If you are suffering, then 'no-self' & Truth is NOT understood!

[Raptorsin7]

@Consilience Don't you think the ideal approach would be to combine psychidelics and meditation?

I've done a lot of trips and they haven't led to lasting profound change so I definitely agree with a lot of criticism of psychidelics, but at the same time at least when I take psychidelics I know something will shift and I at least feel like I moved some % toward healing and releasing emotional and energetic blocks. 

Meditation can be very discouraging because there are so many sits where it appears like nothing happens. You just sit and you're stuck experiencing whatever you are experiencing, which I assume for most people like me is just an unpleasant state of being. 

The way I see psychidelics and meditation is like this:

Suffering, at least for me, is contained as a knot of tension in the head, and when psychidelics really work for me it feels like my attention zeroes in on the knot and eventually I can penetrate to some source sensation that when dissolved leads to completel perceptual shifts and loss of a sense of suffering that when dissolved feels like an unnatural weight i was carrying for years. 

If I were to just meditate then I can feel into the knot but there's never been any movement, save for one time in my life where I spent virtually all day meditating, and somehow managed to make progress in dissolving the knot, but if I do a typical 30-60 minute meditation where I'm just aware of the knot then I get nothing. 

According to this view it seems like you would have to do something to radically alter your state to benefit from meditation, or else you could be stuck just witnessing and observing energetic knots and blockages for years without making progress. 

[UnbornTao]

7 hours ago, RMQualtrough said:

Interesting... Anxiety I suppose a defence against a potential feared situation?

What about depression?

I have never found a way to actually stop or overcome my anxiety, but it can become easy to accept yourself and let the anxiety happen without all the judgement etc. Which helps in a different way.

Could be. I haven't really looked into anxiety and depression yet.

Exactly. I think the best option is, before putting your attention on eliminating anxiety, you let it be there, completely. That way, contemplating its nature, and thus transcending it, becomes a possibility. 

What is the anxiety doing? 

4 hours ago, The Mystical Man said:

Suffering is inherent in life. 

First I would need to know what life really is. Who knows? Maybe suffering isn't inherent. After all, legend tells Gautama Buddha became free of it.

For now, the way I see it, pain is fundamental because of the body (nervous system, etc), maybe suffering not so much.

7 hours ago, The0Self said:

Not necessarily. Dogs get angry too. It's a natural emotion. Of course though, when there's inauthenticity while one is angry, there is suffering. Even jealousy in some situations could be considered a natural emotion. "Unnatural emotions," so to speak, such as shame, existential fear, and conscious-aversion, are classified as such because they're based on delusion.

I don't know about animals and emotions. Their process may be rudimentary compared to ours. What you say could be a projection. 

Those are all emotions -- I don't see why you'd want to distinguish between natural and unnatural emotions. No emotion is negative by itself so whenever an emotion is experienced it should be accepted and felt completely, without necessarily having to act it out.

[Fernanda]

Why we suffer:

 

[RMQualtrough]

@UnbornTao I think the anxiety is just anticipation of a threatening or emotionally distressing experience. If I talk to people, I may hold a fear that they will immediately attack me or put me down.

I've had the condition for 13 to 14 years, nearly half my life. I don't even try to eliminate it anymore. I just let it happen and don't judge myself for that nervousness.

[UnbornTao]

3 hours ago, RMQualtrough said:

@UnbornTao I think the anxiety is just anticipation of a threatening or emotionally distressing experience. If I talk to people, I may hold a fear that they will immediately attack me or put me down.

I've had the condition for 13 to 14 years, nearly half my life. I don't even try to eliminate it anymore. I just let it happen and don't judge myself for that nervousness.

?

[The0Self]

17 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

I don't know about animals and emotions. Their process may be rudimentary compared to ours. What you say could be a projection. 

Those are all emotions -- I don't see why you'd want to distinguish between natural and unnatural emotions. No emotion is negative by itself so whenever an emotion is experienced it should be accepted and felt completely, without necessarily having to act it out.

There are no "negative emotions," which is why I put it in quotes. The core of every so-called "negative emotion" is fear of non-being -- particularly this is the case with shame, which is only possible when the illusion of separation is active. The shame-defense prevents us from looking back and seeing that there is no subject / no true self. But what we label "anger" and even "jealousy" can be observed in non-human animals that don't have the illusion of separation / self-consciousness, which is the only reason I called them "natural emotions."

Edited June 1, 2022 by The0Self

[vladorion]

Quote

I have at one point directly ended all suffering so thoroughly that I longed to forget this heaven, to re-experience trial & tribulation. That has completely re-contextualized this dream for me. Of course suffering is hell. Of course minimizing it is noble. But also, the fact that suffering exists at all is a miracle of the highest order. The genius behind this design is so ineffable that I feel wrong even attempting to express it here. But I know for certain that a dogged, one-track chase to "end suffering" is total silliness, peanuts from a greater paradigm.

