Got an Insight and my practice became rare

[Sergey NMember]

Hey everyone and thank you for this forum!
So I was happily meditating using the book for quite some time now. (as a background, I was into psychotherapy and psychology/philosophy/ego theories for quite some time).
Had some major relationship and personal changes, some easy, some temporary painful (but ending up much better eventually, for everyone).
I reached a stable Stage 5-6. I skipped something like 3 days total in last 3-4 months.
So around two weeks ago I got this deep realization that there is no self behind my actions, including those I “want” to do or plan to do. (Also it coincided with watching some Alan Watts lectures.)
So a huuuuge part of my personality virtually disappeared. That part of me that was exerting effort in 90% of activities in my life. Some of them fell off, but many stayed effortlessly – I essentially learned that there was part of me that was straining to do something, and part that was doing – and that they weren’t connected in any meaningful way, at all.
So, after a week this Insight got integrated and I went back to daily meditations, with even better enthusiasm and number of daily sessions then before.
But this week again is a hard one (quit my job which became meaningful and unwholesome in last two months) and my practice is stagnating again – I barely did two sessions this week.
So, my question essentially is: how do I get back on track with my daily sessions according to Culadasa’s book, given my situation?
My biggest problem seems to be a realization that there really is no “me” who can meditate when he can’t, I mean when it happens – it happens and I sit, if it doesn’t it doesn’t. But is there a way to meditate and progress in the Stages towards Samadhi? Or should I just let it go as it goes and accept sessions being sporadic at the moment, and have no goals (even a goal of sitting daily)?
Thanks, sorry if that was long and cumbersome
Best,
S

• This topic was modified 7 years, 7 months ago by  Sergey N.
• This topic was modified 7 years, 7 months ago by  Sergey N.

[Ted LemonMember]

Do you feel like negative emotions still arise? For me, the strong ones are obvious, and don’t stick, but the subtle ones can creep up and hang out. You might want to really pay attention to what’s keeping you from sitting and see if it isn’t some low-key grasping that isn’t loud enough to trigger your new-found protective shield.

[Ivan GanzaMember]

Sergey,

It sounds like you are making progress, which naturally will shake things up. Many layers of defensive mechanisms will kick in.

Don’t make this too complicated for yourself. Even if you don’t know who is sitting, or why sitting should happen vs. not sitting, sit anyway.

Observe very carefully what is happening if you can, who is appearing having these thoughts? Who is pushing back? Who is evaluating sitting vs. not sitting?

And just sit!!!

[Meshe MooetteMember]

Hi Sergey!

I can totally relate. Your story sounds like the past 6 months for me.

Just so we are on the same page,Sergey- i’m assuming that when you say there is no “you”- you mean that ultimately there is no “Sergey” that exists as a permanent, independent and substantial entity as delusion would have it. So for the self that we most definitely experience-how does it arise if it doesn’t exist?

Check out pg 422- the definition of the narrating mind. Is that what you became aware of in meditation? The emptiness of that process? pg 209-10/228-29 also describes it beautifully.

I found solace in TMI Appendix F (” insight and the dark night”), yet the resistance to sitting was a brick wall. It was like two horses pulling in opposite directions:

One horse pulling for daily meditations, and another, in the corner of the stable- probably drooling, was shell-shocked from seeing how self arises in consciousness. Remembering that a unified mind wouldn’t have that “dark-night” motivates me to keep meditating- moving towards further unification.

Some things that I am finding helpful while working through this-

* super chill walking meditation, just getting outside.
* yoga asana has been amazingly helpful
* using “still point- pg 318” (aka Settling the Mind in it’s natural state) type meditations.
* Asking, “who doesn’t want to meditate? who wants to meditate?” to re-experience insight.
* just being aware of the tremendous inner movement in contrast to the stillness of awareness.
* keeping it real and not falling off the cliff of nihilism- where “meshe” likes to hang out. Just because things don’t exist with self-nature doesn’t mean they don’t exist at all. Serving others helps me with this.

