[Meshe MooetteMember]

HI Sergey. I’ve heard love defined as “attending” to a person- giving full mindful attention to someone. It sounds like you have that capacity in meditation- and in life. Reframed that way, every time you sit, or give your attention fully to someone, it’s a loving act. Every time we are fully aware of a mood, it is a purification.

Rejoicing in little things on a regular basis can break through emotional dark clouds, and as the habit of rejoicing grows, the cloud front becomes more visible as it moves in.

A near-constant inner smile also helps (opens up the inner channels, so prana flows freely, it’s been a huge help for me in moving away from trauma and depression).

Diet and exercise are really vital to health and well-being. They may not be the root of an emotional trauma, but having a properly nourished system with free-flowing energy definitely gives a leg-up when it comes to tackling other issues. Think of yoga- it’s a spiritual system that includes asana and ayureveda, and in Tibetan tantric lineages, you also find yoga asana (trulkhor). Culadasa places an emphasis on walking meditation. It seems very strange, but a vigorous workout actually gives you energy. It never ceases to amaze me.

Do you have a dog? Since you work from home, do you have opportunities for social interactions?

All the best,

Meshe

[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”?

[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?

[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

[Meshe MooetteMember]

Hello Jevan!

This is my first post on the forum, pulled out by this interesting thread. This topic (the hard problem of consciousness) is one of Alan B. Wallace’s favorite topics. https://cup.columbia.edu/author-interviews/wallace-meditations-buddhist-skeptic He may also be a good place to look, if you are interested in what a scholar and adept meditator has to say on the subject =).

In his kindness, Gautauma the Buddha taught a spectrum of views, each to suit a particular set of mindstreams at a specific time. As the years went by, these teachings were elaborated upon, through the commentarial tradition, and formed “schools” of thought.
According to different “schools” of thought- this question would get answered radically differently- as each has a different concept of relative and ultimate reality.

Through meditation, we can examine the pre-supposition that matter produces subjective experience- and coming to our own empirical conclusions. If matter produced subjective experience, there are many logical inconsistencies to be found during analytic meditation- for example.

All the best,

Meshe

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