The 7 Stage Model

EndinSight, thank you for contributing here. I'm anxious to hear Kenneth's explanation, too.

So what happens when one directly knows "emotion" as "emotion"? One sees it as a composite of sensations and the mind bending around them, holding them in a certain way and reacting to them. The mental "bending" tends to cease when this happens and one is left with just the sensations. Without discernment, mental reactions, stories and proliferations are conceived that may lead to further mental, verbal and physical actions which can occur over and over and over again..

"Aren't all the physical sensations basically the same in that they are all just tension? The tension can be present in varying levels of subtlety, and depending on the location and intensity the tone is interpreted as pleasant, neutral or unpleasant? So isn't the tone, at some level, also a type of delusion? "

I got this from triplethink, talking about what one can do with a highly concentrated mind. One can change the way the mind percives a particular sensation. For example, the iddhis or powers, as talked about by the Buddha, are developed by investigating and opening up to perception right at the point of contact. It is possible, in my own experience, to change the way the mind perceives a sensation. If it was automatically read as unpleasant, the malleable mind can change that perception to reading it as pleasant and viceversa. Or both unpleasant and pleasant at the same time. This is not just useful for developing the superpowers, but also for insight into how the mind works and how so very malleable it is. So in a sense, perception of things is a habitual pattern developed over a lifetime (or more , and the fact that we do not know it can be manipulated and changed could be seen as ignorance in my opinion.Some people hate broccoli, some people love it. Why?


Here is an interesting link talking about afflictive emotions as delusion with an interesting quote by the Dalai lama: viewonbuddhism.org/delusion_introduction.html

Glad you liked my explanation, Nick!

I wonder if we have similar ways of thinking about these issues surrounding meditation and dharma in general. For example, you also quoted me in the past in advice you posted to some friends interested in Goenka (but back then I was an "anonymous DhO yogi".)

Nick,
Wow! Stunned silence. I think I'll wade bag to the shallow end of the pool
Thanks for a lot to think on and aim towards. I had no idea the mind could be so malleable.

Hi Chris,

Sorry to take so long to respond. You wrote:

"Is it fair and accurate to say, then, that you do not experience emotions as emotions (things/objects) but rather as unbundled components?"

Yes. There is no water in the mirage when the earth and the shimmering air are seen as earth and shimmering air. That's why it's so difficult to talk about it without confusing everyone. Should I say there is no mirage? Or should I say there is a mirage but it is now seen to be without water?

cmarti: "You seem still to have processes that occur that arise and are caused by your experiences of the world. So to say that you do not experience emotions or that you do but not at all as you used to strikes me as purely a semantic difference.(Per your last paragraph.) This, as you say, could lead to vast misinterpretation and probably has."

Right. The thing is, though, when the mirage is seen through, it does change the experience tremendously. So it isn't JUST the unbundling of the components. To continue to flog the metaphor, when your are no longer grubbing about on hands and knees eating sand, life is good. This dropping away of huge rafts of unnecessary suffering that were directly caused by the misperception is key to understanding what a revolution in consciousness the 6th stage is.

cmarti: "Is this change you have experienced a kind of dropping away? I'm curious because I would use that language to describe pretty much every insight I've had -- they are removal of the veils that obscure what is 'really going on.'"

Yes, I agree that these developmental insights are best categorized by what it lost rather than by what is gained at each level. As you say, though, there is also the successive unveiling of ever more subtle perspectives because they are no longer obscured by the misperception that has just been left behind.

Thank you.

So, Kenneth, I have my next question at the ready: what is it that started the changes in your experience? Did the direct mode practice come first and lead to the changes, or was the direct mode a reaction/adopted practice that was a sort of symptom of the changes? Or maybe it's a chicken/egg thing. I have no idea. But I am curious.

Interesting graph by Shinzen Young on emotions and how a meditator should express them.

www.shinzen.org/Articles/artExpressEmo.pdf

Yeah.

"Never suppress emotions internally" is how I read that

"
Yeah.

"Never suppress emotions internally" is how I read that

"

Hi Chris,

Your point being? It seems you are under the impression soem yogis here are "supressing" emotions? Could you please elaborate on this?


Nick

Nick, I was only commenting only on what that matrix said, not about anyone here. If I was going to comment on any yogis here I'd direct my comments to them as explicitly as possible.

"
Nick, I was only commenting only on what that matrix said, not about anyone here. If I was going to comment on any yogis here I'd direct my comments to them as explicitly as possible.

"

No probs, Chris!

Just making sure. I sometimes read too much into what others have written. It's something I'm working on.

Peace!

Nick

Re-posting a question to Kenneth:

So, Kenneth, I have my next question at the ready: what is it that started the changes in your experience? Did the direct mode practice come first and lead to the changes, or was the direct mode a reaction/adopted practice that was a sort of symptom of the changes? Or maybe it's a chicken/egg thing. I have no idea. But I am curious.

Yes, and is it possible that other processes and practices contributed to the transformations, or are you pretty certain of the causality?
Thanks!

She asked him if he could have feelings for her? He said he thought he could, if he ate her sandwich.

: )

I've seen that ad. It doesn't work out so well

"what is it that started the changes in your experience? Did the direct mode practice come first and lead to the changes, or was the direct mode a reaction/adopted practice that was a sort of symptom of the changes? Or maybe it's a chicken/egg thing." -cmarti

Chris, I want to respond to this as best I can, but I'm not sure how to answer the question. Can you parse it a little, or ask it differently?

