Variety of 4th path attainments

Thoughts -
I am wondering about the differences in people's reporting of how 4th path plays out. I am looking at the arupa jhanas for inspiration.
Did spaciousness loose the personal identification? no --> I AM state...the integrated field is Me still.
Did consciousness loose the personal identification? no --> agency still exists albeit lessened
I wonder about nothingness next and what that means....the emptyness of all phenomenon?
neither perception nor non perception....who knows..
There is a sutta somewhere that talks about moving up the jhanas and getting enlightenment. What if there is the ability to get to a nondual shift is not predicated on completing all the jahanic factors? Might there be some stuff still needing to be seen thru? Might the feeling of doneness mask the need to complete the rest; just like equanimity tends to trap people?
~D

As descriptions by different people I consider to have attained something important differ I'm also interested in this topic. I don't feel the linked threads really do it justice.

I wrote a long quasi-rant about this that I'll post tomorrow if it seems productive to me then. I think I'll do this for all my quasi-rants.

Looking forward to the quasi rant. Awakenetwork is a good place for heartfelt but ultimately respectful rants.

If one is interested in being thorough, it's probably a good idea to distinguish descriptions written by people who think they have 4th path but don't; people who do, but just woke up very recently and don't have a fully matured view of what's going on; people who woke up a while ago and are recollecting via the filter of deeper developments; people who develop further at different paces (or not at all) so that the understanding even of two people who have both been awake for 5 or 10 years isn't comparable at all, and one will say the other is making stuff up...

Which also points to the question of what we mean by 'fourth path'...

If 4th path is pretty much 'awakening,' which is how 90% of people use it, the it's highly recognizable by other people who've gone through it. I've been wrong exactly twice in evaluating people over the years, annd colleagues I check with generally agree.

But the signs I find to be the strongest giveaways are signs of humility, softness, etc.

Even as a person approaches awakening they tend to gradually become less defensive, more welcoming of teachings they didn't want to hear, humbler, more recognizing this isn't all about them and what they want, a lowness that comes from a giving up. They begin to cry more often, to be fearful, to feel foolish, to dread dying, etc.

If someone proudly rattles off a list of symptoms they read in some sutta or book that's a great sign they are still not near waking up.

So it's not non-identifiable, but i personally am way less convinced when a person uses all the right words, and more by the changes in behavior (as expressed in the kinds of stories the person chooses to share).

And to add another vegetable to the stew, there are factors that are A Big Deal when new, which develop over time (or not), but are not definitive either, because they change. So for instance, in the first year after waking up (sometimes later, depending on individual) most people begin to encounter a change in the way common strong emotional reactions are experienced. The physicality of the reaction becomes less and less entangled with conceptualizing, and one begins to notice sometimes startling changes in reactivity around certain common habits. One can than jump on this as definitive, be defensive around the concepts of emotional reactivity and how it relates to awakening, think of it as a special attainment and so forth. But it can/may part of an ongoing process over years, and keeps changing, and can/may become pretty much irrelevant.. Or, said more humanly, one gradually ceases to be so obsessively interested in oneself, one forgets about oneself more and more. But again, why and when and how this arises or doesn't for specific individuals is a mystery.

Another example I've heard popular teachers describe as characteristic of awakening is the ability to zoom in and out of awakeness, so that after awakening one might sometimes be caught up in an activity or reaction, but can remind oneself of awakeness and "zoom out" and re-establish the sense of expansiveness etc. This is also a phase, and can/may go away (though I know people who still harp on it years into waking up, so for some it may not, who knows why).

So this is one of the difficulties in determining some sort of fixed descriptions. In a pinch I guess I'd default to standard traditional old descriptions, which are usually very comprehensive and tweaked over thousands of years. But they are often subject to misinterpretation, especially by the inexperienced. Personally, the more the (so far very few) years pass, the more in awe I am of the depth of wisdom that I never saw before in Christianity, for instance. What seems like analogy or quaint poetry turns out to reveal deeper and deeper mystery.

Which points to another thing, which is the obsessive desire to intellectually understand everything in great detail, as if that will help. It literally doesn't help. I guarantee you. It expresses ones own lack of comfort with vastness and the infinite and unknowing. But it is a natural inclination for many and not a problem in that sense. So go for it.

All above is why Chris always says "YMMV".

Ona, I'm nodding as I read your posts, it jibes with what I've seen beyond what I've experienced.

The vegetable stew can be even more complex. Like you are saying, it can include non-Buddhism traditions, who would never use "4th path" as a label. I personally try not to use 4th path, because I think it links in, through association, a lot of other ideas/beliefs/metaphysics which I can't really endorse (as if my endorsement matters, but whatever...)

