[Alex KMember]

Hey Pierre,

I think many people on the TMI subreddit would like to hear about this. If you don’t have an account I can pass it on.

Alex (from the Passadhi group)

[Alex KMember]

Hi Tom

The more experience you have the more appropriate it is to trust your instincts. But it is helpful to not sswitch around too much and not switch because what ytou are doing right now is just not working. When it gets difficult it may be helpful to stay with you practice.

That being said, adding some metta in the beginning can be very helpful. Give it a try and see for yourself. It is a good idea to do switches to amother technique intentionally, for example when you are on the breath and want to do s.t. else, decide to stay with the breath for, say, ten more breaths and then do the other thing. Be mindful of what happens during the switch and then set your new intention.

Alex

[Alex KMember]

Over here in europe there are many places where the next teacher is far away though. But speaking of teachers, I have some ideas on how we maybe could improve the listing of teachers. But one after the other. My post on reddit has created a little bit of attraction too, and we now have started a simple google sheet – not intended as the place where we want to have this information in the long run, but we can start collecting and connecting already.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ttJFTpk_t-vEdNfBivWoVBp0EzQuzYZqssqC-Y-2GCw/edit?usp=sharing

[Alex KMember]

I have done “no caffeine” for a while and still very mvery mindful about my intake. It is a very interesting way of watching habits, cravings and seeing the effect it has on energy and sleep requirement. If you are on Reddit you might want to check out r/decaf for tips and experiences of others. Beware that many people there seem to be extremely affected and promote a zero tolerance policy: No caffeine ever again

[Alex KMember]

I have found this manual to the MN quite helpful: http://www.shardarogell.com/reading-and-resources/pressing-out-pure-honey

[Alex KMember]

Hi,

we now have a first date, on Wednesday 8th at 19:00 we want to meet at the park cafe. Further announcements on the discord or on http://www.ak80.org/tmi.html

with metta
Alex

[Alex KMember]

Hi María, hi Florian,

Great, that you are interested. Things are moving quickly now and a first meeting might be already next week, see https://doodle.com/poll/b3hsuavyh53m7w77

We have also started a group chat on discord: https://discord.gg/dMxxHpc

Let me know if you have trouble with or questions about the discord

Take care
Alex

[Alex KMember]

Hi,

Such a great endeavor, I was thinking along some of these lines too… A wiki is a great start, I have already sent Blake a couple of links to talks, articles and podcast interviews outside dharma treasure.

I second the motion, that it would be good to keep things together as much as possible and have tge Dharma treasure website as the focal point.

I offer to help with time, some web knowledge (I am a software engineer and also do web frontends) and stupid ideas 🙂

[Alex KMember]

Hello dcurtis,

You are very keenly observing many things. Let my try to tackle them one by one.

>> * I’m unable to keep the attention on the breath for more than three cycles, at most. One to three cycles, and it’s forgetting into mind wandering.

I quickly scanned your post from last year. In relation to what Blake wrote, do you still agree with your assessment that you are sure this is mind wandering? It took me some long face to face discussion with a teacher to realize that I did not forget the breath, but that I was actually having gross distractions and the breath was still in awareness. Which is especially tricky in the beginning because my understanding of attention of awareness was (and is) still developing. One thing that helped me was a sort of delayed checking in: when I woke up from mind wandering, I first congratulated myself and appreciated the aha moment – and it can’t be stressed enough how important it is to do that. Then I asked myself, was I aware of the breath, was there any kind of breath sensation that I noticed. If not, fine. I would move on: how is awareness, can I allow it to open it up a bit more? Sometimes I started again with step 1 or 2 of the 4 step transition and set my intention again.

I like to think that asking this question when coming back from mind wandering sends the message to my subminds that I really would like to know about the breath and encouraged my mind to provide me an answer. After a while (many sits actually) I got a positive answer, yes actually the breath was there. Another reason to be happy! Then I open awareness, set intentions and do the whole thing again.

Another things is the importance of awareness. I tend to hyperfocus the attention on the breath, and that happens especially when I try to work with following or connecting. I learned in my case to never go for attention at the cost of awareness. I am actually putting more emphasis on awareness at this point in my practice. I make sure to have open peripheral awareness and try to find the breath in there. If I forget the breath but my awareness is still open, that is preferable to me, than following the breath but having awareness collapse.

>> * Frequently, the breath stays in the background, and the attention is jumping from one thought, image or feeling. Often so quickly I couldn’t tell you what those things were that I thought, felt or saw.

As long as the breath stays in the background then that sounds like stage 4. With your attention jumping quickly from one gross distraction to the next. But breath in the background is not forgetting the breath completely. Stage 4 is often not recognized, see my previous comment.

* Difficulty keeping peripheral awareness. Trying to keep peripheral awareness up/open leads to attention bouncing back and forth from breath to sounds going on around me.

