mapelis blog

[mapeli]

Another thing that I would like to report, that is most surprising, is that the shifts between the Jhanas have become more and more clear. At some point not too long ago, it seemed like they would develop into more of a single continuum, just one big movement through ever subtler shadesof gray. But now I notice clear, distinct points in time for each shift. "ah, there's the that shift".

I think this is a good thing because it gives me confidence and rest in the practice, when I know I can count on noticing the shifts, I can linger with more relaxed comfort at each state. But as always, I might be fooling myself, and as always, appreciate beeing corrected if someone has noticed a similar experience that have turned out to be counter-productive in the long run.

[mapeli]

Still adjusting a bit to having moved back, I have had the chance to practice moment to moment mindfulness. When I lose that, I will almost immediately find myself annoyed and uncomfortable because of the road of cars I can hear constantly in the background or some social relationship that I had fled going up north.

I'm not yet fit for the mendicant life-style and live where it is too cold most of the time to camp even in a van. So I always figured I would have to find some way of living in between. A simple cottage away from noise will do, and some work I can do from there with as little effort and time as possible. But now I find myself looking at camp gear and contemplating relocation to a hotter country.

I think that I have started to trust the process of negotiation a bit. So far I have ended up on the contemplative side of available choices without having any options really. It has been the way it has to be. So keeping up this direction by daily meditation and stillness of lifestyle, things will have to work out. After all, it was soon five years ago that I quit my last employment, and I still don't know how ends have met. But compared to my friends I live really simple and cheap.  So, quitting the day job was the large step, after that things have been simpler.

I like the term 'negotiation' the way Jhanananda talks about it. It is one of those things that really stand out as brilliant and unique. There are many more such things, of course.
Having been around this forum for not too long, many more such concepts have uploaded into my mind recently, to great joy.

The negotiating is not just life, but every day. Learning to keep equanimous in new environtments and new situations seems like an essential part of the training. I seem to have a couple of areas where I am under-developed, but these days I discovered something that helps a bit in those situations, so I will share it with you.
Since becoming comfortable in the third jhana, and after Jeffrey pointed out the connection between the jhanas and the chakras, I seem to be able to fall back on, or rather flee to equinimity even when my saturation in penetrated, by simply treating my loss and lack of equanimity equanimous (note to future self: invest in spell checker). That is, when annoyance has its course through this body and mind, I 'apply' equanimity to it by accepting it and sort of smiling kindly towards myself instead of working up more unbalance. When I can't find the stepping stone to do this I focus on, and flee to, the third-eye chakra.
This might not be very sane, because the spontaneous thing to go for when losing balance would be the first jhana and thereby the heart chakra. But I find that usually the heartand throat are too much compromized and don't  give enough pull into wholesomeness, in a 'war situation' outside of a meditation session, that is.
 As always I might by fooling myself and over theorizing, but I guess I might also be right. "What ever works for you. No one can tell you how todo it."
When in meditation, I go for permanence, saturation, 'becoming' and all stems from peace and stillness and surrender. Therefor it was not obvious to me how to 'apply' things found in the jhanas outside of meditation, outside of saturation.
I think in terms of backburner-bliss or meta-joy. 'A joy that is not of the senses' even when the senses and mind signals unjoyfulness.

[Jhanananda]

Thank you Jhanananda for comments, guidance and inspiration. It is truly invaluable. I had not expected to get such detailed commentary. It does help a lot. I feel somehow a bit lighter, and as dedicated as ever to keep going.

I am only too happy to offer some guidance to a fellow contemplative, because I had so very little skilled guidance on my inner journey.  Without skilled guidance and validation we cannot hope to negotiate the inner terrain of the mind and spirit.

I will continue sharing my story because it seems to help me in many ways and if some one else might find inspiration through it, it is very good. I find that it is often some ones description of a subtle phenomena of meditation that can give me just the shift in attitude to get further, so I figure, the more the merrier, when it comes to sharing experiences. But then, when an enlightened master keeps giving you comments and encouragement, then it is simply too good a bargain not to keep it up.