And to complicate further, the societal structure/worldview often can be another overlay which colors awakening, it's interpretation or manifestation expression. I'm looking in my files for a great summary of this, and if I find it I will link it., but it's basically the Ken Wilber idea that awakening within a hunter-gather society is going to look different than a modern or post-modern society. For example, women's voices are going to be more heard in hunter-gatherer (even as the matriarch), much less so in early agrarian, and back again in modern... and that's going to potentially change the expression from outward behavior, quiet behavior, equal status, etc. Same thing with societies with married priests vs. monastic priests, etc. Same thing with the level of affluence/poverty in society. Same thing with the level of "civilized behavior" expected of a society. It all changes the "characteristics" assigned to awakening.

I think what ultimately happens -- and I will claim this for myself, in my experience -- is that we both resonate with the timeless, conditionless pointing-out of awakening stories, but also with the milieu of the tradition of that teaching. All of us have portions of our mind that are about primal power, about parental/authoritative structure, about magical non-causality, about logic and science, about sociology and interdependence, about holographic-panoramic mind, about transluencent vibratory existence-but-not-existence. To the extent that we need or avoid those expressions of reality, we can be on a bit of a search for it, to feel and become more multi-dimensionally whole.

For example, when I'm cut off from personal power, the shamanistic and very very traditional people's approaches seem wildly attractive. When I'm saturated in the materialistic cause-effect and it's oppressive, the magickal traditions seem a draw. And these and many others have a social/psychological dimension yet point toward awakening.

What I see in many long-term awake people is that they are more interested and accepting of the whole range of expressions/characteristics of awakening, and less likely to rule out things as being incompatible. And you're right, they are more willing to admit that they just don't really have personal experience with some aspects and so they don't judge, they just don't know. Ultimately, they have very open descriptions or models of the domain of awakening. They might express it as facets on the jewel of awakening, parallel or concurrent levels of consciousness/being, or other very open descriptions.

Hope this adds something to the conversation.

I think the Jeffrey Martin paper that was linked somewhere recently is a decent collection of characteristics for this kind of thing. He found 5 clusters, three big ones being self-identity, thought, and emotion. I would describe these aspects as diminished in quantity as well as in attachment. Also, roughly speaking he found a phenomenon of being aware and "stuck" in the present, and a perception that memory doesn't seem to be quite as good. I would personally add a profound increase in the factors of tranquility/contentedness and openness. Also I perceive a fair amount of visual anomalies and errors that I assume the brain used to simply smooth over.

In line with his earlier dissertation, I would agree that there seems to be a tendency to conflate psychological development with enlightenment or vice versa. As near as I can perceive the absolute doesn't give a crap about psychology, sociology, etc. but I think the perceptual changes do tend to make one amenable towards a particular direction, yet not necessarily compelled. I do think psychology can be very useful in reducing suffering, as could many other things. It kind of depends on your definition of enlightenment. It makes a certain kind of sense to include "everything", but then again I can point to some very much non-enlightened folks who are very "nice", probably nicer than me, but yeah, they're basically lost.

" As near as I can perceive the absolute doesn't give a crap about psychology, sociology, etc..."

Seems that the people I regard as "the enlightened" don't give a crap about "the absolute," either!

Here's the overview of ego/worldview development... I find this write up to be one of the best I've read:

www.cook-greuter.com/Cook-Greuter%209%20...20new%201.1'14%2097p [1].pdf

note: looks like the square brackets in the filename are messing up the hotlink, so you'll need to copy and paste into browser window

Chris Marti wrote:

I don't feel the linked threads really do it justice.

Well then!

I posted those links because they are informative discussions on the same topic that I remember from years of participating here. They were not meant to be a definitive statement on this subject, just helpful additional reading.

Fair?

If that seemed like a jab, sorry. The tone was meant to be frank not curt.

My quasi-rant is mostly useless. I'll summarize a few points that I think are useful.

That the seeking of a 'final enlightenment' is useless for practice at a given time for a given individual doesn't mean a community shouldn't compare descriptions of experiences of masters, collate maps, encourage dialogue, etc. I don't think it should be assumed that doing so is necessarily trying to 'box in', 'tie down', 'plant flags on', 'label' etc enlightenment. I acknowledge, however, that doing so may create divisiveness, competitiveness, unnecessary contention, confusion, misunderstanding, etc. I still think it should be tried.

Kate Gowen wrote: " As near as I can perceive the absolute doesn't give a crap about psychology, sociology, etc..."
Seems that the people I regard as "the enlightened" don't give a crap about "the absolute," either!

Heh. The absolute is kind of "absolute".

I found the Cook Greuter stuff useful to look thru at some point (wanted to provide a working link, I think it should work).

