Jay's Blog

[jay.validus]

Hello.
I have been on this forum long enough, I should have a blog by this point. 

~~~~

My focus lately has less been about jhana and more about cultivating right actions.  I have spent so much time in absorption that my mind has become very lazy, and many life goals I wish to pursue have been left by the way-side.  This is not proper.  My goal lately has been to release anxiety, ignorance, and laziness.  This is tied very heavily into addiction problems.  This has nothing to do with intoxicants, but everything with television and internet use.  I am an addict with these electronic devices.

My whole life I have used television, internet, and games as a way to fill a void in my soul.   I do not feel any desire to play video games anymore, but internet is a problem.  I am on my tenth day since I had it disconnected the internet from my apartment.  It is very freeing, but there are times it is very difficult.  I am already a very open person internally, and meditation and maturity has since increased my ability to change myself for the better.  Without internet, I have now free of distractions to focus on actions I want to do.

I have switched my meditation practice slightly.  In the mornings, I focus on the area on the front of my head.  I notice when I am using any form of cognition, the best way to use it is from this area.  If I focus on my spine, I tend to dwell inward and it becomes pure absorption without any direction.   It does have its purpose, but for work I need to have attention and have my mental tools available to work.

To end, this remind me of the Samugatta Sutta:

monk intent on heightened mind should attend periodically to three themes: he should attend periodically to the theme of concentration (absorption); he should attend periodically to the theme of uplifted energy; he should attend periodically to the theme of equanimity. If the monk intent on heightened mind were to attend solely to the theme of concentration (absorption), it is possible that his mind would tend to laziness. If he were to attend solely to the theme of uplifted energy, it is possible that his mind would tend to restlessness. If he were to attend solely to the theme of equanimity, it is possible that his mind would not be rightly centered for the stopping of the fermentations. But when he attends periodically to the theme of concentration (absorption), attends periodically to the theme of uplifted energy, attends periodically to the theme of equanimity, his mind is pliant, malleable, luminous, & not brittle. It is rightly centered for the stopping of the fermentations (of the mind).

I need to realize my full potential, and although I feel blessed I can go into absorption, I am an intelligent person and I need to cultivate my mental prowess.  Until next time.

[Jhanananda]

...My goal lately has been to release anxiety, ignorance, and laziness.  This is tied very heavily into addiction problems.  This has nothing to do with intoxicants, but everything with television and internet use.  I am an addict with these electronic devices.

My whole life I have used television, internet, and games as a way to fill a void in my soul.   I do not feel any desire to play video games anymore, but internet is a problem.  I am on my tenth day since I had it disconnected the internet from my apartment.  It is very freeing, but there are times it is very difficult.  I am already a very open person internally, and meditation and maturity has since increased my ability to change myself for the better.  Without internet, I have now free of distractions to focus on actions I want to do.

Addiction comes in many forms.  It is good that you have recognized ways in which you are addicted, and you are dealing with it.  This is an aspect of the discipline needed for liberation that I speak of.

[jay.validus]

I cannot seem to get some sense of completion on the topic of choice.  There is a convincing argument one side of my mind makes on ignorance.  Let's say I want to have a glass of milk.  I could go to the fridge and get a glass of milk and drink it.  But it is not that simple.  I would observe the craving as it manifests in my mind.  From there, I could follow the leaf down the branch to the trunk and roots, and see the many reasons why I want the glass of milk.  Simply put, survival.  That could mean case closed, but it is not that simple.  I observe the craving to survive, to exists, and I can see the leaf and follow it down to the trunk and roots.  I am scared to die.  Would would have thought having a glass of milk would be so much effort?  Now imagine this on every single action I do, while at home, at work, and in much of my free time. 

This doesn't end with a comprehensive analysis on my actions, drives, and passions.  When I get down to the fear of dying, I can let that go and I feel empty.  There is a hole inside me.  I observe what is my consciousness.  What seem vasts goes down to nothing.  Nothing.  There is nothing, yet I am still here existing.  Despite this, hold a knife to me and I will defend myself and hurt you in the process.  Human instinct still takes over and I trust it.  Even then, I still look at every choice I make as an illusion, but it is still mine to make.  I cannot get that voice out of my head, which tells me with every choice I am craving, that I am making an improper choice, that I am continuing on with existence and that is wrong. 

I don't agree with that statement.  Okay, when in rapture it makes sense to surrender.  When you die, okay, it makes sense to surrender.  While I am living I want to be able to make choices without all these voices screaming at me saying I am some ignorant and horrible human being.  I don't want to hurt anyone and I want to be there for people.  Be humble and love.  How can that get so messed up within a simple philosophy.  I don't see enlightenment as a change and becoming into something passive, allowing all others to make choices for you.  I see enlightenment as being active and embracing life.  Just being is great, but it does not always mean sitting there and sipping on tea mindfully.  As a living breathing human being I choose to do certain activites, like martial arts, drawing, and tricking and 'just be' while I do it.  I go through much fear when doing a backflip, but the depressed person sitting on the mat telling me I am craving is somehow liberated.   Please.  How addicted are many people to their practice?