I am glad that you are continuing your journal, because I am sure other rigorous contemplatives will benefit from reading about your inner journey.  There is just too few such reports.

I must also say, in the name of truth and encouragement of others, that I have not been able to keep up the four sits and two laying-downs each day. Mostly it is three sits and one laying down per day. Some times only two/one (sit/lay), but that has been the absolute minimum. But I have been trying to implement attitude of 'life as a meditation retreat' that was recommended, which helps me to keep up an effort of mindfulness and ethical living in general.

The rigorous, self-aware contemplative will want to sit and lay in meditation at least once a day, if not 3 times a day.  Those who want enlightenment in this very lifetime will just have to figure out how to do that.  For some it is living out of a backpack.  For others it is handing over the business to competent people, for others it is some other strategy.  In the 90s I had a modestly profitable computer business that only took 4 hours of my time each day.  I was able to spend the rest of the time meditating, close to nature.  It helped me a great deal.  I got some much out of my meditations that I ended up neglecting my business too much, so kept declining until there was nothing left of it by 2000.  Then I took to living in a van.

I have also found that although I am in some kind of retreat, I do have some worldly obligations. And exchanging one sit+lay-session (I usually pair them up) for nature-walk and physical exercise  makes me a lot more balanced and less prone to grumpyness during the day, which I reap the efforts of in meditation. A proper retreat would not have made that trade though, I suppose. I will still have to look forward to that. For me, I will have to return to my home city soon, and I need to prepare to integrate and negotiate to bring the retreat home. I will have the opportunity to keep up at least the first/last-sessions of the day, and my lifestyle has been relaxed/contemplative for a number of years so that will work out fine. But I will be in a city, and I don't look forward to it.

I found regular exercise helped me in my interior journey.  I hiked or cycled daily through the 90s, and I still hike daily.

if you can maintain the meditation sits at the beginning and end of each day after this retreat, then you will have been successful at developing a lifestyle of retreat, which I am confident will be as successful as mine was.  Too few meditation retreats even encourage this.

[Jhanananda]

So to the inner worlds...

After having clearly obsessed a bit, well, at least thought, about OOBEs I have been starting to take refuge in that Jhanananda says that the main message, the focus, is about the four Jhanas, that is, the material Sammadhis. I have not been comfortable doing exercises for body-detachment neither sitting nor laying down, as I find I it takes the focus away from the bliss. I currently enjoy feeling the play of the aura as my body gets more relaxed and my awareness more subtle. So I guess there is a time for everything. Hopefully.

Ironically, or maybe, just because of this, I think I received some OOBE-training last night. I dreamt I got to go sky-diving. Or rather, tag along with someone. This relaxed guy pointed to a camera on top of his head, meaning, I would tag along, but I somehow got the impression it was not about me so I wasn't scared. Then he very casually just dropped out of the "airplane" (I never saw it) and I was most definitely tagging a long, like we did one of those pair-dives. We went down with incredible speed and I felt it in my stomach and eyes. Then I got adjusted and could enjoy the fall. We came down over the ocean, he somehow shifted and we flew in parallel with the ocean waves and could see a lot of big fish and whales and stuff in the crystal clear ocean, and then, very skillfully we landed on a beautiful tropical beach. I noticed that he was such a skilled sky-diver that he didn't actually have to use his parachute, but had some kind of wings-device. On the beach another skydiver awaited us. He had a similar device. And of course, neither of them had neither camera-helmets or parachutes, but wings. But to me, they looked black. I had expected white, of course. That was pretty cool. I think of it as training. Or rather, maybe just a mercy kind of showing me what it is like.

In my experience any flying dreams are OOBEs.  Sometimes our mind just makes up a story to going along with the experience.

