4/18/2023 Minor rewording of stuff.
11/15/19 added random stuff
6/22/17 Added the flowchart of attainments and reworked a few things up to third path.
2/14/17 Added deeping post 4th post
4/21/16 Reworked a bunch of stuff...Split thread to allow more sequential posts.The new thread can be found at http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/view_message/5801621
I'm locking the thread while I'm working on it please add all comments to the  comment thread above....thanks

4/20/16 Reworked proprioception into third path and cleaned up some stuff...moved temporal to thought space.
12/14/15 Added a couple explanations/exercises regarding third path  3 and 4 category opening.
12/10/15 Added a couple explanations/exercises regarding third path 1 and 2 category opening.
Update 11/27/15
Roughed in the basic concepts per path. Wording still awkward. More detailed explinations are probably needed.

Update: 11/24/15

Prelim: I've been meaning to post up a breakdown of my framework of awakening for a while now but lack motivation for the largish project, so I am breaking it down into bite sized chunks.

I will most likely be ignoring any replies to this thread until I get doneish, otherwise I won't get this done.

I'm going to keep changing things around as I go along, sorry about that. I'll update the update to indicate the doneness when I finish messing with it.

Identifying the problem:

I have spent an exorbitant amount of time trying to figure out what it was that needed to be worked on and in what way and what the results would be. I assumed that everyone who got a path would automatically know exactly what they had done. I was completely naive for a long time, assuming that most knew, then that some knew, then that anyone knew. For this reason I have decided to finish explaining what I started a long time ago on other threads, I only wish I had known a long time ago as it would have helped me immensely, instead of reinventing the wheel.
This is not to say I have the "Ultimate truth" of things, I merely have my experience and presumptions, described thru a certain lense. If this helps someone who has similar processes, then great. If this does not speak to you, great - make your own framework (preferably from some level of direct experience) and share it on another thread of your devising. This is the current culmination of my understanding from my years of practice.
Good luck,
~D

I found a great article that summarizes things better than I. It identifies and describes what is the problem with perception. Please read it in it's entirety.
meditation_insight_and_rationality_part_1_of_3/

Go read the whole thing already, its great.

From a facinating article on left brain right brain -
http://cosmology.com/Cosmology11.html


So I propose that, during early childhood, perceptual distortions are created in conjunction with an attempt to understand the sensations occurring and to make sense of the senses and thus the world.
So every sensation that occurs has multiple distortions. We meditate to access these preverbal coded processes and modify them such that the distortion part of the sensation is deleted.

I think that knowing the exact distortion in advance might be useful to some.... to others its probably not helpful as nothing the verbal/intellectual mind can do can change these things.

This exploration started a while ago - The self subroutine elimination
and then moved to a new thread.  5 aggregates/Skandas and the selfing process map

Here is the latest diagram of my framework of awakening. I'm not quite happy with it as yet but it is good enough to be of some use to others. There are different ways to categorize the shifts but I have decided that this way is the neat and tidy way to present it. I may change my mind later.
(2023- 2 1/2 Path is just part of 3rd path stuff)
 

Alright, what I hope to do here is explain the exact distortion that is modified per path/minor/major shift.  There are minor permanent shifts that do not fit into a 4 path model. In fact a 4 path model really doesn't do justice to the reality of the thing but since a lot of us are used to thinking as such, I'll stay with it.
Most shifts are within the third path territory which can be done in a variety of orders. This makes it quite complicated to diagnose especially since some people get several shifts at once.
Analogy- So you may be working on one thing that you consider the meat of the matter but the way you do it or just luck will have it - you get a whole burger while some may get the whole happy meal.

I seem to have a talent, if it is considered as such, to be slow and methodical. I can feel into sensations and discern what has an aspect of solidity. This has helped me to tease apart some of the things that lead to shifts.

The first three shifts are-  A&P, Stream Entry and Second Path. These are related to each other in the type of distortion. They are an identification of sensations as "mine/me" as the sensation is experienced. Multiple subconscious processes add ownership as each moment is experienced. Then as a "self" other subconscious processes jump in to protect this "self" such as fight/flight/freeze. This creates stress/dukkha.

