Improving Concentration

Many Minds

One of the biggest problems of meditation is maintaining consistent concentration. Sitting down and meditating is not a simple business and many teachers talk about mental maps that take years to traverse for most people, or not at all. As any good psychologist will know, there are many minds in our psyche and they run automatically throughout the day. They make decisions for us. They are our counselors and tormentors. These minds are based on addictive conditioning to follow their advice, based on advise we’ve gotten from our family and culture, mixed in with direct or indirect threats to remove pleasurable attention if we don’t comply. [See: Case Studies: ‘Little Hans’ – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gu93b-case-studies-little-hans-sigmund-freud.html]

Like with any addiction, if you want to let go of it, there is tremendous resistance. In this post, improving concentration will not just be about sticking with things and dealing with distractions, but also answering the question why are we improving our concentration in the first place? The answer is to find internal ways we can improve our happiness, instead of the usual way of endlessly changing the external world.

Moving too fast

When people take meditation seriously, they often have experienced at least one blissful altered state of consciousness, like concentration Flow states. Some learn meditation practices after experiencing illuminating effects from substances that makes them interested in pursuing a study of their consciousness. There’s nothing like tangible progress to make someone a believer. For any advanced practitioner, though, there are so many more obstacles waiting for the new meditator, especially in the form of resistances and withdrawal symptoms. Those mentors will find that it’s too soon to celebrate these lesser attainments. Much more work has to be done. But first lets look at life before meditation and the traditional goal of insight practices.

Jhana: https://rumble.com/v1gqznl-the-jhanas.html

LSD Simulation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTamIwZFr1s

Even without meditation experience most people remember a time when they were caught in a desire, and when the object of desire was frustrated, the mind may have gone into a conniption, rage or resistance to force possession of the object of desire, or to punish oneself or others for failure. Now, most people suppress these impulses for social reasons, but it’s a sign that we don’t have complete control of our impulses. We want what we want and secretly want to annihilate our obstacles. These tendencies become ever clearer and more frightening during meditation. A lot of the stability of our personality comes from predictable sources of pleasure and safety. Meditators that get a beginning taste of stress relief are often tantalized by promises of Enlightenment where all addictiveness disappears along with the co-arising addictive self. Yet that addictiveness provided a stability that was taken for granted.

Descriptions of a blissful trans-personal awareness that has no location, colour, shape, or time dimension, advertises a world that is preferable for a depressed person, and many people who are meditators are dealing with depression. When practitioners actually achieve glimpses of Enlightenment, it can be a moving experience. A trans-personal and trans-dimensional awareness can be like a God that sees the pathetic, wretched, lonely, embarrassed, perverse, shameful, brokenness of the meditator, and applies…no judgment. For someone desperate with conditioned voices that are judgmental, negative, harsh, repetitive and unsparing, the trans-dimensional awareness seems more compassionate and redemptive. It has no desire to stop you from improving, and it doesn’t force improvement. Falling and rising up are viewed the same way. This is the friend we always wanted. Tears of joy and thankfulness can erupt. Life is a gift again. Instead of living a diminished existence with inhibitions or suicidal thoughts, life can re-energize, like going through a near death experience and seeing a compassionate non-judgmental light greeting them. After an experience like that, critical and abusive people don’t have to be listened to anymore. The mind becomes more independent and realizes that we have to rely on our own actions to improve ourselves. The grey desert of life changes to a more primordial and vivid experience. Stressful habits of worrying about controlling possibilities give way instead to vivid present moment opportunities. The meditator doesn’t need permission to act from tyrannical human critics. Many meditators strive diligently to find this relief. Without the experience it’s hard to imagine what it’s like. Most religions have a forgiving anthropomorphized parental figure, or with secular examples, as can be seen in movies like Contact, where a higher civilization is guiding humans to their form of Enlightenment, they can only appear like a patient, comforting human form. Instead of imagining the goal in this way, people want to experience the real thing, or ‘no-thing’ as we are told to expect. But like in the movie Contact, the Enlightened being tells the hero “small moves Ellie. Small moves.”