That very longing for trial & tribulation that you experienced was suffering.

If you weren't still suffering you wouldn't be looking for something else.

The heaven wasn't good enough.

[UnbornTao]

6 hours ago, The0Self said:

There are no "negative emotions," which is why I put it in quotes. The core of every so-called "negative emotion" is fear of non-being -- particularly this is the case with shame, which is only possible when the illusion of separation is active. The shame-defense prevents us from looking back and seeing that there is no subject / no true self. But what we label "anger" and even "jealousy" can be observed in non-human animals that don't have the illusion of separation / self-consciousness, which is the only reason I called them "natural emotions."

Okay then, thanks.

[Consilience]

On 5/31/2022 at 4:00 PM, Raptorsin7 said:

@Consilience Don't you think the ideal approach would be to combine psychidelics and meditation?

In the beginning, for some beings, myself included, yes. But after a certain point, one outgrows the need for frequent tripping. For example, the last dozen or so of my trips have left me with the intrinsic understanding that I would have been better off spending those 8-12 hours meditating. This originates from the clear seeing that meditation liberates, uproots, cultivates, purifies, and clarifies, and while psychedelics do as well during the trip, the shifts in consciousness do not last. That and as has been mentioned elsewhere, state shifting is ultimately a dead end, even with manual practice. There are other reasons besides awakening to want to transform the mind though into higher states, such as bodhichitta. 

On 5/31/2022 at 4:00 PM, Raptorsin7 said:

I've done a lot of trips and they haven't led to lasting profound change so I definitely agree with a lot of criticism of psychidelics, but at the same time at least when I take psychidelics I know something will shift and I at least feel like I moved some % toward healing and releasing emotional and energetic blocks. 

Meditation can be very discouraging because there are so many sits where it appears like nothing happens. You just sit and you're stuck experiencing whatever you are experiencing, which I assume for most people like me is just an unpleasant state of being. 
 

Part of the practice is becoming extremely intimate with the 1st noble truth. So yes, the whole point is to abide in this very discomfort aka suffering! It’s amazing how Leo totally missed this point. This suffering is precisely what motivates us practice harder. It helps though having good instructions and learning how to actually generate wholesome states of mind like happiness, compassion, metta, peace. This is why I often recommend The Mind Illuminated, because no other book or method helped me more with developing extremely powerful wholesome states while sober. 

On 5/31/2022 at 4:00 PM, Raptorsin7 said:

The way I see psychidelics and meditation is like this:

Suffering, at least for me, is contained as a knot of tension in the head, and when psychidelics really work for me it feels like my attention zeroes in on the knot and eventually I can penetrate to some source sensation that when dissolved leads to completel perceptual shifts and loss of a sense of suffering that when dissolved feels like an unnatural weight i was carrying for years. 

If I were to just meditate then I can feel into the knot but there's never been any movement, save for one time in my life where I spent virtually all day meditating, and somehow managed to make progress in dissolving the knot, but if I do a typical 30-60 minute meditation where I'm just aware of the knot then I get nothing. 
 

You’ll probably discover other spatial qualities to suffering as your practice matures, besides a single knot. Yes, usually contractions in the energy body are origin points of suffering, clinging/craving/aversion. Psychedelics are so energetically overwhelming they blow apart the energy body which is both their strength and danger. This infinite spacial expanse of the energy body helps breakdown egoic mind patterns and identification.

It’s hard for me to vouch for 30-60 minutes at this point. Personally, Ive gone on 7 meditation retreats in the last 2.5 years and do formal practice 4-5 hours per day through silent sitting, chanting, and mindful eating at the community Im living with (Monastic Academy for the Preservation of Life on Earth). Ive kind of completely thrown myself into the practice and attribute my success with it because of these efforts. But even before MAPLE, I was doing retreats and meditating 2 hours/day. 
 

Most people who don’t succeed with meditation either 1) dont go on retreats, 2) don’t have good instructions for techniques, or 3) don’t practice hard enough to see results and usually all 3. 

On 5/31/2022 at 4:00 PM, Raptorsin7 said:

According to this view it seems like you would have to do something to radically alter your state to benefit from meditation, or else you could be stuck just witnessing and observing energetic knots and blockages for years without making progress. 

I would disagree with this. Meditation offers immediate relief. Ive observed this with many beginners I help as well as in my own experience. I was practice meditation 1 hour/day for around 1.5 years before ever trying psychedelics and therefore, had a strong practice before ever experiencing truly radical, god like states of consciousness. 
 

