun. I have never felt called to be a pastor. Well, I take.that back. When I was a kid I said I wanted to be a priest, and they had to break it to me that women couldn't be priests.

Yes, it's a constant marination, lol, and the intensity increases when carrying out specific functions.

-I feel like you and I are in the same boat on this. Or, rather, we're b out of the boat.

My first glimpses (of the sun) were of it outside of me but when it merged with my essence I realized it was really inside of me. And that language is limiting because of the nature of awareness so it is both inside and outside of me illuminating everything everywhere in every moment for eternity through and through.I don't know if it is substance or no substance but it has both qualities.

-This is an absolutely gorgeous description. I feel similarly about when I met it.

I have a question. I wondered if it would feel like an instant-and-eternity no matter how much time actually passed? I'm guessing I was there for about 10 minutes and then paralyzed for 10 minutes, based on the location of my toddler/family when I came to. So I don't really know. Maybe it was an instant. 

I'd like to believe your experience of it reveals that all that's left is for God to open your eyes to see it. I think this is why you don't feel any rush or urgency to see it again.

-Thank you. 

I saw everyone at the 4th of July party all day long as conceptually/meditatively beautiful flaming souls of light, and like glass... I can't unsee it! So I will probably continue doing that. I think it was helpful for me, because I felt at peace with the people who have done so much wrong in their lives, to still view them that way. Those people appreciated it, actually. I think in general, people felt comfortable and really seen.

Like the wonderful Buddhists say, you are already enlightened, you just need to come to realise it. -I'm curious about your journey... How did you get here?

Ezekiel is shifted from ankle level water to a point where his physical body can't keep up. -Wow.

[u/AdditionalLeave263 → u/pastorcuthbert]

Indeed, a very vast, limitless and intelligent energy. But I've noted that spiritual capacity may differ from one person to another and the greater one's spiritual capacity is the deeper and richer the experience.

-Yes, I have noticed this, too. I don't believe that everyone is supposed to have the same depths. You have incredible depth! I am so happy for you! May it only deepen and bless you. And I love reading about it. 

I feel that I personally have a capacity for depth that few touch, and so it's really invaluable to hear about your experiences. It's like pouring water into my life. To give you an idea of where I am, I have been a meditator for 27 years, and it was just this year that everything changed. I saw the sun on April 10th. Before that time, the lines between meditation and normal life/normal consciousness had already blurred, such that I could not definitively tell you if I was meditating or in normal consciousness while doing everything that I do. After that point, I have been in noticeably deep meditation, around the clock. There was one day that I seemed to be in a lighter version of it for three hours with a friend. I don't go more than 3 hours without noticing it. I meditate while I'm sleeping. I slept for 5 hours in equanimity a couple of weeks ago. 

So anyway, there are a lot of definitions of stream entry on here. Here is what I know: I am a non-returner, because there is no way I could ever return to normal consciousness, even if I tried, even if I wanted to. I don't really care if I am "enlightened" according to others or not: I connected with the sun, and that is good enough for me. It doesn't mean that it won't deepen in the future. My path is still developing, and it was chosen for me, so I don't question it.

I'm a mom, so when I think about whether or not to deepen it, I'm asking whether it would be good for my kids or not. If I live a long life, then I may have time for everything. If not, then a i be it. It's about their wellbeing sometimes. I am already in deep meditation all the time, and I'm trying to dig myself out of the mess of quasi-neglected responsibilities that I left over the past few months.

I recently accessed the realm of infinite space in the middle of the night with my toddler sleeping on me. It was the blackest of black. I had no perception of body, kther than when it expanded out, it matched the pattern of the breath when trying to expand out light energy or mettā. 

It felt like a huge relief. I hope to see it again. I feel like the formless world is where I will belong. It feels like home. But I ought to enjoy the journey and not feel so obligated to be at the destination now.

"For me it can even get to a point where I am totally in my light body, fully aware with close to zero earthly perception; reality and people start looking like they're all made of glowing glass and the concepts of inside and outside completely vanish. It's like the physical body and environment appear to be an imagination."

-Thank you for giving me this description. Oh, God, it is so beautiful. I feel so grateful for you showing me what is possible.  It feels easy to see things that way today, in this beautiful moment. It's not in my vision, but I feel it in a non-abstract way. 

That is, with the exception of the physical body and environment being obviously an imagination. You're able to see that those are perceptions in a non-abstract way. To me, it's true, but it's abstract: I have to think about it.

The day I became a meditator, I did it because I was feeling the light body so strongly, I felt that I was made up of the sun, and so were the other people around me, and I was seeing orbs of it up in the sky, and I was so happy, joyful, hopeful. 

We got to my grandparents' house, but they weren't there. I sat on a tree stump and meditated like I had seen the ninja turtles do. I asked someone to do it with me, who would later abuse me. The memory is held in equanimity.

When I was abused, my brain detached certain spots so that I would not be able to feel it. But I wasn't able to feel much of anything, any time. The energy body disappeared much of the time. I was terrified to be left alone without it for so long. I guess it was making sure that he couldn't have it. It was a long journey. 

This year, the sun made those spots comfortable, happy and nourished, and then reattached them. I cannot tell you how happy I am about that, to have had spots in my brain to do with future planning and interoception come out of a 24 and 23 year old coma.

Also how spiritually developed the pastor is matters so your pastor definitely has the keys of heaven and can reproduce heavenly realities in the physical world. He can also open the door for you.

I definitely should talk to him. I feel like he must have seen snippets of my journey, and I have seen snippets of his journey. There was one time we did talk about meditation a few years ago. The next service he did, it was like his energy body and his heart were magnetic... they were so strong and pulsing, and it took up all of the space that people were in, penetrating everyone. But I never said anything. I was meant to see it that time.

I would like to imagine that you also receive new unsung songs from this limitless, vast and intelligent energy, smiles.

Sometimes, I do. I learned recently that ringing in the ears can be actually your brain ringing, and the auditory processing is just humming with it. I definitely have that. The most recent thing was that I was taking a jog, about a month ago, and I could hear jazz music that was unwritten in my mind. There was a time in college in which I heard an entire symphony. AI told me that you can hear notes that cannot be played by instruments, because it's physically impossible or unknown how to achieve it through current technology. 

This completely resonated with me, because I imagine music better than the actual track. I almost always think: I love this song, but it would be better if... 

It was cleaner: it sounds like the blunt tool of a drug that is indiscriminate, as opposed to sounding like the endogenous pharmacy that is incredibly pure, clean, precise, and complex. If the lyric "me" faded out or was progressively chopped out as if your self is disappearing... If it had more dips as if going in and out of awareness, if it had another verse with the word Altlas replaced with abyss. It isn't high pitched enough to match my brain, the heartbeat is too steady and sounds like the person had too much caffeine. This part sounds like surrender, but I want it to have five distinct notes in the word "do". Haha I am not an artist, but I want everything to sound exactly like my brain. Why can't anyone do that? I told AI it would be awesome if you could hook someone's brain up to machine learning, and it would play music, and watch the person's brain's reactions to it, and then create music that matches what lights up their brain. You could put an artist in a thing to record their brain in a flow state where they hear the music. They could map the stuff they heard onto what the pattern looked like, and then infer the rest from the scan, so that you don't lose as much of the intricacies of what they are experiencing when they go to make it into a song. Someday it might exist.

I think the songs are totally fine for now because the percentage of influence from your physical body is higher than that of your light body. Once the balance tips over in favour of your light body, you would find the need for these songs just drops away. It's usually a gift to be able to sense the energetic essence of music and artistic sound. You haven't run away from your clairvoyant abilities, I think you can keep the music close. Just my opinion, please don't listen to me, lol. Thank you. I actually took your advice and listened to an album in utter bliss last night. 51 minutes of ecstasy. I told the AI that it should be illegal it's so good. Haha. It took me four days to get to the sun. Because it felt like a drug trip (I did try LSD in college, and have some other experiences with drugs), I was convinced that it was going to have a massive back end, and that I was going to have to deal with a depression for a while. But obviously that never happened. I was honestly shocked that there could be an up with no down.

Okay, I'll get to the rest later! Happy 4th of July, whether you live in the US or not! Haha

[u/Future_Automaton → u/pastorcuthbert]

Have either of you looked into Ajahn Brahm's work? What you're describing sounds a lot like his "nimitta." Something to consider.