“Small moves Ellie.” Contact – Jodie Foster and David Morse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRPUO6gGSh8

No Mind – Rob Burbea: https://dharmaseed.org/teacher/210/talk/9547/

Awareness without objects – Rupert Spira: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRLrgoPkSU4

Most people can only absorb small meditative insights at any one time. The meditator that wants to skip to the end, without foundational skills that provide stable spiritual pleasures, will meet that resistance with no protection. If the psycho-physical experience of all human beings ultimately has no stability, part of the mind doesn’t want to see that and will resist. Until it gets a glimpse of an awareness that is beyond the instability of appearances, a groundless ground, the addictive mind will be frightened and defensive. These side effects of meditation and withdrawal symptoms are described very well by Dr. Willoughby Britton from Brown University. She exposes a lot of the weaknesses of western meditation trends. Her discussion with the Dalai Lama emphasizes those side effects, but to not be outdone by a scientist, the Dalai Lama also makes his points for a more balanced practice. The side effects can be debilitating based on her guideline of not being able to “work or take care of children for at least one month.” The important point she makes is that this is not talked about much in many meditation circles and there needs to be more balance. Here are some of the side effects she lists:

• Strobing and flickering experiences, which matches some of the expectations of a three characteristics practice of watching momentary impermanence. This also includes the perceiver strobing in and out of experience. These experiences include times during the day when one is not meditating.
• Loss of an enduring identity over time.
• Loss of a sense of control or agency where a person feels more like a puppet.
• A dream-like sense of now, where reality and dreams are hard to decipher.
• A loss of conceptual meaning structures where the recognition of the meaning of the percept is not registered, and this can include important meanings for navigating the world.
• Euphoric and manic experiences.
• Some meditators perceive that they are enlightened and remove themselves from worldly pursuits prematurely.
• Feelings of terror and panic related to experiences of dissolving.
• Uncontrolled emotions.
• Uncontrolled release of traumatic memories, including when not in meditation.
• Physical responses including, heat, burning, pressure, feelings of electricity, involuntary body movements and pain.
• False diagnoses of Schizophrenia.
• Stigma when these experiences are expressed.

The varieties of contemplative experience: A mixed-methods study of meditation-related challenges in Western Buddhists: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0176239

The Dalai Lama had many recommendations to deal with limitations he perceived of the subjects in Willoughby’s study as follows:

• Simple practices are not enough for the mind which is not simple.
• Many people who remove themselves from worldly pursuits only do that temporarily and find that they are not ready for a monk lifestyle.
• People should not become teachers until they have mastered their own minds.
• Don’t project high expectations into your practice.
• The practice should include lots of study and critical thinking by analyzing many sources and materials to gain a full picture of Buddhist practice.
• After developing a broad understanding the practitioner can meditate in a more balanced way.
• There should be a foundational practice of ethics and single pointed concentration before moving into wisdom and insight.
• If you are having psychological problems from practice. Stop doing it.
• People should be aware of their goals with meditation technology so their motivations are correct before starting.
• Temporary retreats do not replace daily life. One must develop a practice that can be included into daily life.
• It’s good to have an understanding of the negative effects of meditation along with its benefits so that people don’t focus only on the benefits. People can be misled into expecting more from meditation than what it provides and become deluded.

Dr. Willoughby Britton and His Holiness the Dalai Lama: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etii18s9RKU

Just stop!

With these warnings behind us we can now see what we are dealing with in the mind. Certainly there is a desire to let go of everything, including meditation when the mind is not getting the desired results. One of the major authors and commentators who advocate to step away from toxic meditation is Gangaji who was the student of Papaji. When the ego is being used to meditate it can destroy all results, as you can see in my earlier video The Commentator:

The Commentator: https://youtu.be/auejzRGMa9s

“To “stop” is to stop searching for yourself in thoughts, emotions, circumstances, or bodily images. It is that simple. The search is over when you realize that the true and lasting fulfillment you have been searching for is found to be nowhere other than right where you are. It is here. It is in you, it is in me, it is in all life, both sentient and insentient. It is everywhere. As long as you are searching for it, it cannot be found, because you assume that it is someplace else. You are continually chasing a lie…Any step to go somewhere to find it implies that it is not already right here where you are.”