Most of all, what has helped is touching in with motivation- finding pleasure and joy again. It’s coming in unusual forms- i’m flipped out about foraging hazelnuts and biking, and spend a great deal of time outside because of it!

Wishing you all the best, and interested to continue the conversation about the discriminating and narrating minds,

Meshe

[Sergey NMember]

Hey everyone,

So much thanks for all you wrote! I actually did a 40 minutes session today and plan to do another one, and I got back my meditation tracker apps too. I will post an update here in a week or two, to tell how everything worked out, but I feel a change already!

Literally each of you had some precious piece of advice for me: I used Ivan’s “you don’t need to know who is meditating to just sit and meditate”, I also discovered some negative feelings indeed as Ted suggested, and as Meshe suggessted I’ve checked the book on Narrating Mind and gonna read that Interlude thoroughly.

By the way Meshe, interesting thing about being outside – I actually was stricken last month or two about being outside in nature and how complete it feels, and due to that decided to drop big city life and move to a beautiful countryside (luckily for myself I’m working from home)

Cheers,
Sergey

[Ted LemonMember]

Thanks for asking the question, Sergey. I found the answers you got very helpful to me as well. I’m curious if Meshe can talk about his experience of the “still point” meditation. When I heard the name of the meditation, it reminded me so strongly of a meditation I’ve been doing that I went to read the description, but the description is a bit different. What I get to in the meditation reminds me of the end state of the meditation, but I don’t do all the visualizations at the beginning–I get there a fairly different way. So I’m not sure if my “there” is the same there. 🙂

[Meshe MooetteMember]

Hi Ted!

I think you may know one of my meditation teachers- Doug Veenhof?

What do you do that’s fairly different?

I have used the method described on page 318-319 of TMI and have also approached this meditation through “settling the mind in its natural state”.

What i do: starting from a place of very stable attention, mentally recite a rehearsed phrase (such as “this is the mind”) veeeerrrrry slowly and syllable by syllable, then quite simply am aware of the next mental appearance as it arises, abides and dissolves. I practise this with eyes slightly open.

It does require a good deal of stability to achieve “the marriage between stillness and movement”. Sometimes it feels like being a statue in a hurricane, other times like a wide open field with the occasional butterfly…

Discovering more faint, “whispy” mental appearances, and very fast ones takes out any subtle dullness.

Here’s a nice quote about the experience of this practise, from Alan Wallace:

“As thoughts arise in the space of experience, together with visual imagery, sounds, and tactile sensations, let your awareness remain motionless in its own place, without grasping or aversion toward anything. Be present with every appearance, engaged from moment to moment, and not spaced-out. Remain in stillness, amidst a whirlwind of appearances to the mind and senses, like a gracious host surrounded by unruly guests.”

As mental appearances in the space of the mind peter out, the meditation seems to me to shift by itself into awareness of awareness- in a continuous, relaxed flow. That’s where i will then add the vipassana questions that Culadasa mentions (bottom of pg 319). This happens more in retreat for me.

Is that what you do?

[Ted LemonMember]

I do all kinds of different things, but what I did on the cushion on Wednesday was to use use a particular piece of music I love (Lauridsen’s O Magnum Mysterium), which I really feels comes from a place of silence, as an entry point to get to the place of silence that Culadasa talks about in TMI. I’m not clear on whether I’m getting to the Silent Point, or just to the place of mental silence, because it’s hard to compare an experience I have at one time with an experience I have at another. The silence I find always seems perfect.

I didn’t actually remember the text on p. 318 until you mentioned it and I thought “ah! I wonder if that’s related.” It sounds like it is. I’ve had the exact experience he describes asking those questions and then getting answers which felt insightful but not exactly correct, so it was really helpful to me to re-read that and revisit his instructions to keep looking. Thanks so much for calling that back to my attention.

Yes, Doug is a dear old friend. I haven’t seen him in a quite while, but would love to see him again. I’m delighted to see one of his students here, and to hear that you are having success as his student!