The Third and Fourth path distortions have to do with opening up the constraining/particularized sensations from one focus to a greater/wider "field" of experience. Fixing this distortion is about opening/deleting the funnelling of information and therefor increasing the amount of data thruput in the whole field of experience.
I will discuss each shift below-

(1)

The Arising & Passing Away (Stage 4 - Progress of Insight)

I consider the First/Main A&P as a half path as it does permanently modify you.
The A&P event deletes the distortion reguarding the ownership of the rule set of generalized external reality. This rule set is a template like structure of how things are as a generality so you dont need to pay attention to things but instead can live in a generalized world of objects such as tree- instead of each individual tree, or thing to sit on as chair without needing to actually look at that particular thing. Think of when your reading a book and walking around without paying attention to much, you still seem to be able to function ok while most of your attention is not placed upon what is around you.
The rule set includes such things as mud is squishy, floors are hard, water is wet, and a ton of other concrete expectations about how reality operates. These shortcuts allowed reality to remain "known" without having to reinvestigating each thing, each time we experience it. From a survival point of view this is quite handy since you need not decide each time if the ground is hard enough to run on or if you should divert around that mud ahead. The problem is that these things are not always accurate. Breaking these rules hard enough and in the right mindset....and wham... your first A&P.
(Mindset includes altered states from meditation, looking closely, various psychotropic stuff or what not)


Fun stuff to read  - Alien_hand_syndrome
(I'm still looking for the correct psychological terminology for all this - besides concrete thinking.)

(2)

1st path

Stream entry is deleting the distortion of ownership of the 3 major sense doors - seeing, hearing, feeling.
(taste and smell, (being part of the same experience) does not seem to be as nessesary to get this shift , but I'm open to thoughts about this)

Built into each sense door are additional subconscious selfing processes of "me/mine"(my seeing, my hearing, me feeling, mine mine mine!!)  Without these additional selfing processes and the checking for danger associated in each moment, there's more brain power/less time wasted per available moment. 
Stress also goes down, though the sensitivity to the next subconscious category/thing seems to be turned up so that the new homeostasis is better for the old stress but about the same as before for the new focus of stress.

Trying to figure this out - what happens at stream entry is difficult unless there is some obvious condition where the absence of the ownership makes things decisively easier, such as addiction or anxiety related to body sensations. Not that 1st path completly cures you or anything like that, just the portion that was entangled with the senses is much easier. I would say about 20-30% better, which is an amazing amount when trying to deal with those directly related problems. (all percentages are completely made up and your experience will probably vary)

(3)

2nd path

Second path is deleting the distortion of ownership of thoughts and the mental echo of the senses. The knowing part of of sensations instead of the direct perception. Thoughts should be investigated at the subtler level and noticed for what they are, not content so much as how they form, exist and pass.
This is kind of like the first nana mind and body where 1st path is body and second path is mind. This does not complete the problem with thoughts as much as needed, but it is a good start.

The mental aspect of addiction becomes easier and increases the ease around addictions another amount such as 50% more. This totals up to about 70 - 80% easier to deal with. All the numbers are made up and your mileage may vary. 

The following is older thoughts and will be reworked in the future to reflect the latest framework of shifts from the previous flowchart.

3rd path

This is where things get more complicated.
There are several different categories of attainments that are possible for third path. Getting any of the attainments starts your journey in third path proper. There is variance in the combinations of categories that get done, and that creates the different types of descriptions of awakening at this level.

Each sense door has a large field but we focus/filter on a limited subsection of information selected from that field to be experienced. As you move your eyes around you saccade the focal point from one object to the next within a larger peripheral field. As you listen to instruments in a band you move focus from one instrument to the next from the totallity of the larger auditory field.
This narrowing down to one focal point limits information down to a tiny trickle. Once the processes of constraints are deleted and the limited focus becomes the entirety of the larger field, then awareness (which was always there) opens up and the amount of data is increased as well as the frequency of perception. A focus can still be selected from the larger field but without the constraint there to make you ignore the rest of the field.

The larger awareness field for each category-

• Feeling - Entire body as one felt object
• Proprioception - presence/location/spaciousness
• Vision - Panoramic visual field that holds the focal point
• Hearing- The silence that holds all sounds
• Thoughts - The calm/quiet between and surrounding each thought.

Each category above goes from one focus selected -
/\
to opening up -
|  |
As each category permanently expands,  the natural awareness/knowingness can move to that open field instead of the "self area" behind the eyes or heart area. Nonduality/luminosity for each sense door is achieved when information/objects has knowingness/awareness/presence that radiates outwards as much as you do.