There are few people I meet, who I can say this is what I do, and they are on my level.  They get when I say I enjoy backflips, its not because of craving.  There is lots of pleasant and unpleasant realities to the choices I make, but I have strength and balance of my mind to endure the challenges.  You make a choices with a knowing of the best and worst case situations, but you push yourself through.  Swim upstream.  Think of the outcomes and do it.  I can just be, but just being also involves actions and choices.  There are certain aspects of my personality that are constant learning, growing,and expanding.  It is all for some game of perfection?  I don't care and I don't know.   That is not to say I don't listen, I surely do.  However, if I want to make a choice, I probably have much greater clarity of my decision than someone on the outside of me, except for the divine.  That exists outside and inside of me.

[jay.validus]

I think too much.  Re: above post.  This post will be short and simple, I wanted to write my next few retreat I have planned.  Firstly, I plan to take some time off for the fall solstice, probably three or four days.  This will be my first meditation retreat on my own, and I will be taking it slow.  Second, I have signed up at the Alberta Vipassana Centre in mid-October.  Thirdly, I have contacted Jeffery and told him I would come to his retreat in Arizona come end December. 

My practice has always been strong, sitting every morning and evening for an hour.  If I am busy one of the sessions would drop to 20 or 30 minutes, a compromise I felt was acceptable.  For the past week I have lagged, meditating for only 20 minutes a day.  I have made some life changes, dealing with addiction problems.  The time off has been good & necessary to establish new habits, but come Sunday or Monday I will get back to my regular routine with meditation.

[jay.validus]

I am having an issue lately with my practice come the evening.  I find after I sit in the evening, although I feel super good, I am tired and it becomes time to go to sleep.  It is getting annoying, because if I were not to sit in the evening I would have an unbroken will to keep on with my hobbies and passions.  Therefore, between sitting-then-sleep and pursing passion, passion has been winning out.

Passions I partake always involve some spiritual element, in that they are a driving force of change, understanding, and growth.  It is never about a piece of art, but the art comes through me.  It is not about practicing Kung Fu, it is embracing your power in every moment.  There are awareness practices. 

I think to remedy the situation and continue on with meditation in the evening, I will keep my morning sit one hour, and the come evening before bed, I will drop my sit to twenty or thirty minutes.  Otherwise, my body gets too tired and retaliates -- A.K.A. fuck this evening meditation sit.

[Alexander]

I feel the same way, Jay, a lot of the time. Then when I engage in those "passions," I find them unfulfilling, or they can't keep my attention for more than 5 minutes. I try to use walking meditation, as it cancels out the discomfort from sitting. I also try to meditate "24/7," except life always finds ways for you to use your cognitive processes.

[Jhanananda]

I look forward to meeting you, and meditating with you, Jay.

[jay.validus]

I feel the same way, Jay, a lot of the time. Then when I engage in those "passions," I find them unfulfilling, or they can't keep my attention for more than 5 minutes. I try to use walking meditation, as it cancels out the discomfort from sitting. I also try to meditate "24/7," except life always finds ways for you to use your cognitive processes.

I find when I engage in passions, I don't have any expectation out of it.  By that I mean, I don't expect to do something and be filled with happy-joy-bliss when doing it, or even have my attention razor focused on it all the time.   There is the good and bad of of it, and I find I learn lots about myself if I am mindful of myself while doing those passions.  It really is an awareness practice. 

I look forward to meeting you, and meditating with you, Jay.

Thank you Jeff, I feel the same way.

[jay.validus]

My dreams have ebbed and flowed this week.  I had one night of some intense OOB's, while I mostly had some vivid or lucid dreams.  One lucid dream was random, but I was flying over this small planet of water that was raging in a storm.  I was hesitant for a second, but I bucked up and went straight in.  Funny, I only realized now that since that experience happened on Tuesday I have been very emotionally unstable.  I know dreams can be analysed and I have done it before.  However, with my awareness increasing deeper in the abyss, I feel deeper aspects of myself arise when I awake, in my meditations, or even my daily life.  The scariest is when I start to feel an otherworldly sensation in my head.  I feel like I am going to die of a stroke.  I understand what we label this experience, but the experience is not something I particularly enjoy.  I start to panic at times when this occurs.

Depending on how deep I am going, my mind either races violently, or it is very silent while my body shakes and tumbles and becomes cold.  Sometimes I wonder if I should pray to God or if I should wait it out and strengthen my equanimity.  I see how horrible of a person I am.  Do I pray or strengthen my equanimity.  Doing the personal inventory (Re: Understanding the Ten Fetters) made me realize how vain of a person I am.  The pleasantness of its allure is an illusion.  I am not mistaking this for having strength, a backbone.   Even writing this write now I feel I am doing it for something in vain, but it makes no sense to feel vain.  It hurts my heart.  I feel my body get heavy and I want to cry.  Do I pray or strengthen my equanimity.

