ardacigin

For any gamers out there, I'm going to recommend a very technological-based spiritual practice that will help you get an insight into how ego and personality structure is highly elusive and ultimately a mind construct. This will require some introspection in experience but also outside in meditation as well. What I'm about to explain is going to be a highly unorthodox style of practice - akin to the Vajrayana style of training. A Quick Summary of How To Set Up The VR Experience: Many of you are aware Cyberpunk is a highly anticipated game that has failed to meet a lot of the hype people had. Now the game has been out for about 1.5 years. Due to bugs, I've decided to hold off on experiencing it however; things have changed recently. 1.5 update came out and incredible progress has been made by turning Cyberpunk into a fully functional Virtual Reality game: Luke Ross's mod. First of all, you need to have a capable PC to play Cyberpunk VR. I have 5700 xt and ryzen 5 3600, 16 GB Ram. This is the bare minimum to enjoy this experience on VR. In Nvidia terms, 2070 super - rtx3060 will do the job. Use the lowest settings and 1920p resolution for 60-70 fps with this build. You also need a VR system. I use Oculus Quest 2 and it is currently the best price to performance VR system out there. After getting Cyberpunk on Steam, head over to Luke Ross's Patreon page. Purchase its subscription for 1 month, acquire the mod and you can leave the subscription afterward. The instructions on how to apply the mod is very simple and explained in his Patreon Tutorial. ------ How To Practice and Why This is So Profound? After starting the game on VR, make sure you select a character that is different from your gender. This is the key. The main character is named V. So, if you are a guy, select to play as Female V. If woman, a male V. This is important to get you to see the following: 'Oh! In a VR immersed setting, I literally become the female V, thinking like her and reacting to experiences like her. It is as if I'm in a movie and my consciousness has been transferred to another body' This gets you to see (eventually) the body is entirely irrelevant in the construction of the sense of 'I'. You CAN actually conceive of your mind and sense of 'I' in a completely different body. In fact, in an opposite gender as well. Allowing you to see gender is a part of this construction. The ego and personality structure morphs and shifts to accommodate the new body's awareness and consciousness. This becomes apparent after 7-10 hours in to the game as Cyberpunk becomes an actual movie in terms of atmosphere and quest design in VR. In Vajrayana practice, you merge the ego with a diety to get insight into how the self is a mental construct. In this technique, you are literally doing the same thing but in Cyberpunk VR. But to practice it, you need to nurture this new awareness of 'I'. This awareness will develop as you play the game and I want you to pay attention to how your ego structure gets modified with Female V in the background. After getting a sense of this realization, sit down in a formal setting in stillness and inquire about your sense of 'I'. That is the practice. ----- Final Thoughts: I've been a gamer for the majority of my life and I'm an easily content and pleased person thanks to my decades-long spiritual practice. However, things are getting to another level of profoundness after my initial 6 hours with Cyberpunk VR. I can say with absolute certainty that Cyberpunk VR is one of the greatest gaming experiences of my life. Not only does it have serious spiritual implications but also it feels like the next generation of what video games will evolve to as VR space gains momentum. Cyberpunk VR is easily 100 times better than whatever 2d vanilla version people played on a monitor. Not only the bugs have been ironed out but the experience has shifted into a different dimension. Cyberpunk VR is probably going to be an unforgettable experience for me. I was shocked at how amazing it was yesterday night. I feel sorry for people who've experienced it on a monitor 1st time playing. If you've held off on playing it like me, this is the definitive way to play. Let me know your thoughts below after experiencing it. --- Much love, Arda

Right Now imagine you actually do live in a GTA world. There is a GTA 5 VR mod that does the exact same thing. You can try that since it would be easier on the GPU. Roleplay does get you closer to this understanding but more 'merging' needs to take place in a meditative state to access the insight I'm talking about. Daily introspection is needed in formal and informal sessions to drill this into the deepest recesses of the mind system.

Add the masturbation into the mix with radical acceptance of not just your self personality but also each conscious experience and you have yourself a recipe for having an insight into reality. Work towards accepting each experience, intention and craving and releasing it. Keep in mind, you need to inquire towards the sense of 'I' or the process wont resolve into anything substantial. Make sure the self is always in the back of the mind with this investigation. Much love,

Don't mistake 'no thought' as emotional neutrality in a state of reduced thought activity. No thought or no-mind is a highly advanced stage of practice. You need higher equanimity, mindfulness skills, physical and mental pliancy + actual insight into reality to consistently dwell in suchness and being of silence. You may feel there are no thoughts but there are thoughts and intentions formed consistent with your self-view in the unconscious mind which is the source of your desires and aversions. Unless you realize there is no self really deeply, you wont experience what you intend to experience.