There are different combinations of awakeness based off of the category opened 
(12.34. <--- NOTE TO SELF -  lined up numbers -numbered bullets above with the open or closed indicator below it)
​​​​​​​
/\| |/\| | -  Vision and thoughts are open and nondual but body and hearing are not.

| |/\/\/\ - Body is open and nondual the rest is not.

This is an oversimplification of the complete process but the main gist of it gets across.

Additional tips for opening categories
The frequency of vibration to permenently open the category wide needs to be increased closer to the master frequency of the whole brain. Awareness runs faster than any sub categories; vision,hearing,touch, which need to get synched into the present moment with each other and run slower.
Part of the trick to modifications at this stage is to process each category using the spacial aspect of the brain. The parietal lobe brodmann area 7 and 5 I believe. The larger open awareness field should have a largeness/wideness spacial quality to it. Moving to jhana 4.5 or jhana 5 helps emensly as does supressing the other senses that are not being worked on....use the sense door you're modifing as object of concentration and merge the spaciousness with it to the extent that you can.

I have not personally completed permenently opening all of the categories and as I do I will update the details of each more.  I have had previews and discussed with others about most of these aspects and this is my best effort to relay this information, but its under development.


RE: Should I Change My Technique To Get 4th Path?

1) Proprioception - Entire body as one felt object - presence
This is the body sense. It is made up of feeling the skin and the location of the body tendons/joints and the corresponding mental image of where you are at in relationship to other parts of your body. There is a relationship to the centerpoint and boundaries of where "you" are and space begins. There is also a bubble of personal space around you that can be felt into also. This bubble seems to extend to what can be grasped, as in a baby exploring reaching out and anything that can be grasped is considered "mine". Exploring these boundaries as well as body scanning are effective exercises to delete the constraint limiting the totality of body physicality.
This was the first of my permenent perceptual off the cushion, walking around shifts. When you look at your body, it no longer seems to be "owned" in the same way anymore though of course intelectually nothing has changed. The heat in the sauna took on a more complete totality of body feel.
Later as I continued the whole body extended to a more spacious overall feeling bigger than just the body field. Within it is still the body but a larger focus point of emptiness from which it arises.
(Insert example feeling hidden hand exercise from the ego tunnel here)

2) Vision - Panoramic visual field that holds the focal point

Look out into the distance and focus on the outside of the doughnut of the periphery of vision....wiggle your fingers at the edge of vision left and right and focus on opening to that. Once your comfortable holding the focus on the outside, notice you are ignoring the center of the donut. Let the center back in without losing the outside...this is tricky. Once you get it, its kinda like focusing a telescope, things will just kinda come into focus as the whole visual field as one thing. Intensify this by mentally leaning into the field or pulling back and kinda holding the whole field in a big hug....either works. Then drop the jaw literally and add a sense of awe to it as if you were seeing it for the first time. Practise this Panoramic vision until its easy to do. Then just hold it. All day...every day...until when you stop holding it, it just stays. Let it stay until it flips back then just flip it back on and hold it a little til it sticks again....eventually it wont flip back and you got it permanent.

List of visual sub-attainments-
Parallax increase
color contrast
acuity/high definition
panoramic
stereoscopic 3d instantaneousness
emptiness of space
luminosity

3) Hearing- The silence that holds all sounds
Listen to the din...listen to the silence. Stop the selection of each sound as its individuated thing. Stretch the sphere of silence outwards. Listen as if there were danger in the night. Focus on directional and distance ques of listening, focus on the sensations of ears versus the object sound.
Start breaking any of these rules you seem to find as rules. Listen to music while focusing on the whole thing instead of any one part.
Hold the space of silence open and allow the object sounds within happen without selecting any of them. Let go of the center spot.

Like when your stoned and experiencing the whole band at once without wandering from instrument to vocal to instrument, taking in the whole hearing field

4) Thoughts - The calm/quiet between thoughts, that holds each thought

This attainment is a biggy and unfortunately most people who get the thought category opened up think they are done. The relief that accompanies this is huge, especially at first. What's amazing about it is now every thought/experience has been equalized because they are seen from the larger field of thought space/awareness. No-thing is more important than another. Sensations of having a center point are just sensations- equal to all others, and thoughts about the other sense doors are under the umbrella of thought now so they all seem to be "done" too. This is a fabulous stop off point but unless the other sense doors have perceptual shifts, there is more to go to finishing third path.