I want to thank you Jeffery for encouraging others to read St. Teresa and John of the Cross.  I find their religious perspective resonates with me.  I find the Buddhist explanations very cold, but with these two mystics, I find their writings make more clear our relationship with the divine.  The words they used were very off-putting at the beginning, but it slowly becomes more clear as I understand what they really mean.  Thank you.

[Alexander]

Hey Jay,

Your post made me think of this passage.

6. Perhaps He will answer as He did to someone who was kneeling before a crucifix in great affliction... The Crucified One consoled her by saying that He gave her all the pains and labors He had borne in His passion, that she might offer them as her own to His Father. I learned from her that she at once felt comforted and enriched by these words which she never forgets but recalls whenever she realizes her own wretchedness and feels encouraged and consoled...

7. I think this example is very instructive; it shows that we please our Lord by self-knowledge, by the constant recollection of our poverty and miseries, and by realizing that we possess nothing but what we have received from Him. Therefore courage is needed, sisters, in order to receive this and many other favors which come to a soul elevated to this state by our Lord; I think that if the soul is humble it requires more valor than ever for this last mercy. May God grant us humility for His Name’s sake.

Even how she refers to Christ as "the Crucified One" here is so powerful to me. This was someone who followed a living religion: who possessed a great amount of wealth on the inside, and who drank deeply the waters referred to by the Samaritan woman. This was someone who was not only greatly holy, but also greatly humane. I agree with your assessment of the eastern mystics. They are cold and unsympathetic in comparison, lacking the heroism exhibited by the western mystics.

[rougeleader115]

Very good passages Alexander, I was glad to read them this morning. Thank you.

[Jhanananda]

My dreams have ebbed and flowed this week.  I had one night of some intense OOB's, while I mostly had some vivid or lucid dreams.  One lucid dream was random, but I was flying over this small planet of water that was raging in a storm.  I was hesitant for a second, but I bucked up and went straight in.  Funny, I only realized now that since that experience happened on Tuesday I have been very emotionally unstable.  I know dreams can be analysed and I have done it before.  However, with my awareness increasing deeper in the abyss, I feel deeper aspects of myself arise when I awake, in my meditations, or even my daily life. 

While I do not have a problem with interpreting dreams, and even OOBEs, as metaphors; nonetheless your OOBE, described above is clearly your awareness visiting another planet, or another time period in the deep past, or future of this planet, or another.

I had the experience of visiting all of the planets of this solar system, and I found on the OOBE level they have beings on them, and they are nothing like what we see when we send a space probe there.  For instance I found Mercury wall-to-wall sky scrapers full of highly technological society.  I found Venus was a water world with a few scattered islands that were formed by floating debris, and they were a kind of garden of Eden with just a few humans wandering naked in the wilderness.  And, Mars was a desert world also with beings on it. 

When I read the Trilogy of C.S. Lewis, I found his descriptions of Venus and Mars were much like my OOBE experiences there.  Another author, George Adamski, wrote about flying to those planets in alien space ships, and described them similarly, so I am inclined to believe that C.S. Lewis, and George Adamski may very well have had OOBEs that took them to those planets.

The scariest is when I start to feel an otherworldly sensation in my head.  I feel like I am going to die of a stroke.  I understand what we label this experience, but the experience is not something I particularly enjoy.  I start to panic at times when this occurs.

Depending on how deep I am going, my mind either races violently, or it is very silent while my body shakes and tumbles and becomes cold.  Sometimes I wonder if I should pray to God or if I should wait it out and strengthen my equanimity.  I see how horrible of a person I am.  Do I pray or strengthen my equanimity. 

Yes, the experience of deep meditation can be so profound, and so radically different from anything anyone we know has ever experienced, that we do tend to get terrified, and wonder if something very wrong is going to happen to our body or mind. 

One of my earliest students was a devout Catholic who had first gone to her priest and described what was happening to her in deep meditation.  He concluded that she was possessed, and needed depossession.  After all, in his belief only Jesus and his Apostles had such experiences. 

She found me on the internet searching for solutions to her "problems."  I interpreted her meditation experiences as classic examples of deep meditation.

A few years later a neurologist convinced her that her meditation practice was cultivating seizures.  She believed him, and gave up her meditation practice.  I have not heard from her in about 10 years now. 

This is why I do my best to provide content for those who have stumbled upon deep meditation, like the members of this forum, because all of the authority figures in our life know absolutely nothing about the experience of deep meditation.