This is also fine until stage 4 as long as the breath is not forgotten. Stage 4 is where you start to deal with movements of attention to / between gross distractions.

>> * About halfway through an hour of sitting, an energy/tension comes up that causes forgetting to occur, and the attention usually winds up bouncing very quickly from one thing to another. As opposed to the usual mind wandering that follows from one thing to the next in a more relaxed, connected/causally related fashion.
Sorry I do not have to say much about this. It sounds like the monkey mind is calming down?

>> * Checking in? Forget about it. The book says check in every twelve breaths. I’m lucky to make three.
Also I am not sure. I mean you could check in every two breaths, but that is not the idea I guess. My understanding is you should first try to be able to have a couple more breaths without forgetting…

>> * I’m still having trouble seeing the start and end of breaths clearly, distinctly and vividly, per Culadasa. Particularly the start of the in breath. No matter how I try, it doesn’t seem to be there, with few, rare exceptions.
That does not matter, you are trying to look for the exact point, clearly, distinctly, vividly. If you actually find it is not up to you. You can not control this. And it is in no way a prerequisite to move on to the next stage. See also my answer to the next question.

* There’s a sense of having to work to ‘keep all the balls in the air’ as it were – See the start of the in and out breaths, follow the breath between the start and end of the in breath, (I haven’t become skilled enough to do the follow the breath between the start and end of the out breath yet), see the pauses between breaths, keeping peripheral awareness from collapsing, labeling, remembering to appreciate the “aha” moment. Sure feels like a lot.

Remember that following and connecting are just games to play to keep the mind enganged, they are just a tool that can help. They are not the main technique and they are certainly not the goal of the stage. This is in response to your last point. When you are overwhelmed with the demands of the technique and have a feeling of doing to much, you will put a lot of effort in it. Try this: Go back to something simple, just know the breath. Just know that you are breathing. And keep the periphal awareness open. Forget about the exact moment of the in breath or out breath. And if you mind wanders appreciate the aha moment. And notice how good that feels, it is easy. Only add the following when this feels relaxed instead of effortful.

If you start with the following then do it simply. Just the exact moment of the beginning of the in breath. Then add just the beginning of the out breath. Now, are you tensing up when doing this, efforting or losing periphal awareness. Then back of.

Connecting really is hard for me, and makes me conceptualize a lot so I leave it alone unless when doing stage 2 and stage 3 practices. And I rarely combine following with connecting that is just too much for me.

I hope there is something in here that can help you. To sum it up: don’t try to do so much, just know the breath everything else can be sorted out later 🙂

[Alex KMember]

Hi Meshe,

In wonder how big the role of rational examination and the will to renounce this belief in self-existence is? Does it come on its own, is it purely a result of insight and a non-rational experience / examination of reality mainly from meditation? Or do we need to bolster it with a sort of decision “I do not belief in this” and examine how the view of a self-existing self is false? Is this a case of fake-it-till-you-make it? I can only end with a pop reference: “I want to believe” 🙂

• This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by  Alex K.

[Alex KMember]

Hello Samuel,

oh I see, I have not heard of that and will look for some information. That sounds a bit like the opposite of renunciation: not renouncing unpleasant emotions or denying them, but applying them as an opportunity to learn and mindfully examine them and their effects. Is there a post / video you can point me to? I’ll also monitor this thread to see what others can share.

[Alex KMember]

Hi Samuel,

I do not understand what do you mean by “usage of unpleasant emotions”? Can you make an example, please? You can not renounce having an emotion. But, with practice, you can work on how you relate to unpleasant emotions and how to react, i.e. do you act them out or do you allow them to just be and base your action on a wholesome emotion or wholesome intention like compassion or the wish to reduce suffering.

Renunciation has to be put in the proper context. I am not a native speaker, but “renunciation” sounds often like one needs to give up things that one enjoys, and put hardship on oneself and put on a grim face and endure it. That is not the way to go in my opinion. I find it helpful to examine my motivation to do things. For example, one could say “I renounce eating food for pleasure, and will never eat ice cream again”. Then I would ask, what is bad about having some ice cream and enjoy it? Is it based on craving and desire? Are you eating to much and is it harmful to your body? Can you decide to eat it or not, or do you give in too often or are you completely overpowered by the craving? I think renunciation should come from an understanding of what is harmful and what is beneficial to us and others. This understanding can be the basis of renouncing something. Keep in mind that just having the will to renounce something is not enough. It often is just an idea of some or one parts of your mind and if others are active they will not care much about prior renouncements. This will create conflict and can lead to blaming oneself and beating oneself up for failure to stick to a commitment. You want to work on getting a lot of subminds on board. Mindfulness helps, when you can notice a desire to do
something, and can examine your intention and if you detect it is based on desire, greed and delusion, you can reflect on how it is harmful to give in. Strong addictions can not be easily overcome. But putting in a pause before acting can, in time, make room for change. Mindful review may be helpful.