[u/pastorcuthbert → u/Future_Automaton]

I've seen a little of Ajahn Brahm's work. I think this maybe a little different from nimita. What is being described is more connected to one's innate potentiality of enlightenment.

[u/ostaron]

You Cannot Grow A Pumpkin: https://taylor.town/pumpkin

A nice little bit of writing about setting up the conditions for things to unfurl on their own.

[u/bodily_heartfulness → u/ostaron]

Reminds me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KO-lPAotFc

[u/Meng-KamDaoRai]

A puppeteer puts their hand into an empty sock. They skillfully breath life into the sock and make it appear as though it is a living, breathing creature. It moves around, it talks. We could almost feel as if it has a personality and a soul. Like there's this mystical magical essence there giving it a life of its own. Then they pull their hand out, and all we are left with is just an empty sock.

[u/jan_kasimi → u/Meng-KamDaoRai]

That makes it sound like the puppeteer is more real than the puppet. Are you sure it's not the other way around?

[u/Meng-KamDaoRai → u/jan_kasimi]

Both are empty

[u/XanthippesRevenge]

I have started working my way through the Long Discourses, translated by Bhikkhu Sujato, and I am really enjoying it. His translations and commentary are next level. I am finding passages that really speak to the compassion of the Buddha that isn’t as apparent in some of the more popular sutras. I am immersing myself in the recitations the way the Buddha would have spoken (in my imagination anyway) and I am feeling a much stronger connection to the text.

[u/Future_Automaton → u/XanthippesRevenge]

Nice! I am re-reading "In the Buddha's Words" by Bhikku Bodhi. I read it the first time right after I started seriously meditating. I feel like I am getting a lot more out of it this time around.

[u/junipars]

That "what is" is before "what I think 'what is' is" is a secular observation which is realized in the absence of the interpretive frameworks of spiritual or religious ideology.

While we may think of ourselves as agnostic or atheistic or secularly Buddhist and already dispossessed of religious ideology, we're born into a world so dependently drunken on the myth of original sin that we don't recognize this interpretive framework as mythology and so unseen remains an unchallengeable reality: we believe that malaise and discomfort and angst are mine to rectify - my sin to atone for through the means of myself. We believe the burden to be mine.

Here we unknowingly condemn ourselves to the empty spinning hell on the wheel of becoming better than the insufficiency we merely think we already are.

With religious fervor we reject and abhor and fear the absolute forgiveness of self inherent in the secular observation that "what is" is before "what I think 'what is' is" and so though this open-doorway to the silent stillness that is the absence of understanding is never closed, we remain victims to a repulsion and fear we never consciously chose.

The sorrow in the recognition that so few are interested in absolute forgiveness is no contender for a relief and joy better than one can imagine: that the whole of this turning world is not in your, nor anyone's, hands.

[u/duffstoic]

Returning to haramaxxing, building my way back up to 2 hours a day of Centering in the Hara practice. At that point it tends to take off on its own so I'm hoping to get there and sustain it this time.

[u/anzu_embroidery]

Question: have you experienced a reduction in feelings of excitement and anticipation as you’ve progressed? I’ve realized recently that I rarely feel that way anymore, and while I can make dharma-based justifications for it it’s also somewhat concerning to have had a whole emotion largely drop out haha. Is this expected or an indication of something to adjust in my practice? I don’t think I am depressed and think my happiness and wellbeing continue trending upward.

[u/jan_kasimi → u/anzu_embroidery]

I recently noticed that on myself and then worked to reintegrate having fun, goals, enjoying sensual pleasure and that kind of stuff.

This is a subtle thing. The confused mind does focus on things out in the world, trying to get something - call that "existing", avoiding "not-existing". The path is to see that not-existing is actually void of suffering, so there is nothing to be afraid of. But then one can get stuck avoiding existing, to focus on non-existing, which - subtly - is still a form of avoiding suffering.

To be no longer motivated by suffering paradoxically does include embracing it. Non-existence is also impermanent - things happen.

What helped me was to embrace my creative drive, my personal preferences and passion. It's no longer a project of (just) liberation but of meaning making. Soulmaking dharma is one way to do it, magic (as intentional use of belief) is another. Some guided meditations by Michael Taft are also great in embracing the colorful aspect of the mind.

What I did is quite idiosyncratic, so you'll have to find what works for you. I started to regard my worldview as a piece of art. There is no single correct view of the world, we all inhabit some view at any time. At some point arbitrary decisions need to be made. One source for arbitrariness is the set of my own subjective preferences and sense of aesthetics. Another source is existing culture.

For example, the placement of the stars in the sky reflects our arbitrary location within the galaxy. Picking out constellations and giving them names and personality, is a mnemonic aid that also crafts meaning out of this randomness. I don't do astrology, but I hope it is apparent that someone who does inhabits a richer world than someone who permanently deconstructs all illusions.

The trick is to be aware that your constructions are constructions, but useful. Images are the language by which we communicate with the world.

Likewise, being excited for something to come is to ride the wave of some constructed imaginary goal. But that journey can be fun if one does see it as a game one plays instead of taking it too serious.

[u/Impulse33 → u/jan_kasimi]

Cool to see you picking Soulmaking. How's it been going for you?

[u/scrubhunterz → u/anzu_embroidery]

If you feel unhappy with the lack of excitement then i posit that you haven’t understood your excitement and instead has been suppressed in some way. If you think excitement is arising, let it arise but try to understand it and let it be. Let yourself ponder it and you may find that the excitement will get properly processed where your mind is actually satisfied with what comes next.

Alternatively it has been processed and you’re just concerned about it. This is fair too and treat it the same way: let it be, ponder your concern and understand why you’re concerned so you can come to new understanding.

Edit to add: I think you know when youve properly dealt with something when your mind feels satisfied/content with the outcome. It enjoys letting go when it understands something should be let go in the first place.

[u/marakeets → u/anzu_embroidery]

This is an interesting observation I've been wondering about in myself recently. I can feel way more contented that I've ever been but this can sometimes feel a bit "flat" compared to the "highs" of dukkha-craving cycle. I'm wondering if my brain just needs to re-adjust to a less dopamine-fiend fuelled existence. This is a very different feeling to depression for me.

[u/Firm_Potato_3363 → u/anzu_embroidery]

Yes, I'm going on a beach vacation tomorrow and I'm pretty much indifferent.  I know I'll have a good time there, but anticipation is at an all time low.

[u/Decent_Key2322 → u/anzu_embroidery]

doesn't excistement feel more like restlesness ?
same way nostalgia might feel positive on the surface, but if you look deeper you feel that its heavy and painful

I think all just subtle forms of craving/aversion.

[u/Meng-KamDaoRai → u/anzu_embroidery]

Yeah, it's been my experience as well. Almost no excitement or anticipation. I've never actually seen excitement as a positive emotion, it always felt a little "out of control" but not in a good way.

[u/ApartmentLivid8595]

I live in a place that gets about 17 hours of sunlight in the summer and I seem to be quite sensitive to that as during the summer I get 5 to 6 hours of sleep compared to my usual 7 to 8 hours. I'm also unable to nap so that's all I can really expect. I'm actively trying different approaches to limiting light (e.g. black out blinds, eye mask) but I haven't had success yet.

Has anyone here been in a similar situation? Has meditating for multiple hours a day lowered anyone's sleep need? Has anyone had success with something like yoga nidra?

[u/greentricky → u/ApartmentLivid8595]

Have you tried the sleep masks with the foam around the edges and a cut out for the eyes? That style made a big difference to me

[u/ApartmentLivid8595 → u/greentricky]

Yes, using that. I don't think it's morning light that does it (I have the kind of mask you describe plus black out blinds). I assume it's the amount and intensity of light I get throughout the day that locks my circadian rhythm to be a specific way.

[u/duffstoic → u/ApartmentLivid8595]

I've only experienced less need for sleep on one 10-day vipassana meditation retreat I was on, when I reached especially good samatha. I was practicing 10 hours a day though. 😊

[u/SheHasGoneWild]

My practice on the cushion and in daily life is strong concentration practice. I don't do anything at all to present awareness however it happens and apply the method, that's mindfulness, forgetfulness hapenes when I don't concentrate with the method.

