[Upasaka TuckerMember]

Super agreed with Matthew. One of the Dharma Treasure teachers here in Tucson gave me this great advice last week, which is “mindfulness works except when it doesn’t.”

I conducted a study maybe 5 years ago on meditation practice and negative emotion, expecting to see a negative correlation. Actually, what the study found is that when people first start meditating, negative emotion goes down. It then tended to go up, above baseline, before going down again, as people came to recognize psychological issues they previously lacked the introspective awareness to notice.

The advertised goal of meditation is to cause you to realize that the part of the mind that feels like you, the owner or president of the mind, not only isn’t you, but it isn’t really there at all. When you start having this realization, however, it often feels like you are dying, because the thing that feels like your innermost soul is starting to disappear. This of course can produce a lot of anxiety, in addition to noticing anxiety that may always have been there.

If mindfulness works, great. If it doesn’t, treating it the way people treat anxiety (mental healthcare, exercise, acupuncture, etc) is the thing to do.

Last thought is: Are you part of a contemplative community, either in-person or virtually? Being around other people going through the difficult parts of meditation, I’ve found, makes the hard parts infinitely easier.

Tucker Peck

[Upasaka TuckerMember]

Hi Kurt,

I oddly did a psychology PhD on the topic of sleep and meditation. The word “Buddha” means someone who is awake, and the neuroscience on the topic seems to show that this is not a metaphor. Meditation literally makes the brain (and the mind) more awake 24 hours a day, meaning meditative experiences in sleep and lucid dreaming both become more likely. Additionally, it sounds like you’ve hit something of a stream in meditation, and as Ivan says, it’s not uncommon to have dramatic spiritual experiences like you’re describing given the pace at which your practice is going.

Since that you’re having these unusual and potentially scary experiences, I’m wondering if you have a teacher who you are able to meet with?

I’m one of the teachers who trained with Culadasa, and I teach 2 classes via Google Hangout on Tuesdays (7:30 – 9 PM Eastern and 6:30 – 8 PM Pacific) that you’d be welcome to attend if you’d like (whichever time works better for you). There may also be other ways to meet up with a Dharma Treasure teacher online or, depending on where you live, in person.

Sincerely,
Tucker Peck

[Upasaka TuckerMember]

I was trying to be vigilant not to take too long to respond to your thread, but I didn’t get an email that you had replied. Alas …

I think the intention behind Culadasa’s paragraph (and maybe he’s reading this and can correct me if I’m wrong) is to create a balanced approach to PSD. On one hand, we do want to try to overcome it if we can. On the other, sometimes we can’t, and fighting reality as it is, the Buddha said, is the cause of all suffering. So if a meditator is trying to feel equally awake at all times, they will probably sometimes find themselves failing. But the basic premise (I think) towards all dullness is the same: See if applying the antidotes helps to overcome it, and if not, see how wholly and mindfully you can embrace it.

I do like your idea of meditating at the times your mind is most likely to be awake.

[Upasaka TuckerMember]

I’m sorry Jacques! I just saw I never responded.

I’m not entirely sure I understand the question. So let me give a stab at an answer, and if it’s not what you were looking for, let me know (and I’ll respond this time, promise!).

Progressive subtle dullness (PSD) will both on a practical and definitional level prevent you from attaining Stage 5. There are several ways to overcome PSD, one of which is sleeping more. Other ways include the techniques listed in Culadasa’s book, and if neither sleep nor these are successful, you can also try mindfulness of PSD, which will sometimes make it go away — e.g. breaking PSD down into its components, etc. So I wouldn’t think of PSD as an “uncontrollable” factor. There are Zen retreats where people will meditate all night long and achieve great states of mind, and I’ve even heard of a Korean retreat where people don’t sleep at all for an entire week! So it’s not that bad sleep means you are certain to experience PSD or unable to surmount it, though it certainly increases the likelihood of it.

A point Culadasa makes in his book is the risk of trying to move to higher stages of practice before surmounting dullness. So you don’t need a great night’s sleep to overcome dullness (or any sleep at all), but you shouldn’t attempt higher stages until the mind is more awake. My experience has been that simply practicing helps me get better at overcoming dullness until it becomes usually-but-not-always pretty surmountable.

