I’m leaning toward tye-died robes, personally.

Sometimes sarcasm is just a penis, too

Wondering why people are interested in spiritual awakenenings when most of us could use a nap,
Steven

(and, I agree completely… start by accepting — or, perhaps, a better action would be “unabashedly acknowledging” — the simple fact, e.g. I’m not accepting, rather than trying to deny the fact in order to attain the faux-holy state)

Without the story, the fight falls apart too. And then, often, we find that the contentment we hoped for in that imagined future is experienced in the real present.

“I was never so happy as when I stopped trying to improve myself in order to become happy.”

“If you’re not all right the way you are it takes a lot of effort to get better. So realise you’re all right the way you are, and you’ll get better naturally.”

Who am I? Not a clue how to answer that. Can you ask a question I could possibly answer in a useful way?

And, fwiw, I began this blog LONG before and totally separate from the I AM Course. I’m not writing this for marketing reasons, but so that I can get these thoughts on “paper” and out of my head. It just so happens that I only have one real interest, and it shows up in the form of this blog and as Instant Advanced Meditation Course. (Did anyone else have a WonderTwins flashback there? “Form of a blog!” “Form of a meditation course!”)

That said, I agree with you… ish

Yes, Vipassana is about observing in any sensation one of the “signs of existence”, namely annica, anatta and/or dukkha (the impermanent changing quality, the lack of independent existence, and/or… well, we could have a whole conversation on how “suffering” isn’t a good translation of “dukkha”).

However, there’s a difference between experiencing the sensation and noticing that it also has one of those qualities, vs. experiencing the quality directly. In other words a color-blind person can train herself to “see” the missing color by subtly adding a concept to the actual experience (e.g. “Ah, someone told me that these socks that I see as gray are actually red… so I know it’s red”). But one can’t for example, see the sky and NOT see blue.

Similarly, it’s a subtle distinction between experiencing “a painful sensation that’s arising and passing away” versus experiencing the arising and passing away of what we might call a “sensation”. According to the Vissudhimagga, the former is merely a concentration practice, while the latter is actual Insight.

So, to say one is “being with the pain” is clearly inaccurate. And to say it with the air of spiritual superiority or achievement is, well, not an indication of attainment, let’s say.

(In fact, being with the pain is impossible, since what we’re “being with” took place in the past and the experience we have occurs after the time it takes for sensations to make it through our nervous system… and “acceptance” is merely the story we tell ourself AFTER we didn’t react with our familiar aversion… but anyway…)

Now, in doing Robert’s technique, you don’t notice the impermanence, and you don’t try to feel subtle sensations “behind” any solid sensation. Quite the opposite. You deliberately try to ALTER the thing that’s bothering you by working on that VERY SOLID seeming thing!

It just so happens, though, that what’s required to do that action, paradoxically, leads to a presence, awareness and non-aversion, that many meditators only *hope* to attain by bare attention or insight… and that reliably affects the “presenting complaint.”

I’m not sure what “mind game” you see me making, but it seems that “trying to get rid of misery,” or working to create “permanent and true happiness” — what motivates most meditators — is as flawed as believing that one experiences a THING called “pain.”

When seen clearly (which doesn’t require meditation), “misery” and “happiness” and “pain” and “pleasure” are merely interpretations, a story, added to something devoid of substantial, independent, solid existence.

I wouldn’t want to rest my future, or my butt, on something so elusive.

And, with the inability to try to escape from something “non-existent” (misery) or strive in the slightest for something equally non-existent (happiness), Vipassana becomes effortlessly simple, and other ways of attending to the objects of perception (including the experience of “I”) become similarly transparent.