🪷 happiness redesign | Post-Suffering society wen?~ | docs for NSE/stream entry+ breaking desire/ill will in bio | dm for 1-1 fetters guidance (1st to 7th)
July update: after 2 NSE/stream entry group workshops to prove the concept and new 1-1s, i'd say there are ~27 NSE-ers now
In 1-1, all folks have seen through the Self View/first 3 fetters in all the calls.
In workshops, i think most situations where it didnt happen was due to
In April i did the whole guidance for No-Separate-Entity (it's NSE guys, def NOT stream entry!) and it's been a blast-- here are a bunch of stats around how it went:
Total of 21 ongoing conversations, 20 online and 1 an irl friend, out of which 10 have seen thru the
so WTF do they mean w/ "you're already enlightned"??
simply means that phenomenologically, nothing needs to be added to reach the Natural State/so called enlightenment, it's all substractive
further, you can look at these illusions/fetters as Conceptual Lenses you impose upon
3000yrs ago: our techniques for accessing vast spacious bliss on demand are just a distraction, what you really want is to stop a particular kind of clenching to end the feeling of wrongness until you’re centerless which causes a persistent identity shift and foreground
truly,
@visakanv
‘do 100 of something’ is an undefeated concept
i’m about 15/100 guidance calls for stream entry and the subtleties i can catch now compared to first few are insane
it’s much easier to witness where the resistance is real and where it needs only a nudge to fall
there's this talk of Alan Watts', which goes like
"Because this is you saying to yourself, 'i won't wake up until i deserve it".. so i invent for myself an elaborate system of delaying my waking up"
Plenty on tpot should watch it entirely ⤵️
In April i did the whole guidance for No-Separate-Entity (it's NSE guys, def NOT stream entry!) and it's been a blast-- here are a bunch of stats around how it went:
Total of 21 ongoing conversations, 20 online and 1 an irl friend, out of which 10 have seen thru the
I literally remember where I was when Tony Hawk pulled off the 900 and now children are doing it
this must be how the people who grew up in the Bob Cousy era felt when they saw Michael Jordan
may i ask as a peasant, which coherent Buddhist view?
Theravada? Dzogchen? Zen? Vajrayana? Tibetan? Thailandese? Burmese? Japanese? Indian? Monastic? Layman? All coherent?
why do many arguments seem to return to the same “YOU DONT GET IT, YOU DONT HAVE THE MANDATE OF HEAVEN”?
Main problem with the "Jhana" thing is not that people are learning techniques to manipulate their experience. The problem is that this is being sold *in absence* of a coherent Buddhist (or any) view of the basic problems of mortal life and worldly awareness. It would not be hard
why do some advanced practitioners/masters still seem kinda.. jerks?
well, i've been squinting at this subject a lot and this is the best metaphor i can muster
let's take the 'personality templates' we've developed as a river's flow and conditioning being the rock piles that
lmaao what do you guys think it’s a proper/right/moral amount of net worth or monthly income for an enlightened person to have (and mby why)?
if ya read this, yes, you, i wanna hear your take
does this pass the sniff test though?
if it's meant at the level of physical actions, sure, might be the case, but for the most part, happy and suffering folks have very different mental moves they make
an easy example is overthinking and meaning-giving
the biggest (black/white)pill is that most Happy People aren't even actually doing anything different
they usually don't have a fundamentally different mindset, superior introspection, or healthier lives. they're just *like that* somehow. zero pattern to it
to a much larger extent than tpot does it, emotional work and reactivity can be handled with a focus on separating physical sensations from stories
some 80% of the time, focus on separation and then much later dive into those tangled stories that don't unravel w/out therapy
if you think your thoughts, then you should be able to stop them at any time, right?
by the same token, if “you see” instead of there just being “seeing”, shouldnt you able to stop seeing with your eyes open?
done so much 'self development' in the past 12-13yrs only to end up in place of 'most of this sht doesn't even matter'
not even talking about the whole 'can't develop a self cuz it doesn't exist'
simply mean literally most info is done around 'projected & supposed problems'...