The difficulty with collecting meditation practices is that the ego likes to measure itself based on how much it has collected, and like with any desire, possession ends in boredom. Novelty is constantly being sought in the brain and the search begins again. There’s nothing inherently wrong with learning more and the brain does gain a clarity by learning more, but unless the dissatisfaction underneath is dealt with, it becomes like an addiction to regain excitement of a discovery, only to find that we are still aging and difficulties of the world are still there. Gangaji asks “What am I trying to escape?”

Now of course the question is, is this just another practice to collect? Gangaji says “stopping is not a practice. It is simply the opportunity to see that within this seemingly endless flow of thoughts, there is a choice to not follow the thoughts. In not following thoughts, the mind stops, and what is here, what is silent, and what is always stopped can be revealed…Opening to the truth of our own essential being is simply a matter of receiving. But because of our conditioning, this doesn’t seem like a simple matter. There are usually complications and fears surrounding simply receiving, simply opening. We are conditioned to fear the unknown depths of ourselves, suspecting the worst. There comes a time when we can and must meet this primal fear. When we are finally willing to face head-on the suspected worst in ourselves, we discover an amazing, unbelievable truth. Opening the mind to what has previously been feared and avoided reveals the capacity to bear and truly embrace discomfort and even pain. Eventually, the real discovery is that whatever we fully embrace always reveals the peace that we were seeking through all our attempts to avoid discomfort….The only thing that separates you from recognizing the truth of who you are as eternal stillness is following some thought that says you are not that…It is an invitation to stop searching for something to rescue you from yourself.”

Naturally thoughts will fill the mind with questions, creating more stress. In Gangaji’s The Diamond in your Pocket, she says “whatever question arises for you as you read this book, the most immediate answer to that question is simply to open.” Targeting the most painful thoughts are the thoughts of inadequacy. Her insight is that “the willingness to be absolutely nothing, to be nobody, is the willingness to be free.” She often says “be completely not enough.” This is similar to Marisa Peer’s “You are enough.” These slogans can point in the right direction and are all about how we measure ourselves to others. It’s the most painful part of the brain because rejection from society meant you had no access to the resources you needed for survival in the ancient world. In a modern world, this may not be applicable. If you are rejected you’ll still be fed, but the feeling of rejection is as powerfully negative as before. A lot of our self-esteem is being able to compare our success with the failure of others. Being able to open to not being enough, or being enough because you deserve to exist, is away to accept imperfection in yourself so that you can recover your emotions and get back to living your life. When you can do this, you can learn to stop attacking yourself by demanding perfect standards. It’s important to control this because people can commit suicide over their public image. We have to be able to inhabit a private self as well, if we want to be sane. Gangaji says “You will recognize the power and the potential of simply being—not moving toward pleasure, not keeping away pain, not getting another life, and not avoiding the fact of death.”

Be Completely Not Enough – Gangaji: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLN__QHwpss&t=3s

The biggest disease affecting humanity – I am not enough – Marisa Peer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw3NyUMLh7Y

The Diamond In Your Pocket – Gangaji: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781591795520/

Suffering and Addiction – Gangaji: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlLcI5oDKu4

I Am Enough: Mark Your Mirror And Change Your Life – Marisa Peer: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781916411005/

The Pleasure Principle – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gurqv-the-pleasure-principle-sigmund-freud.html

Ego to satisfy craving

A Conscious TV interview with Georgi Y Johnson shows the difficulty that meditators have to face when dealing with their conditioning. “The conditioning runs so deep to the very formation of the mind. It’s always shocking how much we are still conditioned.” Even the interviewer Renate McNay confirms that she is “sometimes amazed myself just only yesterday I discovered a structure which I thought I went beyond the structure. It keeps coming up, the depth is so…There are generations and generations..our whole ancestral lineage is behind this very structure.” This hints at the fact that if there are biological elements to what is coming up in our conditioning, we may have to deal with those impulses for the rest of our lives. They may weaken because they are not acted on, but they may never go away completely and we have to be accepting of that. Any addictive personalities will have to settle for weakened impulses and triggers and make that a part of the story of their lives received with acceptance.

