How to get meditation to work: deconstruction

[Eskilon]

53 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

30 days of 5-MeO-DMT does not necessarily lead to Enlightenment.

So it is with deconstruction.

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Eskilon said:

If only it were so easy. Do you think monks are not great at deconstructing.

No.

 

1 hour ago, Eskilon said:

Buddha himself had to do 6 years of intense austerity and discipline. Mahavira was 12 years of that and even harsher with himself. Now, do you think the average monk and practioner in this day and age lmao -- can just grok Being by deconstructing? heh

Why are you talking like deconstructing is easy? It's simple, not easy.

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Eskilon said:

So it is with deconstruction.

Try not being enlightened after you've let go of all your attachments.

Edited June 18 by Carl-Richard

[Carl-Richard]

10 hours ago, Oppositionless said:

Yes I should clarify when I say "Just Die" what I mean is do something so extreme you have no choice but to die. Not just sit on your ass for 20 minutes a day or even contemplate all day . If you do something sufficiently hardcore (and there are levels to that, 7 day meditation retreat vs Leo's 30 days of 5 meo dmt) it would be hard not to die.

Dying once is not enough. Death has to pervade your being. Again, Leo is not enlightened despite 30 days of 5-MeO. And that is not to pooh-pooh his insights. He will admit this himself.

[Eskilon]

14 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

Try not being enlightened after you've let go of all your attachments.

Well every night you let go of all your attachments and go into deep sleep. Yet people are not enlightened, so what's the catch here?

Letting go of attachments is the first basic step, The beginning, bread and butter stuff. But it does not guarantee enlightment.

Edited June 19 by Eskilon

[Eskilon]

7 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

Dying once is not enough. Death has to pervade your being. Again, Leo is not enlightened despite 30 days of 5-MeO. And that is not to pooh-pooh his insights. He will admit this himself.

Doing 30 days of 5-Meo or doing a hardcore zen-style meditation retreat has a much higher chance of producing enlightment than talking to yourself in your head that you are not this body not this mind.

For enlightment to happen you need Meditation, complete absorption into yourself. Not talking to yourself like "Oh look, here is my ass, Am I that? hmmm, maybe not, Oh I feel my arm, Am I that? Don`t think so, next."

Edited June 19 by Eskilon

[Carl-Richard]

7 hours ago, Eskilon said:

Well every night you let go of all your attachments and go into deep sleep. Yet people are not enlightened, so what's the catch here?

That's not how it works. Let's also be clear that enlightenment is when you operate in a state of non-duality as your baseline (it's your default state). You can be momentarily thrusted into states like deep sleep and psychedelically induced non-dual experiences or even organically induced ones without letting go of attachments, but they will not last very long or get integrated into your baseline functioning, as attachments are cyclical patterns that repeat over time and inhibit the non-dual state. But when you let go of an attachment and you are at a threshold of a non-dual experience say in meditation, that can often push you over the edge, if indeed that cyclical pattern is particularly active at that time.

 

7 hours ago, Eskilon said:

Doing 30 days of 5-Meo or doing a hardcore zen-style meditation retreat has a much higher chance of producing enlightment than talking to yourself in your head that you are not this body not this mind.

For enlightment to happen you need Meditation, complete absorption into yourself. Not talking to yourself like "Oh look, here is my ass, Am I that? hmmm, maybe not, Oh I feel my arm, Am I that? Don`t think so, next."

Again, this is mistaking the deconstruction I'm talking about for a more intellectualized and propositional / discursive form of deconstruction. It's one thing to deconstruct something in the realm of ideas. It's another to deconstruct something in the realm of embodied being.

When you for example deconstruct the feeling that you are a body in space, it's more like noticing something rather than affirming something to yourself. Affirming can help in noticing it, but it's not fundamentally needed.

Mantras can be beneficial when the patterns have very short cycles and they seem to reconstruct very easily (which the feeling of having a body is an example). Mantras can help direct your focus, just like choosing to focus on the breath. Directing your focus in itself is a form of deconstruction, but a more localized and implicit one (you have to let go of your attention wandering freely in the moment and focus it on something; you're breaking a cyclical pattern).

Deconstruction and meditation is generally a recursive process, because some of the patterns seem to be sticky (particularly the very ingrained ones like the notion of the body). That's why it can take 6 years before they seemingly stabilize.

Edited June 19 by Carl-Richard

[Carl-Richard]

17 hours ago, Eskilon said:

I didn't mean it like that. The seeker must believe that the formless exist, it involves faith. Or he can be agnostic about it and simply don't say anything about it but remain open -- not believing nor disbelieving. 

I just have problems with you saying " Spiritual practice is about linking form to the formless" the word linking here assumes that one knows what is linking what and what that means. The seeker doesn't know that, but he listens and stay open-minded because he is commited to know. This is one of the reasons Buddha avoided saying what happens when you reach nibbana -- it will only pollute the seeker's mind and slow his process. 

A true mature realized spiritual teacher gives only methods, without polluting the seeker's minds with expectations, notions, concepts, rewards and such. That teacher won't say that Brahman is, what formless is, what Love is; he will give you methods and remain in silence about it -- even though he himself has experienced those things.

I'm simply clarifying how meditation is something you apparently do as a human being but the result is beyond being human. If that's poisoning the seekers mind, so be it. All teachings do that. The teachings point and then you do the deconstruction. That's why Zen is so shifty in its pointers, because they want you to do deconstruction while dropping the pointers.

Here is notion, a concept, an expectation, a reward:

“I teach one thing and one thing only: suffering and the end of suffering.”

