Kajenx

I think this relates to the idea that the positive and negative aspect of emotions are separate from the physical manifestation. Sadness can feel good or bad, like you say. Except I've been re-labeling the emotions depending on the combination of the two, so a positive sadness could be called compassion instead, or nostalgia in situations that aren't tragic. (Sorry about your kitty. ) Would you say that what you're referring to as Self-realization creates a kind of automatic acceptance of the internal states? Acceptance has, in my experience so far, been the chief cause of the transition from negative to positive, and I think I can recognize the joy you're referring to - though it isn't with me all the time. The emotionless state - or the state free of internal feelings/contractions - seems to come out of this joy you're referring to. That might sound like a downgrade, but it doesn't feel that way to me. More like a natural evolution of the letting go process.

Haha, I've always liked waiting in line. It means there's nothing else to do or think about for a while - simplifies life for the few minutes you're standing there.

Sounds like a nice life MH. I'm still a young whippersnapper, so maybe that's why I've been a bit evangelical, haha... 3bob, I'm not trying to ride on a high horse - but you're correct in saying I've had emotional motivations. I can't make claim to living in this mind-frame all the time. It's likely I won't have any motivation to share ideas if this process completes the way I think it will, though. Maybe making this thread has been a kind of catharsis for the part of my mind that wants to teach. Now that it's been frustrated by language, it can give up, safe in the knowledge that anything I might have to offer the world in the future will likely be created unintentionally and without effort - the place from which all good things come.

Oh good! I'm glad you can relate to what I'm saying at least. I'm curious why you meditate though. Do you have some other goal/purpose, or have you already found the proverbial "home for the mind" and meditation is just a pleasant passtime?

I don't think you're a pain in the ass. ^^ I just want to convince you (and everyone else) that this goal is worth it, so I'm trying my best to dissolve your arguments. I'm not sure it's possible to convey the exact feeling in a way that would make much sense and still be accurate, though. I'm trying to err on the side of accuracy because I think it's incredibly useful to lay this out so baldly. In many ways it's very simple - the emotions are the cause of all judgements, and judgements are why we experience stress. That's how I've come to see it. I really do understand why it sounds like a cop out, though. I can tell you all day that it's the best experience in the world, and you probably won't believe me. I wouldn't believe myself either if I hadn't seen it first hand. I can say forever that it's perfect and nothing is a problem, and bliss feels like pain in comparison, but you'll probably always come back to the fact that you're "losing" the emotions. You'll think about love and compassion and say to yourself, "This guy s crazy! These feelings are so good! Why would I get rid of them just to feel nothing like a sociopath? He must be suffering greatly, or maybe he hates himself. Maybe he's just overly intillectual and wants to be a vulcan." Does that sound right? I can tell you it's nothing like this. I'm a total hedonist, and my greatest ambition has always been to find the best way to live. Logic led me to realize that, if I could hack the brain to enjoy everything, I wouldn't have to depend on any situation to be happy. Perfect happiness was always my goal. Over the years I've seen glimpses of a state of mind where this perfect happiness existed, but I never understood it very well, and I usually lost interest because it seemed too hard to get back or maintain. But on New Years Eve it finally locked in completely, and it blew my mind. I can only say two things about it - it's emotionless, and this is precisely why it's perfect. I've been able to drop more of my "stuff" in the last few months than at any other point in my life, simply because I realized it was in the way. This mind state makes it possible to enjoy everything, so I now only see negativity as my own damn fault. ^^ You mentioned anxiety, and trying not to let it bother you. The reason I think this mind can become perminant is because it enjoys anxiety. It transforms it into bliss, then lets go of it completely. It attacks the root of the problem - the feeling - rather than trying to work through every cause or trigger for anxiety. When all the feelings have been worked through, it's amazing to see how these triggers no longer have effect. The mind is so still and the world is so perfect it would be a complete rapture and joy if the emotions were still there. Luckily, though, they aren't and it allows you to see that the reason the world is so perfect and beautiful, is because it's so mundain and ordinary. There is nothing that ever needs to change about anything except the way you see it - and the best way to see it is without any filters.

Dawei, could you expain your tips a bit more for me? I've noticed there's an emotional connection to the lower dantein that gives a sense of stability. This seems to be mentioned a lot in japanese mental disciplines (hara), and chinese practices so it seems like a good place to start. When you say to sink the mind down there, is this a deliberate concentration type exercise or a kind of let-be and watch sort of thing? You talk about how we're exchanging energy with the outside world; do you see this manifest in an outward facing awareness? I'm wondering if I'm working with some of these things without realizing it...