How to:
We naturally tend to think of all experiences as objects and that they are strung together like beads on a string. The string being the arrow of time. The question to explore is if mindfulness/awareness is another extra bead between each object bead or is it a merged part of the object bead? I will posit that awareness is inseparable from the object bead and in fact the size of awareness is the size of the bead. This is an artificial constraint. Awareness is much larger than the size of the bead, it is actually the space that holds all beads. By doing the exercise of breaking the temporality of experience by merging all experiences together, or smearing the beads across the string into one tunnel like bead of infinity, this breaks the artificial constraint of thought shape as a sequence of events.

There are two steps to deleting the thought space constraint

• Merge all subject sensations into the object space out there (step back mentally and witness self stuff as part of the stuff out there), or merge all objects out there into the subjective space by taking it into the mind space screen being projected in your head. Adding spaciousness to this is useful as a basis to merge to.
• We can use our short term memory to hack the sequential thought shape aspect....focus on the breath but instead of seeing each sensation independently as in vipassana, hold the breath in a zone of timeless memory, merge all the sensations together in short term memory and let the past breaths naturally fall off the end of memory while the next breath fills up the buffer on the front end....each breath is eternal and infinite as is the space that holds the breath. Each experience does not arise, it does not pass, and you can't really say it even stays without a comparison.

If you can get everything merged in the same space/time smear you should be able to tune into it and hold this way of expereincing the world. Once you get it just hold it as stuff just happens and go about your day. When you notice you lost it flip it back and hold it some more...it should at some point become second nature and start holding itself and at some point the constraint gets deleted and it stays opened up.

Other exercises to delete constraints-
Look into thought space. Create a thought and look at the start and end and space between. Repeat, focus on the space between thoughts. This is thought space. There seems like nothing there but not quite. There is a knowingness, a direction of focus and there is energy to it. Push the thought louder, shout it, intensify it - look at the quietness between, look at the tension still there, release the tension, play with this. Get a real good feel for the focusing on the almost nothingness of thought space. Really feel into the knowingness thats there as thoughts pass by. Expand the spaciousness of the thought space....expand it more...how far can it go? Does there seem to be a center to the knowing space? Why? move it around and break that.
Play with directionality. Imagine something behind you....are you facing it backwards or is it really behind you? You can hear behind you but can you imagine a sound like thought behind you. Break this directionality. Imagine a white circle....move it out 20 feet.....now imagine your hand reaching out and grabing it like a coin....it was not really 20 feet now was it? How far is this imagined space really? Break it viscerally. Don’t just think about this stuff, just do it over and over and see the process clearly for what it is. You have all sorts of rules in place without knowing that they exist, get to know them well and then break them any way you can while concentrated in 4.5th/5th jhana. Watch this stuff very closely. Keep resting back into the thought space and releasing all tension. Any content arising within it, is not it.
Once the thought space has been played with to find its characteristics of what it is and isn't you should be able to recognised it, hold it, stay with it. This is like the effort of first Jhana holding, fact it is. Get up and practise simple tasks like walking while holding the thought space. Hold it all day long if you can. You will find that with practise you will eventually be able to let go of the holding part and shift into second jhana where it holds itself. This is awesome when it just stays on its own....it will probably flip back off, but at this point you almost got it. Just flip it back and hold it a little then loosen up and watch it stay again. Keep flipping it back til sometime you notice it is not flipping back. At this point stuff should start shifting in a good way. Its a little weird and you cant quiet tell what is going on during the integration but don’t worry, you will move thru it pretty quick to a more solid ground.
Shifting to the faster brain mode that keeps all the subprocesses synchronized will have profound effects, this new natural vantage point is really nice...

Additional - What your looking for is not space of 5th jhana, nor the fabricated sense of consciousness/presence nor the illusive stuff of nothingness (too easy). What you need to find does not exist as a thing of fabrication or even thingness, its thru looking at what its not that will get you close to what it is, that isn't a thing. Find the unfindable by looking until there isn't anything left to find, look closely though.