 

[knakoo]

On 01/06/2022 at 11:46 PM, Consilience said:

In the beginning, for some beings, myself included, yes. But after a certain point, one outgrows the need for frequent tripping. For example, the last dozen or so of my trips have left me with the intrinsic understanding that I would have been better off spending those 8-12 hours meditating. This originates from the clear seeing that meditation liberates, uproots, cultivates, purifies, and clarifies, and while psychedelics do as well during the trip, the shifts in consciousness do not last. That and as has been mentioned elsewhere, state shifting is ultimately a dead end, even with manual practice. There are other reasons besides awakening to want to transform the mind though into higher states, such as bodhichitta. 

So you feel like 10 hours of sober meditation is more valuable than 10 hours of meditation on psychedelics at this point ?

From my perspective psychedelics are really amazing for healing. In your last dozen trips you did not have some big healing moments ?

[Consilience]

3 hours ago, knakoo said:

So you feel like 10 hours of sober meditation is more valuable than 10 hours of meditation on psychedelics at this point ?

From my perspective psychedelics are really amazing for healing. In your last dozen trips you did not have some big healing moments ?

From what I can tell, yes sober meditation is more effective than meditating while on psychedelics if our goal is training the mind, recognizing truth while sober. Meditating while on psychedelics may provide a deeper relative state and higher short term understanding. Please note this is specific to where Im at. Meditating on psychedelics may be exactly what a noobie needs to jump start their sober practice but for an advanced meditator, it seems unlikely.

 

As far as healing, yes absolutely. But there comes a point on the healing journey where healing is no longer a limiting bottleneck for deepening one’s awakening. We’ll always have healing to do, we’ll always have “growing up” to do. So in that sense, psychedelics could theoretically always have a place on the path. The huge error is believing them to be a viable path to an authentic Awakening in contrast with healing. 

[kieranperez]

On 5/31/2022 at 1:00 PM, Raptorsin7 said:

I've done a lot of trips and they haven't led to lasting profound change so I definitely agree with a lot of criticism of psychidelics, but at the same time at least when I take psychidelics I know something will shift and I at least feel like I moved some % toward healing and releasing emotional and energetic blocks. 

Meditation can be very discouraging because there are so many sits where it appears like nothing happens. You just sit and you're stuck experiencing whatever you are experiencing, which I assume for most people like me is just an unpleasant state of being. 

What comes and goes is not enlightenment. You're chasing "stuff". Profound states come and go. And they will ALWAYS come and go. That which is permanent and absolute is ever-present. 

On 6/1/2022 at 2:46 PM, Consilience said:

Most people who don’t succeed with meditation either 1) dont go on retreats, 2) don’t have good instructions for techniques, or 3) don’t practice hard enough to see results and usually all 3. 

This.

 

[Consilience]

@kieranperez I should have also added a 4th point which is many people who dont succeed with meditation also aren’t working with a high quality teacher. 

[kieranperez]

22 minutes ago, Consilience said:

@kieranperez I should have also added a 4th point which is many people who dont succeed with meditation also aren’t working with a high quality teacher. 

Yep.

How's it going at MAPLE? Still there? I'm entering residency at a Zen monastery in a little less than a month from now in Oregon.

[Breakingthewall]

On 1/6/2022 at 11:46 PM, Consilience said:

In the beginning, for some beings, myself included, yes. But after a certain point, one outgrows the need for frequent tripping. For example, the last dozen or so of my trips have left me with the intrinsic understanding that I would have been better off spending those 8-12 hours meditating

But but from what I've read I deduce that you've never done 5 meo. there are psychedelics and psychedelics

[Consilience]

2 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

But but from what I've read I deduce that you've never done 5 meo. there are psychedelics and psychedelics

I havent, correct. Only NN-DMT. 
 

But my goals aren’t reach the highest state as possible. My goals are complete enlightenment, which transcends 5MeO. The qualitative reconfiguration offered by 5MeO is in principle, the same as what is offered through other psychedelics it’s just thay the degree, depth, and content differ. So even though Ive never tried (which its still on my to do list btw), the integration lessons would remain the same -

1. to permanently raise one’s state requires enormous manual practice. 

2. Enlightenment is ultimately not about states, it‘s dramatically more radical. 

[Consilience]

21 hours ago, kieranperez said:

Yep.

How's it going at MAPLE? Still there? I'm entering residency at a Zen monastery in a little less than a month from now in Oregon.

Please let me know which one! Ill be back in Oregon soon. 
 

My time at MAPLE has been utterly profound. Soryu is like the bodhisattva version of Peter Ralston in his younger years. My practice has enormously deepened and Ive never had more clarity about my direction in life. It’s also incredible how healthy the community here is. I don’t think Ive ever encountered such a large number of genuinely trust worthy people. Definitely still a growing, maturing sangha and we aren’t perfect, but the values here are spot on. Integrity, responsibility, kindness, compassion, and a focus on awakening are all pillars. 

