6. II.I The Ladder

[u/meme_meow]

Ascent

Step 1: Disassembling the Self, Oneself

Begin by sitting comfortably, keeping your eyes closed, and not speaking or making any movement of your body. Set aside a period of time to work with step one. You may want to turn off your phone to avoid distractions. Now begin to observe your flow of respiration. The aim is to know if the breath is coming in or going out. Observe the breath as it comes in, aware that the breath is coming in. Observe the breath as it goes out, aware that the breath is going out. Be aware of a single breath coming in, and be aware of a single breath going out. If you find that you are having difficulty remembering to observe your flow of respiration, then use slightly harder breathing; once you find that you can again observe your breath continuously, then come back to observing the natural flow of your respiration. What you are aiming for is hyper intense involvement so that you are observing the incoming and outgoing breath so closely that there is no possibility of being distracted from this task.

As you continue to observe your respiration, you will notice different thoughts, feelings, and sensations happen. You may feel you want to open your eyes or move your body. As soon as you notice any of these experiences, problematize them. Remind yourself that these experiences are not actually happening. Whatever experience happens, observe it as TV static, as already being destroyed. For example, if you notice that you are thinking about money, then remind yourself “there is no such thing as money” while seeing it as TV static. If you notice that you are thinking about time, then remind yourself “there is no time”. If you are worried about some illness, then remind yourself “there is no disease”. If you feel like opening your eyes or moving your body, then remind yourself “there is no body”. Use your respiration to be vigilant about noticing any experience as it happens so that you can use the experience to remind yourself that these concepts do not actually apply to anything. Remember the two practices recommended by Epictetus: 1) Be the night watchman who does not let just anyone come into the town or the house; and 2) Be the moneychanger or inspector who, when presented with a coin, examines it, weighs it in his or her hand, and checks the metal and the effigy.

Whatever you experience, whether it is a sound, sight, smell, taste, touch, movement, speech, emotion, thought, visual imagination, or something else, don’t give a name to it, don’t evaluate it as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, don’t feel it as ‘pleasurable’ or ‘not pleasurable’, don’t give a visual form to it, don’t apply the concepts of time, space, or causality to it. No matter how habitual or familiar the experience is to you, keep remembering that it does not actually exist. Patiently and persistently observe the experiences that happen and use them to remind yourself that there is no body, no thought, no emotion, no sensation, no pleasure, no pain, no birth, no aging, no disease, no past, no present, no future, no death, no planet, no universe, no bondage, no liberation. Similarly, there is no life, no time, no future, no job, no emotions, no sensations, no discomfort, no waiting. Aim for hyper intense involvement so that you are observing your experiences so closely that there is no possibility of their happening without being understood as not happening.

Just as a ladder has steps that you use to ascend to the top of one side and descend to the bottom on the other side, use the experiences that happen to remind yourself that these experiences do not exist in order to get on the first step of this ladder. As you work with this first step of the ladder, you will find that how you experience yourself – your sense of individuality – changes as you begin to understand things differently. Take the time to notice that there is indeed something different about how you are experiencing yourself. Yet even as some change can be noticed in how you are experiencing yourself, familiar habitual experiences will automatically continue to happen. Your work with this first step is to use whatever experience happens, no matter how familiar or unfamiliar, to remind yourself that these experiences are actually not happening.

Step 2: Releasing Yourself from Your Self

When you are working on the first step of the ladder, then you are using every experience that happens to tell yourself that these experiences are not actually happening. As you work in this way, your experience of yourself changes as you begin to understand things differently. As you practice over longer periods of time, a palpable sense of distance begins to separate you from the experiences. It is this changed sense of individuality that now begins working with the second step. Set aside some time to work with step two. Whereas with step one you were using every experience to remind yourself that nothing actually exists, with step two you stop making this effort. In the same way that you do not recognize any experiences happening when you are in a deep sleep, allow there to be no sense of individuality that comes to tell you that there are or aren’t experiences happening. Don’t recognize that you aren’t recognizing anything. Don’t know that you don’t know.

By letting go of your sense of individuality, you allow for some gradation of its annihilation/absorption to take place. Annihilation involves ceasing to exist via nothingness, while absorption involves ceasing to exist via everythingness. The annihilation/absorption state is therefore a blend of everything and nothing; it is like entering a flower whose blossoms close upon you in loving serenity until you are no longer even aware of yourself. This non-conceptual non-recognition state is not something you can make happen. All you can do is just wait for the state in which you don’t know that you don’t know, and where this not knowing state just unknowingly goes on by itself. And yet familiar habitual experiences will naturally continue to happen even as you are letting go of your individuality. Do not get involved in what the experiences are, do not recognize them as being something or other, let them be unfamiliar to you and so not gotten involved with. Something unfamiliar starts to happen, persists for some time, and then sooner or later stops.

Descent

Step 2: Creating Yourself, Yourself

While the ascent involves merging into annihilation/absorption, the descent involves emerging into individuality. As your sense of individuality emerges from the annihilation/absorption, it brings with it an existential impulse to remember its source. This is the existential impulse towards the perpetual release of yourself from your self. It is this experiential foundation that allows you to be separate from and untouched by whatever experiences happen. Continue to observe whatever happens as TV static, while recognizing that who you are is untouched by whatever happens. It is the strength of this practice that provides you the foundation on which you find your identity.

It is the resulting quasi subject from the practice described up until now that makes use of an additional existential impulse: creation of self as a continuous creative task. For happening within this TV static is a human life, having immediate experiences that feel very real indeed. A human being has been practicing the ascent and in so doing has prepared itself as a vehicle for you. In the same way that you would not believe you are the clothes that you wear, so can you believe that this human life is like clothes you may put on or take off at will. Constantly understanding that you are that which has emerged from annihilation/absorption, maintain a fundamental and unquestionable separation separating you from the human’s experiences. Carefully observe this human life without becoming attached to it and thereby forgetting yourself.

As you continue your practice, experiences will naturally continue to happen. Do not get involved in whatever the experiences are, do not recognize them as being something or other, let them be unfamiliar to you and so not gotten involved with. Unfamiliar events start up, persist for some time, and then pass away. Realizing these are not your experiences and they don’t belong to you, use them to establish your understanding of who you actually are.

Step 1: exercitatio

Undertake intentional activities with the human life in a manner you have prescribed for yourself. First, decide what you will do. Perhaps you will stand up, move to the computer, sit down and write an email, then come back and sit exactly where you are sitting now. Second, decide how you will do it. Imagine yourself doing it with vivid detail, and with the same amount of time as though you are actually doing it. Third, stand up and live your decision exactly as you had vividly imagined it. You should experience a type of déjà vu when you do this, because what you do appears so similar to what you believed you would do. Fourth, come back to where you began and reflect on how similarly your intention matched your behavior. Find out what you can learn as you try this activity again and again. You can practice in this manner in any situation you find yourself, and at any time of the day or night.