The Psychology of Awakening – Conscious TV – Georgi Y Johnson interviewed by Renate McNay: (12:36) https://youtu.be/_BQdbwxWUXc

Meditators have to be vigilant with their practice and humble about their progress. The ego can celebrate too quickly. Leonard Jacobson makes it plain. “You can’t turn presence into a religion. It doesn’t belong to you. The Ego can’t use it, because the moment the Ego tries to use presence, you are no longer present. That’s where a lot of people make mistakes. They very quickly want to become teachers, or use the power of presence to somehow get more into their lives, be more successful or powerful. It’s very easy to be deceived. It’s very easy for the Ego to walk around thinking it’s present and thinking it’s Enlightened. If that happens, it could be a few more lifetimes before you wake up, or few more hundred lifetimes, maybe never. ‘I can use you,’ says God. ‘You cannot use me.'” This is precisely the part of the mind that demolishes the meditation for most people and is something to watch out for on a moment by moment basis.

From Illusion to Truth – Leonard Jacobson (45:40)  https://youtu.be/JFSSKtCYFkM

Most of the time meditators still follow their old conditioning, even if they have some smaller breakthroughs. The ego can take over the practice and co-opt it for its old addictive agenda and why Mariana Caplan says that everyone spiritually by-passes at one point or another. Many people have a difficulty incorporating what they learned into a daily life. All those relationship skills are still needed. Now of course Mariana’s reminder is important in that many people can use spirituality for avoidance and bypass responsibility, but I would add a qualification in that some people are highly sensitive and have biological depression. They may need to be alone or have relationships that have a lot of downtime to reduce stress. When people have severe depression, everything irritates them, including responsibilities. Ultimately the individual has to curate their own life and find what works for their brain to heal. Others with less psychological problems instead have the opportunity to put more on their plate. Gangaji’s terms like “opening” and “receiving” can include opening to responsibilities. Meditation, if done skillfully can also watch hypocrisy in action and watch the different selves we have that often contradict each other. By seeing the variety within oneself, the meditation can let go of a superior “meditator” self. Similar to Transference Focused Therapy by Kernberg, we can accept a variety of good and bad elements in oneself. We don’t have to uphold an idealistic self, and in another way, we have to know what is bad and what is good to be able to choose good, otherwise we could be in a sea of good or bad and not know its value. Value comes from comparison. The opening helps to integrate the good and bad selves together. “I am a mixture of good and bad and so are others.” The defense mechanisms can be reduced. If you accept bad in yourself, you don’t have to defend it. The bad impulses can be opened to, received, and not acted on. We develop ourselves by not being perfect, or expecting perfection from others, but by choosing good as often as possible, and also because we see the results are better. Being able to do good is often based on how much energy people have to control impulses and the skills they’ve learned over time. That’s why there is a science of recidivism. Some people return to old habits over and over again, and others develop in healthier paths.

Everybody spiritually by-passes – Mariana Caplan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqJ3iqJPX_s

Spiritual Bypassing and Inner Bonding: https://youtu.be/JVrkwqUdKE8

Transference Focused Therapy – Otto Kernberg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUHO5laXVug

There are a lot of challenges in life that spiritual seekers have to be thinking about. Realistically you will have to part with all your possessions and relationships sooner or later. Being prepared means using the imagination to prepare for bad scenarios. Thanissaro Bhikkhu provides this test and says that “if you can’t even think about the topic, then that’s a sign you’ve got some inner work to do.” Like Jacobson, Thanissaro warns that “if anything comes up in the mind that’s new, and you are not sure about it, stay with the observer. Just watch it. Don’t be fazed. Don’t be enthusiastic. Don’t jump to a lot of conclusions. Just be there with the observer, and whatever it is will pass. Watch out for the part of the mind that doesn’t want it to pass.”

