Friday, March 19, 2010

awakening cont...2

so continuing with awakening, Id said that Id made irreversible progress. There are certain points in a practitioners spiritual career where they can never slide back from again. These would be called paths. completing a path ensures one doesnt have to do that path ever again, regardless of circumstance. I have completed at least two of these paths my self and am working with a very strange third.
  after first path there was an internal sense of being pulled deeply into reality. I would now enter states of consciousness all the time that used to be somewhat rare. It was very clear some deepening had taken place. I was amazed with this deepening and how I could now enter "emptiness" at will if I had a few minutes to observe. However it was still foggy, I wasnt sure how far I had gotten and I wasnt sure how I got there. After about 6 or so months of intense daily practice, meeting with some very experienced lamas and doing minimal retreat time, Id  went through the cycle of stages (known as vippassana jhanas) again and attained second path. this felt much deeper to me, and Id actually gone through a cycle before that but it wasnt a big shift so i just discredited it. The way fruition felt now was more clear. I was much more aware of how it happened and the arising of the different stages and states that accompany it. For the next few days after penetrating it, it was like I was having many many fruitions with many many instances of perception sort of shaking or vibrating abruptly and then disappearing.
   So now that leaves me at third path. Well id requested guidance from the dharma overground arahats to help me, and they gave me instruction along with the criterion to judge if one were an anagami(third path completed yogi) or not. The criteria was, If you can see all phenomena as luminous and empty in real time. period. Before I would see phenomena arise and pass, as objects, no matter how subtle, and that would do the trick. Now there is a different goal. See though the whole picture here and now.
  Along with the new twist, theres another aspect different about this path. There are the most strange presentation of cycles. I experience a lot of cycles on a regular basis now, some intense, some periphery, some seem like old cycles did, some only present the first half, some only present the second half, just weird all together. And thats where Im at. some times I can see through the whole thing for days whenever I remember to, and then I go into a dark night and  things get uncomfortable and buzzy.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Procrastination

My recent experience with working on the pervasive problem of procrastination has been very counter-intuitive. I previously believed that procrastination was a manifestation of a lack of fear. Im actually learning that procrastination is a manifestation of too much or unfounded fear. I notice my self always making threats about getting something done. If I dont do my paper Ill fail and then that would piss me off and..........etc. Im always under the impression that I must do things when in reality I do not have to do anything. anything at all. I dont even have to eat if I dont want to. I dont have to save money if I dont want to. I dont have to be nice or conform to social norms if I dont want to. If I do something, its because I wanted to. Also, when Im procrastinating Im usually making things appear much larger and more difficult than they are.
 More often than not, procrastination is rooted in rigid perfectionism. The more one procrastinates, usually the more critical of them selves they are. Changing self talk is instrumental in overcoming procrastination, form I have to, to I choose to. An excellent audio book on this topic is neile fiore's Now Habit