— The Buddha, Samyutta Nikāya 22.86

[Carl-Richard]

A very powerful pointer I got from Leo is "you are creating everything". It sort of flips deconstruction on its head: instead of trying to deconstruct the ways which you compulsively and indeliberately construct reality, you take full ownership of the construction, you make it intentional and conscious, you identify with it in its entirity. And that's really the goal of deconstruction, to come to a place where you're constructing everything intentionally.

[Keryo Koffa]

@Carl-Richard Deconstruction of reality necessitates constructing conscious awareness of the
dynamics underlying past deconstructions to preventing a return to unaware construction,
what we're really doing by deconstruction is a multiplicative creation of mental discernment,
as the gathering of abstractions that underly, simplify and bind the multiplicity of experience.

We become aware of the background script, turning it into a superposition we can consciously dismiss.

[Carl-Richard]

22 minutes ago, Keryo Koffa said:

@Carl-Richard Deconstruction of reality necessitates constructing conscious awareness of the
dynamics underlying past deconstructions to preventing a return to unaware construction,
what we're really doing by deconstruction is a multiplicative creation of mental discernment,
as the gathering of abstractions that underly, simplify and bind the multiplicity of experience.

We become aware of the background script, turning it into a superposition we can consciously dismiss.

You gotta learn to talk with concepts not words.

[Eskilon]

1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

I'm simply clarifying how meditation is something you apparently do as a human being but the result is beyond being human. If that's poisoning the seekers mind, so be it. All teachings do that. The teachings point and then you do the deconstruction. That's why Zen is so shifty in its pointers, because they want you to do deconstruction while dropping the pointers.

Here is notion, a concept, an expectation, a reward:

“I teach one thing and one thing only: suffering and the end of suffering.”

— The Buddha, Samyutta Nikāya 22.86

Well buddha did create frameworks like the Noble Eightfold Path and talked about suffering and so on. But generally he didn't talk what God is, what Truth is, what these meta-things is. 

We need not pollute the seekers minds with what appears to him as only concepts #OnlyMethods #StopPollutingSeekersMind #DoTheWork

Edited June 19 by Eskilon

[Eskilon]

2 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

Mantras can be beneficial when the patterns have very short cycles and they seem to reconstruct very easily (which the feeling of having a body is an example). Mantras can help direct your focus, just like choosing to focus on the breath. Directing your focus in itself is a form of deconstruction, but a more localized and implicit one (you have to let to of having your attention wander in the moment and focus it on something; you're inhibiting a cyclical pattern).

Mantras can also make you sleepy and decrease your attention. When you are repeating stuff it becomes like a lullaby -- you are getting ready to sleep, becoming hypnotized. Which is the exact opposite of what you want in meditation -- you want more consciousness not less. 

Edited June 19 by Eskilon

[Jordan]

Deconstruction is great but meditation still has many benefits without deconstruction. I did 2 hours a day of just mindfulness meditation. note, label savor. I think I did some mantra meditation too. I wouldn't consider that deconstruction. I slept 1.5 hours less naturally, I had more energy, less stressed, I felt more connected, more confident, noticed more throughout the day such as differences in colors, beauty of trees. I stopped for 2 weeks or so because I had some lower back pain and started doing other activities after work but I plan to get back into it.

[Keryo Koffa]

57 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

You gotta learn to talk with concepts not words.

Okay, deconstruction is partitive construct awareness.

Edited June 19 by Keryo Koffa

[Carl-Richard]

2 hours ago, Keryo Koffa said:

 partitive

That's not a common word.

[Carl-Richard]

3 hours ago, Eskilon said:

Well buddha did create frameworks like the Noble Eightfold Path and talked about suffering and so on. But generally he didn't talk what God is, what Truth is, what these meta-things is.

I don't see a significant difference in the meta-ness of God, Truth and Suffering (or Emptiness).

 

3 hours ago, Eskilon said:

We need not pollute the seekers minds with what appears to him as only concepts #OnlyMethods #StopPollutingSeekersMind #DoTheWork

Then you shut up. But then the seeker keeps asking. Then you speak.

 

3 hours ago, Eskilon said:

Mantras can also make you sleepy and decrease your attention. When you are repeating stuff it becomes like a lullaby -- you are getting ready to sleep, becoming hypnotized. Which is the exact opposite of what you want in meditation -- you want more consciousness not less. 

Focusing on your breath can also make you sleepy. The slow, repetitive motions, like a calm sea washing into shore.

By the way, I generally haven't done much mantra meditation. I prefer my mind to reveal itself in quiet.

Edited June 19 by Carl-Richard

[Eskilon]

15 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Then you shut up. But then the seeker keeps asking. Then you speak.

No, you keep the silence even if they ask. Like when someone asked Buddha if God exists, he didn't answered and kept to himself.

Edited June 19 by Eskilon

[Eskilon]

19 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Focusing on your breath can also make you sleepy. The slow, repetitive motions, like a calm sea washing into shore.

That's why you don't focus only on the breath, but the gaps in between them also. That way your attention is constant. In the gap, you exist

Edited June 19 by Eskilon

[Carl-Richard]

7 hours ago, Eskilon said:

No, you keep the silence even if they ask. Like when someone asked Buddha if god exists, he didn't answered and kept to himself.

Breh, teachers have tried that and they keep asking. Again, if you understand that the spiritual path starts in form, you won't have this aversion to engaging with form, like speaking, instructing, pointing, conceptualizing. Shutting up and disaffirming pointers has its place, but it cannot be done absolutely, it's actually impossible unless you want to be essentially a rock that sits there and doesn't react to anything that happens around it.

Edited June 20 by Carl-Richard