The Craft of the Heart – Thanissaro Bhikkhu https://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/y2019/190521_The_Craft_of_the_Heart.mp3

Skillful Thinking – Thanissaro Bhikkhu: https://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/y2001/0109n1b1%20Skillful%20Thinking.mp3

In Buddhism, craving is targeted as the source of this conditioning. Desire has a mixture of hatred of the current circumstances that motivates changes in the environment. Stress can enter simply by being bored, or by finding challenging circumstances. People can also advertise what you don’t have to give you more feelings of lack and boredom. When boredom or stress has gone beyond the comfort zone of the individual, the motivation to change things is at its height. Csikszentmihalyi’s work shows that. The brain becomes addicted to the thrill of the chase like a hunter. Mental peace loses its priority and suffering continues if the challenges and skills aren’t modulated properly. This isn’t to say that a healthy use of ego and challenges isn’t good. It’s necessary for survival, but the mind will always benefit by having more balance if it can find more and more skills to find relief.

Flow – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: https://rumble.com/v1gvked-how-to-gain-flow-in-7-steps.html

The art of focus – Christina Bengsston https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF80HzqvAoA

Mastering craving

So if craving is hard to master with all this opening and receiving, what is this extra work? Certainly the imagination has to be accessed to weigh choices. Comparing if there will be more love and peace somewhere else can help because an allure for a person, object, or situation can be compared to the love and peace one has already. Usually the imagination will stop at the pleasure of some activity and the motivation to act begins. To hold the activity in the mind long enough to vividly see the realistic costs and consequences can be a form of skillful stress and disenchantment to reduce unhealthy motivations and craving. Even then, most meditators have big cravings and some addictions when they start their practice. This is often the reason why they are practicing. Cravings and motivation move quickly and they are hard to see. If meditators are able to see through the ego’s desire for power and consumption what are some methods that will allow them to do that?

Mary Aubry from IMC Washington DC does an excellent survey of mindfulness practices and emphasizes to notice both when a disturbance is present, and also when the disturbance has past. Unless we pay attention to the peace that is there it’s hard for the mind to enjoy the relief. It may be off to another tantalizing thought world. Waiting for experiences to pass away is the key practice. It becomes more permanent when the mind enjoys feeling normal. That feeling of being normal is so enjoyable it competes with intoxication or other forms of escapism. Rob Burbea describes this counter intuitive method very well by focusing on where students, who try just waiting for experiences to pass away, get caught, because they’re still trying to avoid the pain. There’s a lot of doing going on in meditation and part of that is the natural need to repress painful content and sensations. An aversion to clinging. Rob says that “the aversion to the pain of clinging, partly fuels the clinging more. I’m after an ending of this pain of clinging. It’s almost like an addiction to cigarettes or something. Partly, one of the ways of working really skillfully with it is learning to tolerate that craving and the pain…If I just watch it with mindfulness it gets stronger and stronger and at some point the person says ‘I can’t tolerate it anymore I’ve got to have a cigarette’, or whatever it is, but if you just watch it and have space, there is pain and clinging and it rises and at a certain point it kind of peaks and then it naturally dies down because one’s not feeding it through the aversion to the pain and the clinging. The more one does that and sees clinging arise, it starts to lose its grip, it’s power over us, and also its actual force, or the unhealthy clinging. There is such a thing as healthy clinging. Good clinging to good stuff that opens us up, but that unhealthy movement starts losing its power.” Here Rob is working on a similar level to Gangaji. Instead of saying “receiving”, and “opening”, Rob describes it as “welcoming”, or “allowing.” These are synonyms for the relaxing of clinging found in the Anapanasati Sutta 4 tetrads. Why it’s easy to fail is to not know how to deal with pain and craving. We may have to continue allowing or welcoming no matter what intensity comes up and for long periods of time until the impulse naturally dies away because of its impermanence, and then pay attention to the freedom when it arrives. This isn’t to say that this practice can only be used by itself. If you are on powerful drugs, or if the addiction is very far along, withdrawal symptoms can kill you, so you will most likely need professional help from addictions counselors and medication.