@ Marblehead: If given the option between love/bliss and anxiety, I would choose bliss as well. The options that have presented in my experience show a third choice, though, which is the absence of both, and I would easily choose this third option every time. It's as far beyond bliss in its "rightness for the mind" as bliss is from anxiety. Can you honestly say you'd choose a life with anxiety if you found a way never to feel it again? That's essentially what I see when I read you guys talking about what a shame it would be to lose positive emotions. They are just as contacted as anxiety, and I just can't take them seriously anymore. Love and bliss are agony when compared to true freedom. The moment my mind drops discrimination, it just sits back and says, "ahhhh, why was I doing that to myself?" In any case, the same method - acceptance - leads the mind into a full bodied bliss equivalent to the jhanas (IME so far) with no concentration required. From there you can decide if you want to let go of the bliss as well, which seems to be the final step in the transition process. It's quite easy to stay in once it gets going. @Simple_Jack: I'm a materialist as well. :3

I call the lack of internal contraction emotionless because it has no variation and no expression. It is perfectly still and completely different from emotional thinking. I can't really think of a better way to describe it. The problem is that emotionlessness has a negative conotation. However, negativity is, itself, the product of emotional thinking, so you couldn't call this state negative. It simply IS. Everything simply IS. I can see that this thread has taken on a new topic though. I don't think there's much use for me to keep repeating things. I can try one last time though. I never endorsed any kind of emotional suppression. I'm simply reporting what's happened when I took the teachings and ideas I've read to their logical conclusion in practice - I accepted everything and this is what resulted. The information is here for anyone who might find it useful. I was going to make a larger post of TTC references to acceptance, indifference, etc, but that's a bit hard to do on the tablet. I hope I don't sound conceited when I say this, but I just don't feel like anyone can relate to what I'm saying. The state itself should be easy to recognise by the descriptions I gave. If anyone is interested in seeing it first hand, the key, as always, is acceptance without exception. Let go of all control and judgement and it will quietly take you away. I don't make any judgements about if this is the aim or goal of taoism or buddhism - I just can't see what the mind could find better. When I say that everything is perfect, I really mean it. Perfection in all of its seeming impossibility. The whole world becomes complete and fresh and pure - which means it always has been, and it's simply the mind that made it otherwise with emotional thinking.

Stosh makes a good point. I'll try to describe the state in a purely sensory and descriptive way, and you guys can decide if it's emotionless or not. One thing, though, C T, you seem determined to ignore everything I keep repeating haha. You cannot hope to reach this state through suppressing, ignoring, avoiding, not-handling, running away from, hiding from, forcibly battling, or barganing with emotional states. Actually, that's what we do all day long. I think that's why we experience negative emotions in the first place. The emotionlessness I'm talking about is the result of accepting what is percieved as negative so that it becomes positive and then fades away completely. What I am saying is emotionless is the complete absence of internal contraction. Emotions seem to register (for me) in various knots or lumps along the midline of the body. Fear, excitement, and bliss/love are a contractions in the chest area, anger is in the head and neck, a particular kind of innocence or nostalgia manifests somewhere under the stomach. These things can get messy, but there's always a physical manifestation I can point to as, "this is where I'm feeling." What happens is, by coming back to "now" and enjoying the sensory feelings of the moment, it becomes easy to accept these feeling "knots". If they're negative, they will transform into their positive counterparts. This shift can be very odd, because the emotions themselves are so different, but they actually feel the same physically. Once all these knots are read as positive - something which happens natturally on it's own when they aren't resisted - the mind transitions outward from these knots and comes to a complete rest. There is simply no internal focus at all; no movement to the attention. If I try to "look" there, the feeling is a sense of emptiness, like I am hollow. I can't call this a good or bad feeling because it's just a different thing completely. It's like trying to compare apples with the space left when the apples go away. You can call it bliss, or serenity or whatever, but to me it simply feels like there is nothing there. There is nothing to give a name to. This "feeling" is, oddly, the best feeling I've ever encountered. It is total freedom. After I encountered it the first time, I suddenly realized how even what I called normal or happy was a kind of tension. These internal tensions are something like an obsession, and I've noticed they color my opinion of everything my senses come in contact with. If the contractions are read as negative, I'm bored or angry and the things around me are judged as inferior, boring, gross, etc. If the contrations are read as positive, the things around me are seen as good or helpful. You might think this is a good thing, but it's just as much a kind of blindness. I see "good thing" not "thing itself". For some reason "thing itself" is better. Maybe because it's restful. Does it feel better to squeeze something tight or lay your hand on it sofly, you know? The mind state just has this sweetness to it, almost like a smell or a taste. It might be related to sinus contraction going away and bowels running smoothly? I dunno, I'm doing my best here, haha. It's complete relaxation, made all the better because it isn't attached to any "thing". Contraction (emotion), I would argue, is a sense just like taste or touch. It's a representation OF the mind FOR the mind. If those contrations go away, the mind percieves itself as having no state at all, and simply offers sensory information without any judgements. The mind state has a hint of childhood to it, and I think that's why. It's like everything is fresh and new. As for motivation, I can understand why it would seem like a person wouldn't want to do anything without feeling desires, but the body has this energy of its own I think. Maybe this is wired into the mind, where when things seem new and fresh, the mind wants to explore and experiment with the world so it can decide how to judge things. It isn't a lathargic state at all - it's simply still and outward facing. It doesn't make me avoid food or work. Hunger isn't an emotion, and I still have a logical mind telling me money will create more food and a house. These things don't have urgency, though, they're just understood to be true. Creativity might be worth mentioning as well. I'm an artist, so it would suck if no emotions/contractions meant no artistic ability - but the opposite seems to be true. Spontenaity fuels the creative process, and emotional thinking just causes me to get attached to bits of the song/painting/writing even though I know I should change it. When there's no attachment to the process, you can obliterate something that just isn't working with no real thought to the time spent on it. There's no frustration, so things go much faster and just work better the first time around anyway.