[Jhanananda]

Sometimes I start worrying about lifetimes and salvation and things of the infinite. A bit of lack of faith perhaps. But it creeps up on my awareness from time to time, and I'm starting to see that it has been bugging me for quite a while. During one of the laying-down sessions today though, I just noticed it and thought, "f*ck it, it might be so or so, and my destiny might be this or that, but I'm gonna bliss out no matter what anyway" and I felt a shift in me, and a joy. A letting go. With a smile I got back to the golden glow.

As you are noticing the bliss is proportional to your ability to let go, surrender, submit, or whatever terminology you like.  It is the bliss that makes all of the difference, and the rest is just icing on the cake.

[Jhanananda]

I think that meditating on the senses and making sure that they are blissful are what the gospels are referring to with the five wise and five foolish virgins. When the senses have the oil of bliss they can go to the wedding where two become one and experience non-duality.

I believe that you are correct in your reading the allegory of the five wise and five foolish brides maids.  It would be worth a discussion on this subject.

[Jhanananda]

I also suppose that dealing with this kind of past wounds is at least one way of understanding the concept of karma. Especially now that I have come to experience that sometimes these traumas seem to come from previous lifetimes.

In my experience working through past traumas, whether from this lifetime, or a previous one, is all par for the course, but it is hard to explain to others until they start experiencing it.

I'm quite used to the process described above, but today I experienced what I think was more of a root cause, than an actual trauma. Because it did not follow the usual process. I was doing laying down meditation and incorporating the new way of meditating on the body that I described in previous posts. I started with taste/stomach and then moved up to smell/lungs, but after that I noticed that I need to meditate upon the rib-cage too, the externals of the body surrounding the lungs because I often feel a bit uncomfortable there. I decide where to go next by keeping the bliss growing and glowing and noticing what in any of the four corners of mindfulness that makes ... resistance. What is not yet blissful. Often it will be parts of the body resisting the breath, or, of course, the graspings or aversions of the psyche.
This time I noticed a heavy weight upon my upper chest, that also put tension and resistance in the diaphragm because of the pressure I suppose. The body is in many ways a 'closed' mechanical system so tension will often propagate. I was in meditation and could without trouble spot that the origin of this resistance was in my soul rather than my body, and it was the feeling of 'not being good enough'. This supposedly came from a traumatic childhood with abandonment issues and stuff, but I also guess that it can happen to pretty much anybody, as most families and societies are dysfunctional one way or another, and could propagate such an attitude to a young child in many different ways.
Any way, this realization was very undramatic and the tension lifted. I was a bit amazed that I could actually find such a deep psychological issue and 'work it'. It seems like one of those things that I thought was carved into my soul and I would have to live with. But now I threw it away from me like an old used blanket, at least during meditation.
I do not care to worry about whether it will come back, or rush to implement a new day to day psychology with all the 'software patches' implemented in my psychology to work around such an issue removed. I have tried to work things out at that level before, and the results are often questionable. What matters, and what works, is that I can lift off this burden again and again, organically, when going deeper into the bliss, and in that way associate - that is, 'hard (or wet) wire' - freedom from that issue with the ever deepening bliss and joy of the first (to fourth) Jhana.

This way, even the deepest wounds and bugs of the soul will not get primary attention, but their resolve will always be a by-product of some thing very nice, that is, meditation. The contemplative practice will go on, and will be the joyful driving force in the healing. This way the tendency of making past trauma into new fixations and just make worse complexes and neurosis out of it all is avoided.

This turned out to be a long post about the bridge between 'psychology' and deep meditation, among other things. What I had intended to write about, was the astonishing fact that such a deep wound as 'not being good enough (to ... x,y,z)' was 1) actually found in a concrete way 2) lifted off 3) without any drama. This was surprising and joyful.

Thinking about it post-writing, maybe it is not a root cause, but rather a consequence of traumatic experiences in the past, that is why it was easy to get rid of and did not come with a memory. It was something learned, and integrated into ones sense-of-self, from, and in relation to, the world. "If I am treated like this, I must not be good enough to be treated better." Or something.

This is how healing works on the level of the mystic.

