Self Awareness

Yeah. I talked to a friend about this lately.
We agreed that we still had the same bad habits and the same hangups. They are perhaps loosened up somewhat, but more to the point, they don't worry us to the degree they used to, and we are better at acknowledging them and not letting them lead us into trouble to the same degree.
So, i agree, at least to a point (devil in the details, as always, but let's make the devil a little while)

What I've seen in some people I know and in myself is that awakening, in a gradual way, supports a growing awareness of ones thought processes, habits, reactions, dysfunctional crap etc. So that a person may say "Oh, wow, I never saw that before, the way every time my boss uses that tone of voice there's this bam-bam-bam little reaction inside, and it's really all about a sort of pride I have, and a memory of how my dad used to scold me, etc." And suddenly that little reaction doesn't turn into some kind of "How dare he talk to me like that the asshole!" and being rude and nasty to yourself and others all day, but is released, and is just a weird little habitual reaction that doesn't entangle you. And you chuckle at it and just do your work and don't care what tone of voice he's speaking in. You might even start to see that his tone of voice is an expression of his deep stress, and not about you. So you sympathize a bit with how unhappy he is. Maybe you have a chat with him one day, seeing him make the other secretary cry, and say "gee, you seem pretty stressed out. how are things?" and he sighs and tells you about his dying wife and debts and car accident and so on...

So that just an example of the kind of possibilities that seem to open up, even more deeply than with therapy alone. Because therapy can open up you seeing the patterns of behavior in your life - but it doesn't disentangle you so effectively from the reactions.

There certainly seems to be an ability for people to wake up without this kind of self-awareness and empathy developing very well, and I don't know why. How we are brought up and formed by family and culture is something that colors our personality and behavior quite deeply, and that may be reason enough.

So, while it's easy for me to say that not only does awakening give you an opportunity to release yourself from this crap and make the world a better place by not spewing your crap on others, and moreover that you have a responsibility to society to make this effort, that may well be my upbringing speaking, as things like taking opportunity, bettering oneself, and responsibility to family and community were heavily taught. I could just be a brainwashed minion.

Yes. Fantasies about future outcomes are always a distraction and it's great to learn to identify them as such. Recognizing that ones preconceptions are an impediment to awareness of what's going on right now, also great.


Meditation develops great awareness that can apply to real world stuff, too, I think. I think it's a very integrated process, and whatever frustration is coming up is superb fodder for practice.

Because isn't a lot of dysfunctional behavior tangled up in trying to make things meet preconceived expectations, rather than recognizing what is actually present? Frustration arises in all sorts of contexts: if you want a person to say x and they say y, or you want to feel peppy and you feel sluggish, or you want your sit to be blissy and it's not, or you want to be walking in the park but instead have to go visit the in-laws, or you have an itchy arm and wish you didn't. Want, don't want. Clinging, aversion.

If i sit down to enter and abide in the first jhana, and i do not manage to, is it not ok to say i had a bad sit? There are methods in developmental awakening where a specific result is sought in a sit.
Yet you are mostly right - i make lots of those sorts of illegitimate judgments myself, though usually for specific sensations rather than sits. And wanting what is right now to be other than what is right now is, it seems to me, one of the very origins of suffering.

Perhaps we should take more care with our language, and our ways of thinking, but the path, it seems to me, does involve some sorts of skillful desires

I think that's a common thing, Villum - in any context, for many people. I grew up with that kind of succeed/fail training. But isn't there a healthier, more pleasant way to practice? It's practice right? And practicing (bicycle riding, piano, whatever) is practice. There's a general goal (ride in a straight line without falling down) - but if you approach it as "I am a damn failure until I finally ride in a straight line" you are turning practice into a form of self-punishing misery, no? What if each attempt is a really interesting process of learning: ah, if I lean a little this way, that helps; if I keep pedaling a little more steadily, that helps; if I lean that way - whoops! ouch! okay, that doesn't help.

The learning itself is an art, an exploration. AND, given the later need to understand letting go of expectations, it's also an opportunity to start building that ground in a beginner, rather than having them spend year(s) doing "I must do this, and do it right, or I am a failure" and then suddenly spring on them the idea that one must allow things to be as they are, let go of expectations, etc. I think it's a really normal way to come into practice, but I think it's really helpful to start undermining it as soon as possible because of the struggle and unnecessary suffering it creates.

What balance of strategies have others found helpful in transitioning from this "good/bad" approach to learning, particularly in meditation? Thoughts?

I was probably misreading Chris as (also) saying something like "a meditation can't have a goal", and reacting to that.
Anyways, i would suggest teaching oneself the curiosity mindset you mention. I find that looking at the judgments themselves as part of the meditation is the best approach for me, while also applying a coating of acceptance to make everything easier to see.

Yeah, I agree there's that fine line between having a goal (after all, why is one practicing meditation unless one is seeking some benefit from it, right?), and not just turning into another win/lose, gain/fail kind of game.

The "thing" is awareness, i think i agree. Making the "thing" self-awareness, i suspect, involves some subtle traps, but hits on the important point you started the thread with.
As i understand it: Awakening does not change your behavior (much), but awakening empowers you to become a better human being, even though everything is perfect.
It's like the trap Florian mentioned in the other thread, where you mistake surrender and lazyness. You still have to actually go and change your behavior, and it's still work, even though it might be work in accordance with the flow of the Absolute.

Hope i'm making sense. Anyways, too much judging is far more prevalent than too little, in my practice and with most people i've talked to.

Interesting, isn't it-- that one of the most common "objects" of meditation is the breath. And then the implications of that get lost in the project: we don't say-- "Ooh, yeah: that breath was a really good one; oh, hell: that one sucked."

