I haven't really been practicing much. I got hit by inspiration and had to spend as much time as I could making music for awhile. My inclination to practice and actually do good practice has returned. I think it's important to let myself do regular life stuff from time to time because I pushed pretty hard through the first couple paths and that involved some "heroic" and rather alienating doses of meditation. It's good to cut loose and shake a few tail feathers.

So... I will start a new log in hopes that I might stick with it. 

In practice and more and more throughout the day I notice the self activity falls away and there's a softening of the heart and an opening of the senses. The thing I enjoy the most about it is that my heart, breath, chest all come to rest and just do their thing. I tend to practice in this state because I can just be with the world and my experience in a very natural "just right" kind of way. It is also easy to see the selfish activity that remains. Mainly just a certain looping narrator that picks up and falls away over and over and also sometimes an urge to strategise and schedule. Sometimes it's like watching a movie when the audio glitches out and isn't in time with the image. Or like... the ridiculousness of having some voice in my head narrate shit to me that I already know, have already cognized, sensed, experienced. ... The absurdity.... THE AUDACITY !!! 

I'm really just working with that edge. Being as open and restful as I can without ignoring the remaining dissatisfaction. (Soften, include, relax). There's a strange tension to practice in some sense, in the juxtaposition of great restfulness and the annoyance of subtle dissatisfaction. I'm not trying to avoid this but as I said, soften, include and even lean in a little. 

If this thing I'm pointing at is natural mind, or whatever, what's interesting about it, is that it's so real and obvious and normal that it can be super tempting to be like "well, hey this is it" but the more I "supress" or ignore dukkha the less I can be in this natural way of being. 

Yeah... the juxtaposition is interesting. 

Woooo Bahiya 2 Baby !!!!! Lets go !!!!!!!!!!!!! 

​​​​​​​That brings to mind Daniel's Kazzo player. 

Omg. You guys are killing me with the log names. XD  HAHAHAHA

Slainte, for your new log!  

A warning... We're working out our dilligence with salvation here so there will be no messing, no shooting the breeze and absolutely no "joking around" on this log. Very serious, very uptight, very dry meditation discussion is all that's allowed. NO FUN !!! NO RAMBLING NONSENSE !!! NO COMEDIC CHARACATERIZATIONS OF EGOIC PROCESSES !!!

This goes for you too Bahiya ... !!!

HAHAHA

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Doing 40 or so mins a day
Will bump that up to 2 sessions per day soon. Naturally inclining toward more practice which is good. 

There are periods of restlessness and clarity. The periods of restlessness are tough. The mind is scattered, obsessing over motivation, inspiration, creativity. Very difficult to concentrate. 

The periods of clarity are nice, for obvious reasons, but interesting because it seems I can see the root dilemma, the backwards self referencing process, this activity that takes like a slice of experience and starts winding up fantasy's around it. At first clarity was so interesting on its own I only saw this process obliquely. Now I'm starting to see it more clearly. I just watch it stop and start. Contract and relax. This is the edge that I need to practice at. Light touch, vigilant senses

Practice at this point seems to be all about gentle, consistent concentration. Just staying tuned into the groove of insight. I don't know how else to say it. 

During periods of clarity the three characteristics are sort of already there, through all the senses, just kind of implicit in the experience so it's really just about letting that continue to occur. No interference mostly but subtly keeping an eye on the self referencing back tracking fabrication machine. There between my eyes. It's spooky man. That subtle realization that you're looking at a reflection, like realizing youve been talking to a hallucination. 

I feel ready for this next leg of the journey. A few months ago I was not ready. I was a bit apprehensive, a bit avoidant, a bit lazy. It's time now. 

Sounds really good. 

It's really hard to talk about this phase of practice. Something deep is figuring this all out, but there is also a need for "me" to participate by formally practicing which allows us to stumble on the kind of quality data that fuels the developing understanding. And yet, what is formal practice at this stage? It's barely more than intending to be aware of how attention works within awareness for a pre-determined amount of time. But if we don't lend ourselves to practicing like this, it's really unlikely we'll wake up. Habits of mind are so strong...

There is clinging and there is resistance... and there seems to be a hint of what it would be like to be beyond this grabbing-onto and this pushing-away. The trick --- as always --- is to look directly INTO this grabbing and pushing away rather than search for something that must be missing. The answer is in the dukka itself, there is a misunderstanding somewhere in there. Enlightenment is realizing the misunderstanding in dukka, rather than realizing an understanding outside of dukka.