[Jhanananda]

I have known through reading and practice that applied and sustained attention are only factors of the first jhana and then falls away. This I have previously noticed gradually but it has become clearer lately. What happens is that all of a sudden the attention itself seems to disappear. First, it seems like nothing is 'grippable' by attention anymore but all of phenomena seems like a single image where attention has nowhere to rest. Then I saw that a better description, would be that attention it self has fallen away, and what is left is awareness. Attention and awareness has separated from each other and one of them died.

This is strange as I hardly noticed they were the same prior to this. Awareness has no problem focusing on silence, but attention cannot.

This is great news, because the disappearing of attention can yield sort of a whiplash effect in the experience if not aware of this transition. Like someone would pull out the rug from underneath the feet. Then I will have to stumble around a bit before adapting to the new configuration. But when this phenomena has been befriended, the transition can be smoother and more skillfulness has been implemented.

So it seems for this one right now at least.

Slowly, the truth of the GWV is revelaed in more clearity. Indeed a good description for this would be that of a factor of one stage disappears in the next.

Another good lesson from this is that each Jhana and the transference between them need not to be mastered before going further and deeper, so it is important to see that in some sense, the abstractions are secondary and will unfold as long as meditation is practiced as skillfully as possible at any given stage.

Yes, applied and sustained attention, or what is also called 'concentration' is cognitive; whereas, the religious experience is non-cognitive.  Thus, awareness can be sustained, as you observed, without the need of engaging the cognitive mind.

[Jhanananda]

Last night and the end-of-day sit I ended up in what I think is the 5th Sammadhi again. I hardly noticed getting into the fourth Jhana but all of a sudden all bodily contact and sensory stimuli just dropped off and all went black. It was very nice. I knew that I had a body but it did not intrude at all. All was just black and silent. It was funny and I felt like giggling a bit. I felt really good and a great relief. It was not at all hard to maintain this state and after my initial exaltation from reaching this state wore off, I just lingered and enjoyed myself.
After some time the awareness and sensory input of the body very gradually and slowly came back. During this coming-back I realized that I have been in between these states many times before when younger, because I had memories arise from hearing my father speak right in front of me but he would seem very far away and his voice would hardly reach me, like he was standing behind a sound proof wall of glass or something. So I knew I had been here before.
Sometimes I can end up in that in-between state almost by accident, but not having meditated properly before it is often like one sense is still left behind. Like it is partial. Like I turn thin like a paper - I lack some dimensions, but am still in the world. It is a very cool experience.
But last night was the second time I was completely in that state of infinite blackness and silence without any sensory stimuli and much bliss and relief. And joy.

This is an example of the non-cognitive nature of the religious experience.  The best thing we can do is show up, in case one happens, which is what daily meditation practice is all about.  Then when a religious experience occurs, then our best option is just to savor it, as you did.

[Jhanananda]

Today I have had a day of rest. I went up and meditated. Had breakfast. Went into laying down meditation. Got up and meditated again and so forth. As I was tired I did not use a timer when laying down but wanted to allow my self to drift off to sleep if needed. This way I got a lot of experience and training in recognizing the different stages of sleep.

I found out that I start dreaming a lot sooner than I thought and some times it seemed like the lucidity of the dream and my sense of my physical body was mixed and super-positioned on each other. I got to experience more lucidity in the dreams than I have had before and I got hope for progress. I noticed I was dreaming and remembered Jhananandas reply earlier on this blog that I don't have to stick around in the scenario given in the dream, so I decided to go somewhere else (as it was a fairly uninteresting one) and left the dream with ease. But then I didn't know how to go somewhere else, so I just ended up in white bliss which then turned into those wonderful fractal patterens and when they faded I seemed to be back in my body again. I did not know how to go to a certain place, but maybe I should have stuck around in that dream world, but my interpretation of leaving seemed to be dimensional, rather than spatial (if there is such a thing as locality in the dream world).

This is very good success in the OOBE, which is learning control in the dream world.  The "wonderful fractal patterns" are classic transition from one domain, or plane to the next.  Sometimes we just get dumped back in the body.

