[Chloe BMember]

I am not actually seeing where the conflict or absence is in the system based on the definition you shared. Can you point out precisely what you feel is missing? It may just be because in the book TMI Culadasa focuses heavily on the meditation aspects but in the rest of his teachings he focuses on the complete 8 fold path. One thing he says constantly is “Virtue is the vehicle for a happy existence.”

[Chloe BMember]

Hi Kim,

I suggest you deal with your adrenal fatigue first. It’s one of the reasons you are feeling wired and tired. I am not a doctor but have dealt with the same problem. I suggest you see an acupuncture, Chinese medicine doctor or tibetan doctor to help you rebalance your energy system. Dr Avivva Romm also makes great supplements that use adaptogens to help balance the system https://avivaromm.com/. I took her Adrenal Soothe everyday for 9 months. It helped me rebalance. The depression could possibly also be due to the imbalance in your body.

Also I would let go of meditation going well or poorly. We are not a buddha (not omniscient) so do not know when the meditation has been the most beneficial to you or least. A session where you struggle the whole time may actually being doing more of you than one that everything felt at ease. There is no point in judging the experience other than to say you sat. The stages help us apply the appropriate antidote to help us move through whatever we are dealing with. They are not meant as this judgemental framework to say we were in stage 7 so that was good and stage 3 so that was bad. The framework helps us say I am in stage 4 noticing gross distractions this is the antidotes to help with this today.

Ayurveda, Chinese medicine and Tibetan medicine are all excellent at dealing with the problem you are having. Chinese with the combo of herbs and acupuncture style treatments is particularly good.

Best of look to you in this and focus on your health. The rest will follow.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 1 month ago by  Chloe B.

[Chloe BMember]

Bernadette – not sure where you are located in the world. Tucker is an authorized teacher by Culadasa and he has an online sangha. You can also reach out an do meditation audiences with him if you need help. It is a good idea to have some sort of sangha even if it is online and at a distance. https://meditatewithtucker.com/

[Chloe BMember]

I think this depends. For one there is no way to use willpower to meditate although your strong intention/ motivation to do so can your mind train itself to do so. You feel like you are in control of your mind but you are really not in control of all areas that is why you are training it over time. It’s not at all harmful to constantly be directing your attention to your breath like a weightlifter. That is exactly what you are supposed to do to train your mind.

If you have focused with “willpower” on the breadth, the question to ask yourself is how is my awareness? Have you closed off your access to peripheral awareness to the point that while you are forced and locked on the breath your scope of awareness of sounds, sensations, etc around you have diminished? Is your anxiety cured because you have blocked it out of your field of awareness or because it has truly diminished? This is really the key. You are training your mind to have the widest possible vantage of open awareness while resting in attention on the breath. The idea is not to block things out through forced attention on the breadth. How do you feel your practice is in regards to awareness?

Do not worry about overtraining your mind and injuring it. There are people who go on retreats for month on end and meditate the full day and through the night. Their minds are not injured. There are phenomena that can happen after extensive retreats but unless you are in this category it is probably not necessary to concern yourself about this. I am not sure what your goal is with optimal efficiency and mindfulness? Meditation is an important building block for realizing stable mind, single pointed concentration, equanimity, and provides a fertile field for insight into the true nature of reality to appear.

Let me know if there are further questions. I hope this was helpful.

[Chloe BMember]

Hi JC,

It’s great that you are entering meditation with eyes wide open. That said many people who practice dharma do not experience the Dark Night of the Soul. You may be more likely to experience it if you practice meditation with extreme dedication without also practicing the other aspects of buddha dharma such as cultivating virtue and practicing loving kindness. This is because you would be relying on only 1 of the parts of the 8 fold path. These are very important to do in conjunction with your meditation practice. If you focus on generating loving kindness and living virtuously in alignment with what feels right to you internally as well as reducing harm and suffering for others, you will not become a cause of suffering or distress for your friends and family. Instead your ability to be a positive influence on your children will most likely increase. As you meditate while also cultivating love and compassion in your life, your patience will increase, ability to handle anger and afflicted states of the mind will increase and your ability to channel love will grow. These are all very positive aspects of dharma. Perhaps instead of worrying about the possibility of the worst case scenario, you can look at the possibilities of the more common scenarios.

If you begin to experience distress in your meditation, reach out and get help from a qualified teacher. It is so important for us all to have teachers. We are all just traveling a path with some unknown terrain. Occasionally something will seam off or out of place that we have’t encountered before and are unsure how to navigate. This is why we must also rely on the teacher as well as the teaching. The teacher can help guide us when these situations arise. If we do not have a teacher, we can look to get one by reaching out to our community (our sangha) of spiritual practitioners who are also traveling on this path. They are incredibly important to us as they can also help guide us in times of difficulty.

One of the goals of meditation is Vipassana which is insight. These insights can be very strong and powerful as they help us see things as they truly are. These powerful insights are what can cause the dark night of the soul. This happens when the person has often cultivated a lot of dry insight and has not also cultivated Samatha (calm abiding) before or in conjunction with Vipassana. This distress could actually be a a wonderful gift as insights into the true nature of reality are arising such as impermanence and emptiness. Culadasa talks about this on pages 409- 413 of the Mind Illuminated. The antidotes to this are cultivating both a stable calm abiding mind along with insight as well as following the other aspects of the dharma path such as cultivating virtue and compassion.

Re mental chatter: It’s also ok that your internal chatter appears negative or ego-centric. That is just because you are judging them rather than noting there are there. You can just note there is chatter and not get as caught up in the story of what the chatter is. It’s possible to step back and just observe that it exists. This takes some time and will happen naturally as you meditate over time.

I hope this helps a bit.
Chloe

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