Some clarification on SE?

Laurel Carrington wrote: But what if there is a non-dual state, a non-dual experience? I don't think fixation on any state or experience is liberating either, but to say there's no such thing doesn't conform to my experience. I would not in a million years know what it was without having been there. Just imagining, conceptualizing, or talking about it, or even having insight about it, would not approach being there (or more to the point, not being there).

I'm not trying to say "My enlightenment is better than your enlightenment." But it's hard for me to grasp what awakening is if it's not awakening to a direct experience of the emptiness of phenomena, including self. When you, Kate, talked on another thread about laughing over feeling like an old lady who was looking in her purse for the glasses she was already wearing, that sounds like another way of expressing it to me.

I think maybe the point I'm trying to make is perhaps an unnecessarily subtle philosophical one. It has to do with how distancing it is to conceive of a "special" ongoing state or experience that we call "non-dual" by contrast to the previous status quo, or samsara, or unenlightenment. When I refer to the precipitating insight, I don't mean an idea-- I mean that bodily, global, total conviction that the separation of subject and object is not real. It's just a view one can take or not, depending on its usefulness-- I mean, if you're in the middle of an IRS audit, total spiritual communion with the person across the desk is probably not the best tack. [Although, what do I know: maybe it is!]

Even though Jake begged to differ, he restated the main point: reality isn't divided up into self-and-other or any other duality. It's not even divided up into the duality of "nondual" and "dualistic." It just is. We human beings, however, rarely let up on our "knowing by means of compare-and-contrast"-- to the degree that, when we do stop for a bit, we immediately start contrasting the experience to how things were "before"-- !

Maybe I'm the only one who notices this, or finds it amusing...

@Laurel - I know what emptiness means intellectually, but it's never felt like a meaningful word to me. I don't think I used it in this discussion (or if I did it sneaked in without me noticing!) But I hear what you are saying.

I think I also have a mixed relationship to "no me" and "no self" and all that. That is, although nondual experiences and nondual awareness in general are notable for perceptions (so to speak) of "no separate self" that's not the way I tend to frame them, or not the part that jumps out at me. I don't reflect on it a moment later and think "wow, there was no me there!" I tend to say things like "holy shit, it's all God". Similarly as my practice has deepened over the last years it's not been about "feeling more and more no-self" but about being more and more surrendered to God. The less of "me" there is, the more it's not about me or what I want, it's all in God's hands: His will, the spontaneous manifesting of Spirit, and so forth. But it's that latter that I focus on, rather than the former. Which I think are more or less pointing to the same thing, but framed slightly differently. A bit like saying the glass is getting emptier (of water) vs fuller (of air)...

Does that make sense?

Ona Kiser wrote: @Jake, I do think there's something to be said for "being done" actually being the beginning of something productive and useful. You've gotten all the bullshit out of the way, and now you can move forward with a life that is ever more integrated, honest, authentic, whole, and useful. Now you can "practice" for practice's sake. It's like you've finally got the mass of debris out of the way, and now you can have a life. There's stuff to deal with, but now you know how, you have the tools, the insight. You can actually understand the books and the teachings, read them and say "yeah, I see" instead of "sounds great but what does it mean?"

Thoughts?

Yes. Like it's time to go ahead and live. The looking is over, time for the doing.

The chief characteristic of the state I was in was a profound sense of no-self. I guess that's the best way of going about describing it. The Bahiya sutra is a good representation: in the seeing, there is only the seen. I wasn't in deep spiritual communion with anyone or anything because I was not there. In spite of this, I fully participated in meetings, consultations, parenting, socializing, and studying. It was the strangest thing. For all I know it was depersonalization disorder. At the time (just after stream entry) it was awful, but then subsequent experiences were not awful at all.

I think I'm going to throw in the towel at this point and say that I need more time to process and to practice. FWIW, I identified very closely with what Adya was describing in The End of Your World. I've read it several times. But really, I'm persisting in posting about this not to defend a point of view, but to relay information and hear from others. I think, though, that what Jake is talking about makes no sense to me at this point because I'm not ready to understand it.

I wish I felt that way. What's happened is that my concept of God has faded away since I've undertaken this practice. I rather miss God, but perhaps what's been burned away is the Santa Claus notion I used to have. In its place is no-thing. Emptiness. I am moving toward that, instead of cringing away from it, with an attitude of basic trust. Part of what I am trusting is this sangha. Part of it is just the universe. Part of it is the dharma. I'll throw the Buddha and Jesus in there for good measure. I'm not meaning to be glib. But I'm trusting that this body and this mind can move forward into its own self-canceling and find liberation on the other side.

If nothing else we seem to be discovering that we all have very different ways of describing our experiences and very personal and variable experiences to describe.

Besides that I can't draw any conclusions from this thread!! I hope Duane you have found some use in it???