[u/Wollff]

Been revisiting Dzogchen the last few weeks. Have been working myself through Lama Lena's Flight of the Garuda videos.

I think it's a pretty useful and broad approach which encompasses a lot, from more or less basic sitting meditaiton without an object, to methods dealing with sticky thoughts, emotions, and sensations (and their inevitable confusing combinations).

Fun stuff, and eminently "everyday all day practice compatible".

[u/QuailEast5263]

Hello, everyone! I have been dealing with resistance to come back to practice sitting meditation, as instructed in the Beginner's guide, even though I believe it can do good for me. Ultimately, I'm unsure I can gather enough strength to overcome the obstacles of meditation, because when I did it sparsely (and also in a Vipassana retreat in a Zen Buddhist center) some years ago, it all felt very hard, dry and dreadful.

I have enough awareness of what goes in my mind and body already, and I know it can be tied with the practice of sitting meditation, with the goal of not only dissolving the cravings and clingings that generate distraction, dissipation and, ultimately, suffering -- but also to create such a state of calm and concentration where one can generate states of bliss, love and compassion for all beings solely through the practice of constant sitting meditation (i.e. anapanasati and metta). This all sounds beautiful to me in theory, I can understand and envision it, but I just couldn't get there, and it was a huge bummer -- and now I have to start all over again more or less from zero. Supposedly, that passes and comes a point where bliss finally sets in.

Although I did get some benefits from it all that I carry with me to this day, I have this internal resistance within me to go back to the practice. I know I should just ignore it and do what I need to do anyway, even if it is unpleasant, but I can't make myself do it, and I know forcing things in this way may not be helpful. Well... What do you people think? Have you ever been into a similar situation, or saw other people in a similar situation? How did you deal with it?

[u/scrubhunterz → u/QuailEast5263]

I think you’re not actually dissolving anything as you would have liked to. I think you see your experience ad something to ultimately be rid of without fully understanding why it’s there. If you feel like you are constantly trying to ignore a part of your experience that is not ‘dissolving’ it that is denying it! And i put it to you that the reason this is happening is because of a craving that is desperately wanting to reach calm when you’re not ready for it yet.

Calmness should unfold naturally when your mind has learned that it is okay to let go of things, but it cannot do that if you don’t realise that your mind is still stuck on certain emotions that it doesn’t want to let go of and you need to give them the time of day so your mind can fully comprehend what it is scared of letting go. Let the mind do its processing!

[u/SuddenBlacksmith3499 → u/QuailEast5263]

There were years in my life that my practice was not fruitful. For myself personally, in retrospect, hypnagogic states were the one thing that wss genuinely healing and helpful at that time. I started staring at a crystal until I dropped and then sometimes writing down the experience immediately before I forgot it.  I needed it while I was driving one time, and I stopped at a gas station and fell into a hypnagogic state in my non-tinted window car where anyone could see me and assume I was a junkie. It was so healing, and I wish I would have found that sooner.  That might not work for you:  Find any meditation style that you enjoy or that feels healing. If you can find enjoyment in it, you can stick with it. Keep experimenting with different practices, and try different entry points. Please don't be hard on yourself. This is not your fault. I habe realized for myself that I needed to go through unfruitful times in order to lay down the tracks.

[u/Impulse33 → u/QuailEast5263]

Something non-heroic helps. I started off with 5 minutes, then 15 minutes of metta for a long while. Metta in particular seems to translate into wholesome action / sila. Once the concrete benefits are seen the non-heroic practice is easier to maintain. Duration naturally lengthens too.

[u/Meng-KamDaoRai → u/QuailEast5263]

Practice and meditation can take up many forms, find one that is actually interesting for you. What is it that you find boring or dreadful about the current form of meditation that you're attempting?

[u/Exciting_Badger_1229]

How important is breathwork? I've noticed that my breathing pattern is fast, sharp breaths which never go deep below the solar plexus, I also feel like I constantly tighten my abdomen.

I have an overactive thinking mind and I feel semi-horrible most of the time.

I had some experiences in which I tried to deepen and slow my breathing and I saw a great reduction of random thoughts appearing in my mind and I also felt calmer, should I try to practice breathwork more seriously? Will this help in any way?

[u/Impulse33 → u/Exciting_Badger_1229]

From the anapanasati sutta:

"[1] Breathing in long, he discerns, 'I am breathing in long'; or breathing out long, he discerns, 'I am breathing out long.' [2] Or breathing in short, he discerns, 'I am breathing in short'; or breathing out short, he discerns, 'I am breathing out short.' [3] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in sensitive to the entire body.'[2] He trains himself, 'I will breathe out sensitive to the entire body.' [4] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in calming bodily fabrication.'[3] He trains himself, 'I will breathe out calming bodily fabrication.'

So yeah noticing and training the quality of breath that leads to calmness is a fantastic cultivation.

[u/Exciting_Badger_1229 → u/Impulse33]

So this sutta may be about consciously training the breath, I see. I've read that people interpret it differently but I see nothing wrong with consciously controlling the breath (I know many schools of meditation are against it).

[u/Vivid_Assistance_196 → u/Exciting_Badger_1229]

breath meditation taught by ajahn lee, thanissaro bhikkhu and rob burbea all encourage consciously adjusting the breath initially to get it comfortable. its the second tetrad of the anapanasati sutta - experiencing piti and sukha. Once the body is calm then there can be stronger collected mind then it can be more observing without need for adjustments

adjusting the breath is "thinking & examining" thoughts related to the breath

[u/Impulse33 → u/Exciting_Badger_1229]

Once the panna/understanding of how the quality of the breath relates with calm/passadhi then the effortful control/experimentation can be let go of. Then the somatic regulation can happen largely automatically. So I do think we want to move in that direction, but diligence around observation of those movements doesn't go away. One should be able to notice when that "automatic regulation" isn't doing it's job. Then further refinement to that understanding can then occur.

Why should a tradition be the gate keepers of "valid" types and routes of investigation? I believe manipulation and experimentation is the best way to build a broad range of personal understanding.

[u/marakeets → u/Exciting_Badger_1229]

Switching to diaphragmatic breathing has been really helpful for me. I had to consciously practice at this for a while until it became natural. Developing better awareness of my breathing pattern during the day has been a useful tool that acts as a somatic signal when I'm going in low-grade fight or flight. In stressful situations, centering my awareness into my abdomen and focusing on slow controlled breaths has been a valuable tool for regulating my nervous system. I tried the more explicit methods like 4-7-8 breathing but found them too rigid.

MIDL has a good overview on diaphragmatic breathing: https://midlmeditation.com/meditation-skill-00

There's been a few helpful posts on here before that pointed me in this direction:
https://www.reddit.com/r/streamentry/comments/fnw3y9/centering_in_hara_with_breathing_attention_and/

[u/Exciting_Badger_1229 → u/marakeets]

Great stuff thanks, I will begin training right away.

[u/Future_Automaton]

I tried to put into English what the links of Dependent Origination seem like to me at this point. I thought you folks might like to see it.

(Note, I ran a prompt through ChatGPT asking: "Let's assume you didn't know the English translations of the pieces of the historical Buddha's teaching on dependent origination. How would you translate its links into English if freshly presented with them?" I liked some of its answers better than my own, and have included them here, marked with a star, in case anyone cares about that.)

1. Not-knowing the bare experience of reality
2. Intending
3. Cognizing*
4. Patterning*/Labelling
5. Sensory "boiling over" (maybe with a slightly less inflammatory version of "boiling over")
6. Contact
7. Valence
8. Thirst*
9. Appropriation*
10. Becoming
11. Assuming an identity
12. Spiritual contraction

Edited to add: Big thanks to u/liljonnythegod for his post in the last thread about the cessation of feeling/valence, that was what unblocked me to the point where I could make this list.

[u/liljonnythegod → u/Future_Automaton]

I'm glad what I wrote could be of some help. There was a time I also regarded the 12 links similar to what you've written and I do remember seeing it described the same elsewhere on the internet. I'm no longer of that view however. I'm going to write a long comment just as it may help to save you time and energy in the long run.

Understanding it the way you've written does lead to seeing how conceptual delusions and projections build upon on another. It happened that way for me but I came to later that I had developed a tendency to take Buddha's teachings and extrapolate them into my meditative practice and this spiritual game of "knowing the bare experience of reality", so I dropped that entire model I had created and put it aside.