If it didn't last, then it was a glimpse. An insight experience. Not enlightenment.

Well, this was such a great response that I have nothing to add :)) In Leo's defense, on very rare occasions, human brain has certain limitations and depending on the individual personality type, this entire spirituality journey can manifest as torture expanding to many years of someone's life. Along with wrong intentions and destructive habits, the downward spiral can take a good while to change its momentum to positive growth. Because of this, I understand people's initial love and loyalty to psychedelic substances. So much wisdom splurged in your face with little to no manual training. However, as most of people here are being aware of, it is not a long term solution. We only have finite time here. Constantly sliding back and never deeply integrating a spiritual insight will only result in a marginally better life than your average Joe. Actually embodying an insight permanently is SIGNIFICANTLY and RADICALLY more profound than any insight you temporarily glimpse with any psychedelic. But of course, doing both is very powerful. So, I don't try to demean the value of psychedelic here.

After developing some introspective awareness with body awareness and breath practices I've detailed in my previous posts, you will eventually come across a point in your practice where body awareness - filled with distinct moving, changing or stable sensations - starts to get in the way of your spiritual development. 'Getting in the way' means you are better of exploring the less solid aspects of the body after a certain point of practice. This is the exact point where the pacification of the sensory systems of your brain is the key to progress as outlined in Culadasa's book 'The Mind Illuminated'. Pacification of the Senses: From Bodily Sensations to Physical Pliancy Pacification of the senses comes from consistently ignoring normal sensory information presented in awareness. This is NOT the same as suppression. Ignoring sensations simply mean focusing your attention on the meditation object BUT not boosting body awareness as a natural part of your practice. Allowing attention to exclusively attend to the breath sensations at the tip of the nose and nothing else. Eventually, the sensory sub-minds (which include aches, pains, pleasures, sense of weight etc) stop projecting that content into consciousness at all. This is similar to 3rd jhana/ 4rth jhana, but it also delves deeper into the unconscious recesses of your psyche due to unification of mind. When this happens, it means the sensory sub-minds are unified around a common intention not to interrupt the focus of attention to the breath, resulting in complete pacification, effortlessness and physical pliancy. --- Once the bodily senses are fully pacified, there will be a dramatic change during meditation in how you experience ordinary bodily sensations, proprioception, and the mental image you have of your body. Before pacification, when meditating, we’re usually quite aware of many tactile and other bodily sensations: pain in muscles and joints, burning and pressure where our body touches the cushion, temperature sensations, and pressure and touch where body parts contact each other or our clothing. However, when the senses are completely pacified and physical pliancy arises, we cease to be aware of all these sensations. Instead you may feel as though your body is completely empty inside—that there is nothing more than a thin membrane or shell at the surface of your body, from which all sensations have disappeared. You’ll have little more than a vague awareness of your body occupying space. This corresponds to when attention stabilizes effortlessly for long periods of time to the breath at the tip of the nose. Pacification of the senses will reinforce effortlessness. ---- Short version: After enough body awareness and introspective awareness develop, ignore all bodily sensations and exclusively focus on the breath sensations to pacify senses. Why Is This Important? Eventually, you will have to do longer sits to delve deep into certain insights or start insight practices. You can't do that without physical and mental pliancy. You've heard about a yogi who can sit for 4 hour SDS with ease. Well, they are not using some magic trick. They are also not brute-forcing a smile in a state of resistance. They've completely pacified sensory sub-minds and unified the mind. One of the effective ways of doing that is explained in this post and my prior techniques. Physical pliancy and meditative joy come quickly and easily for some, but slowly and arduously for others. Physiology and genetics may play a role, as do differences in temperament and psychological disposition. If you are an entrepreneurial go-getter type of individual, the process will be more torturous and harder than someone who is laid back and chill but also firm when it comes to following instructions. Physical, mental, and emotional health are also factors, which can be addressed through diet, exercise, good work and recreation habits, and appropriate therapy, if necessary. However, the biggest obstacles are often the hindrances of aversion and agitation due to worry and remorse. How we condition our mind on a daily basis has a powerful influence over these hindrances, and practices that purify the mind can be extremely helpful. -- Much love, Arda