The coolest proof of success for me would be to be in the room where my body is, but I don't know if that is even possible.

You will get there.

But today was just about rest and meditation and I don't care too much about success in OOB-travel, as I decided a couple of days ago. But I notice that my mind has started thinking about ways to sleep outside to experience meditating upon the stars. You see I live where there is this peculiar problem of light pollution ... by the sun it self. During summer nights are not nearly dark enough for the stars to be visible. It is not dark at all in fact. But in the winter, it is waaay to cold to sleep outside. So I wonder, do I need to find a house with a glass-roof? Or maybe I need to buy a coffin from a burial agency and install a window in it, and make it heat-isolated. Then I can just have it somewhere in the forest and go sleep in it. But that would probably be a bit unsafe, considering all the vampire movies that people are watching now a days.

On the same theme I have been thinking about making my self some kind of portable mosquito-net-tent so I can meditate in the forest, because it is way too much mosquitoes around here. It is a bit sad because there are forests around. However, it is a fairly simple practical problem.

There is a tradition of mosque architecture in Turkey, which uses an oculus, which is a circular opening to the sky.  It is used also in the Pantheon.  The ladder opening in Hopi Kivas goes through the roof, which I believe was originally intended to be an oculus, or observation opening to the night sky.

The oculus is a way to have an unobstructed view of the sky while remaining relatively warm inside.  A box, or coffin, as you described it, might also be useful.  I found mosquito netting too obstructive of the night sky to see much of the stars, but I use it to meditate without being eaten alive by the mosquitoes.

[Jhanananda]

I have noticed since trying to implement moment-to-moment awareness by keeping in contact with the four corners of mindfulness, that every time I make an effort to implement a wholesome mental state, by the recommendation of flooding the dark night with wholesome states, the most horrible of my internal states seems to rise to fight it.

This could mean that I'm usually in a state of anger and despair, and just notice it when trying to adjust my attitude to loving-kindness or compassion. Or it could mean that I'm usually neither, but setting a thesis means confronting an anti-thesis. Or to go from gray to white requires letting go of the black. I don't know. But I thought I should mention it here, because I almost gave up a while ago until I saw how silly and 'thin' the opposition was. The trick is just to call the bluff and recognize it and again and again reach for that loving-kindness. And finally, when it sticks, at least in meditation, I find that it is a lot easier to handle any other thing that surfaces, in body, mind or soul, whether it is a sore neck or a sad memory, when it can be greeted with loving-kindness and compassion.

Many of us come from a dysfunctional family system or childhood trauma.  These traumas tend to come to us when we are deep in meditation.  When I think of my childhood I am presented with much darkness.  So, for me it is easier to just still the mind, than to try to cultivate some positive state, which just ends up with the kind of internal battle that you described.

[Jhanananda]

Today I woke up really early, as have been the tendency since I started to meditate more rigorously. It is quite a lovely feeling to set the alarm "really early" compared to my previous standard, and still be up earlier. And waking up wanting to get up and meditate rather than snooze is a new feeling too.

During the sit, it was one of the most challenging sessions so far though. The dream that was in my head prior to waking up was one of the heavier ones so far, psychologically, and I had a hard time regaining my balance, as I on top of this was sore and stiff in the body as well. A bit into the session I had to notice that my usual bliss-groove was not running and I had to get back to the basics a couple of times. It was like I needed another kind of grip on my self now when both mind and body was in sub-optimal and abnormal conditions. I felt tremendous resistance but after some struggling I noticed that I had a huge weight and tension in the lower neck/upper back and once I found this hot spot I could meditate on it and get into the groove. But getting into it and releasing that spot was rather like bench-pressing on maximum capacity. It was a humbling experience. The bliss was as fine as ever when I got into it, but it seems I have gotten used to having the Jhanas more accessible then I had today.

I think that the lesson is that to some extent, each sit is its own, and I can never guarantee with certainty any depth. But if things don't go the usual way, something is probably wrong, and that something can be found and corrected. And today it was not obvious what it was, the way it usually is.