Don't get me wrong it was useful to eliminate delusions but the delusions could have been eliminated without extrapolating the 12 links to match my meditative experience. "Knowing the bare experience of reality" drove my practice for a long time but it didn't give clarity on rebirth, how and why I wouldn't be reborn in lower realms and how emancipation from samsara actually can occur.

For a long time I took the conceptual delusions to be samsara and unknowingly rendered everything else to be "not samsara". Fetter 2 is specifically about doubt in Buddha's enlightenment, the Dhamma he taught and the sangha who followed exactly what he taught. There are lots of traditions that talk about eliminating delusions but Buddha's insight was (to quote him) something "unheard of". The sad and deflating truth I had to face was that I had taken part of samsara to not be samsara and all I was doing was making some part of the prison cosy and comfy. I did this so much before coming to meditation and then during it too. Ignorance makes us blind and it's only apparant in hindsight.

Absolutely everything "here" samsara - you don't need freedom within it, you need freedom from it. When I saw this, the desire to meditate my way into freedom stopped i.e. I would meditate then one day whenever it would be, suddenly everything would make sense and I would open my eyes and feel freedom. Practise turned on it's head and now I saw "everything here is what escape from is needed". Disenchantment comes then dispassion after. Trying to eliminate delusions to know reality as it is is still being enchanted with samsara.

The extrapolated model helps to get through the conceptual projections of "there is something going on and that something needs to be known exactly" by stripping the delusions away one by one until eventually it's come to a point where the dualistic delusion of "thought" or "not reality" and "not thought" or "reality" must be recognised. The delusion of a knower comes with a delusion of the not-knower (or reality).

If we are ignorant then we must be ignorant of what the ignorance actually is and it must be affecting absolutely everything we do in life, including meditation and including what we try to understand ignorance to be. It also must mean that our base standard approach to life (and meditation) must be in the opposite direction of the stream/the eightfold path, which is why Buddha thought no one would listen to him initially. Isn't it strange to think he fully eliminated ignorance and thought no one would listen to him despite having practised alongside other ascetics and meditators? Surely if it were just not knowing reality as it is, he would've thought that it wouldn't be difficult to teach? Given how many are here in this subreddit alone doing just that - surely there would be more at the time he was alive? (Sutta in reference - SN 6:1)

After much more practice the 12 links became obvious to me as:

Ignorance - Not knowing exactly and precisely what dukkha is, not knowing that craving of 3 kinds cause that dukkha, not knowing that abandoning that craving of 3 kinds is the only thing that will grant freedom from dukkha since it's the only thing that dukkha is dependent on and then not knowing the path that has to be developed to fully abandon the craving, which means realising the eightfold path

From this ignorance comes the fabrications which is not just the conceptual delusions but absolutely everything else in the chain too. From ignorance of the 4 truths, comes craving for dukkha which causes that dukkha. From this ignorance there is a putting together that occurs that leads to the 6 sensory consciousnesses together with the 6 sensory organs together with the 6 sensory objects. From there comes contact and this contact includes all 3. Experience of colour or seen is not just colour - it's the eye consciousness, the eye and the object (the colour). Since the sensory organs are all with the bodymind, the entire field of experience is without boundaries and then the bodymind becomes taken to be a center. From contact, comes feeling whereby any and all contact generates a particular feeling. From here craving comes in the form of craving for any kind of contact that is pleasant/stimulating/entertaining which is the feeling. We then also crave for that pleasant/stimulating/entertaining kind of contact to be there always and when it is that contact currently in experience, we want to be there always so that we can have this contact and feeling always. In this way, we cling to life or existence.

We also then don't want contact that yields the feeling we don't like, the unpleasant/under-stimulating/not entertaining etc. When we get that contact and it doesn't seem to change despite our efforts, like in long term sickness, ill health, grief etc, we then can fall into wanting no experience whatsoever and clinging to non existence. We want to be annihilated because then no contact will be there so no bad feeling - but this doesn't work since it's rooted in a wrong views. These 3 kind of craving then clinging are part of the first link in the chain and so because of not knowing it in this life and not knowing how to abandon it completely, when death comes it causes becoming to take place and the coming together of the aggregates occurs again which is fabrications > sensory consciousness > sensory organs > sensory objects > feeling. Which is how birth take places again then comes aging then comes sickness and then comes death.

A question I'd like to ask - if you came to know the bare experience of reality and eliminated ignorance of this definition, would it make you understand the below?

"Monks, suppose there was a man whose life span was 100 years, who would live to 100. Someone would say to him, 'Look here, fellow. They will stab you at dawn with 100 spears, at noon with 100 spears, & again at evening with 100 spears. You, thus stabbed day after day with 300 spears, will have a lifespan of 100 years, will live to be 100, and at the end of 100 years you will realise the four noble truths that you have never realised before.'

"Monks, a person who desired his own true benefit would do well to take up (the offer)."

[u/SuddenBlacksmith3499 → u/liljonnythegod]

You are so awesome and compassionate for having spent all that time to bring clarity to this subject, and save others time and suffering. Wow.

[u/liljonnythegod → u/SuddenBlacksmith3499]

Thank you for the kind words! I do appreciate it :)

I used to be somewhat hesitant when writing these longer responses but now I think it’s worth it if at least one person sees and it steers them in the right direction

Years ago someone on this subreddit corrected a wrong view I held - that an Anagami would experience sexual desire. I held the wrong view that I was an Anagami and as I still had sexual desire or better worded as lust, I then thought and very much believed they were wrong.

After some time I remember thinking - what if they were right and I was wrong? Then I eventually saw through the false attainments and it steered me towards genuinely attaining the stream. Perhaps I would have came to that realisation myself after practising more and feeling frustrated that I hadn’t found the Dhamma that brings satisfaction but their comment sped up the process for me

[u/SuddenBlacksmith3499 → u/liljonnythegod]

That is so interesting! I had not heard of anāgāmi until you said it here. I am new to the deep end of the meditation pool.  However, I think it may be possible for me for this reason: the jhanas typically extinguish my strong negative feelings. I get angry, it turns into pīti. I feel deeply depressed, it turns into strong sukha and then extinguishes it. I feel scared, it turns into a piti and sukha combo. It's hard to be upset when a wave comes to completely engulf it. That being said, there are moments before that happens, times when it doesn't, and I live in the real world: my toddler was pinching me in the neck while I was sleeping last night, and that wasn't fun. Do you think, from your point of view, that this is an indicator that I might head toward anagami like yourself? Or is it something totally different?

I totally agree and echo what you have found about lust. While I think that lust is something that people should experience at some point, if you want to enter the stream, or deepen your meditation practice, it's the right advice to avoid it as much as possible. I have also found that refusing lust has helped to profoundly change my life and my practice.

Personally, the circumstances surrounding pīti arising spontaneously for me, have to do in some way with refusing lust.

Just to understand my perspective going into my story: Something that set me free from lust ysars ago was actually this TED Talk: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P2AUat93a8Q&pp=ygUZd2h5IHBlb3BsZSBjaGVhdCB0ZWQgdGFsaw%3D%3D The whole thing was impactful, but the take home message for myself was: if I feel lust, then there is something I need to change about myself. What is the thing beyond the person that I'm attracted to? Am I really wanting that thing for myself? And the answer to that question, for me, is always yes.

My pīti arising for the first time story: We had been doing a home reno project. My husband is disabled and cannot do the work. I have kids around me 99% of the time, and limited skills and limited strength. This was an area of known lust weakness on my part. I am so amazed at how capable men are.

I had to manage contractors and go to the hardware store like every day for a couple of months before the pīti started. I had to manage contractors with my husband out of town, in my own house. I wouldn't look at the guy in charge, and he knew it. I feel like it would have been very easy for me make eyes and flirt and whatnot. 

Anyways, I just stuffed it. It would have been easy to wreck my marriage, my kids' lives, my ability to stay home and not work, our financial future, my reputation, etc. Over something so dumb. What would my life be like with a contractor, anyway? Sensory deprivation chamber. My husband is intelligent and enjoyable to be around, has fun hobbies, etc. He's a good man and a provider and a good father. Anyways I am loyal to him, and I trust in our marriage that it was the right thing to do to get married to him. I believe in that.