can currently distill the practices and directions for stream entry in ~40-60 mins
could likely record one of these calls at one point so that folks can guide themselves, it's much better in terms of explanations than the doc
i do think tpot needs more of 'X person'. like not seeing anyone be like 'deity yoga girl' or 'kasina guy'
any of you wanna take lead into being an explorer into one particular practice for the sake of trailblazing? i suspect the community would be stoked
just sum thoughts
and this, lovingly, is why i keep saying why tf do 'real buddhists' expect newcomers to buy their morality wholesale? 🙃
till we get a response to the above, please stop forcing people to buy the whole house with jhanas, thx!
@hermittoday
so, the thing is, it s not so much his lifestyle as the fact that he was a storyteller without direct insight into what he was speaking of
which isnt bad, just worth taking with a grain of salt. you can see this if you know what he s pointing at when he crosses referents oddly
dont end up sniped by "sitting practice" if it's not your thing. you'll end up stacking hundreds of hours of frustration with little gain. try walking meditation, noting the 5 senses while sitting in a queue, note the senses involved in washing dishes. find your thing
well, in regards to jhana discourse, and length of path is general
is seems to me the biggest pain some even advanced meditator feel is... that they wasted so much more time than was needed
naturally, they start defending that pain, even unconsciously, with complex arguments
Meditation has completely nuked my motivation. Why do anything when I can just feel whatever sensation I want without doing the thing? Why travel when I can stay at home and feel whatever sensation I'm seeking my travelling? Why date when I can feel infinite love at home? Why
suspecting that these grumpy advanced meditators who scowl at others’ feeling extremely good are in denial about the need to work on multiple dimensions.
“you mean i also need to do shadow work?? and take care of what i eat? and connect w/ ppl? that’s sum bullshit!”
tpot hive-mind, would love your help!
what would you imagine a company bent on solving happiness/suffering problem at scale focus on?
▫️ Self inquiry, up to breaking craving, full 4th path?
▫️ integration practice/therapies?
▫️ recc'ing tests for health/diet/nutrition?
ooohh LOOORD, I'm finally seeing it all
you can definitely go the whole path, maybe even speedrun it, with just Bahiya sutta & noticing/noting in usual consciousness
this is as direct pointing as it gets
@nosilverv
it’s because they want to keep the fancy descriptions like god s embrace or blanket or luminosity or whatever.
but if you ask them to return to phenomenology they re pretty similar, spoke with folks from multiple traditions and we could def find the parallel right away like this
SO— are we going to work together on a proper definition of Stream Entry or
are we going to go around complaining about each others’ definition like before?
we can start with historical, narrative, phenomenological, but kinda let’s start??
So-- early October, I got Stream Entry in 6 days.
Not in retreat setting (was in a month-long vacation), using direct insight/pointing.
I've a few 'looking exercises' (the public doc is in bio) to dissolve solidity and it clicked rather quickly and the shift was glaring.
Also,
just done, 100% shift to NSE/Witness in workshop😆
initially 6 ppl, but the 6th person got NSE on their own beforehand, so 100% or 5/5, still cool!
GROUP WORSHOP VALIDATED, direct pointing scales
will share some notes below + tag those that agreed to be open abt it
so-->
I wanna try to do a NSE group workshop, w/ 3-5 people instead of the usual 1-1, so as to experiment whether the format works and things clicks or 1-1 is imperative
chose Sundays so more people could make time
know anyone interested? it's FREE just so we're clear
also ...