The Anapanasati Sutta: 4 tetrads: https://rumble.com/v1gon6r-the-anapanasati-sutta-4-stages-of-meditation.html

Are humans stupid?

Pema Chödrön, talks about the difficulty of tolerating withdrawal symptoms. People can have feelings that they are going to die, and some do, but addiction is in particular a challenge to our sense of superiority. Pema is known for her compassion and understanding, but she can also ask sharp questions that we may ask ourselves in our worst moments. “We actually, even though a quite intelligent species, you know on the charts, of the evolution of consciousness, we’re pretty high up there, and some of us are even called geniuses and brilliant people, but I think really we’re pretty stupid. We look to things outside of ourselves, we look for strength in what weakens us.” In this talk I referenced she goes on to describe how we get caught in the same habit of not wanting to feel negative feelings and using experiences and substances to numb the pain. The Tibetan method she uses, is similar to the “opening” or “welcoming” methods already mentioned. The goal is to face those feelings and feel them completely, even if they are uncomfortable. By learning to accept those imperfections in ourselves, and to know that they are impermanent, means we can achieve relief sooner than if we run away from those feelings and numb them. An example she uses which is one of the best on how the Flow state can be used in an unhealthy way. “We see this in the ecology movement, which is such a worthy thing, yet we see a lot of dogmatic warfare. I remember in the early sixties, I lived in Berkeley…We had a guy living in our basement, who was very involved [in the free speech movement]. Basically, as soon as it looked like the conflict was going to get resolved he would go into a deep depression, and then there was some kind of elation that would come over him when a new cause could arise. I’m not trying to put down anything, but it’s the way we make things solid, the way we hold on to things. It’s a way of going astray from the true nature of reality which is not one certain way. Each moment is completely fresh. It has not happened before and will never happen again. It’s unique. All that is overlooked when we cling to things and beliefs. The real truth of the matter is that we can use these things as stepping stones, use them as ways of communicating, using them as a way of enriching our lives and enjoying things, but if we cling to it, and use it as a weapon, if we find we’re threatened, should anybody disagree, then we know that somehow we are going astray, that we are blinding ourselves and weakening ourselves.”  So in a sense there is method in the madness in that a lot of human history has been to use aggression to end our frustrations, but this is because we are not seeing clearly enough what is going on all the time. Instead of stupidity, Buddhism points to a more subtle problem, ignorance.

Ignorance (Avijja)

One of Rob’s students asks an important question. Why is there a sense of lack? Rob points to the Buddhist understanding of ignorance. “The sense of lack…From a dharma perspective it comes from fundamental delusion. When there is this belief in a self that’s real, and really separate from others and the rest of the universe then automatically just in that proposition, there’s a sense of having to defend oneself having to look out for oneself, having to feed oneself, which is also a biological necessity, all of that inherent in that sense of separateness, inherent in the sense of self being something real which I have to look out for, in its very finiteness and its separateness. There’s going to be a sense of lack there. It’s a fundamental delusion and out of that delusion comes the clinging and the rejection, which only feed that delusion and don’t really end up satisfying us. So the whole thing kind of snowballs, builds like that. There’s a way that that sense of lack and the fear of that lack are just part of…the condition of unawakened consciousness. One of the fundamental movements of awakening is puncturing that delusion. There is not that sense of lack, that sense of imperfection and incompleteness, and that comes into the very feeling of life more and more and it’s not dependent on me achieving this or someone saying your good or anything like that or having this kind of person or that kind of person in my life. It’s just that something in the whole sense and perception of existence itself has changed and opened out, has dissolved, or is in the process of dissolving and a radically different sense of existence comes into being…Emptiness, and Metta dissolves that misperception. If I’m continually investing in things to fill the lack, that are not really going to help, I’m just going off in the wrong direction. There are many kinds of happiness. I could go and play a slot machine and get a certain amount of happiness, but how does that compare to when you got the Metta just right?” Rob continues talking about the effect family has on a person’s psyche, but even if a person has all the external world controlled, it doesn’t heal that sense of lack deeply enough. I personally would add that there is also a sense of scarcity. There’s a fear of being without in the future if I don’t act now. Similar to a hoarding mentality, we all have a fear that if we don’t gather enough the options won’t be available in the future, and this is partly true. There is competition and scarcity, but the mind forgets that a lot of what we want isn’t a necessity and gathering every experience means also gathering all the consequences and downsides of those experiences. The world always has something that is not to preference and the mind’s impulses are reacting to that constantly with tightening. We tighten around the initial tightening impulse until the pain makes us motivated to release the pain with something addictive, or under extreme duress, suicide. Rob describes a practice that instead goes in the opposite direction of increased constriction.