Ona Kiser wrote:
Besides that I can't draw any conclusions from this thread!! I hope Duane you have found some use in it???

Hahaha! Yes. I have, thanks

Kate Gowen wrote:
Even though Jake begged to differ, he restated the main point:..

Sorry for my very unclear wording in that post earlier. I edited it just now because I was actually agreeing with you, hence the restating

Also, I think nondual engagement is definitely the optimal way of being with others regardless of circumstance. I work with a lot of clients who have pretty intense moods, inscrutable triggers and quick tempers (developmentally disabled adults, many of whom with co-occurring mental health problems). And in the process of working with them I frequently have to work with bureaucratically minded bean counters and deal with machiavellian office politics of burnt out human services workers. The closer I can be to appreciating the wholeness and open ended completeness of Nature in my encounters with these bureaucrats and cynics the better. Oh, and with the clients too. hehehe.

Laurel Carrington wrote: I wasn't in deep spiritual communion with anyone or anything because I was not there. In spite of this, I fully participated in meetings, consultations, parenting, socializing, and studying.

How can there be union/yoga if "someone" is in the union/yoga? Doesn't the presence of someone implies separation still?

On a side note Laurel, perhaps disorientation is another way of being here and not actually emptiness or union with something.

If I'm not mistaken, emptiness is also form and what I can understand from that and the old mahayana texts, is that form is empty presence displaying many selfless virtues. So if a selfless presence displaying wonderful virtues isn't there, perhaps emptiness hasn't been reached.

Hi all,

Instead of clicking the "Thanks" for every contribution, from each and every contributor, I thought I'd write this post.

I've been following this thread and and getting a huge amount from it. I'm finding the discussion to be interesting, inspiring, a motivation for practice, thought provoking and fun. I especially appreciate all the different experiences and frameworks being expressed.

It is helping me to realise this thing is for real and attainable. Exactly what I was asking for prior to finding this site - real, live people who have done it and willing to share.

I do not want to be gushy, but I do feel full of gratitude at the moment.

No idea. I know there were some virtues: no anger, a sense of universal compassion, love manifesting. There was also disorientation the first time, but Adyashanti says this is something that happens to a lot of people in the beginning (others have said the same). Whether this was true emptiness, true union, true awakening, or whatever I am not qualified to say. It may have been a blind alley. I have an opinion about it, but that's about all it is: an opinion. That opinion is that it was in some form a step towards awakening. The after-effects have been a reduction of identification of self, less stickiness of emotions, more patience and compassion, and a general reduction in drama (although there still is some of that).

duane_eugene_miller wrote: Is SE simply to have a comprehension through direct experience that "I" am an illusion, and then experience being generally the same (such as moods, prejudices etc..) or is it more of an entire shift into experiencing self as an illusion as a baseline? In other words, once SE is attained, are moods and such still sticky or not at all because it's always obvious that "I" am not real? Something like that:) Thoughts? Insights?

Going back to the original question of this thread, I think I have worked it out. I didn't notice it at first, but I'd simply say that the most obvious attribute of SE (if that is indeed what has happened to me - and now that it's blossomed a bit and I've had a look at it) is the "Here-ness". Before I had to use effort to remain present, now it's tilted slightly the other way. There is still distraction but it has no grip and it's much easier to rest (almost effortless) in the present, and the present is not necessarily made up of "me"

Would we say this is accurate and common?

I think these things are all inter-related. Without awakening, we are very caught up in past/future thoughts. Our sense of who we are is tied especially to thoughts about the past (I am a victim, special person, asshole, failure, winner; smart, ugly, pretty, dumb, etc with all the stories and memories that help build that identity). So the growing sense of being attentive to the present moment links to the growing sense of not being such a firmly defined separate permanent self as well as a loosening of the fixation on the past/future thoughts. So all those things (and others) kind of interact in the process, at least in my opinion of the moment off the top of my head.

I have to qualify all of my chiming-in here to say that I "don't know nothin' 'bout stream entry or other stuff on the 'map', Miz Scarlett!" I speak up on the basis of seeing a kind or resonance in my own experience/view and the qualities you guys seem to be describing. So-- no authority whatsoever, me.

Lots of curiosity and enthusiasm, though.

It seems that what Duane is describing is the distinct discontinuity between being on what was automatic pilot-- and being confronted with the irreversible knowledge that there are alternatives and choices. A larger awareness is possible. How frequently and forcefully that pops into view for someone-- that may account for at least some of the differences in description between us.

I had a conversation with a martial arts instructor that made me return to this thread. It's seems to me that SE is much like a black belt. A black belt is in no way a symbol of one's mastery of the art, only an acknowledgment that one can truly begin to learn because the foundation has been established. I would say SE is not a marker of mastery of life, but the point at which one can begin to live. That's my conclusion on "SE".

I'd say the same about awakening, actually.