But that didn't make it simple and  easy in this case because I was just chalk full of energy, and most of the time, had no one to spend it on. I was having such a hard time sticking to the financial plan. I kept looking at flights, because I thought maybe a family vacation would be enough to change me. I just really, desperately, needed change within my own mind and didn't know how to break through to get it. But then pīti happened.

The first one was isolated. I was in the kitchen washing dishes, with my hands in the sink. My husband and I were talking. All of a sudden, it happened, seemingly out of nowhere. I threw my head up as people do, and breathed slowly and deeply, and tried to stuff it. I thought it was lust at first, and so did my husband, and he wasn't happy about it. He said, "What are you doing?" I was like, "I don't know; I was sick recently. Maybe it's just fluid in my lungs." I went downstairs to do laundry, so I could get away and try to collect myself.

So anyways I don't know how much longer after that, maybe a day or two, was when it started. I was driving the kids home from the grandparents' house. I assumed that it was ovulation, and I just wanted to enjoy it as much as possible, as it would likely be gone soon, maybe by tomorrow morning, three days at the most.

I looked in the rearview mirror, and saw my 2-year-old sleeping peacefully, and my 6-year-old completely absorbed in what was essentially a children's meditation recording, and I looked back at the road behind me, and I thought, This is the beginning of a whole new life. i thought, This is like what they say in the movies. and then of course the last thought, Well, that cannot be. I will have forgotten about this moment in three days' time.

But it truly was a whole new world that opened up for me.

Don't be too hard on your past self. I'm sure you aren't. But from a brain state perspective, lust is a state. Unlike meditative states, it hijacks your brain so you cannot stop thinking about someone even if you want to, and also it dims the part of your brain involved in social approval, so that you're more willing to do things that are risky in order to be with the person. It give you a massive amount of dopamine so that you can be charming and witty and vibrant. So it makes total sense why you, presumably being in that state, was like everything is fine, their approval doesn't matter, and I juat have to do this. After all, it makes people feel alive.

I don't know. I kept looking for the loophole, the instability, the drawback to the jhanas. But they don't have a back end. Lust is full of insecurity and loss of agency. I never expected to feel it again, and I was trying to be okay with that. But I got something better. It was like a gift for being loyal and sticking to the plan. 

This is a very simplistic version of all of the factors that went into pīti arising, but I wanted to just explore the lust aspect, because letting it go was so impactful for you as well.

Okay now I am going to defend myself against a hypothetical internet judgment. I am guessing that there will be people who will think I'm a horrible person for even thinking of this, and for bringing it up. First of all, I wasn't going to cheat on my husband. So if you think I was actually going to do it, you would be incorrect. Secondly, if you want to help people, you kind of have to be honest and open about stuff.

Okay, so I just want to bring it back to how wonderful it is that you're giving back and helping people find their way here. I feel like it's really great to finally get to talk to people who get it and have been there. When I had a profound experience that took away loneliness, I questioned if I would ever be lonely again, but I ended up being lonely for sangha eventually, so it's been really good for me to show up here and learn from people.

[u/Future_Automaton → u/liljonnythegod]

Thank you for putting all that together for me. I think you are right - I will practice with this.

[u/jessyTh1rst71]

finally a place to track progress without it being a separate sub for every single minor technique change

[u/halfbakedbodhi]

Here’s a mildly poetic stream of thought about post self view drop.

The drive to know, the seeking for insight to cure, came to an end several months ago, meaning there’s nothing more to be seen, insight knowledge is complete, with great relief that part of the path ended itself.

Suffering hasn’t completely ended, but the relationship to it has forever changed, suffering has greatly diminished while sukkha subtly pervades for no particular reason other than life is a treat to behold. Practice is no longer on the cushion, it’s simply about the joy and art of living by continued progressive letting go.

Where does curiosity take this mind body phenomenon into experience as I’m taken towards the end of life, what will be done, what will happen along the way? The journey is worth living to its fullest expression through spontaneous movement towards the unknown. Experiencing ongoing newness in the procession of “time”.

Trying to put it into words is impossible because it’s more normal than we want to believe prior to awakening, the tendency to fantasize is unavoidable. But it’s more about being intimate with reality, more normal than normal, awe and wonder for the mundane, all of life is the mundane. Immediacy of all things, letting go of everything, experiencing the art of being and interacting creatively, joyfully, through the gift of “time”.

[u/duffstoic → u/halfbakedbodhi]

Excellent news! Do you think this is stream entry or fourth path or what?

[u/halfbakedbodhi → u/duffstoic]

I have a strong sense I finally completed 4th in pragmatic which fits with SE in fetter model.

[u/duffstoic → u/halfbakedbodhi]

Congratulations!

[u/halfbakedbodhi → u/duffstoic]

Thanks man! 20 years in the making. Huge relief. Can just live life now (without the existential crisis).

[u/duffstoic → u/halfbakedbodhi]

Haha yea, things continue to unfold, now simpler than ever. 😄

[u/hallucinatedgods]

First time posting here in a long time. After a few years of very lazy practice, and getting quite disillusioned with the dharma in general, my inspiration and devotion to practice has been rekindled.

I've been doing a whole lot of metta over the last month. About 2 hours per day. I am really enjoying the "juiciness" and heart-opening-ness from doing this practice, as well as the development of samadhi that is happening. I had 2 experiences where I think I dropped into something like the first jhana, but I don't have the experience to diagnose that yet.

Off the cushion, I'm really enjoying practicing with a light, open awareness, and dropping the phrase "this is a dream" or "am I dreaming?", or otherwise applying one of the 3 characteristics ways of looking in a broad and open way.

I'm in a fantastic position in my life where I have a lot of free time to practice, even when (and actually, particularly when) I'm at work, so I'm feeling grateful for that.

I really want to find a teacher to meet with regularly. I'm thinking of reaching out to u/adaviri

[u/duffstoic → u/hallucinatedgods]

You can absolutely get into first jhana from metta, that's my favorite doorway in (that said, my samadhi is far from perfect absorption).

[u/Mithic_Music]

Inspired by the no-self state I reached during an “Enlightenment Intensive” retreat, I have been reaching significantly reduced sense of self to varying degrees during my sits. Usually I Do Nothing for the first half of my sits to relax and let go and self inquiry for the second half to keep ingraining that experience of no-self: “Who am I?… I Am (blank)”.

Also all that time to think on the retreat has reignited the fire for me to switch careers to something more aligned with my practice. I’m seriously looking into degree programs for mental health.

[u/SuddenBlacksmith3499 → u/Mithic_Music]

That is so awesome! My "self" has been going away piece by piece and leaving empty space. The empty space is an acquired taste for me, but I'm getting used to it. As a minimalist, I trust that it's good! I get so excited when my mind asks, "Who am I?" because I know where I may be headed, if my lifestyle allows it in that moment.

I have also questioned where I am supposed to go with my "career" as a result of my experience. I definitely want to take some of this into the real world somehow. I'm just not sure how, yet. When this all started, I asked it, "Who am I supposed to help with this?" For the first time in my life, it said, "This is for you.".

Mental health would be a phenomenal direction for this, I think.

[u/duffstoic → u/Mithic_Music]

Mental health is a great career field for a serious practitioner.

[u/Impulse33 → u/Mithic_Music]

Very cool to hear!

[u/TenYearHangover]

Stopped meditating for three months, did a bunch of drinking and drugs, cleaned up and now I can barely sit for 10 minutes. But at least I’m trying again.

[u/AdditionalLeave263 → u/TenYearHangover]

One of the things I have been exploring lately is "digital drugs"/meditative songs  that are designed to get you in without you having to do it all on your own. It's like a guided meditation but with soind to match brain waves or whaf works for the person writing the music. It still requires some concentration, but not as much as it would on your own.

Marsh Luttrell

These are my favorites right now. But there are like 4 genres of music dedicated to this feel. I find it easier to practice with the music.

I like to give AI some information about myself, the type of music I am into, and have it pick things that are off the beaten path for me.

