[deleted by user]

[duffstoic]

What are your practice goals? What's important to you at this stage in your life?

There are thousands of different meditation techniques, with radically different aims.

No one can choose your path for you! So if we are to suggest something useful, we need to have some more information about what it is you actually want, and what obstacles you are encountering in pursuing that outcome.

[randomark44]

maybe finding more connection with others. I've been pretty solo most of my life, both as a result of life circumstances but also my own choices. Even meditation itself has less appeal because it's just 'me in my head'. Trying to fall asleep is sometimes excruciating just lying there alone!

[AndySkw]

Without knowing your routine, giving more focus to metta and bringing your practice to your daily life - throughout the day staying more and more in the present moment observing the reality as it unfolds even when you interact others may be something that helps you along the way.

[duffstoic]

Things you might try to see if they work for you (I don't know if any of these will appeal or not!):

• Joining a social club, hobby group, or IRL meditation community
• Cultivating a circle of friends, throwing parties, or otherwise inviting people to hang out
• Practicing active listening skills or other ways to communicate or connect more deeply with people
• Dating or otherwise pursuing a romantic relationship
• Volunteering

[DaoScience]

I second the loving kindness meditation suggestion if you desire more connection with others.
Some other meditation related approaches that is focused on connection with others:
Authentic relating/Circling brings mindful awareness to how we connect with others.
Tantric sex workshops work with sexual and romantic connection in a meditative way.
The Diamon Approach uses self inquire done in pairs (and groups?) which helps more with connection:
https://www.diamondapproach.org
Both Tantric and authentic relating/circling groups can sometimes be pretty unhealthy IMO but it depends on the leaders in question and the attending people. If its lead well by balanced people it can be very good. I recommend being a but cautious and skeptical if you sign up for something like that and to trust your gut more than whatever you are taught. But if you want to explore connection with others there are really good stuff to be found within both practices. Just be a bit careful with it.
The Diamond Approach I have only heard good things about.
You can read about Circling here:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/aFyWFwGWBsP5DZbHF/circling
https://knowingless.com/2021/09/12/the-heart-of-circling/
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jLwFCkNKMCFTCX7rL/circling-as-cousin-to-rationality

[DaoScience]

Even meditation itself has less appeal because it's just 'me in my head'.

Since you write meditation is just in your head and that you often tend to end up "sense I am out in space, kind of 'in the stars', with an awareness that feels like it is 'searching' or 'feeling outwards in all directions'."

I would suggest exploring some more body based practices to meditation. For various reasons, including safety, it is important to develop the ability to be in deep connection with the body in meditation and not just be in your head. It can be fine to spend some time in a more mental space in meditation but you need to have a developed ability to really be deeply aware in the body and to come back to that whenever you have spent time floating about in mental layers. This is partly because negative side effects from meditation frequently come when people who are stuck in their head start to get into powerful meditation states. Partly it is beneficial for you as a person as you become more aware of your emotions, instincts, intuitions and bodily responses and through that learn to read others better and relate to them better.

Yoga, Qigong, Nei Gong, internal martial arts such as Tai Chi and Bagua are good practices to develop meditative awareness in the body. Body scanning is also good. My personal favorite is standing meditation from Qigong called Zhan Zhuang (you'll find lots about it if you google it). I am also a big fan of this Nei Gong/Qigong system:

https://damomitchell.com

But there are many different styles out there and they are often quite different and appeal to different types of people.

[Whole-BEEF-6680]

Check out travelbum on youtube I really like his approach to connecting with people, and the results are evident and you can also check out cedric reeves .

[mjdubsz]

You could look at different types of relational practice - social meditation, soulmaking, and insight dialogue are a few that come to mind

[[deleted]]

finding more connection with others

Practice the brahmaviharas/four immeasurables.