[Breakingthewall]

53 minutes ago, Consilience said:

 

Maybe 5 meo is different. I find it extremely straight. It erases the mind in a level that seems impossible in another way 

53 minutes ago, Consilience said:

Enlightenment is ultimately not about states, it‘s dramatically more radical. 

Could you explain? I'm really interested .

I would say that it is to be in a state without barriers permanently. the constant perception of the infinite that you really are. So a state. Independently if you couldn't sit without movement more than 10 min 

Of course have control of yourself is important, a tool, manual practices are fundamental, but maybe not always needed

 

 

 

Edited June 15, 2022 by Breakingthewall

[kieranperez]

41 minutes ago, Consilience said:

Please let me know which one! Ill be back in Oregon soon. 

I'll be at Great Vow Zen Monastery. 80 or miles Northwest of Portland.

41 minutes ago, Consilience said:

Soryu is like the bodhisattva version of Peter Ralston in his younger years.

Have you met Peter? I've met a lot of enlightened guys and teachers at this point and the closest guy one I know that's similar to Peter is my root Zen teacher is Doshin Roshi. They're both enneagram 8's (I like intense tough masculine teachers that have fucking balls and don't pussyfoot around). Even then though, Peter is kinda his own thing. That dude doesn't seem to have a feminine bone in his body. An old school man's man. I remember being around him and he has that same "IT factor" thing I came across when I've met some of the best athletes on the planet that I don't see in any of the other very enlightened guys and gals I've gotten to know quite well personally. I don't want mythologize him like it has been done on this forum because he's also just another dude. 

Sorry seems like a guy that has a strong intense presence to him. Probably all the effect of all that Rinzai training with Harada Roshi. 

47 minutes ago, Consilience said:

I don’t think Ive ever encountered such a large number of genuinely trust worthy people. Definitely still a growing, maturing sangha and we aren’t perfect, but the values here are spot on.

It's good you recognize that. Nobody is ever going to be perfect. Yes, in one sense everything is already perfect and yada yada yada but it really is good to see everyone, no matter how enlightened, will always fall short of idealistic expectations. Enlightened people can still be deluded in some things. Reconciling that by noticing that and yet still seeing the perfection is where the really humor lies. And you're working with a great Zen teacher, and a profound humor is one of the core aspects of truly of an ever deepening Zen practice. 

51 minutes ago, Consilience said:

It’s also incredible how healthy the community here is.

Yeah, that aspect can be incredibly healing. My first intensive/retreat was with Peter and Brendan down in Texas and the example they set regarding honesty and integrity just blew me away because at every turn I paid close attention and saw that their word and actions always seemed to match and just stunned me. It was like "these guys aren't lying to me!" And to really see that for what it is is great. By the end of the intensive I was just crying and crying because I finally found what it was I was looking for. A bunch of insane fucking people that were genuinely going for what's true and a more powerful and healthy way of living and experiencing self and life. Same thing at all the other retreats I've been to. I'd just find myself in prayer/gratitude for finally finding this and would just be in tears. The unseeable ever-present sacredness arising out of nowhere. 

I will say your enthusiasm for how your experience is going gives some reassurance to my incredible fear, doubt, and skepticism regarding me truly going into this time at the monastery because if all goes well and it's a good fit I will try and stay or see what I can do to deepen this path even further. 

[Kamo]

On 5/18/2022 at 8:14 AM, Leo Gura said:

Make a distinction between awakened consciousness vs training the human mind/body to respond or behave in certain ways that you might find desirable.

@Leo Gura Right, so recognition of Truth doesn't actually imply any behavior change or advantages to the human? For example it seems like there are benefits to having such a realization, are there? The only thing to "gain" is recognition of Truth itself, which doesn't necessarily mean anything else about your life will change? Maybe how you interpret it will dictate how you act in the world?

I understand my egoic desire for benefiting from such a realization is what once motivated my interest, however I also understand that Truth is seeked for the sake of Truth and not for any personal gain due to ego inflation. Personally I have experienced a God Realization state on 5MeO, how ever it hasn't really changed my life too much, but it was completely amazing and valuable to experience for the just for sake of it at all. I now carry that realization with me but I haven't experienced it making much of a difference in my life besides how I comprehend and interpret certain things. I know there are much higher degrees of it which motivate me to keep at. Are there any real changes to your life that happen after the higher degrees?

State changes from baseline to God are so radically different that it feels like Im trying to be able to bring something of that back with me to baseline, and it doesn't work that way, because each state has is unique qualities, so is the main point to just enjoy the temporary state while you can and learn from it?