“The self sense is constructed by aversion and clinging. Seeing it over and over again. The mind creates these connections dot-to-dot and constructs a self that way. Allowing is non-aversion.” If the allowing method doesn’t seem to be working then Rob recommends that the frustration felt can also be allowed. Relax aversion, contraction and clinging. “Have you noticed that when you relax aversion or clinging to something it often dissolves a thing? With curiosity being a motivating factor. Aversion to this thing over here is clinging to this opposite. When I’m aversive to a pain in the knee, I’m clinging to wanting a sense of comfort. When I want romance, often times I’m aversive to loneliness or what that makes me feel or think of myself if I see myself as a lonely person in a Hollywood saturated society. Aversion to the pain of clinging is partly what fuels the clinging more.” Here Rob means that dissolving a thing doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, but the charged recognition of a object as being likeable or unlikeable dissolves. Later as the practice progresses, after many hours and days, the perception of objects starts to fade.

Whether you call it a dot-to-dot or a staccato morse code of conditioning, it begins a contraction, based on a desire to modify reality to your immediate preference. In a psychological understanding, this is the beginning of defense or control mechanisms. The requirement of strong concentration is to catch those early contractions to start allowing / opening / receiving / welcoming them so that presence is maintained. Desire always has this clouding over and conceptual overlay and it’s goal is to tighten up to achieve it’s goal and then gain pleasure when the stress naturally decreases with satisfaction. This mechanism is also creating goals in the meditation, but ultimately that tension and release has to be let go of over and over again to develop further. Desire outside of allowing / opening starts up again because the desire mechanism feels emptiness, or the beginning of withdrawal symptoms, and requires a new target to feel more relief. Meditative presence brings withdrawal symptoms, but with strong pleasure in concentration and pleasure in the freshness in the senses fulfills the emotional craving so that overall craving reduces. Waiting long enough for craving to naturally fall is the big challenge, but each time it’s experienced, the more the brain is able to reset its addiction and learn to do without. The feeling is like you are going to cave in to the craving, but when you wait long enough the impulse stops and a sense of freedom and control arises. This increases self-esteem because you can know that when the craving comes back you believe in your ability to wait until impulses pass away.