OH YEA, one last thing about the jhana discourse and im done, are we going to address that the guy complaining is an entrepreneur to the same TAM space?
literally incumbent vs startup type of discussion, imposing regulation on newcomers, rule setting in the market
there’s no need to “deserve” stream entry/awakening by any stretch of the word
no need to be a great, or even mediocre meditator
no need to pass some teacher’s hurdles
all is needed is to See on your own what’s Direct Experience and what’s Conceptual Blabber
ive found inversion to be an insanely effective model to apply to practice and progress on the insight path. more so than “how do i do this” solved by theory, it’s the “why isnt this already happening” and a huge amount of time it’s some fear of diving into thoughts/sensations
see? told y'all the problem is meditation instruction and crappy teachings, more people would have an easy time with it if the instructors did an adequate job
ok i just learned: when (wrt. meditation) they say "focus on your breathing", they mean turn off your inner monologue and sense your breathing.
they DO NOT mean direct your inner monologue towards contemplating your breathing.
that makes a lot more fucking sense!!!
owed to hitting my head nicely on a balcony, i’m in the waiting room for a CT scan
there’s a rather striking view of the pain and suffering the folks in the waiting room are experiencing
can make one reconsider some priorities and everyday bullshit to prepare for old age
starting people on meditation as their go-to practice seems like a rather stupid idea, prone to getting hurt
should start with labeling, noting, being able to get some presence in daily life,
not being gangsta on the cushion and then returning to the hurricane everytime after
I wanna try to do a NSE group workshop, w/ 3-5 people instead of the usual 1-1, so as to experiment whether the format works and things clicks or 1-1 is imperative
chose Sundays so more people could make time
know anyone interested? it's FREE just so we're clear
also ...
you may think aversion has a purpose, it helps you move, it’s fuel to keep doing. and then you drop it and realize you just do things just as much, maybe more, without it, and you feel a bit cheated. you mean getting stuff done and suffering are not connected?
that's like horrendous advice.. and you don't even have to believe me, just look at like Sam Harris
dude has been stuck in brahman for years and he seems to get crankier which each passing year, he's locked into that identity
Now more than ever you need a strong identity.
It's your compass, your legacy.
Yes, spiritual process is about shedding the self.
But you can only drop it if you have it.
Confusion isn't enlightenment.
First build your self, then transcend it.
fuck, will i have to change my discourse from 'stream entry is so easy and anyone can get it' (true) to 'stream entry is really hard, but i think you have a shot at it' so people take it seriously?
don't know enough about jed but like he's potentially not the only one to speak about it without seeing it
alan watts is another example and he's on point with many things, but by like .. just winging it, not thru experiencing
yea, yer already enlightened, in the sense of all separation coming from a stacked series of perceptual illusions
but feels like if i said ‘my house is already’ clean and once you re in it looks like an episode of ‘Hoarders’ you d say “mby there s work to do until it s obvious”
OH FUCK
Oh fuck
The quote “It is easy enough to stand still, the difficulty is to walk without touching the ground”
WAS REFERRING TO FINDING NO GROUND IN REALITY TO STAND ON🤯
goddamn groundless ground
@mounica_v8
@sama
Truthfully not very familiar with Kegan as I avoid most intellectual models- but if they've done the full 4th path, they broke Craving, their relation to the reality of desires changes a lot
But the funny thing is.. most 4-pathers would not be interested in the power anyway😄
so WTF do i mean by 'insight', 'glimpse', 'attainment' or 'breaking a fetter'?
they're all snapshots in unravelling a puzzle.
starting an inqury into Direct Experience, you slowly get small units of understanding, of what the full image could be.
call that an 'insight', a
retrospectively, most shadow work or 'healing' i did in the past few years were scraping the surface
the real deal happened after no self/stream entry, when things would actually be let go of from the root
before NS/SE, 'growth mindset' really is mostly 'fixed mindset' LARPing
early on, the buddhist path seems like it's a rather liniar process, but i'd say the wellbeing 'gains' are quite exponential
and what's more, some portions of it seems to account for a bigger jump in contentment that others. what do i mean by that?
from personal exp and a few
in order to have a “self”, something needs to be constant through it all..
but sensations change, emotions change, thoughts change even more so. the body... do you have the same body as when you were a child?
if not then, what is constant throughout it all to be the self?