@Leo Gura As you are doing contemplation and observation at the peak of the 5 Meo session, your perception, at its core, can not fully shake off the following assumptions: (everyone's default unconscious worldview). These are the foundation of all your motivations, beliefs and actions. 1- I'm a separate entity, a Self, in a world of other entities. 2- My emotional states - happiness and suffering - depend intimately on the interactions between myself and the other entities/objects/environments. 3- As a self, I rely on my manipulation and survival skills to influence these interactions to satisfy my cravings in the hopes of satisfaction where my happiness will be maximized and suffering will be minimized. --- All 3 of these assumptions are false delusions of the mind. As you investigate reality at the peak of a psychedelic session, you might think that this worldview is completely broken and fully integrated by all unconscious sub-minds to re-organize their worldviews. The problem is that only %5 of mind system is 'online' so to speak to receive the insights and integrate them. The rest 95% is still completely oblivious to whatever wisdom that arises in a psychedelic session. That's why no actual stickiness overlaps to your life when afterglow ends. The same 3 assumptions above continue to pervade your life, perceptions and understanding of life. Then you focus on a memory trace, a feeling of the peak 5 meo state to remember these insights, thinking they actually transform you. These assumptions are not going to revise themselves by spending the rest 99% of your life in unconsciousness. There lies the problem with the 'mainly psychedelic user, little to no meditation' style of spirituality. And there are many other assumptions and contemplation points you need to work on after dealing with these.

I'm seeing a common pattern in all spiritual students these days (which includes most of my students). 'I've done lots of psychedelics. I have been meditating for a few years with relative consistency. I do have solid experiential glimpses of some of the insights spiritual teachers talk about. But I feel like no progress has been made 99% of any given day. No access to clear understanding and truth. My normal state of consciousness even after meditating is extremely poor. I don't know what to do and I'm starting to get sick of this perpetual cycle my mind dwells in.' First of all, let's get the essential ingredient out of the way. If you are working with wrong intentions, techniques and can't execute them exactly as the instructions ask you to, then you won't get anywhere even after 40 years of meditation. Make sure you get this right. It is the first step. But let's assume you do understand the instructions and know what exact skills you are developing and aiming for; so now what? The understanding of how the process of meditation unfolds - having some baseline skills - by itself, won't result in deep transformation. Potential for backsliding exists in each moment without permanent awakening. It is definitely a challenging aspect of this journey and you should smell the roses if you arrive at 'I can finally do this meditation thing. It actually unveils the illusions of my mind' but once that is circumvented, you need to actually do HOURS of high-level meditation back to back to consolidate insights, strengthen awareness and integrate the truth to each and every activity you enjoy doing. Absolute understanding will already integrate and consolidate the spiritual insights into daily life. But that process requires some nudging in the right directions via cultivation of healthy mental habits: The reduction of craving and self-perception. Also, contemplation will be needed in the future for further exploration. To do that, you cant 'half-ass' the training. Only after 4-8 hours straight high level practice daily will you start moving the needle and creating some inertia. ---- I'm a fairly laid-back guy and maybe some of the instructions I give may appear too 'rigid' or 'disciplined'. That is because to get any of the benefits of this path, you need to apply yourself. But you need to do this process with a smile on your face. After developing the baseline skills, you will have EXTREMELY high levels of motivation to meditate in each moment, in each activity. In fact, you'll sacrifice time you'd prefer indulging in your most enjoyable hobby to meditate more and enhance consciousness. After arriving at that pioint, keep riding the momentum and practice HOURS back to back each day. Go deeper and resist the temptation to rest on your accomplishments. You'll be glad you did. Hope this motivates some of you who are stuck in a rut. Maybe more attention to detail must be given by teachers letting students know how much they are missing out on by dwelling in 'normal' states of consciousness distorted by countless mental illusions. Much love, Arda

This is not only highly unlikely but filled with potential misunderstandings for anyone who is on the spiritual path. If you are trying to advocate for 'effortlessness' of practice, this is not the right way to do it. I hope you understand 'letting life flow and stopping this meditation business' is basically 99% self-deception for all meditators. Your life continues as before and huge backsliding occurs very quickly. Your self-perception is almost always maintained. And since you no longer have a spiritual practice, you can never hope to integrate insights to any significant level.