At these times we just have to remember that there are always ups and downs in the contemplative life.  So, we just show up for meditation to see what is going to come of it.

Some of my deepest meditation came from having to sit through an hour of nothing, before the rocket took off into a 2 hour bliss bomb.

[Jhanananda]

I was out canoeing almost all day yesterday and when I got back and sat down I noticed the sense of balance was conditioned heavily by being on water. It was fun to meditate on for a while but as meditation deepened I got almost too sensitive and had to switch to another meditation object because there was too much turmoil. I noticed that I was also very tired so I meditated upon the sensation of almost falling asleep until it became a blissful presence that did not threat my meditation.

Some serious frustrations has been coming concerning mostly things that I think that I lack. Mostly regarding intimate relationships. I have missed some one most of my life and I've started to question it, trying to think what life would be like if I didn't miss anything at all.
I considered my self free from addictions when dropping even coffee to be able to prove to myself that I don't have any addictive behavior of the body any more. But it seems like I have addictions to the fetters of the soul as well. Sometimes I seem to be addicted to misery, but I think it is mostly unskillfulness. Sufferings exist. Need not get to worked up about it.

I have not been very deep lately but I do enjoy every meditation session, and I need to not be pushing my self right now, I think.

Having come from a family that never expressed love, let alone appreciation for me, then seeking love externally in relationship became my greatest obstacle.  Eventually I deepened the depth of my meditation sessions to the 4th jhana and beyond, where I found so much bliss, joy ecstasy and fulfillment, that I found no need, or interest, in sex or human relationships.  It sounds like you will be there quite soon, when you can consistently meditate to the depth of the 4th jhana on a daily basis.

[Jhanananda]

I have now relocated back to my usual place of living. I am not equanimous enough to be completely unaffected by changing environtment, rather, I seem to become more sensitive, but less anxious about it. Meditation last night was a bit of a struggle, compared to what Im used to. My body and emotions seem to be abit worked up. Like constantly having to tame a racing horse, or driving just a bit too fast to be comfortable.

I find bringing the retreat home with you is aided by maintaining moment-to-moment mindful-self-awareness; and especially, in keeping the mind still all day long.

Today, I decided to warm up before meditating in the morning. Around here there was already noise around by the time I get up, so I need to develop a new schedule. 'Warming up' I do by sitting in a chair, resting in the surroundings and directing my eyes to some mystic text, today browsing this forum until I find dedication arising again. Sinking into rest, soon the charisms arise, and I let them play a while without shifting focus too much. In this state I can 'find myself', recollect myself, which I need todo in order to adjust to this change of location. It is sort of just lingering in the first jhana, drifting back and forth into the second.

After a while I spontaneously want to go deeper, and then I go sit on the cushion and close my eyes.

I notice that it is really helpful to have this blog to share and report to, because by writing here, I constantly debrief, and it also gives me a kind of verification of dedication.

I found reading contemplative journals, such as this; or reading contemplative writing of the mystics, such as the suttas, before every meditation served to inspire me to meditate to depth.  I found once I could get to the 3rd jhana, then the noise of the neighborhood would not disturb me at all.

[Jhanananda]

Another thing that I would like to report, that is most surprising, is that the shifts between the Jhanas have become more and more clear. At some point not too long ago, it seemed like they would develop into more of a single continuum, just one big movement through ever subtler shadesof gray. But now I notice clear, distinct points in time for each shift. "ah, there's the that shift".

I think this is a good thing because it gives me confidence and rest in the practice, when I know I can count on noticing the shifts, I can linger with more relaxed comfort at each state. But as always, I might be fooling myself, and as always, appreciate beeing corrected if someone has noticed a similar experience that have turned out to be counter-productive in the long run.

I too noticed that at first the shifts from stage of the religious experience to the next was subtle shades of gray.  However, the more time I spent cultivating the religious experience to more I too realized the very real divisions that exist between the stages.