I am not sure if it goes in a direction that answers your question. If you want to know about whether you would need to renounce the life of the householder to make progress, then no, I do not think that is necessary. You also do not need to renounce watching tv. But if you constantly watch tv instead of doing meditation you need to work on that – but renouncing maybe too strong an approach.

Still, there certainly is benefit in training to resist urges and impose restrictions and work with your desires. But using this as a way to be hard on yourself or even punishing yourself is a danger that should be avoided. It is certainly necessary to acknowledge your weaknesses and cravings and work with them skilfully.

If you mean renouncing acting on anger or with ill-will. Then yes, the goal should be to “stop that”. But like I said, you can not renounce that and expect it to work.

Sorry if this does not answer your question or makes no sense. It is hard for me to understand what you are really meaning without some more information.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by  Alex K.

[Alex KMember]

Yeah, it is progress even if it doesn’t feel like it 🙂

Cool, I was in my second eSangha(Europe) meeting on Tuesday :). What tucker said to someone else there was, that concentration was not a good measure of “progress” in meditation. But the understanding of how the mind works and what it dies and a growing ability to work with whatever is going on right now, that was a better measure of progress. Maybe an attitude of wanting to better cope with it instead of wanting to concentrate better may help us. Also, I heard, and I think it was in the TMI Hangout, that it it was not the goal to overcome dullness or ged rid of it, but to stay with it and be able to investigate it. Which is easier said than done when it is so strong that one can’t investigate it.

And I do not think it is selfish, when you feel glad that you are not alone in this: you did not make me experience, but make me also happy about a companion. We are dullness-buddies, lol

Alright, so we do this as long as it lasts. And I hope that, whoever comes out of this first, the other will be even more inspired and happy and not disappointed.

I wish you, if you are in a part/culture of the world where it is relevant, a quiet and awake holiday season. Be there, in the moment. “Relax, look for the joy, and observer. Let it come, let it be, let it go”.

May we stay with whatever happens, may we trust the process, may we experience clarity and presence. May we have fun 🙂

[Alex KMember]

Hey Synelg,

thanks for writing! Yes well, I also have / had my moments of doubt, thinking “this isn’t working” or “when I am meditating with this strong dullness, always spacing out, I am sure making it worse”. But for now I decided to take just don’t get hung up on this. What is said in the book… “the only bad meditation is the one you didn’t do”. And I am sure something is happening deep down. So if I may, I wouldn’t agree with you when you said you were hardly meditating at all 🙂

So one other thing that was a recommendation for me is to not forget the intention. When I notice that I was totally lost and spaced out, and then try to get back to the sensations of the breath they seem far away and it is hard to refocus. So I set an intention for example: “I would like to put my focus on the sensation on the breath and experience them vividly. I would like to stay with the breath and be awake”.

For me it seems to help when I say to myself “I would like to” instead of “I will”, because the “I will puts” me in a strong mode of “I need to do something” and then I try hard, tense up and make it worse.
It also helps the next time I become aware of spacing out: With “I will stay present”, it will seem like a failure to me. “Hey I said I will stay present, and I didn’t… What is wrong with me?”. But when I said “I would like to stay present”, and then get aware of spacing it, I just can say it again, because it is a wish from me to my mind and I wish again. It is not something I had to do. So I even try to say “Mind, please try to stay more present”. I don’t know if that makes sense… But it I will keep on experimenting with this.

I guess in the long run I try to develop an attitude of humour about this, don’t take it seriously and let go of any need for progress. So give me strong dullness for the next month, who cares. Anyway, another thing that I just started yesterday is, I try to find out how present and how spaced out I am in daily life. I try the same thing as with early stage two meditation. Every time I notice I was unintentionally somewhere else with my thoughts, I am happy about becoming aware and then try to stay more present.

So to your question, it was beginning or mid of November when I started to struggle with this. So maybe now is the time to give up struggling 🙂

[Alex KMember]

For me it helps a lot right now to know how I am not alone in this phase, and that others went trough it!

After steady “progress” the beginnings of longer concentrated periods now have thrown me back hard with heavy dullness setting in very quickly. I am not yet able to catch it before it gets to strong. But for I while it seemed like totally numbing all any possibility of escaping it.

What helped me a bit then was easing up and not trying so much to correct anything. Still I need to apply an antidote the clenching up doesn’t seem to help, the deep breaths or breathing out forcefully through pursed lips is not helpful. I try to work with open eyes and standing up and even then I get dullness and it happens that I find myself sitting down after couple of minutes without remembering deciding to do it. Very strange!

What I then do is I try to broaden my focus, and try no notice the sensations of the breath in the whole body, .e.g. shoulders rising, chest expanding and so on and not restrict myself on a tiny focussed area. Has anyone had success with this, or is it a bad idea now?

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