[Upasaka TuckerMember]

Hey Jacques,

As regards dullness, I’ve found sometimes it’s possible to overcome it by applying the antidotes or practicing things like mindfulness, patience, etc. But if I haven’t been sleeping well, have a cold, etc., I sometimes find I can’t overcome it. What I try in these cases is mindfulness of dullness. My students have often seen dullness as a true obstacle, something coming between them and the truth, but dullness, like any other phenomenon, is empty and therefore a suitable object for meditation. What I mean is, if you find you can’t overcome dullness (Plan A), see if you can notice the various components of dullness (Plan B). Do you notice goofy thoughts in your head? How does it feel in your body? What are you actually experiencing that makes you invoke the concept dullness? For me this has been a helpful insight practice and has sometimes helped reverse the dullness. Even when it doesn’t, it certainly relieves the suffering caused by trying to force my mind to be and feel a way it currently isn’t/doesn’t, as well as the suffering caused by the delusion that I’m sufficiently in charge of my mind that I ought to be able to tell it what to do.

My experience of the stages is as you describe, that I usually travel through them during a practice. I almost always start in stage 2 – 4 somewhere, and on a good day I move up, on a bad day I stay put, and on a normal day there’s lots of forward & backward travel. Your idea of practicing with whatever stage you’re experiencing would be my suggestion. As in, if you feel you’re in “Stage 3” (in quotes because this is a concept, a model, rather than your actual experience), then your experience is probably one of inattention. So what to be done? Of course, see if you can focus your attention! And if you can’t, see how good you can be at radical acceptance of having a mind that only sometimes does what you ask it to. Remember, the Buddha says that craving things to be different than they presently are is the one cause of all suffering. So, when you find your mind won’t do what you want it to, see how much you can minimize the suffering this causes you.

Tucker Peck

[Upasaka TuckerMember]

Hi Chris,

My name is Tucker, I’m a dharma teacher trained by Culadasa. I teach a weekly Sangha over Google Hangout, a group video chat forum, in the style of Culadasa’s teachings. It meets Tuesdays from 5:30 – 7 PM US Pacific time. If this would be of interest to you, please let me know. My email is E.Sangha.Email@gmail.com

Sincerely,
Upasaka Tucker

[Upasaka TuckerMember]

Involuntary body movements are a not-much-discussed but quite normal part of meditative progress. It is related to prana/chi/inner winds, and it’s a little hard to talk about, because it requires adopting a system by which to understand prana. The way I would describe it is that in our unconscious mind lies all sorts of emotions and memories and the like that we have not previously been sensitive enough to notice. Each mental event is also stored somewhere in the body; you’ve likely noticed in your meditation that each thought, feeling, etc. has some physical correlate. As we become more sensitive, we start noticing these “blockages” in the mind and/or what feel like blockages in the energy flow through the body. When we notice either one of these (or even if we don’t consciously notice it but it has moved up to the surface of the unconscious), there can be strange energy sensations and movements in the body. The fact that this only occurs when you pay attention to your legs makes me think it’s very likley that this is what’s occurring. As far as I know, there’s not much to actually do about this, except to let it come, let it be, let it go, and see it as a sign of progress.

I did once have a student who had tremendous jerks during meditation and saw this as a great sign of progress but it kept getting worse and wasn’t explained until the student was diagnosed by a doctor with some sort of neurological problem. 🙂 So, you know, of course, if you’re having physical symptoms that are causing you trouble, always good to get it checked out rather than trust the advice of strangers on the internet. But what you’re describing certainly sounds to me like a “kriya,” which is one of the names used for these involuntary meditation-induced movements.

[Upasaka TuckerMember]

That’s right, Oleg. Essentially, you’re learning a new skill, so in one sense, you are starting from scratch. You should expect not to be as proficient at it and should expect more mind wandering.

Another translation of “right effort” that is sometimes used is “balanced effort.” So for a meditator who uses poor posture and often indulges in and enjoys mind wandering, my instructions would be about increasing effort. In your case, though, learning to be more tolerant of mind wandering is probably a good idea. Remember, one of the capital-I insights to which the Eightfold Path can lead is that there is no self. Among other things, this means that there is nobody in control of your mind. You are not the guy in the driver’s seat who can decide what the mind will do; there is no such guy, and no such seat. Seeing that you cannot control your mind (other than temporarily in the “crushing” sense which increases, rather than decreases, suffering)is actually a pretty good insight. There are a bunch of techniques you can read about on Culadasa’s website (particularly the outline of the 10 stages handout) that can help gently increase focus, but being OK with being less able to control your attention than you believe you “ought to be” is probably the best way to go for now.