When we make the 'byproduct' self-awareness/insight into the goal of practice, I think we may be limiting the potential results of practice. Going back to the analogy: there are times when an asthmatic, for instance, needs to retrain breathing skills. [This is something of which I have personal experience.] One of the reasons the breath is such an excellent focus is that it is both voluntary and involuntary; both a skill and an automaticity. Awareness is similar in many ways: it is always functioning, but better focus and direction can be learned. And in both cases, developing skill will change your life-- to the extent that you use those skills in your life.

Reading this thread, I noticed there are some funny language issues we should address. Don't worry, this isn't super technical, a la Daniel Ingram style mapping.

We throw the term "awakening" around as though we all mean the same thing.

Awakening could mean "realization" - as in, we've seen reality as it is, and have stabilized a certain confidence in this. This changes our lives quite a bit, but it's not the end of growth/change/development as a practitioner.

Awakening could also mean full and complete actualization/expression. This goes beyond realization. In fact, it takes realization as a starting point, rather than an end point. Realization is a seed that, through further work, may lead to Buddhahood (i.e. awakening, in this context).

Dropping the "awakening" word altogether, at least in this conversation, is probably beneficial.

In many ways, as Chris has been saying, realization bears the fruit of the potential for greater of self-awareness. It's necessary for spiritual maturity, but it's more of a beginning than an end.

I hope that wasn't too off topic :-/

So we can't use the E word or the A word??? I think you are either at some advanced level I don't yet comprehend, and in a few years I'll agree, or you are over-fraughting something that isn't that big a deal. Misunderstanding what E or A mean is part of the process, and they are understood differently as one bumbles along, no?

That's okay. But I think I may be utterly missing your point, and (probably) some huge backstory that led to it? This happens often, that people post some thought, but without context, where it would be helpful to not-so-clued-in-me to have it start out "I've been noticing that a lot of my students seem to struggle with x, and this led to me thinking it's perhaps more useful to focus on y or z, given this particular situation" or whatever experience or event led to the thought.

Or not. It's your thread.

I've just spent three days in nearly non-stop sessions with various interfaith/eclectic meditation groups with several different teachers in Sonoma County, where I'm visiting a yogi friend, and no one so far has been the least bit fraught about throwing around words like awakening, enlightenment, divine union, realization, and so on. The groups contain people who are beginners, people who are in deep periods of resistance, people who are awake... You can hear in people's questions the nudges and encouragements they need, and everyone has something to offer in the conversations, even if their experience or realization is limited. My friends and I offer that in terms that seem appropriate to the question. None of the questions have been about struggles with terminology, they are all about deeply personal experience. Just to give some context to my response.

@Chris - yes, the "awakening" word was thrown around a few times, which is why I threw in my (perhaps unhelpful) clarification.

@Ona - of course we can still use the words awakening/enlightenment/etc., in general. What I don't like to see is the way people draw arbitrary lines in the sand and say, "Okay, THAT was awaking," and then examine there experience to determine just what are the "real" effects of awakening.

Specifically, Villum* wrote: "As i understand it: Awakening does not change your behavior (much), but awakening empowers you to become a better human being, even though everything is perfect." Defining awakening in this way sets up a whole slew of questions that wouldn't be there otherwise; the primary being, "What's possible after/beyond awakening?" I've always been a little confused as to why we all set the bar so low. If beneficial change can be effected through what we're currently calling awakening, why not move the bar? Or instead, why have a bar? Why should we keep planting flags? None of us have exhausted the territory, which may or may not be exhaustible.

You see where I'm going with this?

It all depends on the kind of conversation you want to have. I don't mind talking about awakening in general. But when we start talking about what is or isn't possible, it doesn't seem right to try and map out a clear destination when so few - if any - have adequately surveyed every nook and cranny.

Yes, I have a tendency to pick nits. Not much is new here

What I appreciate about the topic of this thread is that it points to something very immediate and accessible. It's not a destination so much as a aspect of our being which can be utilized immediately AND beneficially, both within and without contexts of discourse on awakening.

Also, I don't mind being told to lighten up, if that's what you think I need to hear

*I'm not picking on Villum, by the way. I just chose this quote from the others based on convenience.

yeah. Awakening is not very specific (it might be on this site, not sure). I was referring to Kenneth Folk's understanding of 4th path (not completely sure i'm there, doesn't matter much to me, but will say when i know).

The one i experienced (4th path or not) has seemed to have an additional benefit - compassion practices and similar seem to permeate my being more easily and in a deeper way, so that the effects last longer and come about quicker. (Shinzen Young said something similar somewhere, but can't find it right now)

I'm not sure. I really am not. It depends on what the purpose is. If you are trying to prove something to someone (whether that is "yes, awakening is real" or "yes, I am awake" or "here is what awakening is, for once and for all") then yes, you need definitions, terms, studies, and so on. If you simply adore precision and definition, that can be a perfectly good reason too. I just tend to see the whole thing as so much more organic and fluid.

There are some people I've met and talked to who simply don't do the "awakening" thing - if they are, they pretend they aren't; if they aren't, they won't say either. That's their tradition, that's fine. I have gotten some really brilliant support from such traditional teachers, and had simply good conversations with them as a peer/friend about life the universe and everything.When a friend or student is seeking or struggling, the struggles make evident what they need for support. The process then works itself out.

There is no single standardized experience or vocabulary for how life is experienced, let alone the spiritual journey. Even if you invent one, there will be people who say "but that's not the way I feel about it" or "that's not relevant to my tradition/style" no? Why isn't malleable and eclectic okay? Who needs to be persuaded or proven something?

Eta: in other words, how does coming up with a whole new vocabulary and definitions do anything other than create yet another very detailed map of attainments, leading to endless flag planting and one-upmanship?