radical no holds barred self enquiry

[Scott]

You make a great case for your argument, Christi.  I can agree with all that you've said.  Thanks.

[Eddy]

quote:Originally posted by Christi

Hi everyone,
 

quote:David wrote:
People certainly do have energy problems that result from self-enquiry practices. Almost any spiritual practice (if effective) can produce imbalances. In those cases, the 'backing-off' aspect of self-pacing is advised as for anything else.

I agree with David here. I know quite a few people who do a lot of self enquiry practices and who suffer from energy problems. In general they are often confused, find it difficult to make decisions, struggle to deal with the imbalanced energies in their bodies, suffer from headaches, are argumentative, defensive and suffer from verbal dioreah (usually revolving around themselves, their theories and their problems).
Not a pretty picture.
To make it worse, they often seem to think that the only way out of their obvious energy imbalance is to do more self-enquiry, more often.

I see self-enquiry as another spiritual practice which needs to be approached with caution, and if it is taken up, needs to be self-paced carefully. I cannot see how it can work as a stand-alone practice. Eventually, with enough self-enquiry, inner silence will come, and when it does, it will cause the kundalini fire to rise. If the body has not been purified first, all hell could break loose, and usually does.

When are we going to wake up?

Christi

this makes sense to me. i find myself experienceing a lot of these symptoms but then the next day everything is all gravy.
it's like not much bothers me at all anymore but now i just don't know what to do.
i guess i just have to do what i feel i need to do but what's that?

[david_obsidian]

Thanks Christi,  well said.  For me, it was quite a pleasure to read as I've been often trying to say the same thing. I'll mentally bookmark your last post and it will be handy to refer people to.  You'll probably save me a lot of typing.

Christi said:
I am sure you would agree that we cannot base anything on one person's experience[ ]. To answer that effectively, (dare I mention the word "scientifically"), would involve a study of large numbers of people. Thousands would be needed to get a large enough sample size to proove anything statistically. Then we would need to monitor them over a long time (many years), and record what happens to their mind/ energy body/ kundalini shakti/ consciousness etc, and see how many fell into minor or severe energy imbalances during the experiment. Unfortunately we are way off being able to do anything like that. We do not even posess the equipment necessary to measure the variables involved, we haven't invented them yet, so everything would have to depend on subjective reports.

Many of us are participating in an important cultural ferment: yogic awareness and knowledge is now fermenting nicely with rational,  scientific cause-and-effect perspective.  Human consciousness is being pushed forward by those who understand both and integrate them.

Yoga so far has developed in an older culture that was not as 'hot' in terms of effective cause-and-effect thinking.  I remember one thing J&k said which I thought was quite funny but captures it well -- someone becomes enlightened meditating in a blue shirt down by the river,  so soon he has a big spiritual school going in which the main practice is putting on a blue shirt and meditating down by the river.  That's funny, but really that very thing happens -- it's not as much an exaggeration as I would prefer.  We tend to 'mythologize' the enlightened,  thinking they won't make mistakes like that.  We may tend to make the mistake of thinking that enlighenment has perfected their cause-and-effect analysis.  So we (and they) may misunderstand the domain-of-competence of such people.

As time goes on,  we (the world) will learn to understand properly the 'domain-of-competence' that enlightenment brings,  and what 'domains of competence' it does not in itself bring.  Then the enlightened will have less of a tendency to talk outside their domains of competence and all will benefit.  In the meantime,  there will be some elements of a 'culture clash' in our Yoga world,  as some people's efforts to push illustrious Yogis (living or dead, as people, or as their teaching corpus) back into their domains of competence, will be interpreted as disrespectful by others.

Christi said:
When are we going to wake up?

Dude, this is it!  We (the world) are waking up now!  These posts are part of our waking up!

[Anthem]

"When are we going to wake up?"

When we completely surrender our fear to what Is.

A

[Scott]

Going back over your post, Christi, I have a few problems with it.  Perhaps I shouldn't have said I agreed with all that you said.  Here....

quote:As I see it, at the other end of the scale are the more direct (or very direct) methods of self enquiry which Eddy is talking about and which you are practicing. If I continuously ask myself "who am I?" every time I blink, as I see it, it is pretty clear that I am not the body, I am not my emotions (feelings), I am not my thoughts, and I am not the thinker of my thoughts. If I disengage from the thinking process, thoughts keep arising for some time of their own volition. So it brings me directly to awareness that I am awareness (or the witness). Simply being aware of awareness brings us to that state even faster as we are cutting out the process of negating what we are not. But how much faster must depend on the consciousness of the practitioner. So for me, these direct practices of self-enquiry amount to much the same thing, either through negation (I am not this, I am not that...) or directly (I am the witness of all this).