"Yes, and is it possible that other processes and practices contributed to the transformations, or are you pretty certain of the causality?" -jhsaintonge

Hi Jake,

My sense is that the practices I began focusing on in September, i.e., what I called the toll booth, the sunspot, the lightning rod, and the deadman switch directly precipitated the changes. In working with other yogis since then, I also see that those practices are not enough in and of themselves; in other words you can't just "throw a switch" or learn the special formula and gain the benefits. My best hypothesis is that the yogi has to be ready for the changes to take place. This readiness, combined with the set of practices I just mentioned seems to lead to the changes. So, there is the all-important "tilling of the field," which can probably be done using a hundred different practice modalities, the common denominator of which is that the yogi remain present in this moment as continuously as possible. (The built-in feedback loop of noting aloud makes it especially attractive.) For most people, this tilling of the field takes place over years and decades before the yogi is prepped for the 6th and 7th stages.

You could set up an algorithm:

1) Practice the toll booth, sunspot, lightning rod, and deadman switch.
2) If it sticks (negative emotions don't arise), keep doing it.
3) If it does not stick, note the 4 foundations of mindfulness.
4) Retry #1 periodically.

Thank you Kenneth, that helps.
So these core practices (1 in the algorithm) precipitated the transformation of the emotions only or both that transformation and the 7th stage dropping of the inference of subjectivity (I apologize if that is not an adequate characterization of the 7th stage transformation)?

"Chris, I want to respond to this as best I can, but I'm not sure how to answer the question. Can you parse it a little, or ask it differently?" -- Kenneth

Kenneth, no need - you seem to have answered my question by answering Jake's. So thanks. What I'm seeing you say is that you were ready, in some fashion, to experience the changes that were brought on by the changes in your practice methods and techniques. So... a simple timeline might look like this:

1. Practice as you had always practiced before
2. Those original practices caused some opening to be created but which remained undetected until...
3. Experimenting with the toll booth, the sunspot, the lightning rod, etc., caused that opening to be revealed
4. Which then caused you to have further realizations as you continued (fruitfully) with those practices

Is that right?

Yes, I think that's right, Chris, and I would also tie this in with Jake's question from post 143. For me, the direct mode practices coincided with and seemed to precipitate stage 6, but not stage 7. For stage 7, it was more about juxtaposing self-referencing and the lack of self-referencing by using a simple binary note: "Am I self-referencing (yes or no)?" This brought the contrast between self-referencing and the lack thereof clearly into focus while also making it obvious that much of the time there was no self-referencing and yet life went on without it. One of the tricks of self-referencing is that whenever it arises it carries with it the assumption that it has always been here. To see that this is not the case was crucial; if it isn't always here, then it isn't performing any essential function. At that point, it was seen as nothing more than annoying baggage, and that orientation seemed to help it unravel.

Also, although the package of practices I've listed here worked very well indeed, I have no reason to believe that other practices would not also work to reveal the 6th and 7th stages. Simple noting, for example, may also unravel the misperceptions at those levels. It looks to me now as though the only thing that holds up yogis at any stage of development is camping out in their favorite state or situation. This is why I think it is essential to perform a thought experiment like this: if I could no longer have my favorite situation, be it jhana, nondual awareness, pure awareness, ongoing ease, or (fill in the blanks), could I still be free?

If the answer is "no, I have to have my happy place," the yogi is stuck on a plateau. No problem, it happens to all of us again and again; it's part of the process. All we have to do is get back to noticing things as they are, including and especially clinging (to my happy place) and aversion (to everything else).

Nice. That's about what I figured. Thanks for the clarification; it'll be interesting to see how your articulation of these shifts evolves as you guide more practitioners into similar territory.

When you were talking about the practices which led to the sixth stage last fall I was struck by how similar they seemed to some shamatha practices in many Vajrayana lineages, and kept wondering about the "vippashyana" side of the equation--- which generally involves investigating and dropping the sense of a "subject". The latter is what I always assumed was being spoken of in Vipassana circles as annatta or no-self or emptiness. Shows how much misunderstanding can arise when communicating across traditions!

And just to be a pest, I can't help but mention that shammatha/vipashyana in the Vajrayana lineages are said to result in "liberation" and to be followed by yet further development. This further development is described in similar ways in the major Vajrayana lineages such as Mahamudra and Dzogchen. There, I couldn't help myself!

Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions Kenneth. Hopefully a more tolerant, ecumenical dialogue is emerging around these topics.

" the common denominator of which is that the yogi remain present in this moment as continuously as possible."

This seems to be the KEY element in all this!!!!!!!!!

Thanks again for reminding everyone, Kenneth!

I would agree with the idea that it is possible, likely even, that practitioners can get stuck on a plateau and not be able to get off until something changes. I also suspect that change can be forced from outside or be coaxed along from inside. To me this is becomes an argument for changing things up, trying a different tradition, or maybe just getting angry and stomping off in a huff

"
I would agree with the idea that it is possible, likely even, that practitioners can get stuck on a plateau and not be able to get off until something changes. I also suspect that change can be forced from outside or be coaxed along from inside. To me this is becomes an argument for changing things up, trying a different tradition, or maybe just getting angry and stomping off in a huff

"

Or experimenting with crazy arse modes of perception.