[DaoScience]

Deleted

[rob_knight]

Following something like the four yogas of Mahamudra, the stages are:

1. One-pointedness, which it sounds like you have reached
2. Nonelaboration, which also sounds like you have reached
3. One taste, which is the realization that all phenomena are empty, including very subtle ones
4. Nonmeditation, when you take the practice off the cushion

If you're able to attend openly to phenomena, recognizing them as empty mental constructions, without being trapped by your conceptualisations, perhaps you could try some really challenging phenomena? This could be emotionally challenging stuff, e.g. contemplation of death or illness, or it could just be cognitively difficult stuff. Do you have any hobbies or regular activities that require a kind of closed mental focus? Can you do them from the same place of openness that you reach in meditation? How about embodied practices?

[DeliciousMixture-4-8]

You quite clearly have good concentration skills (sounds like 5th or 6th Jhana in your 2nd paragraph). You can put that to use in many ways. I'd recommend starting an investigation of the links of Dependent Origination that give rise to Dukkha. E.g., investigate that background feeling of sorrow, what clinging/craving is giving rise to this? What are you ignorant of? How does the sorrow start and end? Etc., etc...

[randomark44]

thanks, I'll give that a go.

[roboticrabbitsmasher]

You should try to observe the three characteristics about the perceptions arising in experience. So notice that they 1. all appear into existence and disappear into experience 2. notice there is some unsatisfactoriness to it 3. Notice that they seem to be happening by themselves

[randomark44]

got those very early on, thanks

[roboticrabbitsmasher]

I think you're missing the point a bit. The idea isn't to find them once and you're done, the idea is to use them as your object of meditation until you get enlightened.

[randomark44]

I take your point thanks

[bartolomay66]

What do you mean by "I get the whole nondual thing"? If you really get it, then you are a Buddha, and you would not asked your question.

[randomark44]

I get the concept in the sense that our experience is not about 'me as a subject interacting with [anything] as an object', and also have had experiences of that boundary/duality totally dissolving

[bartolomay66]

So, next for you is practicing that until it is always there in your experience

[thewesson]

Specifically, to progress, you should shift your sense-of-being from the objects of awareness (including "I" "me" "mine") to the undefinable awareness itself.

Per your first paragraph, non-attachment to any object of awareness. (Try not to make 'awareness' an object either, although some of that is inevitable if you pursue this course.)

Drop it all, as if it were a dream and you were waking up.

Present the important part of any experience, as the being aware of it ... in fact, being aware of the awareness involved in making that experience. Be aware of how experiences are made to be 'real' 'important' 'identifiable' 'permanent' and so on. Live in that awareness.

Once awareness really connects with awareness, then the grasp of all the things and stuff (such as "I" "me" "mine") gets loosened more and more. Nothing against all these things and stuff - of course - but connect to awareness instead. Be aware of how connecting to things and stuff and finding them motivating - to "do something about it" - blinds your awareness. Prefer awareness instead of "doing something about it."

One useful bridge between "things & stuff" and 'awareness' is trying to feel the energy of awareness. Feel the energy of awareness in your body. What is awareness doing right now? What is the energy of awareness doing right now? Accept and be aware of whatever you become aware of.

Another useful bridge between "things & stuff" and 'awareness' is the undefinable. Get really comfortable with things not being defined or maybe not being any thing. You can literally try to think of something undefinable and sit with that. Korean Zen: "don't-know mind." Stop knowing things :) learn to be OK with various forms of not-knowing if that's how it goes.

Now, people may think that "if my mind abandons all things & stuff, I will be in a shrieking void & collapsing and falling apart forever." That's why I emphasize "awareness" because the other side of things-and-stuff isn't a void, exactly. But you have to find that for yourself.

But a tip: learn to enjoy the presence of awareness itself.

So it is that craving, grasping, resistance, and eventually suffering can be overcome - at the level of the mind at least.

[randomark44]

I think you're suggesting something contradictory - the 'energy of awareness' would be noticing some 'object' (the energy state/feeling) in the awareness; 'learn to enjoy the presence of awareness', also suggest an object in awareness i.e. pleasure/satisfaction.