Lately I’ve moved a bit away from the idea of Buddhism making claims about the nature of the universe when speaking of No Self and into the idea of speaking strictly about Direct Subjective Experience
You won’t be able to find a thing called self, independent from causes and
“No-self” is a common idea in Buddhism. In Chinese it is 无我 (wú wǒ), “without I” or “lacking me” or “non-I” or “I-lessness”. I/me is also closer to “self” in Chinese, so “non-self” is a common translation.
this is basically the 4 humors from the medieval age and people think they’re more scientific now as distinct from those barbarians and their alchemy
(what i mean this trivialises complex processes)
unfortunately, the intellectual understanding and the visceral understanding of the buddhist insights are VERY different
and a huge set of folks who only have an intellectual understanding of it like to believe they're the same
how far on the path do you want to get? to not feel like the 'hommunculi behind the eyes'? one with everything? no thingness? or maybe you'd prefer to let go of the sense of me entirely so there's only Suchness?
this question is underasked, but would be useful to some folks to
this is exactly the same pet peeve i had with MTCB and having “dark night” so front and center and then being surprised when most, if not all, meditators i’ve heard share weird/panicky experiences (seeing rivers of blood n sht) were practitioners of just this
You walk into a meditation retreat & they sit you down, make you sign all these forms about how dangerous it is, how they are not liable if you go nuts, about all the possible negative side effects, there’s a trauma therapist on call…
And then they’re like, now just relax 😂😂
sometimes, you gotta look for your folks
i first started posting about stream entry on reddit and after getting crappy comments after stupid comment, it toughened me up to say "maybe these people are all insane, what if i went another place"
the attachment/aversion says to experience:
[should]-[be different]-[to me]-[now] implying
[should] - there is some other reality where this now isn't so
[be different] - i resist what is because it's unbearable
[to me] - there is some 'self' or a 'reactor' that can change
a decent tip: when you're working on breaking attachment/aversion, start on older 'heavy issues' if the ones closer to present get you into a 'problem solving' narrative too much
lovingly requesting that those of you who See (and you know yourselves) to slowly start speaking up about your experiences
your courage is needed for this place to flourish as a whole and testing the waters of your comfort will ripple into others' opening up further
a LOT-LOT of advice on the internet, and i'm even excluding here our bubble on Twitter, is given by people suffering tremendously and who are amazingly deluded
but bcuz some have trappings of success, many will lend their ears and nod in agreement
doubt is likely the biggest hindrance for 80% of those on the path
and it can take the form of “doubt it can be easy”, “doubt it can feel this good” or “doubt i can have it with my (special) suffering”
something to consider
not a tool for deep shadow work, but a 'meditation' with a focus on separating what's physical sensation and what's mental narrative in an emotion does wonders
if you start small, with trivial peeves, you can build considerable space between the 2 + have confidence to feel them
can an enlightened one/arhat still have kids in your 'path's view'?
if not, is it because of karma?
and if's because of karma, what would that karma be exactly be if there's no self/no other?
i'm kinda curious in exploring this one, so happy to listen, even 'tiss blasphemy'!
doing a big think here, but the way to get NSE/stream entry and mby even reducing reactivity by a whole lot at scale is ...
on-demand video courses/content with enough redundancies and edge-cases
most of the 1-1s i've done lately more-or-less follow the same structure
will likely do a scrappy v0.5 in the next week or so by recording a 'mock-up guidance call' so no one's 1-1 is public and then split the video samurai style and upload to Youtube
will probably ask for 2-3 testers for this after i got it made, curious how it'll go
doing a big think here, but the way to get NSE/stream entry and mby even reducing reactivity by a whole lot at scale is ...
on-demand video courses/content with enough redundancies and edge-cases
most of the 1-1s i've done lately more-or-less follow the same structure
similarly watched a lot of alan watts and i never knew how to get to see all those wonderful things, meditation didn’t click
now, experiencing most of them, i can tell he knew, or even lived, some stuff
Kind of fucked up how many hours of Alan Watts I listened to in my youth and I understood exactly 0% of it
I literally thought he was just saying random shit that sounded fun and I listened because I liked his voice. Like fairytale, fiction with no meaning
April office hours open folks!
