ROOBIO

@Sincerity Amazing! Next time I will use the blindfold, I have never done that before. How does it compare to without using one?

I probably spent like 30 minutes in pranyama. Important thing that I try to focus on is Paravastha. I'll spend about 30 minutes in Paravastha. The rest is split up between Mahamudra, Yoni Mudra, Navi Kriya. Although I am currently in India at the moment and I'm doing an initiation with this Kriya Master. Swami Nityananda Giri. Taught me his version of Navikriya, and it's very different to what I learned from the books. It seems far more impactful just that one exercise itself. At the end of it, my mind was extremely still.

I'm 30. What was it like when you were pushing it really hard? I'm just curious. I'm not saying my experiences were bad, per se. I'm grateful for each and every one of these experiences. I think the way I wrote the post wasn't the best. It does seem a bit childish and maybe a bit over dramatic. How have your experiences of Kriya changed since you started and to where you are now?

Yeah, I was meditating quite intensely in my earlier years, but then I completely stopped for like six years to sort my life out. I kind of just forgot about spirituality. And now, especially this year, I've been practicing very hard: Kriya Meditation, Mindfulness, Psychedelics. And I've always been interested in trying to find out what is true. What am I? What is consciousness? Asking the big questions. Yeah, right now I do Kriya, concentration practice, which I think is extremely important, Shinzen Young Noting Technique, zazen/do nothing, some contemplation, but I should do more of this. I don't do enough. Don't start with pranayama. Start with the prep, in this order: get a comfortable seat (30-45 min), learn Nadi Sodhana, learn Ujjayi, practice resting in awareness after each round (Parvastha), then learn to hold focus at the eyebrow point, then spend time feeling each of the 7 chakras one by one, then add mental Om at each chakra up and down the spine. Only after all that ,usually a month in, start Kriya Pranayama itself, 12 breaths building to 24, slow (30+ sec per breath).

I am interested the peoples experiences with Kriya. Have you been through a similar path?

i love this view, cause it is the seperation, the dualities is apart of being whole I remember Shinzen young once saying in an interview that his experience ranges from living in complete delusion of the self, as though he never meditated before, and then seeing through that and being whole and abiding from the void or nothingness. He has no preference between the two.

Do you agree or disagree?

It seems like this is if you actually want to have a relationship with someone, but not with sleeping with a girl. You can be extremely charismatic, fun, present, in the moment, and be an absolute bum. Have no prospects, have no money in the bank. But then, as time goes on, if the girl realises that you don't have anything sustainable, you don't have future plans, you don't have ambitions, you don't have goals. Then she'll probably leave you if you don't align with what she wants. I think game, charisma, are important for attraction but not for developing a relationship with the woman. I think these two are obviously separate things. Probably wealth and status help more with having a relationship with a woman, but not for actually attracting them. If you do attract them using these methods, then they're not actually attracted to you, so it might prove quite badly when the relationship develops. However, if your game relies on you being a deceitful person, then as the relationship develop that also might cause problems. I also think pre-selection is a pretty cool here. If you are seen with other girls, especially attractive women, then it's easier for you to get another girl, and you don't need status to get that. It's crazy to see how much you can portray wealth and status through your behavior and the way you act in front of a woman and not actually have those things.

Interesting, have you been able to rest in a state with no thoughts? What did you do to rest there?

I see a lot of spiritual traditions talking about no-mind. What do they really mean by no-mind. Is it the same as no thinking? I guess the place to start is what do people mean when they say mind. I looked at some definitions: "The mind is that which thinks, feels, perceives, imagines, remembers, and wills" "The mind is the individual, subjective experiencing of “something” that is always changing, moment to moment." Ok this made this contemplation a lot easier. Mind in analogous to the small self, small i that tricks it self that it is the do-er of life. To me this question is the same as "Does no-self/no-ego mean not thinking?" Not thinking is seen as quite a popular "goal" in spirituality. But is it actually possible? I don't know. My experience tells me it is hard BUT thinking is not the issue. Believing you are a mind that is doing the thinking is. We are saying that mind is the thing which is responsible for it's life, it is doing the thinking, it is doing the perceiving, is it doing the remembering. So mind is responsible for it's life. But this is false, from direct experience there is no small doer of these things, you aren't responsible for thinking or perceiving. These things are happing inside of you. Reality is being, these perceptions are happening without an experiencer that is a thing. All perception has no perceiver. So when you are realising no-mind you are realising the truth of what is happning in this moment. When you think there is mind that means you aren't seeing reality directly. So no-mind IS NOT the same as not thinking. You can be thinking ALOT and be in no-mind. A thought is just a thought, the meaning and abstractions can trick itself into many things. But it is a sub-set of reality that you as an ego have no control over. Thinking is a happening. Not thinking is a happening