4th path

So each sense door category from above has been opened up (optimally)

| | | | |

So there is one more major constraint left. Now the final step is to delete the walls between sense door categories such that awareness is one big thing. This constraint put upon awareness, once deleted, allows each categorical emptiness to be seen as empty and with this the final selfing processes that creates a self shuts down. There is no self to be found, no centerpoint of any kind, only the space(that is empty) that knows itself and everything in it. (again optimally)
The spaciousness is unbounded and empty and vast but the things arising within it are dancing with liveliness and are exactly right where they are.
|       |
There are variants of awakening possible at this level, some categories may not be addressed yet, though the walls have come down between others
/\| |   |

There is also some possible non tethered selfing processes/distortions/constraints that operate independantly from the rest and do not need a center viewpoint to operate.

RE: After 4th Path: What do to? (Daniel

So the next phase of stuff is not a "doing" but additional undoing. This will not affect the insights gained, so there isn’t much to say about further attainments for a while. Attainments are pretty much done as far as how reality is presenting itself..

So now we get into awareness practices that are of an undoing nature. Why undoing? Because "doing stuff" drops you out of awareness speed and into the slower speeds of attention and regular mind. This is the specific "thing" that isn't a thing to notice. Lots of people call this deepening but cant tell you whats deepening or how it is deeper or much of anything anymore, then get all indignant that people want to put words to it. So I'm gonna try to metaphor it with some humour to try to keep it light.

Deepening is like butter,

melting into the nooks and crannies


Or maybe a waffle. (I can't decide, I keep going back and forth)

Anyway, that’s what is happening on its own and there isn’t much to do about it, but since I hate non-doing in general ---- lets force the undoing to do the job without doing, but faster.
Huh?
Lets turn awareness up to 11!


So there are two qualities to awareness to let integrate-

• The spacious unbounded wholeness that is empty = Vastness (without other or any stuff)
• The increased sample rate speed  that notices the vastness = Clarity

So while experiences are happening and doing themselves, you rest into the vastness, then you rest into the clarity which will bring you back to the vastness....let these play out with each other until they balance and are turned up to their maximum, whatever that may be. (go for 11!)
Is that it? Yep, but dont stop, dont let the vastness and clarity get off of 11. Keep it turned up at every moment of the day.

You will notice that there are things that drop you out of this level of 11, Notice what that is and work on those things specifically, challenge yourself....Read a book and don't let it drop from 11, watch a boring documentary on TV, watch an exciting movie, take it to the bedroom activities.

You think your enlightened? Spend a week with your family. In fact volunteer to organize a family reunion! Then tell everyone they should act in certain ways to maximize enjoyment for all and point out each persons faults and tell them to please avoid these pitfalls for the benifit of all beings......This should start a shit storm for your practice with the added benefit of not actually having a reunion.

Want to take it to the next level? Shinzen Young gives some advice--

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbznm2NLais
Time 1:05:45
6 months of professional torture.....wow, thats a bit to hardcore for me Shinzen, but you go ahead.

So you perfect this in an ongoing baises with using life and its various challenges to really dial in what takes you out of awareness. Make a list and start to dig into it. Emotions and the thoughts around them are the biggest culprit. So then you have to work on that stuff.

I'll stop here but at some time may be again motivated to toss out more thoughts on working with stuff.

Ok, so I've got somemore to say about stuff - what about taste as a sense? Silly but there is a lot to learn here. Think about a sommelier of wine. What can they taste different than you? Within the realm of gross taste there is a trained nuance of several things. Type of taste,intensity, duration, speed of intensity/fade. As these become multifaceted and overlap that gets you to think about the other senses that have similar and expounded characteristics. Taste has nodirection, or does it? How does it differ from smell? How can a dog track scent? What other things are happening within perception that are unquestioned? Could there be untethered processes that happen that are not related to the 6 senses? Could the attentional system be in control of unknown stuff? If so, could that be a way of finding the way to un-control the controller? I'm not saying that you should unprogram the ability to not shit yourself at night, as that is a great function of the subconscious mind. Lets just say that at a certain point, the pointing of the point can point out unnecessary points on its own.Undoing the doing/emptiness practice/surrender/dzochen stuff becomes the new game of finding the unfindable crap that gets deleted next.

oh, by the way, i ain't there yet ;)

bump

From Noah D, here is a link to the final version of Dreamwalker's Framework of Awakening:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/16DpXOTkDOgbmcTy959ap9qfhguClhXiu/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=117294344641142191461&rtpof=true&sd=true