That's why those dukka-ish "no clarity" sits are really important. Awareness is still there even though there is apparently no attention. We "know" there is no clarity, awareness knows there is no attention. This is perhaps most spooky of all, because we personally identify with clear-knowing and feel that "I" am lost when there is no clarity. Very interesting, what is making this assessment? I am lost. What is I and what is lost? Where is the problem I think I'm having?

When we first start practicing, we are so identified with the body that if there is discomfort or disturbance, we think "I'm not meditating well". Then the body relaxes and becomes tranquil and we think "now I can really pay attention to my mind, I'm learning to meditate well!" The knowing mind can become so strong that the body can be in turmoil (e.g. in the midst of turbulent reobservation or in the midst of a nasty inter-personal argument), but as long as the knowing mind is strong we say "I am meditating well" and "I am fully present". The last stage is nearly impossible to describe because the body can be in turmoil and the mind can be completely confused, but there is a growing realization that awarness itself is still there and even in this chaos "I am still meditating well!, even though we couldn't explain why we still think so.  

The enlightened mind is really good at being home in uncertainty.

It's also really important not to assume there will be constant progress. Somedays there will be deep juicy sits and you can just soak in jhana. Somedays there will be diamond-like clarity and you can vipassina the heck out of the subtlest sense impressions. And other days you just need to sit through a bunch of noise. My teacher at the time used the metaphor, "sometimes you feel good and you put on your pack and grab your rifle and go hunting deep into the mountains... and sometimes you go down the street and buy some hamburger meat at the grocery."

All of these are important experiences to soak in. The good, bad, and ugly experiences all leave an hard-to-describe impression which gets refined into wisdom/awakening. And the mind seems to evoke what is needed in sort of a shadow psychology way --- we unconsciously get attracted to what we superficially don't want to experience because somehow know deep down we need to to experience it to gain power/wisdom. To face our overblown fears. To crumble our false persona. (Which evokes the fear-of-annilation instinct, which is spooky and eventually funny -- how many times do we have to experience "I think I'm gonna die?!" in meditation??? )

​​​​​​​“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened.” ― Mark Twain
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This can get pretty humbling at times, we can feel like a beginner meditator all over again. 



Best wishes!!

p.s. if you haven't read "Seeing that frees", it might be a good time for it. I personally don't like the "voice" of the writing, but the content is very very very good. Jump around to the sections that seem to draw you in -- don't try to read it from front to back. 

(as always, just my opinion and people pay me.... well nothing... for my opinions. Which is about what they are worth.    )

Practice is continuing to pick up. A number of decent length sessions everyday. 

I guess the crux of practice now is attention. In the earlier stages of meditation you sort of use attention to be aware of or "attend" to awareness (aware of awareness). Then third path is when you start to recognize oh I'm attached to attention and maybe can afford to loosen my grip on it a little. Now it's like noticing I don't need to pay attention to be aware and that chronic attending actually creates suffering.  Further I find that I can practice and have the sense of attention fall away which is what I think caused some of the earlier fireworks I experienced with this path but I notice now that when attention drops off what remains is the oddest dukkha. It's like a nebulous tension. It's I suppose somewhere in the head but is also kind of impossible to point directly at. It can be missed if things have more of an A&P type hue or if I'm basking in something nice but it is there.

The only thing I feel I should add to practice is a little metta.

I have read seeing that frees but I will flick through some chapters. I do find when I read it I tend towards over saturating experience with emptiness which can be nice in a jhanic way and useful when mind is busy but I've been more inclined to a "just be with it" style of practice. I know there's some things deep into the book that it may be useful for me to reread. I will keep flicking through. 

Adi Da used to talk about divine ignorance. Ignorance is obviously a tricky subject when you're talking with Buddhists but there is a sort of "ignoring the impulse to chronically attend to things" that allows one to become more immediately aware. 

Emptiness can be a bit God realm. I try work with it the way a drop of dye hits a body of water. One can be tempted into seeking emptiness and when practice becomes seeking emptiness it feels like it's missing the point of where im at. 

​​​​​​​I feel the edge I'm working at is a super subtle intention to include everything, a tacit or implicit recognition of emptiness/3cs like the body mind can be allowed to just do that itself without direction. I don't have to direct the investigation at all. This is where the falling away of attention occurs. So then I notice what still judges the experience. What still tries to start up patterns of activity because it has determined that something is wrong with experience. Noticing the subtle difference between attention dissolving and attending to no attention