Started March 7th. Two sits a day, started around 30 min to now mostly 80 to 90 minutes each. I'm somewhere in the back half of First Kriya. Yoni Mudra stable at 90 seconds, Kechari, Maha Mudra, Navi Kriya, full Pranayama stack. The first three months were one of the ugliest stretches of my adult life. Nobody told me this part. So here it is. What actually came up An ex I hadn't thought about in months surfaced like she lived in my chest. Grief that doubled me over. A "I am fundamentally unlovable" core wound I didn't know I was carrying showed up around session 10 and sat on me for weeks. Refused to mute her on Instagram even though I knew I should. Dreamt she married a prince and I watched it through stories. That's the level of subconscious sludge the breath drags up. 4am wakings with my heart pounding for no reason. Sleep got worse before it got better. Samskaras process at night. Hulk level rage at my family. I'm talking visualizations of killing people I love. Then immediately the broadcast samskara fired. I went and told a friend the detail because part of me wanted credit for the catharsis. Caught myself only because I was reporting to a coach. Spontaneous body convulsions during Yoni Mudra. Gag reflex from vagus activation. The "verge of exploding and dying" feeling before the bliss door opens. A non-dual experience on a beach where I merged with everything. Woman, dog, ocean, no separation, weeping at the beauty. Followed within hours by a full ego reconstruction panic attack at 4am. I posted about the beach experience on Instagram and texted a friend a screenshot of my own insight before deleting both. That's the loop. Insight, broadcast, identity, pressure to perform, anxiety, shame. It runs in pickup, it runs in spirituality, it runs everywhere. Around session 92 I had a long conversation with a British woman earlier in the day. She left. Hours later I'm standing outside a cheesecake shop in India and she comes back. Says "hi friends," and jumps into my arms and starts weeping uncontrollably. Not crying. Weeping like something inside her had been waiting a year to come out. I held her. Took her to the side. Said "it's okay, it's okay, cry." Started breathing with her, our stomachs touching, for about 10 minutes. She stopped. I sat her down with the cheesecake and said "feel the wetness on your face, the sadness, the sorrow, it's so fucking pleasurable." She broke into laughing hysterics and we ended up laughing together. I walked her toward my place and decided not to bring her up. Gave her a hug. Didn't take her number. Closed loop. And right after, I felt the structural pull of how spiritual leaders become sexual predators. I felt it from inside. Regulated nervous system plus vulnerable seeker plus intense bonding plus projection of divinity equals the exact circuit. I understood Lahiri's rule against organizations in my body for the first time. That's the level of clarity Kriya gives you about your own potential darkness. A few days before session 101 I had another one. Deep conversation, very fast. Dating, sexuality, consciousness, silent presence. She cried during it. I felt the pull, decided not to pursue. Didn't message her. Then a few days later I'm sitting in a cafe working, and she walks in. Says "hey" passing me, sits with another guy. Five minutes later she leaves him, comes over to me, makes small talk about her foot healing for five minutes, says "I need to go, I'll see you again," and goes back to the guy. While she's leaving the cafe she shouts "Bye Hari!" across the whole restaurant. I was sitting with an American friend at the time. My nervous system went into the floor. Day-long fear spike. Mind bombarding with guilt, shame, worry, every possible angle. Sexual energy uncontainable, pulsations streaming up and down my body. That night I woke up hallucinating. My laptop became a boat. There was a crocodile trapped at the bottom of the boat. A lizard popped out of it crawling along the keyboard. Hypnopompic paralysis, couldn't move, just watching it. I didn't message her. Didn't post. Didn't go looking for her. Brought it to a coach instead of acting on any of it. Social collapse. Couldn't look people in the eyes. Couldn't smile naturally. Parvastha bleeding into daily life so much I stopped wanting to talk to anyone. Watching girls on the beach instead of approaching, half witnessing, half avoiding, mostly avoiding. Sloth states after sessions. Lying down "thinking" for an hour. Stopped sessions to write poems. Tried to do three sits in a day. Went over the timer constantly. The mind dresses up self sabotage as creativity, as devotion, as "deepening." Crying as cathartic relief, not pain. That's the good version. The bad version is hell/bliss oscillation inside the same retention. Pure terror, then pure love, every 8 seconds, for 80 minutes. You don't get to leave the seat. This is not a hobby. It's a controlled demolition of the self you walked in with. If you have unfinished business with a parent, an ex, your ambition, your specialness, it is coming up, on the practice's schedule, not yours. The bliss is real. The "I am" state is real. But the path runs straight through every wound you've spent twenty years arranging your life to avoid feeling. Sit twice a day. Don't post about it. Don't make it your identity. Don't join the course. Don't tell people how deep you went. Get a coach or a friend who will call you on your shit. It is worth it. It is not pretty.