[Jevan PMember]

Sergey,

How has this no-self realization impacted your craving/attachment/suffering/well-being?

[Sergey NMember]

Hi Jevan,

I think it made me more detached of my future and my goals – I am more present now (that present moment is mostly uncomfortable though). I dream of future much less, and I spend much less time planning and worrying about the future, the plans, etc. Just to be clear, I still do a lot (or more) of wholesome healthy things for myself, so this Insight didn’t really make me more passive or apathetic.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by  Sergey N.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by  Sergey N.

[Jevan PMember]

What makes the present moment uncomfortable?

[Sergey NMember]

Jevan, not sure if that’s Insight-related, but there are a few things:
– I am quite uncomfortable with my body, I have muscle tension in my stomach, my back, and especially my neck – e.g. I can’t lie down on my back being relaxed, I feel like my cloths start pushing on my neck/chest and I am quite uncomfortable with that, but even if I take off the t-shirt and lie on my back I still feel this thing, and it’s sometimes happening with seated meditation too, even though less with time as it seems
– I have that overall feeling of energy-less in my consciousness, mind and body, like if I have no fuel, it’s quite empty everywhere inside of me
– emotionally, it’s usually a mix/cycles of light-medium levels of tension, despair, apathy and sometimes grief – in best case it’s just a dull, somewhat melancholic, emptiness

It’s getting better with time I guess, cause I’ve ripped of many of my negative emotions layers in the last couple years, but sometimes it feels a bit like walking in circles, getting into similar base emotions again and again

As a full disclosure, I had a terribly fucked up childhood, but well, many of of us did. After spending quite some time in psychotherapy and meditation I was really surprised to discover (due to meditation making me remember my dreams) that I was still getting dreams of my family/childhood many nights per week, just in the last month

[Jevan PMember]

Hmm..interesting. So this was going on before your insight? I’m trying to discern whether these are dark night symptoms making themselves manifest because you received insight before you had developed enough concentration, or was this something that has been around for a while.

Do you exercise? Sleep well? Eat healthy?

[Meshe MooetteMember]

Jevan- couldn’t it be both? Things that were around for a while, that come up to the surface for integration/purification after insight- producing “dark-night-like symptoms”?

[Sergey NMember]

Thanks for your help, Jevan.

I think it’s partly leftovers of my traumatic past, partly dark night
I had a quite good awareness/mindfulness since 5 years ago, as well as the darkest period of my life, and at about that time I enrolled into psychotherapy, and my awareness grew tremendously fast every year – my life was also becoming increasingly more good and peaceful, but concentration is still much much worse than mindfulness is.
After I started meditating this year I finally noticed my mood getting better, so that was definitely a huge relief, there was a huge period of purification, and I feel it’s still going on (I feel my sessions are at Stages 4-6 usually, probably mostly Stage 6), but the mood is still negative most of the time.
The problem is, I can’t really see the source of my negative mood.
I don’t really exercise, I sleep well, I don’t really eat healthy – and I can’t see any point in it for myself. I tried and it definitely gives a mood boost, but there is always that underlying base unhappiness where everything comes back to eventually and which drags me down. I definitely feel like there is some apathy and general yet unhealed trauma from the past, cause you know, many people, when given a completely free weekend, are usually relaxed and joyful to some degree, and they will go do something fun, but for me it’s just another bad day. But I think there is a dark night thing going to a small degree too, cause I can’t find much reasons in daily activities, goals, exercising (even though I really want to do that), and having fun in regular ways (also I have problems actually having fun/enjoying things)
I also have very little love in my life, i.e. I don’t really love myself, enjoy the things in my life, and when it comes to others I give them all the tiny love I have and care about them, but that comes more from awareness than heart, so yeah, I am lacking love energy terribly. Maybe I should try loving-kindness meditation for a while?

Thank you again for spending your time on this

• This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by  Sergey N.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by  Sergey N.

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