I was on a walk yesterday and thought about dreams. I think one of Daniel's 4th path lists turned me on to this aspect. There is something different I would say about my relationship with dreams. I'm certainly more aware of them, I don't ever have the perception of not having dreamed anymore. Somehow they feel more intense or real or something. There's more lucid dreaming - here everything seems very real, testably real (and you better believe I test that sh*t), and yet I am fully aware it is an illusion. Something very useful about that.

Eric wrote: Also, roughly speaking he found a phenomenon of being aware and "stuck" in the present, and a perception that memory doesn't seem to be quite as good. I would personally add a profound increase in the factors of tranquility/contentedness and openness. Also I perceive a fair amount of visual anomalies and errors that I assume the brain used to simply smooth over.

What kind of memory does this mean, remembering what happened a week ago/a few hours, or working memory like you'd use while reading a book/doing a math problem?

Femtosecond wrote:

Eric wrote: Also, roughly speaking he found a phenomenon of being aware and "stuck" in the present, and a perception that memory doesn't seem to be quite as good. I would personally add a profound increase in the factors of tranquility/contentedness and openness. Also I perceive a fair amount of visual anomalies and errors that I assume the brain used to simply smooth over.

What kind of memory does this mean, remembering what happened a week ago/a few hours, or working memory like you'd use while reading a book/doing a math problem?

It's a very specific kind of memory that is affected, for me: The part where you keep constant track of what you were doing 2 hours ago, who said what to whom 4 hours ago, what you plan on doing later today and tomorrow and next week; the part where you keep remembering your last vacation and fantasizing about your next one and all that. Same function, I suspect, as the constant rehashing/planning of conversations or events (especially stressful ones, like arguments).

Since a lot of people worry that various aspects of waking up may destroy their ability to function socially and at work: I do a lot of reading and study, memorization, music lessons and all sorts of productive work including financial stuff and I actually do a better job (learning very rapidly, concentrating for long periods without distraction, getting things done the moment they cross my desk, etc.). Probably just because I'm far less distracted by constantly remembering what I ate for breakfast. Or maybe God has given me some supernatural ability to do spreadsheets.

This did not, for me, happen in a particularly notable way at what most people I know from this site or my teachers called 4th path; it didn't become notable until about four years after that. General mental silence has kept increasing, and that includes the kind of "memory" above, which is specifically expressed as mental chatter and imagery. Other kinds of memory, such as doing work or memorizing music, don't involve mental narrative, right? That may be the important factor - the gradual reduction of mental chatter.

From Martin's paper " Clusters of Individual Experiences form a Continuum of Persistent Non-Symbolic Experiences in Adults ":

As participants neared the further reaches of the continuum, they frequently reported significant difficulty with recalling memories that related to their life history. They did not feel this way about facts, but rather about the details of the biographical moments surrounding the learning of those facts. They also reported that encoding for these types of memories seemed greatly reduced. Although this was their perception it did not appear to be the case when talking to them. They were typically rich sources of personal history information and their degree of recall seemed indistinguishable from participants who were in earlier locations on the continuum...

These participants also felt that their short and mid-term memory was significantly affected. While I witnessed instances of participants being unable to remember details of conversations that had occurred only moments earlier, for the most part even participants who felt that they had this type of memory deficit seemed able to accurately recall recent parts of our conversation, things that happened earlier in the day, and so forth...

As they neared and entered the farther reaches of the continuum, participants routinely reported that they were increasingly unable to remember things such as scheduled appointments, while still being able to remember events that were part of a routine.

This corresponds to my daily experience - memory (particularly short term memory with appointments etc) is now pretty poor, when it used to be very strong. I have to keep lists now.
It makes me laugh though - an example from a few days ago: I had booked a gourmet restaurant for a birthday and then completely forgot I had done that and went and bought a whole bunch of ingredients to cook a special dinner for them, then as I was preparing some of the ingredients, suddenly remembered that dinner was booked, so had a good laugh, got ready and went out to dinner. I cooked dinner the following night. The recipient of the dinner of course had not forgotten and until I joked about it with them, were non the wiser about my forgetfulness. So I hadn't written it down and it just disappeared from mind.

So with respect to the heading of this thread, 'poor memory' is an attainment!

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Ona Kiser wrote:

Since a lot of people worry that various aspects of waking up may destroy their ability to function socially and at work: I do a lot of reading and study, memorization, music lessons and all sorts of productive work including financial stuff and I actually do a better job (learning very rapidly, concentrating for long periods without distraction, getting things done the moment they cross my desk, etc.). Probably just because I'm far less distracted by constantly remembering what I ate for breakfast. Or maybe God has given me some supernatural ability to do spreadsheets.