Doing the personal inventory (Re: Understanding the Ten Fetters) made me realize how vain of a person I am.  The pleasantness of its allure is an illusion.  I am not mistaking this for having strength, a backbone.   Even writing this write now I feel I am doing it for something in vain, but it makes no sense to feel vain.  It hurts my heart.  I feel my body get heavy and I want to cry.  Do I pray or strengthen my equanimity.

Yes, self-awareness brings our attention to our faults.  Sometimes being so self-aware can be quite maddening.  I recall when I ramped up my contemplative life about 15 years ago I become terribly aware of a whine that had arisen in my voice.  I just could not stand hearing myself speak, so I went off into the wilderness in silence for so long that I nearly forgot how to speak.

I want to thank you Jeffery for encouraging others to read St. Teresa and John of the Cross.  I find their religious perspective resonates with me.  I find the Buddhist explanations very cold, but with these two mystics, I find their writings make more clear our relationship with the divine.  The words they used were very off-putting at the beginning, but it slowly becomes more clear as I understand what they really mean.  Thank you.

You are welcome.  While I agree with you both; nonetheless, I find that no religion has all of the answers, so I needed to read the life and teachings of the major mystics of the major religions of the world.  Doing so was like putting all of the pieces together of a very complex puzzle.  So, I urge you all to do the same.

[Alexander]

While I do not have a problem with interpreting dreams, and even OOBEs, as metaphors; nonetheless your OOBE, described above is clearly your awareness visiting another planet, or another time period in the deep past, or future of this planet, or another.

I had the experience of visiting all of the planets of this solar system, and I found on the OOBE level they have beings on them, and they are nothing like what we see when we send a space probe there.  For instance I found Mercury wall-to-wall sky scrapers full of highly technological society.  I found Venus was a water world with a few scattered islands that were formed by floating debris, and they were a kind of garden of Eden with just a few humans wandering naked in the wilderness.  And, Mars was a desert world also with beings on it. 

When I read the Trilogy of C.S. Lewis, I found his descriptions of Venus and Mars were much like my OOBE experiences there.  Another author, George Adamski, wrote about flying to those planets in alien space ships, and described them similarly, so I am inclined to believe that C.S. Lewis, and George Adamski may very well have had OOBEs that took them to those planets.

Is it true that the moon is "hell"? I read some article recently that said the coldest place in the solar system was on the moon. It made me think of G. I. Gurdjieff, who said the moon was "at the extremity of the cosmos," and if you're sent there you can't escape.

You are welcome.  While I agree with you both; nonetheless, I find that no religion has all of the answers, so I needed to read the life and teachings of the major mystics of the major religions of the world.  Doing so was like putting all of the pieces together of a very complex puzzle.  So, I urge you all to do the same.

Thanks, Jhanananda.

[Jhanananda]

Is it true that the moon is "hell"? I read some article recently that said the coldest place in the solar system was on the moon. It made me think of G. I. Gurdjieff, who said the moon was "at the extremity of the cosmos," and if you're sent there you can't escape.

Astronomically speaking the moon surely is neither the coldest, nor furthest distant object in the solar system.  For instance recent imaging of Pluto shows glaciers made of frozen methane gas, so it should be quite cold there; however, there is likely to be localized heating due to the occasional impact there.

As for my OOBE experience of the moon, I found the dark side of the moon is much like the mythical purgatory, where souls must reside in suffering for a finite period of time before returning to a new body on earth.

[jay.validus]

It was interesting reading the discussion here on OOB's and planets in the solar system.  It reminds me of an OOB I had last fall.  I was on this water world, but this planet was huge.  The water was calm, the sky and stars were so beautiful, and looking toward the planet was very darkish -- black with the hue of purple.  I was scared to enter.  I felt the water and I simultaneously felt its age.  There was this boat there with people and it was sinking.  They jumped off and I was there with them.  After the boat sank the men disappeared.   

~~~~

I have a question on Gotama's classification on absorption.  As I understand it, the material only relates to the physical, meaning the mind is taken out of the equation except for how it relates to those sensations.  I am unsure of the immaterial.  We have discussed the black before, and it is seen as a transition.  This has been labelled as access concentration before, no?  What are other words for it?

What does he mean when he discusses the immaterial?  Can the immaterial manifest itself while awake?  I know from my experience I have had experiences in daily life where suddenly it feels like my mind expands.  There is a depth that is never-ending.  I am aware of more of my body, including this depth, and sometimes the different voices in my head increase like wild fire.  This depth has happened in meditations before, where most of my awareness of the body disappears, and I am aware of an infinite depth, beyond my comprehension.  Hell, I remember as I kid I would go into the basement, sit down close my eyes and go straight to this infinite depth and talk to God.  I would use words, and he communicates with this knowing, that has a feeling of purity.  Is this the beginning of the immaterial, as Gotama classifies it?  If not, what could the immaterial be?