All enlightened people (who've tried them) needs to give some credit to the usefulness of psychedelics. Downplaying it too much from an insight perspective is not a good idea. But there are many people who drop their 'sober' practice thinking psychedelics are end-all be-all. They get allured by the insight-peak experience combo which arises in many sessions. You basically need a way to consolidate these insights. Work on them. Chew at them. Get a deeper grasp on them that buries each insight into all aspects of your life. Depth doesn't go vertically only. It also goes horizontally. In this sense, Peter's words are wise and should be listened to by all psychedelic users.

Great way to put it. As a meditator, your job is to see even when you form and hold intentions, there is no do-er and 'you' were always getting in the way of this elusive 'effortlessness'. That understanding, however, requires deep introspective awareness + insight into no self which is why you are meditating to develop these skills. So don't just sit on the cushion, rationalizing 'do nothing' thinking it is helping you going deep. More likely, for most people, it can be a waste of time unless you understand what I've written above intuitively.

On top of this, I see crazy levels of benefit in Shinzen's visual field techniques you can utilize in daily life. In Culadasa's term, he is stabilizing attention on the visual field (or letting it move around) while developing introspective awareness of sensations and mental states. The exact skills you need to maintain mindfulness in daily life. Even when the attention constantly moves around in daily life; that introspective of awareness of sensations and feelings are maintained and tied into the understanding of no-self, impermanence and suffering. This transformation is slowly but surely understood. Getting a little taste of all 3 characteristics while eyes open in the world absolutely transforms many assumptions and starts a new tier of spiritual development. So regardless of skill, doing almost any visual field technique is extremely important. Especially for us westerners who don't spend 12 hours eyes closed to develop introspective awareness.

@JonasVE12 Let's not fully blur the lines between 'egoic forceful trying with desire and aversion' to 'setting and holding intentions with your mind' which is how you actually improve in meditation and create a good balance of concentration and awareness. Letting go strategy helps you to see that there is no do-er. It is advanced. Prior to such awareness developing, nudging your mind to stabilize attention and expanding awareness is the first step. And such a practice will allow the OP to improve his practice tangibly. In fact, right after this, going for self enquiry will extremely fruitful and is my key recommendation for people at that stage. Letting go of 'effort' develops that understanding. But not right now when the meditator doesn't even have proper full body awareness, understanding of mind and some level of inner joy and pleasure.

Well, let me rephrase everything that any psychedelic user can relate to: 'Imagine experiencing LSD for the rest of your life on demand' That LSD turns into DMT and then 5meoDMT as decades go by with continuous practice. You have no understanding of what you are missing out on by not taking meditation seriously.

The bitter truth is that mind and brain is such a complicated system is that their deep transformation requires mindfulness + emotional training + purification + sustained positive feedback loops + holding of clear intentions etc. Now you can try to do all of this process in 30 mins sit daily but that is not realistic when the rest 23 hours of the day is spent in pure unconsciousness of the truth. To make this process work, you commit to hours of deep meditation back to back and actually ENJOY the process of doing so. See, I think we need to step back a bit. People misunderstood the starting point of this article. You can't decide to meditate 4-5 hours both informal and formal continuously in any given day when each time you sit to meditate, your mind feels bored, resistant and unable to figure out how to actually be more conscious aka the natural state of all beginning meditators. The initial challenge is to develop enough consciousness in short bursts of training (30 mins - 1 hour), training attention and awareness to work harmonically, strengthening the ability to stay present and to know the states of the mind (frustration, boredom, joy) and to take correct mental actions with clear intentions to disrupt this habitual cycle. This simple process I've described above is already insane levels of training to your mind, strengthening conscious energy and power even if for mere 15 mins to do continuously. The problem is that you want to do that, but you simply don't have the skills yet to do it. Once your meditations arrive at this quality, you'll have an intuitive feeling along the lines of: 'Wow! Meditation is EXTREMELY healthy for my consciousness. It actually allows me to see consciousness for what it is, reducing self-perception at a greater level each sit. Literally truth is slowly unveiling in each moment at a deeper level. Im also suffering A LOT less and experiencing a LOT more joy and pleasure.' Then you spend some time doing your favourite activities with normal habitual forces (without mindfulness) and then introspect: 'My life is just incomparably better with mindfulness. What the hell was I doing? The obsessive quality of the mind is such a clear roadblock. It is better to integrate more of my formal session quality to cooking, jerking off and watching tv shows' That is where continuous multiple hours a day practice (both formal and informal) will get you to the next tier of development. You can have the same realization as a complete beginner but that won't take hold and signal enough parts of your complicated mind to change your perceptions and attitudes regarding meditation. You will want to love meditation but 95% of your other sub-minds won't be convinced. See, there is no actual alternative here. The alternative is spinning your wheels for 20 years, half assing meditation and literally having close to nothing at the end of those 20 years. Whatever emotional trauma you fear you need to face while committing this training (going on a retreat, disciplining yourself etc) is nothing compared to potentially lost 20 years you could utilize being more conscious of the truth. After a while, zero disciplining of any kind will be necessary. Your mind wont even process information like you used to. Absolute effortlessness will pervade each moment but until then, the so called 'self help' discipline will help you push through certain resistances until they don't. Thats when you make the switch to other methods that are useful and just keep on going. See, this process is fun. Your mind currently struggles so much with 'What the hell should I do in meditation' that you suck out all aspects of interest, joy and curiousity of the training that only pure torture is left. A feeling that your own mind generates and gets in the way of its progress, making the training 100x harder.

