Year: 2017
Resistance, not Content, as the Problem: The Lesson of Meta-Anxiety
Andrew
Jenny
Andrew
Jenny
Andrew
Jenny
Noah
Andrew
Noah
Alex
Greetings amigos. Medication. I like medication and practice. It serves a purpose, just like having right conditions for practice. I did like 8 years of tantra without medication and about a year with medication. The 8 years without medication were fruitful, very fruitful, but hard. A year of tantra with medication, was more fruitful still.
I take Escitalopram, I think in the U.S. this is Lexapro. I still feel emotions, but they don’t drag me down as much. This allows for more productivity without being stressed out and faster serenity when sitting. If, however, I don’t do any of my responsibilities and that affects me somehow, medication wont stop stress. Stress is gone only with sila and view abiding. And Sila happens more often on medication because I am less distracted by heavy emotions. So that’s that.
What is a Buddha? I don’t know yet. I have never met one in person.
As for psychiatric conditions and dharma, I believe some are reversible, and others are irreversible. In fact, again going back to the concept of “freedoms and advantages of the precious human rebirth” as discussed by the Tibetans, such Precious Human Rebirth implies having the mental health to learn and practice the Dharma. In my book, that includes stuff like addiction and maybe even severe depression. If addiction is present, in a hc way, there is no way the dharma will rise in that person, and the same thing I think about people with severe depression, or similar conditions.
Jenny
Dzogchen doctrine and pretty much Tibetan Buddhist doctrine in general is that the only way to be a living buddha is (1) you are born a tulku, or (2) you completed the four stages of the visions. Personally, I see no reason to amend that position unless and until there is some reasonable basis to believe there is another way. I don’t believe Advaita Vedanta leads to the same extent of awakening as Buddhist paths. I also do not believe Theravadin arahatship is equivalent to Dzogchen Togal buddhahood. If there is comparable evidence to the contrary, I’ve not encountered it but would be open to reviewing any that comes forward, esp. if it isn’t just one person.
I also doubt you can tell who is a buddha from how poignant their teachings are. I bet the majority of the best teachers in the world, say the top 5% of teachers, have less than buddhahood. Meanwhile, I think it is also likely that buddhas stay mainly hidden and are rarely seen in the public eye as teachers. J tells this story of a guy who achieved Rainbow Body on the Tibetan plains. He wasn’t a monk. He was a yak poop shoveler. No one had any idea until Rainbow Body how highly realized he was.
Alex
Jenny
Buddhas teach and render benefit on other planes, not only or chiefly this one.
Alex
Jenny
Alex
Jenny
Alex
Jenny
Alex
Jenny
I’m not talking about merely “feeling sacredness.” I’m talking about the advancement of one’s own practice by opening up to the buddha field and receiving teachings from the buddhas from other times and places. It isn’t difficult to do.
Alex
Jenny
Sure, we can circumscribe this discussion that way. I think what I’m trying to convey is that my connection to the sangha across time and space (and in dreams) has actually been the best teacher, better than my earthbound teachers in terms of felt presence and reliability. Shakyamuni is one of those teachers I’m talking about from across time and space. I don’t separate him out from the buddha fields and categorize him as lesser or other. He’s not currently living in nirmanakaya form, after all, and once a buddha, always a buddha. So to me that includes him in the buddha fields.
Alex
Jenny
Alex
Jenny
Indeed.
You know what’s funny? The anesthesiologist called me today, and I wanted him to promise me they would inject a local anesthetic into my knee before going in with their scalpels. He was curious why, and I had to explain that I had vivid dreams of you all during my colonoscopy, that I was practicing lucidity in sleep, and that I didn’t want to wake up in my surgery and feel all that pain.
Alex
Hahahaha!
Jenny
Andrew
Jenny
Andrew
Alex
Andrew
Jenny
Andrew
Jenny
In other news, my practice has been incredibly beautiful for about 2 weeks. As I was looking on last night, I began thinking. I was puzzling again, as I have many times, that no negative state of mind seems to affect the practice. I can be sitting there with doubt, fear, whatever, and the signs and wonders rip anyway. Last night, I suddenly thought that maybe all this doubt and anxiety that has arisen lately is part of the dharmakaya release. That would explain why I lost all my anxiety before, and it stayed gone, but now it is arising so intensely since end of May, when that shift happened.
And that made me think about how on Wednesday I was freaking out about this surgery and the MRI findings. That night, I went online and was reading about pre-op anxiety, and everything I read said, “It is normal.” One article by a surgeon said, “I’m worried only by the patient who does not feel some anxiety; it’s not a haircut!” That made me laugh. And then I noticed that as soon as feeling anxious was normalized for me, and I said to myself, “Okay, so I have pre-op jitters; it is normal,” the anxiety vanished.
Andrew
Alex
Jenny
Alex
Jenny
Yeah. Trekchod via YouAreGonnaDie.com.
Andrew
LOL!
Jenny (Days Later)
Since surgery ended, the esoteric practices have continued in their splendor as long as I can stay awake for them. My recent realization that my emotional, physical, and cognitive state affects practice and results not one iota has struck me as a lesson of some kind.
I noticed this more than a year ago, but I thought I must be missing some connection, that surely if the inner state was “off,” then the efficacy of the practice would respond in some immediately noticeable way, with some change in display or some drying up of signs and wonders. But recently I saw that this is absolutely not true, no matter what my state of mind is, my actions are, etc. Nothing stops the progress, not even a protracted negative state of mind.
I think that the lesson here is akin to what I observed the other day about what Andrew called my meta-anxiety. Anxiety is not a problem; elaborating meta-worry about the anxiety is the problem. Similarly, other states, thoughts, and “negative” emotions that arise are not a problem; nonacceptance of them is. This is key. Resistance, not content, is the problem. Content is just content, the same as post-op knee pain is just pain. Radical acceptance is the practice. This includes forgiveness and self-forgiveness, compassion for myself.
During the earlier stages of my current practice, things were compelling, dazzling, miraculous, and so on. Now they seem more like a teacher of the “inner” “lessons,” even though the lessons are essentially the same as they were during ordinary insight paths. Resistance, not content, is the problem. The spectacle and magick aren’t the point; inevitability and steady presence no matter what is the point. In this, the inner light manifested as outer sign is the teacher and, through its changelessness under whatever inner condition, that outer sign shows the way.
The only thing that keeps me from cutting my arm
Cross hatch, warm bath, Holiday Inn after dark
Signs and wonders: water stain writing the wall
Daniel’s message; blood of the moon on us all