The two are still different, because one is generally taken on as a philosophy or a way of life and one is just a method.

Mantra meditation gets us to the witness state, but that can't be said to be self enquiry.  So I wouldn't say that Advaita type stuff has anything to do with the AWA method, besides being another branch of yoga.

I wouldn't say Vipassana is self enquiry, although both yield the same result in the end.  The means are different in all of these cases.

So they really aren't the same thing.  The results on all levels differ, aside from attaining the state of samadhi...which doesn't change between practices.

quote:The reason everything went wrong, was because the practice did not purify the subtle nervous system fast enough to keep pace with the rising inner silence and the opening crown chakra. So when the kundalini awoke, the nadis were not able to take the force, and he was burned alive from the inside.

I disagree with your assessment of his practice.  The reason why it went wrong was because he was focusing on his crown.  Focusing on any one part of the body is a horrible idea, kundalini-wise.  It wasn't because he was bringing too much inner silence and not enough purification.  It doesn't work that way.  The two always go hand in hand, and the technique is what determines how effective and efficient the purification process is.

What I've found is that the most effective way to purify the nadis is through entering samadhi.  I still can say that I believe AWA would be an effective stand alone practice from the start, if the person knew how to do it correctly.

quote:So when we look at spiritual practices, it is important to look at what they are achieving, but also, what is the balance? What is being cultivated at what speed? Will it be safe and stable in the long term? For everyone? These are the questions we need to ask.

I agree with this completely.  Keeping that in mind...

quote:I think we are already seeing enough casualty cases who have come up against this stuff too early, to be able to say that it doesn't work from the start as a stand alone practice.

I disagree.

quote:So I see it as a set of very important practices, but I feel direct self-enquiry practices, especially when done outside of controlled practice times, must come with a caution stamped on the box.

I would say don't even attempt practices outside of controlled practice times.  Yeah, or at least I'd put stamps covering that entire box...then I'd bury it and never tell another soul about the box, just in case someone got curious.  In other words, I think it's a horrible idea energy-wise, if someone were to try that.

[ajna]

Hi Scott, Balance and All

Thanks for your replies. As already told in this discussion thread (and as well by Robert Adams) ask the question "who am I" repeatedly and leave it unanswered. The answer will be revealed in due course and the answer is Brahman or Pure awareness or God or whatever name it is called by.

PS: I agree with Scott that methods are different but result is the same. I meant that but did not convey it properly. Iam "practicing" who am I all the time, for the last few weeks and it has given me a glimpse of the inner silence. Strangely i could not fluently do "IAM meditation". Stating the obvious, everybody is different and so different methods work for different people.

Cheers

[Christi]

Hi David
 

quote:Many of us are participating in an important cultural ferment: yogic awareness and knowledge is now fermenting nicely with rational, scientific cause-and-effect perspective. Human consciousness is being pushed forward by those who understand both and integrate them.

I couldn't agree more. And I see it as very exiting that it's happening in our time.

Christi

[Christi]

Hi Scott,

I forgot to say, I'm very gald to hear that you are over your energy overload problems, and are finding great success with direct awareness methods.

 

quote:The two are still different, because one is generally taken on as a philosophy or a way of life and one is just a method.

Mantra meditation gets us to the witness state, but that can't be said to be self enquiry. So I wouldn't say that Advaita type stuff has anything to do with the AWA method, besides being another branch of yoga.

Yes I agree. Diferent practices are different even if they bring about the same results. Mantra meditation is different from asking the question "who am I?", and both are different from being continually aware of awareness itself. But all are powerful practices and need to be treated as powerful practices. That's all I'm really saying.

 Some would say that awareness of awareness is not a self enquiry practice, it is a meditation practice where the object of meditation is mindfullness (awareness) itself and it can be done with eyes closed or eyes open. In fact (as I believe Mike mentioned earlier in this thread), it is a big part of Buddhist practice, as awareness is the fourth (and last) object of meditation taught by the Buddha in his four objects of mindfulness sutta).

 The Buddha taught his monks and nuns to practice this state of awareness continually in all four asanas: sitting, standing, walking and lying down. But... and this is the big but... he didn't teach them to do this on day one after they renounced the worldly life and took up the holy life. In Buddhism, then, as now, it is a later stage practice.