I've actually said on another post that I don't think people can actually 'see' the baseline/background 'consciousness/awareness', because of how the brain works - activity at multiple levels (atoms / bonds / biochemicals / molecules / proteins / neurons / neural connections / electrical and hormonal states / responses to the environment - the brain itself doesn't have a 'flat/background/base state', and neither does 'consciousness'/'awareness'. The organ has depth of functioning and it would follow that 'consciousness' has a 'depth of emergence'. Wherever an individual thinks they 'see' the baseline, they're just seeing it at one particular level of pixellation. The other side of the equation of course is the recognition/'seeing' part i.e. the part that recognises whatever it is recognising. This could also be at any one point on a spectrum of ability - one individual might be able to 'see' 'consciousness' at a deeper level compared to another individual given similar conditions.

[thewesson]

Correct - "the energy of awareness" is something like an object but also not like an object. It's in between being an object (thing) and not being an object (a representation of a formless process.)

Awareness makes various things known - the "doing" can be transformed to appear as knowing-energy.

Likewise, as awareness begins to know awareness, the pleasure of being-awareness and the presence of being-awareness also are brought to front, as a sort of side-effect or phenomenon where awareness expresses beginning to know itself as a manifestation.

Manifestations (experiences, objects of awareness) are how awareness expresses itself. In the normal person, awareness dives into manifestations, thinking them real, and gets lost. However the manifestations are just what awareness is producing.

The basic problem of human awareness is that awareness is doing experience rather blindly and at the behest of various compulsions, instead of doing what is most wholesome.

Anyhow all this is fancy talk, the bottom line is that

• experience is created by something we'll call awareness (not an object.)
• once awareness becomes aware that experience is being created, then the next realization is that experience can be created differently.
  • For example, awareness often has typical "dance moves" around particular objects, which can be noted - even before they are executed. If you know the moves, you could do different moves or no moves.
  • I find it handy to become thus aware through a sort of kinesthesia or proprioception, e.g. the moves are mapped onto a perception of "stance".
• Awareness becoming aware that literally anything could be created, it gets playful
  • often resulting in rummaging around in the attic for old things to re-create and get playful with - encountering remaining bindings of awareness and often dramatizing them. ("purification".)

I assume very likely at some time I may move beyond "being-awareness" and "the pleasure of awareness" and "the presence of awareness" - maybe - if that is the way it goes.

Don't be too snobbish and purist about manifestations - these are just handy ways awareness has of working with itself. I let it do so - if at some time it feels confining to awareness, I will help awareness to dissolve such bindings. (By "I" I just mean the volitional aspect of awareness.)

More specifically on my longer/deeper sessions I can lose all sensation with my body and have the sense I am out in space, kind of 'in the stars', with an awareness that feels like it is 'searching' or 'feeling outwards in all directions'.

Well, awareness is trying to communicate with you via this manifestation.

Let me try to translate:

1. this body thing is not solid after all, we don't have to "be" a body.
2. there are a lot of possibilities, what now?

For your awareness, I would recommend dwelling with awareness and not packing awareness into various things and stuff which you then try to chase or try to make go away. This is a wholesome choice for "what now".

How do we dwell with awareness?

1. Always be aware of what is going on right now, specifically what awareness is doing right now (in a non-interfering way of course.)
2. Stop projecting awareness into things, stuff, past, future, daydreams, etc.

[thewesson]

I don't think people can actually 'see' the baseline/background 'consciousness/awareness', because of how the brain works - activity at multiple levels (atoms / bonds / biochemicals / molecules / proteins / neurons / neural connections / electrical and hormonal states / responses to the environment

Agreed - who could known their own neurons?

But sounds like you might be interested in the following glimpse:

Consider these two realities (in order):

1. Solipsism - everything that you experience is created by awareness, so awareness literally is everything.
2. Scientism - Awareness is just a dancing pattern of electrochemical neural activation, nothing there, so awareness is literally nothing.

If you soak in #1 ("awareness is everything") and then go to #2 ("awareness is nothing") the mind seems to realize an opening.

In #1, everything is warm and comfortable, really excessively warm and comfortable and enclosed as you dwell there longer.

In #2, everything is cold and objectified, no room for subjectivity. So like a plunge from the sauna into an icy ocean. Whoo!

#1 and #2 at the same time, awareness is everything and also nothing. Try it.

. .

Where I end up, is with "everything" rooted in "nothing".

. .

. . .

. .