Any strong preferences for spiritual rituals will then appear useless and one can welcome the laundry, cleaning, caring for children, yardwork etc. When impulses try to take over, you can know that they will naturally go away so you can direct yourself. Tiredness isn’t oppressive, it just requires normal rest like everyone else. The meaning of reifying, to make real the world, is really just to contract over preferences. Yet a use of this contraction can have pleasure as Csikszentmihalyi pointed out. Rob confirms “what is it to be able to be in the self to have that richness and fullness and my journey, knowing oneself, relating to oneself, and acting in the world responsibly, and that whole growth and the journey? To me that is really important and beautiful. There’s a way we can obviously grasp hold of self and make it a problem, but we can also grasp hold of emptiness and make it a problem. Nagarjuna says ‘if you cling to emptiness or pick it up in the wrong way, it’s like picking up a snake by the wrong end.’ We could go into nihilism and obliterate everything, obliterate the self. For me it’s really a balance…It’s the middle way of emptiness teachings…I can be in the box of emptiness and then I shift gear and I’m in the box of self. I just go back and forth and not worry about the one when I’m in the other. When I’m in the self, am I doing it in a way that feels fulfilling, and beautiful, and rich, in your uniqueness and your sense that the life brings, or is it a prison and a constriction and a self-hatred? Similar with emptiness. Is it opening up love, is it opening up the sense of connectedness? In that deepening of the understanding, the middle way comes more and more.” As I’ve shown in many other videos, we have to have a self to enact boundaries to prevent exploitation. People who are empathic are targeted by predators and one needs a self to protect oneself from exploitation. This is not just opinion, but also personal experience. There are many people, George Simon says 1/7, that are predatory and are not going to get better anytime soon. Their life is all about the contraction and achieving their predatory agendas. So practice, but please don’t tolerate abuse. Anger, when it’s seen as a healthy response to outrage, doesn’t have that painful clinging to it, because it makes sense and a person who welcomes responsibility will be able to welcome the responsibility to hold people accountable. This way you feel essentially normal, because you are not in an altered state, but you are using the self appropriately and you are not deranged. You have a full range of emotions.

In Sheep’s Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People by George K. Simon: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781935166306/

Understanding & Dealing with Manipulative People – Inner Integration’s Meredith Miller interviews Dr. George Simon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-Vv0qpK_mE

WNAAD Stalking: https://rumble.com/v1gvhk1-stalking-world-narcissistic-abuse-awareness-day.html

Adding the tool of what I like to call above, “de-contraction”, to other tools I’ve spoken of already I can see how this can play out with many people. For example, a person could be clinging to an activity when they should be doing a responsibility instead. A spouse could call them out, and the brain clings “I want to do this!” Then if the person remembers, “oh I’m clinging” and welcomes the clinging and relaxes it, they can get caught again by clinging to not feeling embarrassed and try to defend their ego. “Don’t tell me what to do!” Then they’ll have to let go of clinging to that as well, and keep going this way until they are better and can act responsibly. The sign of mental health is to take care of responsibilities first before any rewards, which matches up with Mariana Caplan. That’s why we want improved concentration. To get things done. Not to runaway. Adding this to other tools like play psychology the mind can get started and feel a sense of ownership with the ego in a healthy way. Another tool I’ve covered allows the mind the permission to breathe in a way that is full of pleasure. Emotionally feeding on the breath helps to bring the mind to the present moment because it’s grazing on air and doesn’t need to ruminate on possibilities, but instead can act on opportunities now. While allowing, or welcoming imperfection, the mind is free to adjust skills and goals so that the ego’s efforts are rewarded with Flow, or aimed at more appropriate goals if that is not possible. The emotional feeding on the breath, which keeps me in the present moment, allows experience to Shine in perception. Noticing the benefits that are taken for granted, like modern technology, infrastructure, trees and plants, creates a sense of gifts, appreciation and thankfulness. If the ego interrupts with some insights or ideas, those can be gifts as well if we don’t obsess about them. The thoughts can be welcomed and relaxed so that enjoyment of presence continues. We have to remember that we are all just passing through. It sometimes takes a person that appears to be successful in the usual sense that most people chase, which is having professional success and a fandom, to remind us that it doesn’t last.

What is thinking? – Martin Heidegger: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780060905286/

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. Live Long And Prosper! ~ Leonard Nimoy’s last Tweet

https://twitter.com/TheRealNimoy

Abiding in Emptiness – Mary Aubry https://dharmaseed.org/talks/audio_player/990/56371.html

MN 121: The Shorter Discourse on Emptiness: https://suttacentral.net/mn121/en/sujato

Deepening into Emptiness – Rob Burbea: https://dharmaseed.org/teacher/210/talk/12520/

Welcoming – Rob Burbea: https://dharmaseed.org/teacher/210/talk/9813/

Dependent Co-arising: https://rumble.com/v1goxkv-dependent-co-arising-various-authors.html

Emotional Feeding: https://rumble.com/v1gqvl1-emotional-feeding-thanissaro-bhikkhu.html