Also, from this, there was never a problem with the "I" thought. When you realize reality is a fucking flame coming from nothing. The I thought is just the thought existing within all other perceptions. Even when you have a thought, "I am the universe". You still realize that it's the universe having the thought: "I am the universe," tricking itself to think it's an "I" thought, but it's still the whole universe doing that. In everything else it is doing.

Okay, this insight just hit me. Not on any psychedelics, but just being completely sober. Reality is absolutely groundless. There is no ground on which reality is coming from. In our experience, we have, let's say, six types of perception we can compartmentalize. Color, sounds, feelings, emotions, thoughts/abstractions (i.e. mind), taste/smell. Notice every single one of these perceptions is always changing. There is no fixed configuration throughout your entire life on any one of these perceptions. Let's call this FLUX. Perception is always in flux. I mean, the Buddhists have called the impermanence of life. And it goes so fucking deep. And it's so tricky. Because the mind is so fucking tricky. Shit, the mind is creating a reality within these perceptions. However, the mind is just one of these perceptions. If we break down or transcend the mind and we experience the perception directly. All perceptions are made out of the same thing. Our mind tends to create a physical separation of certain colors. This certain color is It's wood. This certain color is metal. That some set of colors is human. A certain set of colors is tree. And so on and so on. But this is perception labelling perception. To think of it like a vortex of perception. What really is going on is that this certain set of perceptions is now saying it's the manager of the other perceptions. Mind carves out certain things within FLUX. It labels certain things as "me", "as not me". Creating dualities. Creating your life. Your life story, where the experience is happening. Everything is being created by these abstractions your mind is creating throughout the day. And we just fucking believe it. Consciousness gets trapped into the mind. These abstractions are just perceptions, when mind creates an abstraction of itself, what is that? A perception of another perception. It's a mirror reflecting another mirror. If you look into the reflection of a mirror within a mirror, it goes on forever. The is no beginning or end. There is no place where mind eventually touches something solid. I.e., reality is completely groundless. And this makes no sense. Because sense is a thing that mind creates. Wow. Wow. Wow. Let's take a bunsen burner. I attached an image to this post. The gas in this case is completely empty. Potential to create the flame. When it does, the flame is rising out of the gas. The gas is no form, no color, no heat. There's no place at which you can point where the gas is located. It provides the conditions for the flame to exist. And so the flame comes from the gas. Now, let's look at the flame. In the image, the flame has an outer core and inner core. But do we say the outer core or an inner core are separate. No, it's one fucking thing. It's just a flame. Exactly the same thing is happening in your experience. It's just one fucking thing. However, the identity of the self, the me, the I, carves itself out, creating an inner flame, a distinction between I and other, which separates it from everything else ie the outer flame. It tricks itself to think the inner flame is separate from the outer flame. It's ALL JUST A FUCKING FLAME.

There is no location in which experience is happening, and there is no thing which knows it is happening.

I am here? Where is here? I am 5m away from that tree? Does that mean your body is 5m away from the tree? Or if see a guy and I am 10m from him? What is the you that I am trying to locate? The perceiver? OK, so when you say "where are you," you mean where is the perceiver of things? Ok, so where is the perceiver of things? When I perceive a tree, am I in my head? Which is 5m away from the tree, which is in Himalayas, which is in India, etc, we can go forever and ever. It's just a chain of "where" stemming from the head, because you can keep giving another word for where the other word is. So no you aren't even defining a location for something. You are coming up with more perceptions and words to define a location for the previous word, which in turn is leading to nowhere. So you are still here by actually struggling to find where you are. The stories you give yourself are there to make comfort for your life, they give your life a grounding. But really, there is only perception. So even the question: where are you? is a perception within the sea of perceptions. And you are the knowing of the perceptions. So where is that? When I look at a tree, is the act of perceiving happening in my head? Or is it happening "as the tree is known", is the tree self-knowing? Is that where I am? But if every perception is self-knowing and that is where I am, I am not located. Location is happening inside what I am.