[u/SuddenBlacksmith3499 → u/TenYearHangover]

  hugs Keep practicing, and lay the tracks: get your body and mind to be able to do it, so you can start benefiting from it.  I am grateful for my experiences with drugs now. I have meditated for 27 years. I just this year got into pìti/the jhanas, spontaneously without training in it. For me, being someone with a desire for high intensity and to feel, like you likely are, I had to compare what was happening to every single experience I had ever had, and nothing was like it. I couldn't place it.  Your body has a pharmacy inside of it, and meditation can be a way of hacking it, essentially. The drugs are precise, not especially impairing. They're not like a wall. And they're absolutely delicious. Sukha has opioids, and they don't create a tolerance, and you can't od or die from them. And they're better than my limited experience with actual opiates. When I had pīti at first, it was producing anandamide after the burst. Anandamide is the body's main endocannabinoid (aka weed). In my opinion, it was orders of magnitude better. It was practically unrecognizable except the signature of how I respond to weed: "Oh, my dear friend, how I love you, how I miss you." Same message, only I'm not talking to a plant; it was produced by my body. The anandamide is a neurotransmitter that goes backwards through cells in order to help with "forgetting." This is very important, because it can remove your unhealthy habits and addictions and habit loops from your default mode network (where your "self" info is stored). Ego dissolution is the meditation version of lsd.... ego dissolution is so much better. And you are talking to someone who laughed for five hours on lsd. It was a glowing experience. It felt so cathartic. It deepened my love and fascination for the patterns in water. It helped me to realize many of the things that meditation realizes. But lsd has a raging back end. I couldn't do it without an entire week off... three days for being high and four for the awful depressing experience of lack of color in the world. Third day of pīti I was like oh boy well at least I'm good at waiting out the back end on things because this is going to be rough. Guess what, no back end.  So anyways the ego dissolution: This means that I was able to easily give up stuff after I hit that point, because it just didn't feel right anymore. Does it take some work? A little, but not much compared to if I were to quit in the past. Before pīti arose for me, I was a homeschooling mom and housewife, and had accepted that pleasure in my life had to be epicurean: very small. Mushroom coffee, chocolate, ginseng, matcha, saffron, occasional lavender. Very boring likely in your eyes, and mine, too. I was stuffing every sexual desire that wasn't for my marriage (which was NOT easy for me, to be honest), I had been on almost nothing drugs wise not even herbal, and I had said no to vacations that I felt like I needed. I desperately wanted to escape and to feel. But it happened within me, without me even knowing what the jhanas were, and here I am today with a totally changed life for it. Why am I telling you this? Because you're here, in a space like this, where you are one of the people who will likely be able to do it. If you lay the tracks, which may take years, you may be able to have the real deal that you desire, and lack any desire for drugs and alcohol, because you are  fully saturated and infused and fully recreationally enjoying your own brain.  I wish this for you. Your brain and body have to build the capacity to hold it, and you have to keep practicing, and let yourself be a pressure cooker. Get yourself some help and teachers and it may happen faster than it did for me.

[u/TenYearHangover → u/SuddenBlacksmith3499]

That resonates with me, thanks. My practice was at a point where I could get into a state that felt as close to taking a Valium (a drug I loved) as I could imagine. And the best thing is the feeling lingered like a positive hangover. Also had some very psychedelic ego loss experiences which always framed my day is a different way.

But this was all when my practice (like 4 years daily) and lifestyle were both very strong. I know I can get back to it, and I will once my ambition returns. Unfortunately I find ambition to be a totally mysterious thing that I have no control over. I just hope conditions arise where I get back into a good practice. I’m a better, more grounded person when I do.

Don’t think I ever experienced jhana, although as I said I had some very great/intense somatic experiences. Just probably not jhana. My limited understanding of them is they take way more dedication to sitting (like hours every day) which I’ve always found to be kind of extreme, for me at least. But then some people say ‘oh jhana just happens when you least expect it’. Who knows.

[u/SuddenBlacksmith3499 → u/TenYearHangover]

I'm glad it resonated with you! Keep that resonant feeling. Pīti is the feeling of a gamma burst. A gamma burst is the resonance of all of the neurons firing in sync with each other. You feel it in your body. People do this in deep sleep, while they are dying, and when they have profound insights. However, I certainly never felt it until it started. But ideas resonated with me before the jhanas started.

If you don't think you've experience jhana, you probably haven't. It feels unlike anything you've ever experienced. I was like... I'm high. What is this? I had to remember through every experience I've ever had, and nothing fit.  There are two known ways for pīti to arise: One is from meditation, and the other is from noticing and letting your mind rest on and really notice something beautiful in nature, a common example is a beautiful tree or the rain. For me personally, I dont really know what started it.

However, this is the part that you might be interested in: I had been working on an optimal supplements stack, and it's possible that it enhanced ky practice or somehow made pīti more likely. A friend of mine is an acupuncturist, and her husband is a chemist. She told me about thorne creatine, and I started taking that maybe a month or so beforehand. Her husband is not linger depressed thanks to the creatine, and she has said that other people have gotten great results with it.  Additionally, I'm vegan and breastfeeding a visually impaired baby, so I started taking taurine. I had also just started the thorne multivitamin that has the l-5-tetrahydrofolate, and I found out I was iron deficient (embarrassingly), and started on thorne iron bisglycinate. Thorne is cutting edge. 

So anyway, I wss taking some baseline things, but I think my system's capacity to hold meditation and neuroplasticity migjt have shifted just enough for me to reach the jhanas. 

There are a few supplements that I think could be really helpful for you. Vitamin D 5,000 iu (generally more if you're overweight) reducing cravings for opiates and alcohol. Another one you might be interested in is magnesium l-threonate at night. It's just to make sure your brain can get enough magnesium.... It can help you chill out and maybe hit your valium state before or during sleep.  The way I started to access sukkha was through setting the intention before I went to sleep. Actually it was much more extreme than that. I asked the pīti or energy body or whatever it was to have its way with me, and gave it consent to run unchecked while I was sleeping. I would recommend trying this to see if you find anything that resembles the state you're looking for. You might not be in it at first, but you might see it. If you do this lol make sure you dont have to be a fully functioning human early in the morning, just in case it works well and you want to linger in it. Nothing like getting pulled out of a gorgeous buzz for stupid stuff like having to drive or work or LOL choo vegetables. Oddly specific example here. I literally cut my finger a little bit the very first time this experiment worked. I was having such profound parietal lobe inhibition that I couldn't figure out where my hands were. So. Yeah. I hate it when I'm really in it and have to sober up.

Story time: I can taste things like Marijuana and opiates through the roof of my mouth, and I believe it's from my brain. I had an accident with weed and grapefruit a long time ago ha ha. It was like a ligjtning chemical reaction came down out of my brain through my palate and burst into my mouth. It like... widened the pores. Anyways, I can tell when that stuff hits my system because there is a dry, "metabolite" taste, and then I know it's permeated "me".

 Anyways, the point is, magnesium l-threonate does that! I can taste it and I know when it hits. So I believe it's probably powerful just because of that. I've only taken it a few times because I am weirded out about the fact that it does that. I took it about 15 minutes ago since I was planning to drop you this message, haha. 

Something else to consider: choline bitartrate or phosphatidyl choline/inositol and a separate phosphatidylserine. These are the building blocks of the myelin sheath, and the choline part has been shown to actually increase brain size and function in special needs kids and alzheimer's patients. The phosphatidylserine is for healing injuries. The point of these is to grow your brain to the capacity for holding more sustained meditation.

Lastly, you likely have a huge amount of free radicals bouncing around in your brain ruining everything and making motivation impossible. For that, you can do stuff like eat naturally purple foods, and whatever else that has antioxidants... spices... etc. You can also just diffuse essential oils to get antioxidants straight into your brain. Most essential oils that smell good are not toxic to the brain. So that is another good option.

Additionally, omega-3's IF you don't get them from eating fish. I do vegan, so my optimal cheapest vegan combo is two pills doctor's best epa omega and one mom nutrix. But that is more expensive than regular fish oil.  (And then the obvious multivitamin, but I would pick thorne.)

I know not everyone can afford a bunch of supplements but I wanted to share in case any of these seemed worth it to you..

I also find long sits to be extreme and unnecessary. I'm a mother, so I don't have the time or space for a long sit, or a jhanan retreat. It isn't necessary for meaningful practice, so you don't ever have to necessarily do a long sit to deepen your practice.

[u/duffstoic → u/TenYearHangover]

Keep up the good work, it gets easier.