#1
Wanna chat 30min about dharma/stream entry/reactivity? DM me about it, happy to talk, i'm gmt+2
#2
Can guide ~5 more ppl thru the Stream Entry practices i've used, either thru email or Voxer (voice notes)
ofc - both FREE
Couple deets abt
#2
:
there are no emotions. none, zero, zilch
of course, there are sensations and contractions in the body which we reify and label as something
but as something i can "shamefully" admit, sometimes this labelling fails and you think yourself sad when you've merely missed lunch
i've regretted many of the things i did, or didnt do, up until around 29, basically last year
and what made it a non-issue? realizing the past is merely a thought-now, those situations converged to now and it's a lie to say 'i'd be happier if things would have been different'
yer not gonna like this... but the alienation is self-inflicted
the 'superior' spiritual interests are put above the mundane 'mindless' of their everyday life
try to meet them where they are, you'll be pleasantly surprising if you're curious about their experience
most folks
Curious to hear people’s thoughts and experiences:
How do you navigate being the only person in your family and extended family with a spiritual perspective?
I know it’s the ultimate test, but it can feel extremely lonely when all I want to talk about is God, consciousness,
oh, btw, one other important aspect
whatever arguments these folks have, those are LUXURY BELIEFS
easy to speak about morality and lineage when it's not your ass that's suffering and depressed
well, in regards to jhana discourse, and length of path is general
is seems to me the biggest pain some even advanced meditator feel is... that they wasted so much more time than was needed
naturally, they start defending that pain, even unconsciously, with complex arguments
soo.. where do you guys draw the line of what's the 'spiritual path' and what's.. not??
cuz i've read some stuff around here lately and boy do i have thoughts, but first i wanna listen
one of the worst narratives we tend to believe is “it’s going to be worth it because it was hard”
and it s bad bcuz we come to associate hard things with eventual payoff and, in case of the path, with the expectation of it really being hard
so we find subtle ways to make it so
many pointers from deep-path become infohazards when someone is pre-path
for example, “there is no body”
it means simply “what you thought as a solid ‘body’ is merely a cluster of sensations you were overlaying on a mental body-image”, but can cause weird reactions in 1st form
once you get the confidence you can feel most emotions (and here i mean sensations only), attachments and aversions don't feel so threatening to explore
I was trying to drop fetters 4 and 5 as soon as possible,
but working on them relaxes so many things and it's so enjoyable that I kinda wanna savor the process lmao
YO, any of you who have seen through some of the illusions would like to make like a group chat around putting existing maps/models within a system that compares what each sees through/empties and what doesnt?
streamline what traditions see as real/not, for the benefit of tpot
imma be real folks, for the last 5-6 weeks.. i find myself coming to twitter for what i was used to, cool convos and ideas and ... this algo is bringing anything but that
option a is reduce usage tremendously or
option b is gonna start some shit
this math of 'how much better are things at different stages of awakening' is always tricky...
mostly bcuz you'll forget really quickly how bad it was beforehand and just enjoy the new baseline
@bastard_brian
I think those two are kind of hard to separate. Also the time aspects is helping a lot of the math. Like if someone does jhana 1 30m a day compared to this. This is 16hrs a day and maybe 10-50x better than j1? So ~25x (better) * 32x (time) = ~1000x or so
it dawned on me.. why i'm still paying rent in my current city, other than 'habit'?
reasons to stay have reduced A LOT, thinking of maybe moving for a while
enjoyed Barcelona, would love to know stories for choosing diff cities to live med term🙏
likely EU cities for now
on the path, dissolving the solidity of identity is a lot like passing thru the states of aggregation
you start as solid, a bulk of identity, a seeming Self
then you become liquid, just a bunch of aggregate processes
then you becomes gaseous, so rarified it's not even there,
i don't think we've seen all the takes on reincarnation so far, if you've got a personal one or your lineage has a way of explaining how it works, would love to hear it, still can't wrap my head around how it could work
trivially easy once you’ve lowered your own suffering to be an involuntary a-hole and start saying stuff like “the path takes what it takes” and “you shoudnt rush on the path”
that’s quite rich coming from someone who s not in that moment walking on cinders