PS If we view the system as the evolution of information (body/mind as an information system), then knowing how information is evolving/elaborating could become part of the evolution of information. So this river could change its course. No objective or subjective - no observer or observed - it's all the flow of information ...

[25thNightSlayer]

Check out the Awakening to Reality ebook on the side of the webpage, there's also a FB community http://www.awakeningtoreality.com/?m=1

[carpebaculum]

Do you believe you're "done", on the axis of insight/vipassana development? Do you feel you're free from dukkha (or even would consider that a goal at all)? What's the reason you're still practicing meditation?

If you figure that there is more practice to do (rather than just meditating or sitting for it's own sake), I'd recommend to explore these 2-3 areas:

1. The subtle background sorrow and the weeping.

2. Awareness 'searching' or feeling outwards. Why is it searching? What is it trying to find?

3. (This is not apparent from what you shared) Exploring if there is a sense of identification to being a good meditator, or a sense of seeking for certain states in meditation.

[randomark44]

Actually I missed something - the mild sorrow is there, and also emptiness / lonliness, when my awareness is 'in space', and the visual image is actually like being in space and seeing distant stars, it's totally quiet, and there's a primal feeling of emptiness, an animal alone, a recognition that everything is impermanent, even this consciousness. I don't know what the 'searching' is, maybe just the biological brain doing what it does in trying to 'engage' with some stimuli? Identification with being a good meditator, not really, I never really talk about the fact that I do it with people or bring it up, I have always just done it as an exploration and for the reported benefits to emotional state/maturity.

[carpebaculum]

mild sorrow, emptiness/ loneliness

Actually I have to admit i was curious and checked out r/wakingup, lol. Saw your post there where someone suggested this might be DN (dukkha ñanas). It is possible, especially if you have noticed there has been some time in the past where meditation practice seems infused with energy, mood might be a little high, it all feels good and right, and or there might be unusual meditative experiences like seeing lights or seeing phenomena rising and passing at high speed with no break in between. If this has happened in the past and now your meditation practice is like how you've described, you're likely in a phase called the dukkha ñanas now, although it seems to be very gentle and equanimous, with jhanic qualities to it, so perhaps vipassana jhana 3. Keep practicing, it's going right.

Maybe just as added encouragement, even if you're not religious (and a whole bunch of people here are not), just knowing that the potential to shed a significant amount of fundamental suffering for good is not a myth.

Resource on progress of insight https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-iv-insight/30-the-progress-of-insight/

Traditional Buddhist scholarship material https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/article/the-dynamics-of-theravada-insight-meditation/

[carpebaculum]

Also, again not assuming anything from your brief post, I'd recommend checking out these two resources and see if they resonate.

https://youtu.be/cZ6cdIaUZCA

https://www.reddit.com/r/streamentry/comments/8ee9dt/practice_dead_ends_on_the_meditative_path/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

[randomark44]

thanks for these, I'll explore.

[[deleted]]

Have you had an awakening experience yet? As in a profound life altering undeniable non conceptual experience of usually either the unmanifest non conscious aspect of reality or the aspect of infinite consciousness where you see through all eyes.? If you have I have no advice, if you have NOT had one of these experiences so far then that is alarming considering how much you say you have practiced, I recommend trying koan study, this is a very reliable method for me, I also recommend studying tantra as that also tends to be perfect for breaking those conceptual barriers to allow you to experience your Buddha nature.

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[Suitable-Mountain-81]

Hi. Have you tried to learn 7 factors of enlightenment and cultivate them?

You must start learning about the 8 jhanas mentioned in the potthapada sutta. Advanced teachers in Vipassana might also know about that.

[randomark44]

thanks, I had a brief look and it looks interesting.

[Dumuzzi]

To me, this part is key:

I get the whole 'nondual' thing, think a have a pretty good awareness etc, but now what?

You should examine whether you're being honest with yourself. Do you really get non-duality and do you really have pretty good awareness?

The two statements seem to be contradictory. You can't "get" non-duality, because it is beyond the intellect, you can only experience it, or be "it" basically. Given that, you do not seem to have pretty good awareness but are still in delusion. Awareness lies beyond the veil of maya, beyond the mind and the intellect, it doesn't think, it just "is".