 

quote:I wouldn't say Vipassana is self enquiry, although both yield the same result in the end.

There are two main schools of vipassana meditation which are quite different. I don't know which is authentic... of course each school claims that it's version is the authentic one taught by the Buddha. But it doesn't matter now for the purpose of this discussion. I am just mentioning it to point out that different people mean very different things when they use the word "vipassana" depending on which school they studdied in. One (Burmese) is a body sweeping meditation practice, the other involves contemplating all of existenece as having three fundamental characteristics: impermanence, not bringing happiness or contentment, and not containing anything that could be called "me" or "mine". The Pali words are Anicca, Dukkha and Anatta in case anyone want's to use a dictionary definition rather than my loose translation .

So this contemplative version of vipassana could easily be called a form of self-enquiry meditation. The monks (to this day) sit in meditation with eyes closed and practice this, as well as practicing it with open eyes in daily life (outside of structured practice times as we would say).
So the Buddha was teaching both a self-enquiry meditation method (vipassana), and a direct awareness of awareness practice. He was really quite a dude. But I believe that even though contemplation of the three aspects of existence (vipassana) is a less advanced practice than awareness of awareness, he still did not teach this to newly ordained  monastics (monks and nuns). Yama and Niyama were taught first, and then deep meditation (anapanasati) with the breath as the object was taught next.
 

quote:I disagree with your assessment of his practice. The reason why it went wrong was because he was focusing on his crown. Focusing on any one part of the body is a horrible idea, kundalini-wise. It wasn't because he was bringing too much inner silence and not enough purification. It doesn't work that way. The two always go hand in hand, and the technique is what determines how effective and efficient the purification process is.

I agree with you that focussing on any one-part of the body is not necessarily a good idea kundalini-wise. And certainly, Gopi Krishna was just asking for trouble by doing the all-out, go-for-gold crown practice thing. But it is not only people who do crown practices who get problems with energy impalances resulting from spiritual practices. Many people have problems who have never done any crown practices, yourself included.
 

quote:What I've found is that the most effective way to purify the nadis is through entering samadhi. I still can say that I believe AWA would be an effective stand alone practice from the start, if the person knew how to do it correctly.

If we bring our awareness to awareness itself often enough then we do enter samadhi. But I see samadhi more as a symptom of the practice rather than the practice itself. We are aware of awareness before we enter samadhi, just as we are when we are in samadhi. It's just that in samadhi, certain aspects of the aparent universe start to fall away, and the number of those aspects depends on how deep our samadhi is.
 But you are right.... in samadhi or not, bringing our awareness to awareness has a purification effect on the nadhis, and the deeper that awareness is, the stronger the purification effect is.
So the real question here is "Does bringing awareness to awareness, purify the nadis at a fast enough rate to be able to handle the rising energy (kundalini) which is being simultaneously drawn up by the expanding (and deepening) consciousness that the practice produces?".
So (as I see it) our only disagreement is that you would say "yes... for everyone" in answer to that question, and I would say "yes... as long as enough purification has already happened in the body through other more gentle practices first (demonstrated through the presence of some naturally residing inner silence)".

I believe that in real life it's actually very difficult to answer questions like that simply because very few people would start their spiritual practice with such a powerful, direct, mind (or consciousness) based practice, and for that to be the only practice that they ever do. We would need lots of people doing that to make any concrete conclusions. What usually (nearly always these days) happens is that people take up a mixture of practices at different times, mix dvaita and advaita practices, stop drinking alcohol... start drinking alcohol again[], and all the rest.

The person that Yogani refered to above, as still having problems now after attending an Adyashanti retreat (advaita self-enquiry based zen Buddhist practice), was already an AYP practitioner. So it's not really possible to know how much her problems were caused by the intense self-enquiry methods that Adya teaches (combined with his direct "no-mind" teachings) and how much she was already balanced on the edge due to her AYP non-dual practices. If she was already "on-the-edge" then any intense retreat situation could have pushed her into extreme energy overload problems, even if no self-enquiry methods, or direct mindfullness practices were involved. So I have to admit, I am really only working with "best guesses", based on observing many people doing different practices. But the more cases we get on the database, the better our guesses will be.


 

quote:--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So I see it as a set of very important practices, but I feel direct self-enquiry practices, especially when done outside of controlled practice times, must come with a caution stamped on the box.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



I would say don't even attempt practices outside of controlled practice times.