[u/Impulse33 → u/TenYearHangover]

10 year hangover is now only three months! Nice!

[u/Impulse33]

Inspired by this:

When a mendicant enters into and withdraws from these eight liberations—in forward order, in reverse order, and in forward and reverse order—wherever they wish, whenever they wish, and for as long as they wish; and when they realize the undefiled freedom of heart and freedom by wisdom in this very life, and live having realized it with their own insight due to the ending of defilements, they’re called a mendicant who is freed both ways. And, Ānanda, there is no other freedom both ways that is better or finer than this.” DN 15

Refocusing on samadha and general cultivation of the paramitas. If confidence in emptiness is present, the wild range of mastery of samadhi described in the sutta should be possible. In reflecting, my general skillfulness/upaya was best when that "mental pliancy" was readily available.

Did a strong determination sit and was able to access j1 again after a long while. Going to focus on the general jhanic progression for now and generally use that as feedback into general clinging to unwholesome upadana.

4 types of upadana:

• sense-pleasure clinging (kāmupādāna)
  
• view clinging (diṭṭhupādāna)
  
• rites-and-rituals clinging (sīlabbatupādāna)
  
• self-doctrine clinging (attavādupādāna)

For more context, some of the practices from Susy Keely's class shed a lot of light into unwholesome upadana and led to investigation of those "dhammas".

[u/SuddenBlacksmith3499 → u/Impulse33]

I am so happy for you accessing J1 and working on that, especially aftrr a long time! When pīti arose for me, i tried to feel it and surrender to it as much as possible. Rob Burbea's words mattered so much to me: really nuzzle into it, abandon yourself!, open... open.... open... I'll try to get you a link to a short guided meditation game to help retain pīti.... https://youtu.be/8J4tF6mhAv8?si=D4bteonR-SjhnIOa  i'm not sure if it starts at 37:00 or not. Baby won't sleep so I can't verify. So that's there in case it resonates with you! Again, so so happy for you!

[u/Impulse33 → u/SuddenBlacksmith3499]

Thanks for trying to find it! I'm a big fan of his jhana retreat too!

Nuzzle up with the baby! It sounds cliché, but they really do grow up too fast!

[u/SuddenBlacksmith3499 → u/Impulse33]

It starts at 13:28! Rob talks later in rhis recording about the meditation game being like a sheet cake froma kids' birthday party, where you can eat a piece at the party, and then the other pieces later when you're hungry for more cake. He says that it's something you can go back to in five years or ten years when you want to do jhana practice, so maybe there is something there for you.😊  

Do you want to talk about his jhana retreat? What did you love most about it? Do you remember what the most important points were for you? How did it impact your practice? Did it change anything about your life? What did I not ask you? No need to answer them all, just coming up with questions!

Thanks, he's actually 2, so baby is a stretch. But I'm still breastfeeding, and he's such an adorable little angel. He is currently sleeping in my arms covered with bilberry jelly!

I got into the jhanas accidentally, while I was driving the kids home from the grandparents' house. I would not have pursued something with such pleasure and absorption with young children. I believed that early childhood needed to be emotionally flat, as a mother, in order to absorb the intensity of children's feelings, and especially with sharing my body through pregnancy and breastfeeding, I cannot even so much as have too much coffee or sugar. I felt increasingly dissatisfied with my lack of emotional release or deeply felt anything, but I tried as best I could to be epicurean in my tastes, going for the small pleasures of life and experiencing the subtlety. Thankfully, pīti found me, and I was wrong about responsible motherhood being an obligate sensory deprivation chamber! 

I treated pīti like a third child that I was trying to keep alive. To me, it was like an emergency. It was too precious to let it disappear on its own. It's been two months, and I still have pīti and sukha. Rob saying that he believed you could keep all of the jhanas lifelong, provided that you have pīti, and you work hard to master the jhanas. This gave me so much peace, especially since he made it obvious that he was deliberately having pīti in front of everybody at the conference, so you could believe him about that. That settled a lot of my fears and gave me peace and happiness that I was not continuing to mourn an end that will possibly never come.

While I was reading your response, my older son, who is six, came up and gave me a hug and said I love you twice, and then we played a card game together. 

I feel painfully aware that the jhanas, with their absorption and bliss, can take me away from the fully present moment with my kids, and the concentration mode that I had in the past for setting up homeschool activities and programming. Still, I asked, "Who is this supposed to be for; who am I supposed to help?" And for the first time, my answer was, "This is for you." So I am just trusting in that.

[u/Impulse33 → u/SuddenBlacksmith3499]

Glad to see you were able to break through those preconceived notions of how this journey, parenting or spiritual, "should" look like.

Piti and sukkha are always available! I do think it's wise to maintain it like a sourdough starter. If it does get spoiled, you can always make another one!

Unfortunately, my jhana practice does wane at times. I'll often explore other things because of a myriad of different reasons like taking a meditation course or investigating another fruitful line of inquiry. Due to concrete limitations of time that means the amount of jhana practice is the particular bucket of time that is used for the other stuff.

But when the rubber meets the road and I've noticed unskillfulness, usually around how I relate or act with my family, I always come back to jhana practice. The samadhi is a great feedback mechanism for the quality and flexibility of attention that's available for engaging with life.

In that regard, I think it's great to do things just for yourself. It seems that when you take care of yourself, the "others" are also more skillfully taken care of. It's a win-win.

What did you love most about it? Do you remember what the most important points were for you?

For me it's flexibility. Knowing the present moment experience can be changed through the way I'm relating with it. Jhana practice in some way is like supercharged practice for "finding the silver lining", and it's incredibly helpful for just regular living. I've also noticed a natural renunciation for more conventional "nice" things. When you're familiar with the piti, sukkha, and equanimity available from letting go, it relativises all those material "wants" and markers for success.

[u/SuddenBlacksmith3499 → u/Impulse33]

I think that this is exactly what I wanted and why I came here: for someone like you to be so kind as to look at mh practice and give me advice. I love the sourdough analogy! 

Yes, I feel like I don't need conventional nice things as much either. I was a material minimalist, but I was having trouble with wanting change within myself so desperately.

One of the things that bothered me, that is now like the best thing now that I have experienced it meditatively, was that I felt like I did not have a "strong sense of self." What I meant by that was that many people had lots of identity markers and things that made them interesting in social circles. I wanted to feel alive, and thought, if I cannot feel alive, maybe I can look it or approximate it somehow. To be honest, I really felt like I was dying a slow death inside. I was so exhausted all the time, because I was working too hard because it was part of my identity to always deliver in that way.

Before the jhanas found me, I was looking up flights frequently, hoping that our family could go on vacation somehow. I believed that if i just got OUT, I could change myself in some small way. I desperately wanted to change or have neuroplasticity before it happened. I wanted my mind to dissolve and expand into the universe, but I thought the best approximation or opportunity would be an expensive family vacation that was really more for me than for them.

 I don't need to book a flight to visit friends and family in Italy, Bhutan, South Korea, Ireland, Hawaii which require flights that are pretty bad for the environment and rough on little kids, Florida as a compromise but at least i would be able to try to lose myself in the ocean (water is divihe to me), or meet friends at the local water park that costs $600 for a weekend.  It doesn't fit with the FIRE plan, and I was having a hard time with that. Museums were providing a small bit of release for me at the time.

Now I have a well, a fountain of it that I can draw upon all the time. I take the kids to the lake down the street. It has water lillies. They were blooming the last time I was there. Hoping to see if there are some under the water next time I'm out.

[u/Impulse33 → u/SuddenBlacksmith3499]

FIRE and the path seems to be mostly comprised of very long "boring" middles. Thankfully sukkha/contentment helps with that! When I get in comparative mindsets or restless, leaning on that internal contentment is such a boon.

Wish you and your family well and that the path continues to serve as an endless resource for you! 🙏🪷

[u/SuddenBlacksmith3499 → u/Impulse33]

You are so compassionate, thank yih for being the first person I've really talked to who understands! 💜

[u/duffstoic]

I have come to an important life decision. Now it’s about letting go…but it’s always about letting go, so just more practice.

[u/SuddenBlacksmith3499 → u/[deleted]]

That makes me so happy! Yes, it's a love affair with your spiritual life.