Here’s the good news. The work you’ve been doing so far is a part of this training. So, while in a sense you’re starting over, in another sense you’ve already practiced one component of what you’re now doing, so I would expect it will go more quickly and easily than for a novice.

I wouldn’t recommend a break from meditation; the practice you’re now doing sounds like it’s going in the right direction. As far as how much you should practice, I’d say the total hours of daily practice doesn’t matter so much as the intention. If you’re meditating 3 hours a day with a sense of gentleness, patience, and an acceptance of the mind as it is, then that’s fine. Or if meditating 3 hours a day just inherently leads to that sense of overeffort, hyperfocus, and rejection of your current mind in favor of the better one you’re sure you ought to have by meditating more, then cut back.

I teach a free meditation class over group video chat on Tuesday evenings (8:30 – 10 PM Eastern time)that you’d be welcome to join. If you post your email address here, I can send you more information about it.

Sincerely,
Tucker

[Upasaka TuckerMember]

Hi Oleg, my name is Tucker. I’m a meditation teacher studying with Culadasa. We talked about your question this morning and he suggested that I respond, because I had the same problem about 7 years ago.

I think the problem you’re experiencing comes from hyperfocusing. First, this takes a tremendous amount of energy and leaves you feeling exhausted and as though all you’d like to do is watch TV. The goal of the practice is not to gain exclusive attention on the breath — although this may happen quite a ways down the road. In fact, if the entirety of your awareness is consumed by the breath, this probably means you’re exerting a lot of mental effort to ignore or subdue all the other things going on in your mind … the Buddha called this trying to “crush” the mind. This wears you out. It might be helpful to think that the idea in meditation is to TRY or INTEND to focus on the breath, but not to actually do it, necessarily. You set the intention to focus on the breath then largely relax and see what happens.

Perhaps the bigger problem are the consequences of hyperfocusing itself. The mind becomes accustomed to only holding one thing at a time. Any everyday task involves multiple steps (remembering how much the bus costs, remembering how much each coin is worth, counting them, putting them in the machine, etc.), and if you’re training to only focus on one thing, you can get pretty dopey at doing daily tasks. Perhaps the biggest problem with hyperfocus is that when you’re entirely focused on one thing, the context collapses, which is the opposite of what we aim for in this practice. So imagine that some sadness comes up. If the mind is spacious, it’s easier to remember that you haven’t always been sad, won’t always be sad, and that both your mind and the world are awfully big, so this passing sadness isn’t too much of a problem. If you’re hyperfocused, this sadness feels as though it’s the absolute truth, the entire world, and that dulling the mind to get away from it is the only possible solution. Being able to keep the context during unpleasant mental and physical sensations is one of the mechanisms by which meditation decreases suffering.

As far as how to get back to meditation without this problem, my first suggestion would be trying to keep the breath LIGHTLY in your attention while allowing everything else that’s happening to be in your background awareness. So while you’re watching the breath, make sure you can hear the electric noises in the room (air conditioner, refrigerator, etc.), the thoughts in your head, and anything else that’s going on. Experiment with letting go of the breath; at this point in your practce, it’s more important to relax your effort and notice the context than to center the breath in your attention.

My favorite metaphor here is that of the teacher and the class. When you’re in class, you’re trying to focus on the teacher, but you can still see all the other students sitting in the room. At some point, one of the students will become more interesting than the teacher (because the student is cuter, or doing something new, etc.), and your attention will shift from the teacher in the foreground to the student in the foreground, with the teacher either in the background or completely gone from your awareness. This is the way we want to hold the breath. We want to aim to keep it in the front of our attention but ensure that EVERYTHING else that is happening (the other students) remains in your background awareness, which feels like a sort of “mental peripheral vision.” Inevitably and repeatedly, something else will be more interesting than the breath, and it will jump from the background to the foreground. That’s OK, that’s the way the process goes, just adjust your attention when you notice.

You might find that, actually, the best way to keep the attention focused is by keeping possible distractions in your peripheral vision.

If you’re not immediately able to do this practice of keeping the breath in the front and everything else in the periphery, you can also try expanding the scope of the meditation object. A big object, such as focusing on the whole body at once, won’t contribute to hyperfocus the way that focusing on just the breath will.

Sincerely,
Tucker

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