I agree with you. I also practice outside of controlled practice times, and I practice awareness of awareness both inside and outside of practice times. I am just used to calling it "mindfullness of mindfullness" because of my Buddhist training, or "absorbtion of the chitta (consciousness) in the akshara purusha (witness self)" because of my yoga training. But it's the same thing.
But again, I wouldn't advise people who are new to meditation or spiritual practices to try this. Yogani strongly advises people to do practices during practice times, and then go out into the world and do (work, serve, dance, whatever...).

But he does also say that one day samadhi becomes our natural condition (24 hours a day, 7 days a week).
 
 And I agree.. the practices we are discussing are very important and powerful practice, and there is no danger of them being put in a box and burried .

Christi

p.s. Great analysis of how direct mindfullness practices fit into the eight limbs of yoga.

[Eddy]

i'm gonna start a new post that's completley dedicated to self enquiry and porblems/do things that arise out of it

[Scott]

Christi,

quote:I forgot to say, I'm very gald to hear that you are over your energy overload problems, and are finding great success with direct awareness methods.

Thank you.

quote:Some would say that awareness of awareness is not a self enquiry practice, it is a meditation practice where the object of meditation is mindfullness (awareness) itself and it can be done with eyes closed or eyes open. In fact (as I believe Mike mentioned earlier in this thread), it is a big part of Buddhist practice, as awareness is the fourth (and last) object of meditation taught by the Buddha in his four objects of mindfulness sutta).

The Buddha taught his monks and nuns to practice this state of awareness continually in all four asanas: sitting, standing, walking and lying down. But... and this is the big but... he didn't teach them to do this on day one after they renounced the worldly life and took up the holy life. In Buddhism, then, as now, it is a later stage practice.

Awesome!  I didn't know this Buddhist practice existed.

Yes, I suppose it can be hard for someone to become mindful of being mindful if the person hasn't really ever practiced being mindful of anything.

quote:There are two main schools of vipassana meditation which are quite different. I don't know which is authentic... of course each school claims that it's version is the authentic one taught by the Buddha. But it doesn't matter now for the purpose of this discussion. I am just mentioning it to point out that different people mean very different things when they use the word "vipassana" depending on which school they studdied in. One (Burmese) is a body sweeping meditation practice, the other involves contemplating all of existenece as having three fundamental characteristics: impermanence, not bringing happiness or contentment, and not containing anything that could be called "me" or "mine". The Pali words are Anicca, Dukkha and Anatta in case anyone want's to use a dictionary definition rather than my loose translation .

So this contemplative version of vipassana could easily be called a form of self-enquiry meditation. The monks (to this day) sit in meditation with eyes closed and practice this, as well as practicing it with open eyes in daily life (outside of structured practice times as we would say).
So the Buddha was teaching both a self-enquiry meditation method (vipassana), and a direct awareness of awareness practice. He was really quite a dude. But I believe that even though contemplation of the three aspects of existence (vipassana) is a less advanced practice than awareness of awareness, he still did not teach this to newly ordained monastics (monks and nuns). Yama and Niyama were taught first, and then deep meditation (anapanasati) with the breath as the object was taught next.

I had always assumed the Burmese method was just a structured way to practice the method written in the Pali canon.  But I don't actually have any true experience with the Burmese so I shouldn't say that.  Interesting to learn about this, though.

quote:If we bring our awareness to awareness itself often enough then we do enter samadhi. But I see samadhi more as a symptom of the practice rather than the practice itself. We are aware of awareness before we enter samadhi, just as we are when we are in samadhi. It's just that in samadhi, certain aspects of the aparent universe start to fall away, and the number of those aspects depends on how deep our samadhi is.

I agree with this.

 

quote:But you are right.... in samadhi or not, bringing our awareness to awareness has a purification effect on the nadhis, and the deeper that awareness is, the stronger the purification effect is.
So the real question here is "Does bringing awareness to awareness, purify the nadis at a fast enough rate to be able to handle the rising energy (kundalini) which is being simultaneously drawn up by the expanding (and deepening) consciousness that the practice produces?".
So (as I see it) our only disagreement is that you would say "yes... for everyone" in answer to that question, and I would say "yes... as long as enough purification has already happened in the body through other more gentle practices first (demonstrated through the presence of some naturally residing inner silence)".

Those do seem to be the stances we're both taking.  But should we take those stances.  In your own words:

 

quote:I believe that in real life it's actually very difficult to answer questions like that simply because very few people would start their spiritual practice with such a powerful, direct, mind (or consciousness) based practice, and for that to be the only practice that they ever do. We would need lots of people doing that to make any concrete conclusions.