This did not, for me, happen in a particularly notable way at what most people I know from this site or my teachers called 4th path; it didn't become notable until about four years after that. General mental silence has kept increasing, and that includes the kind of "memory" above, which is specifically expressed as mental chatter and imagery. Other kinds of memory, such as doing work or memorizing music, don't involve mental narrative, right? That may be the important factor - the gradual reduction of mental chatter.

Two thoughts pertaining to this have recently occurred to me. The first one was about how ones relationship to their sexuality is changed. I notice in general when I have a buildup of sexual energy, but don't let it hijack my mind, it makes me more productive and more forceful or distinct in my thought process as well as movements and speech. Does that change with awakening?

And the second is about concentration and learning. I'm starting to do a lot more studying and I'm noticing that its difficult to get concentrated a lot of the time, and I'm wondering how this relates to meditative concentration, and how I can build both, and maybe sort of feel into what the awakened state might be like through concentration. One thing I notice a lot is that when reading, at times it happens in a kind of turbulent mental intonation as I read them, which is kind of reminiscent of physical difficulties while meditating and trying to concentrate.

This is a very interesting conversation for me. I have a bit of ADD, so I've always had trouble with certain kinds of tasks, or remembering appointments. I have a glitch in my brain, whereby I will plan on doing something, but not factor in the time it will take me to get to where I'm going, or forget the 5 minutes or so it would take me to get ready to leave the house. I'll think, I have this much time before I'm supposed to be somewhere, and think I can get this or that done in that amount of time. Yesterday, for example, I thought I could do the dishes before going downtown for a chiropractic appointment, but then realized I would need to eat lunch, and that would take up the time I had left.

ADD people need routines to help them with this kind of thing. I know that in my smallish town, I will need roughly 15 minutes to get to any destination in town, more if I'm going to campus and have to be concerned about parking. So I'll make a point of leaving 15 minutes before I have to be somewhere, always. When my glitch does its thing, as it did yesterday, I'll just smile and think, there it is again. I put everything on my Google calendar, with different colors assigned to different kinds of activities. As long as I remember to look at it at the beginning of each day, I'm fine. I also have simplified routines, always keeping my keys in exactly the same place (a compartment in my purse), and I always make a point of looking at them before I leave my office locked, or leave the house.

I had my awakening insight in October of 2013, so it's been a few months over a year. I feel now as if the past is no longer important. I know that before awakening, I would ruminate a lot, and let thoughts proliferate around a particular juicy "problem" I'd be having with someone or something. That is mostly over and done with. I do have life's ups and downs to cope with. My mother continues to take a lot of energy and time. Last week she was miserable whenever I went to see her, and made sure she let me know it in no uncertain terms. I was not sure how to respond to her, and instinctively pushed the unpleasantness away. This ended up causing a miserable flareup in my fibromyalgia, which I didn't understand until I was lying on the table in my chiropractor's office yesterday and realized that my symptoms appeared as a result of my refusal to acknowledge how I felt about my mother's depression. So I lay there and cried while the doctor was adjusting me (I told her what was going on, of course!). Later I had an appointment with a nurse from mom's facility, and we brainstormed solutions, which was helpful in settling my mind.

The drama and reactivity are greatly reduced. Often I feel that what Dan Ingram calls the "limited emotion model" applies to me. I can experience emotions, but they don't escalate to a full-blown drama. All the same, aspects of my basic personality structure are still with me; I have a tendency to try to keep everyone happy, or to defer to a more aggressive or a stronger personality, for example. This can lead to problems with my son, who will resist me in typical adolescent ways. I have become aware of the stress this will evoke in me, needing to say, "No, Paul, you need to get off the computer and get ready for bed," knowing he will give me his look and stalk away in anger.

Sometimes things feel unreal to me, or not unreal so much as empty of permanence. If I sit still and settle my mind for a moment, I can feel a deep, vibratory calm take over the body, even my teeth. Vibrating teeth--now there's a 4th-path attainment no one ever told me about!

Oh, and I do seem to be noticing a bit of precognition here and there. The other morning at home I saw that the toilet was running, so I reached into the tank and adjusted the rubber plug, and watched as things settled down and the water began refilling the tank. I thought, "That's one thing I can do--fix a toilet!" There's a limit to my technique, however, and I imagined myself reattaching a loose chain to the flush mechanism, which is the only other thing I know how to do. Later, when I visited my mother, another woman in her facility by name of Mary immediately approached me and asked me to go to her room with her. I shrugged and followed her into her bathroom, where she showed me the toilet and said, "It won't flush," You can guess the rest--I opened up the tank, and sure enough, the chain had slipped off. I reattached it, and I instantly became Mary's hero. So: precognition of toilet repair is yet another 4th-path attainment.