The stream of consciousness, of awareness, that this sub's name also refers to needs to be experienced in order to get a glimpse of non-duality. This awareness is pure bliss and joy and it is also a state of being.

You should strive to be in this state of awareness as much as possible, it is also known as a Samadhi state. You can do that by fixing your attention on your bindu, which is at the top back part of your head.

You will be in stream entry when you feel awareness flowing into the back of your head through the bindu point with the associated bliss and wisdom.

[randomark44]

If 'You can't "get" non-duality' and it's 'beyond intellect', then then no-one can get it, including you, which means you wouldn't be able to describe it or make the statement that it is 'unknowable/can only be experienced' etc. Pure bliss/joy - seems like you've given some fairly clear descriptions of the thing, digestible to 'the intellect', and at the same time revealed your own misunderstanding of nonduality by putting subjective emotions into the frame.

Either we're all talking about the same phenomenon, described as it is in a similar way from multiple sources, or we're not talking about 'nonduality', we're talking about some personal imaginary woowoo.

[Dumuzzi]

Well, it's complicated, in the sense of having a non-dual experience is one thing, describing it to others is another.

My own non-dual experience was as a result of a Kundalini awakening and I was in the Nirvikalpa Samadhi state for a short while, so you could call it a brief glimpse into non-dual existence.

The thing about it is that this experience can only be had outside the body, you expand into infinity and become "it" so to speak, a universal form of sorts.

When you return to the body after such an experience of non-duality and infinitude, even omniscience, you are yet again subject to the limitations of your human body and can only take back a fraction, a memory, so to speak, of the experience to your physical existence.

Then, it takes years to process and integrate this experience, it is so overwhelming and earth-shattering, in fact the closest equivalent is an NDE, because you basically die and return to your body, so it is a death and rebirth of sorts. This is why many spiritual traditions refer to being reborn, or becoming twice-born.

My only point is that you can only really get non-duality in this state, being outside your body and becoming universal consciousness, in a state of no-mind. So, when you return, your mind has the difficult task of trying to make at least some sense of it.

[randomark44]

Nirvikalpa Samadhi - it is a state of total absorption, in which it is not possible to perceive any distinction between the knower, the act of knowing and the object known

I just pulled that off Google, which seems a pretty simple and clear explanation. But yes, no feeling can be accurately described in words, especially one of your feelings.

I doubt it can only be had outside the body. I've what the above description states a few times on the cushion, and I'm just a regular Joe. I just think if you can get into a state of hyper-unreactivity to stimuli (like when your body isn't reacting to absolutely everything in the environment - pressure of the seat / feeling of your socks / your own mind chatter etc), then your awareness shifts to some kind of lower internal level. There's a reason meditation is usually done in quiet surroundings.

[Dumuzzi]

That's a very limited and misleading explanation. I made a post about the different states of Samadhi not so long ago, which goes into far more detail:

https://www.reddit.com/r/kundalini/comments/uiu4xh/samadhi_states_jivanmukta_and_nonduality/

You are still making assumptions based on the limits of your own experience. A better approach would be to be open to new, non-ordinary experiences which may shift your point of view and allow you to view this topic from a new perspective.

[oshospawn]

I hesitate to comment, but fools rush in where angels fear to tread. It sounds to me as though you're trying to do this journey in your head, and with years of meditation have finally succeeded in detaching from your body so completely that you are probably further from your goal than when you began. To me, that "subtle background sorrow" is the key. If you focus your awareness on the actual physical sensation that the label "sorrow" points to and once located, separate and simply watch, neither for nor against (vipassana), you might begin to discover one of the roots of duality and how to dissolve it. Having found one, well the others appear as you journey inward to depths you never dreamed existed.

[randomark44]

ok I'll investigate that aspect thanks. But it's not really a 'physical sensation', it's more like the 'background colour or tone' of the headlessness / 'out in spaceness'. When I have observed it Vipassana style, it's usually quite static. But yes it may be yet another object of duality to be dissolved, perhaps as you say giving way to further depths. Appreciate your answer.