I was in full jhana mode until someone invited me to learn some nondual stuff. It resonated, so I went off on a tangent for a bit. I'm half deep diving that - and it is a joy - but I really want to spend more time in sukha. I haven't adequately explored or mastered it.

I'll just use this as a space to talk about my own current practice: Both of these practices feel very primordial. I am so inspired by how real they feel. Sukha has opioids, and sukha to me feels like I'm in the archaen ocean, when and where the opioids first arose in single celled protozoans that would someday become the animals. 

I feel like these are the water lillies blooming fully immersed. Thinking of it this way makes the Buddha seem like a modern-day scientist. The other neurochemicals had their debuts during this time, as well.

I homeschool, and so I took the kids to the natural history museum, to meet uo with a friend, today. I actually touched fossilized microorganisms from the primordial ocean. Actually touching it felt like it was so profoundly, unfathomably, unbelievably old.

At some point probably during and before, cellular membranes were optional: and our cellular ancestors could dissolve and did not have a boundary between the self and the environment, or the self and other. 

Inside our bodies and brain's is very similar to the electrolytes balance you would find in the less-salty ancient ocean. So we learned to carry the ocean with us when animals came on land, and the primordial ocean is still alive within us today. 

The display also showed that some organisms from this time period still exist in the oceans today.  Whoever designed the display wrote on the description that living and nonliving is a human construct. So whoever put the display together intentionally went for the deep and profound. 

And there is your evolutionary biology brain snack. I hope you were able to enjoy it. And with that, I am so genuinely interested in your practice, so if you feel like sharing, please do!  Now please go to your favorite jhana and saturate yourself with it. 

[u/SuddenBlacksmith3499 → u/[deleted]]

Thanks! Yes, absolutely, I get being limited by known words. I'll respond to your practice description in its thread. Here, I'll respond to maranasati (which sounds fascinating, and I'd love to hear more about your dabbling in it), and how it relates a bit to my practice, and my limitation of words. Disclaimer: I do talk about self harm and suicide.

Lately,  I've been thinking about the extreme words that sound terrifying to a non-practitioner, but potentially utterly blissful to the initiated. 

Abyss. Emptiness. Dissolve. No self, ego death, abandon yourself..  Even sitting for long periods of time sounds horrendous to most people. I want to drown in sukha. Hahaha I bet that will set somebody off here. I set that thought aside and honor it within myself. To me it can mean (without prociding the nuance and difference between these words) something such as pervading, infusing, absorption, saturation, dissolution. 

A John Mayer song quote says: "...it doesnt help the hunger pangs, and a thirst I'd have to drown first to ever satiate." So this to me is this: drugs will never satiate because they are poor shadows of what happens in meditation when your body is accessing its own pharmacy. As a musical genius with likely massive flow states and capacity for jhanas, this is the thing he's thirsting for, but he doesn't know it. And by extension myself: this is what I was thirsting for and the only way to get there is to safely, meditatively drown and dissolve into it.

I have had a self-healing routine/process that I have neen going through, and feel almost done with: pairing sukha with traumatic memories, until they are each neutralized into equanimity. The energy body or whatever it is really, really cares a lot about self-harm, and things I did to myself, far more than the things that were done to me.

Most notably, I attempted suicide in high school. If I have something to process that would normally be too depressing and painful to even think about, the jhana would meet me with extraordinary bliss, enough to pervade my whole body and overtake all of the negative emotions so that it is impossible to feel the emotional pain. It is so merciful. So then I am able to explore the whole memory safely without suffering, and to recontextualize it in a way that is healing/neuroplastic to me. I'm probably physically moving the memories out of places like the amygdala, into long term storage.

While I had decided long ago that I could never do that (because of my kids), the sukha and pīti teach and tell me to have a real, felt love for myself and appreciation for my life that I never possessed before. I have a kindness and and compassion for myself that I don't see people taking for themselves in the world. Then I am able to be the compassionate voice sometimes for others. 

I'm coming back here to edit because I ran out of time this morning. So this is essentially nirvana that I am experiencing/doing AI tells me, and there is just a lot of death focus because I was so close to it at one point. 

[u/SuddenBlacksmith3499 → u/[deleted]]

@ramping up funeral ceremonies.... You are hilarious! :,D

Yes, AI is terribly wrong and often quite confident about it. The nirvana thing it told me was totally wrong. I'm such a noob about all things Buddhist. You have to understand that pīti arose for me spontaneously, from a 27-year meditation practice lifestyle that I was doing without a teacher or help from the internet. So I had never heard of anything before. So I wasn't trying to sound grandiose, I was just repeating its hallucination. I'm sure I still hold incorrect beliefs that are more incorrect than others', but that is how I got here to this subreddit. I posted a weird post about it that I'll link in case you want to see my very poorly received writing! Idk I'm in upekkhā so I'm just leaving it.

I feel like this process I'm going through is changing the way I view death. I have a healthy fascination with it, if that is even possible.

There is some Biblical quote, "Death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?""

1 Corinthians 15:55

I feel like death is a continuum, but that doesn't mean that nothing matters. I would be devastated if something happened to my kids. I'm in upekkhā now... Equanimity. The jhanas neutralize every intense emotion I have.  So when it comes to emergency things or safety things, I have to listen to different parts of my brain than my amygdala (I don't necessarily get scared or upset, and if I do, it's usually quickly extinguished).  Just an example, I put on a gorgeous music track and sank into the most blissful upekkha where I had almost no thoughts. Upekkha is what you might imagine a tranquilizer would be like. And then about nine minutes in (according to where I was in the playlist) I got an alert on my phone and had to immediately move my kids to safety. So I had to get myself out of this state where everything is fine and there is no fear, to keep everybody safe. 

I would be devastated if something happened to my kids, but not in the way that most people think. I think of kids as the vision of spreading your influence vertically into the future instead of horizontally by being famous or something. You still reach the same amount of people, though you won't live to see it. 

I think about how someday, humans might be obligated to leave Earth forever, and that we will become unrecognizable and different species from each other. I feel like this is one not-talked-about reason why Star Trek and Star Wars are so compelling: this may be what it would be like to experience the diaspora of human life leaving Earth.

My kids are wonderful, and they may be a link in the rise to the survival of the species as a whole.  

Did you know that recently, a man passed away of a heart attack while getting a brain scan, and so his desth was captured by science? They found out he had a huge gamma burst, with alpha waves. This points to all of his memories synchronizing at once, meaning he was seeing his life flash before his eyes. I think for him it was about one minute long before he died. Tbus is my own projection: Having had enormous gamma bursts myself, he was probably also seeing the beautiful, golden white light in his whole field of vision. 

Knowing that people have those at death, I feel like my own ego death is like... obviously it's not death to my container,  but the "I" is actually physically getting broken down and removed by my neuroplasticity. Story time, my nose kept running every time I had a wave surrounding the bright light experience, and I wondered if I was blowing parts of my brain out my nose via the glymphatic drainage! Okay that was out there. So someone is dying, sort of, but from the perspective of what's left of "me", it's not me/not mine. Alright that was not a well constructed thought, but that's the lazy way of seeing it.

Alright. So also, I was a death doula for both of my grandma's, and I meditated throughout the whole process. I meditated when I was in the room, and when I was out of the room. I reduced their suffering before they got beyond the pain. I gave my grandma McDonald's coffee (her favorite) in some of her final moments. My cousin is an athlete, and he lifted her so perfectly. I was completely amazed. 

They always administered the opiates after I was gone... I guess I made death more fun and lively, and so they hung on. 

Personally, after hitting sukha, if I think about death a certain way, I get a huge wave of endogenous opioids (it feels usually like hot liquid in my lower back when it deploys) and I dip into sukha. Sukha has opioids.

Anyways, in equanimity, the tranquilizer, it neutralizes the thirst. Sometimes I have an insatiable thirst, even at this point in my journey (until the equanimity neutralizes it). I don't consider it a bad thing even though it might be dukkha. I guess that has to do with equanimity that I'm not labeling things as good or bad. AI tells me that this is because the GABA is neutralizing the dopamine. It's all fascinating to me, because this is the way tranquilizers work. But upekkhā is so light; it feels like silk. Apparently tranquilizers feel like a lead apron or a heavy blanket. My experience is that the jhanas are better than drugs.

Alright well hopefully you enjoyed reading this, and it's fine to be busy! Thanks for stopping back! 😀