Informal daily practice included in 8 hours. Ideally, you need to meditate continuously from waking up to going to bed.

@Striving for more I suggest viewing meditation as something you could have been doing as you were writing this post. An operating system that will enhance all future moments. With that attitude, your desire to get pragmatic results in 6 months max will dissolve into 'How can I practice each moment to develop the necessary skills and ACTUALLY enjoy my life?' With that intention, your spiritual training will begin on a healthier foundation.

Equanimity is absolutely essential. The way you develop is through both samatha and insight techniques. They develop equanimity in different ways. Samatha trains the mind to generate and sustain pleasant sense percepts, get into flow states and strengthen concentration + awareness. Insight allows for the deepest recesses of the psyche to reprogram itself based on no-self, impermanence, emptiness, causal interdependence and non-craving. The result is ever-increasing depth and breadth of equanimity.

In this post, I'm going to help you figure out why the moment-to-moment experience of your daily life, activities and behaviors have seen no improvements or changes after years of meditation. Then I'll provide you with a technique you can practice in formal sessions and bring it to daily life. This transformation requires deliberate daily practice and effort. You won't find much value here if you are looking for magic tricks. ---- Contrary to common understanding, meditation is not actually about cultivating exclusive attention (concentration) to a particular object. That is one aspect of the practice you can do for the development of certain skills. That's it. A more central part of meditation is the development of metacognitive awareness, equanimity, joy and their sub-skill - whole body awareness. We'll focus on these aspects and try to spread the concentration muscle to the whole body with breath sensations. But before we get to that, we need to understand why this is important. Ask most meditators and they will mostly tell you that it is about generating focus to a particular object. Rather than approaching the practice from a narrowing of attention, let's start with a more solid foundation. As you contract attention to an object in daily life, it collapses awareness of everything else. When you are watching Game of Thrones, the unconscious mind system doesn't see much value in projecting the sensations of the couch and the feeling of hedonic comfort that currently lies in your posture. It bypasses and filters all that information to make your life simpler. It is easier to focus on Game of Thrones that way. Well, it looks that way at least. See, regardless of whether you naturally filter these sensations or not, the unconscious mind needs to project something to the conscious awareness. Unless you are mindful in the process, what you are going to experience will be annoyance, boredom, striving, grasping and discontent. All of these mental reactions have a deeper source you can completely yank out after years of practice BUT first, you need to develop the skills which will enable you to do that. Our default option was to bypass and filter as much information unrelated to the task at hand. Well, let's practice not doing that and allow more sensory information to be generated in the entirety of mind and body. Instead of collapsing awareness with concentration, let's strengthen it. ---- Experiencing the Whole Body with the Breath: Very-Lite Jhana System It’s possible to become an advanced meditator by just focusing over and over on the breath at the nose and ignoring subtle distractions until they fade away, but that can take a very long time. Learning to enhance awareness each time it collapses can be a torturous process. Experiencing the whole body with the breath is a faster and more enjoyable method that makes it much easier to completely ignore distractions. This practice involves clearly defining then gradually expanding the scope of your attention until it includes sensations related to breath throughout the entire body all at once. Make sure that you are not dealing with lots of sleepiness or dullness prior to engaging in this practice. Try to remain as alert as possible. Fortunately, this process will enhance energy levels and develop conscious power in the long term. The method itself builds on the body-scanning practice you learned in Stage 5 in Culadasa's book 'The Mind Illuminated'. 1- Just as with the body scan, you first direct your attention to the breath at the abdomen. Then, making sure that peripheral awareness of the breath at the abdomen doesn’t fade, you shift your attention to a particular body part, such as your hand. Define your scope of attention to include that area only. Then further refine your scope to include only the breath sensations in the hand. Ignore all other sensations by excluding them completely from attention, but let them remain in peripheral awareness. Next, move to another body part, perhaps the forearm, and do the same thing. Each moment of attention should include a very strong intention to focus clearly on breath-related sensations and to exclude everything else. What is important in this process is to enhance awareness of hedonic feelings. Even if you focus on breath sensations in a particular location, that will either feel pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. There is no other option. So, let's add a flair of vibrancy, joy and pleasure to the process. 