So as you've said before, it's probably close to impossible to do this scientifically.

So I will not take that stance, which says, "this is fine for anyone to do as long as they want" even though I do believe it based on my own results.  I recognize that sometimes our beliefs have to be cast aside for the sake of truth, and the truth is that I don't know the truth!

So now, the only thing I have left to "defend" regarding this practice is someone saying, "This is a dangerous practice.  You should have a certain level of purification or inner silence first."  That stance isn't known absolutely, for the same reason that the first stance isn't known absolutely.  It is a more cautious stance, and that's a good thing, but it may be unnecessarily cautious, in that whoever holds that stance is telling someone not to do a practice.

quote:What usually (nearly always these days) happens is that people take up a mixture of practices at different times, mix dvaita and advaita practices, stop drinking alcohol... start drinking alcohol again, and all the rest.

It's true.  The great thing about AYP is showing how to set up a stable spiritual practice.

quote:The person that Yogani refered to above, as still having problems now after attending an Adyashanti retreat (advaita self-enquiry based zen Buddhist practice), was already an AYP practitioner. So it's not really possible to know how much her problems were caused by the intense self-enquiry methods that Adya teaches (combined with his direct "no-mind" teachings) and how much she was already balanced on the edge due to her AYP non-dual practices. If she was already "on-the-edge" then any intense retreat situation could have pushed her into extreme energy overload problems, even if no self-enquiry methods, or direct mindfullness practices were involved. So I have to admit, I am really only working with "best guesses", based on observing many people doing different practices. But the more cases we get on the database, the better our guesses will be.

It's good to know things like that she was practicing AYP as well (although not on that retreat).  That kind of information helps to sort this kind of phenomenon out when we're collecting our cases, so that the guesses we make are more accurate and not skewed by maybes.

quote:I agree with you. I also practice outside of controlled practice times, and I practice awareness of awareness both inside and outside of practice times. I am just used to calling it "mindfullness of mindfullness" because of my Buddhist training, or "absorbtion of the chitta (consciousness) in the akshara purusha (witness self)" because of my yoga training. But it's the same thing.

I like that yogic definition of it.  Great to hear you're practicing it.  So, you do it inside of practice time as well?  No more mantra meditation?

[Christi]

Hi Scott,
 

quote:Great to hear you're practicing it. So, you do it inside of practice time as well? No more mantra meditation?

No... I still do mantra meditation. But I was doing this meditation before coming to AYP and did not want to drop it, so I built it into the AYP practice. 10 minutes spinal breathing, 10 minutes mantra meditation, 10 minites AWA (as you call it), 10 minutes samyama, 10 minutes rest... like that.
But actually it has never really been so structured or definative as that for me because of the samadhi element. If we are used to entering samadhi anyway, then during 20 minutes of AYP mantra meditation, usually, something happens (as you know)... and we enter a space where we are simply aware of awareness. Consciousness becomes withdrawn from the sense objects, the thought stream either stops entirely or becomes incredibly distant, and the very thought of picking up the mantra again seems like an incredible effort, or rather absurd. Then we have a choice, to keep the mantra going, or not. If we don't keep the mantra going, then we have switched anyway into a (deep) awareness of awareness practice automatically. Because of my previous practice tendencies (vasanas ), I have always tended to drop the mantra altogether at this point during mantra meditation.
Yogani does not advise us to do this. He advises us to keep the mantra going on a very subtle level, even in this state of absorbtion. He advises this for two reasons, one is because the mantra keeps working (purifying) on a very subtle level, and secondly because it avoids any jolting of the mind (or disjointed feeling) if we go too deep, and then suddenly come out to "normal reality". He explains it better himself here :
http://www.aypsite.com/plus-forum/index.php?topic=1514&whichpage=2#13876

I can see the logic in his reasoning and would be very interested to try it, but (as they say), vasanas are hard to break !

I know you are not doing mantra meditation (or pranayama?) at the moment because it brought up too many energy problems for you, so this stuff might not seem so relevant (whether to drop the mantra in samadhi or not). But maybe at some point you will want to take these practices up again, and then it will be relevant. Planning ahead...

 

quote:I recognize that sometimes our beliefs have to be cast aside for the sake of truth, and the truth is that I don't know the truth!

Well said ! I am willing to cast all my beliefs aside for the sake of truth, in fact I am happy to do so. It is just taking a little longer than I thought it would, and is proving to be a slightly more involved process than I first suspected.  

But hey.. where there's a will...



Christi