2- As you experience (and generate) changing and flickering sensations to various parts of your body, smile physically and try to experience the exact same sensations as more pleasurable and exciting. You don't want dryness to pervade your mind and body. Serene, changing and pleasurable breath related sensations are starting to be experiened in arms, legs, forearms,head. In each in-breath and our-breath. 3- You are not constricting attention to the breath at the nose just yet. Keep the awareness open and after you are comfortable with this process, try to feel changing and pleasant sensations in the whole body. Not in particular locations. Feel it more holistic as the awareness and pleasantness spreads to the whole body along with clear changing sensations in various parts of the body. You will lose some of the resolution power from before but this time the object is the entire mind and whole body. This process is going to train conscious power to the next tier of strength. 4- Finally, bring the attention to the breath at the tip of the bose WHILE continuing to experience the whole body, pleasure and changing sensations in various parts of the body. Now you are also investigating in-breath and out-breath while step 3 activates at full force. This will add another layer of training for your conscious power circuits. Make sure you don't lose joyfulness, pleasure, relaxed ease and happiness in any of instructions. Awareness of mental states is a key part of mindfulness and can't be discarded. When feelings of annoyance, impatience etc arises, re-generate some ease with smiling and relaxation of tense muscles. --- Do this practice everyday in formal sessions. But how am I going to bring it to my actual life? You are going to intend to bring this whole body open awareness while watching Game of Thrones, playing the piano, and eating. When you fail and get obsessively focused on an activity, strengthen the whole body awareness again and re-train your mind to maintain it while doing these activities. In all activities, this awareness can be practiced. There are no exceptions apart from sleep states. Whenever you feel things are so hard and require so much effort, just remember the ease and pleasure in whole body awareness and try to replicate that mental state again as you are washing the dishes. ---- Hope this helps. I suggest doing this system of training for 30-60 days straight. With many hours of formal and informal deliberate practice per day. (2-6 hours) Then the results will speak for themselves. Much love, Arda

Here are my thoughts. I've just seen this person here and watched a few more of her videos to understand her better. Some of her realizations are legit. Her self view seems to have significantly dropped. Which is the most critical insight for the 1st stage of awakening. If she is not a stream-enterer already, she is almost there. The key issue seems to be lack of practice, too much craving and obviously her traumatic reactions to spiritual truths. She seems better adjusted and integrated certain things in her later videos. Depersonalization has significant overlap with stream entry. If the mind doesnt recoil with trauma and maintains some sort of spiritual practice, stream entry is right around the corner.

Piti is important but not required. In samatha vipassana style of training, piti is how the mind slowly releases its tension, develops some pleasure, joy and as a consequence, equanimity.

@_Archangel_ Hi there, You can easily have these persistent piti sensations (energy, movement, flickering sensations) along with some level of pleasure and joy in any stage of the practice. But that doesn't mean you are stage 8+ for example. Definitely use the open awareness, pleasure, joy and piti to strengthen mindfulness. Make sure breath attention doesnt chip away at your pleasure, piti or anythin else. Keep peripheral awareness at MAX for whole body while stabilizing attention. Gross distractions will get eliminated after your awareness develops further. Dullness is an habitual issue that will also resolve itself when more conscious power is available to the mind. Body awareness is key. Dullness means your awareness collapses. Do the technique I've described here. It will help you. It is a stage 6 technique but still, practice it with clear intentions and a joyous attitude.

I've just written a post that attempts to answer some of your questions in detail. Hope it is helpful

Great to hear again from you, Ethan Your absence was felt. Amazing schedule. Sounds like you are having progress. I'm also covering some new ground. I'll share it soon with the forum. Keep it up and let us know how things are going.