That's a good point. Steve, I understand what you're saying, but I'm mainly referring to the sensations specifically. I'm not sure it's correct to assume the two correlate. Soaring Crane talks about physically resting on a ball of Qi. If it were energy in the cosmic sense, you might assume it could be used to push things around or it would make a print in the dirt as you put weight on it. Or even that you could sit on top of it. Maybe it's better to look at it as a way of allowing the mind to work with the muscles more efficiently, or a way to allow the nervous system to take more stress. Or do you guys see it as a physical "thing"? Maybe the what isn't as important as the why and how in the end, though.

Your question is actually rather important, I think, CT. I'm in the mind-frame as I answer your question, here, and when I look around me I'm suddenly struck by how much more alive I feel than normal. Emotions take attention away from the world and gnaw on that attention so it can't see anything else. This is why it feels a bit like a veil has dropped when the emotions disappear - there is just this lovely set of vivid sensory phenomena to experience. It doesn't seem to matter much what those senses are displaying, as it's all very nice. So, yes, there isn't much motivation to do anything. I'm answering your question, though, so I must have some reason to do so. Maybe it's emotional, but the emotions aren't read as "feelings" but rather "suggestions". There are just no contractions or physical manifestations. My body is completely at rest. Somehow everything feels very clean and new and still. I think that's because the mind sees itself as still, so it projects that stillness onto everything else. It does this with the other feelings as well - I think that's just how the mind works. You might say nothing is ugly or boring, the mind just is that way sometimes. Strong emotions definately are fuel for transformation - I saw that the first time I ran into this mind state. I was incredibly anxious, and that anxiety suddenly flipped over into incredible bliss when I finally accepted the contracted heart center completely. The two emotions were identcal physicaly, the mind just decided to see one as good and the other as bad. That bliss faded quickly, as I was still "accepting" at the time, and I spent the rest of the night completely emotionless or equanimious. Once the transformation happens, it doesn't need any more fuel, I think. This is what I think the "dualistic illusion" really is. ANYTHING can be seen as positive or negative, and once the mind begins to see this switch instantly happen on a regular basis, it has a hard time believing it anymore and simply stays neutral. That's my theory anyway. Once this mind locks in, it sticks around pretty easily these days. The main problem is remembering not to try to change the feelings, but instead to just let go of the judgements about the feelings. They seem to go positive before they go neutral - so that's probably the continuum. Bad -> Good -> Freedom. I think a lot of the Taoist practices bring this into the physical realm as well - also yoga maybe. What might feel painful originally becomes pleasurable with acceptance. I've been able to play with this a bit with headaches and seen great results. Edit: Actually, consider something like writer's block. In that case the emotions are in direct conflict with the will. The artist wants to write, but dislikes what s/he is writing, losing motivation. If the writer wasn't influenced by emotional thinking, s/he could just write freely without any problems. Maybe what I'm referring to as emotions could be thought of as inhibitions. The capacity to make judgements remains, those judgements just don't have any feelings or urgency attached to them.

Well, 3bob asked me who this "I" was that I kept referring to. Anatta is a buddhist concept, not a Taoist one as far as I know. That's why I asked... I've been interested in Taoism for almost 10 years now, and I've been studying buddhism for about 5 months, haha. A friend of mine considers himself buddhist, and he really disliked most of these ideas I've talked about. I have a feeling this thread wouldn't be any more relevant/accepted in the buddhist forum. I just tried some buddhist language because I thought it might help to have a different take on the idea. Maybe what I'm doing is just someting completely different. Recently I came across something called "Actual Freedom" that seemed to fit the bill, but the guy who started that insists it has nothing to do with enlightenment (which he seems to consider a dirty word) and is actually a "third option". I don't really know, end of the day. After this thread, I'm wondring if it really isn't just something new - which really makes me wonder what enlightenment is. What do you guys consider the "goal" to be? Like, assuming a genie came to you and could grant you instant perfect enlightenment, what would that be to you? This is my view as well; that's why I thought it belonged here. Everything I've been talking about, minus the specific post on empiness/luminosity, is how I've come to view taoist philosophy based on my experiences. Edit: Would any of you be willing to experiment with radical acceptance for a month or two? Maybe see if you can't reach this emotionless state I'm referring to? It might be helpful to have another person who has seen it first hand. Or maybe some of you already do practice like this? IDK, just an idea.

@3bob: I've run into that kind of quote/idea a lot around the internet. Consider this, the state/mind-frame I'm referring to is arrived at through complete acceptance. Wouldn't a visceral realization of anatta solidify this understanding so acceptance became automatic and effortless? If so, I can only assume the result would be this same emotionless mind-frame. I have no idea what a realization of anatta is supposed to look like though. Do they talk about "self" at all in Taoism? I've never seen it talked about how buddhism does. It seems like anatta might be more of an abstract concept than a direct insight everyone would describe the same way - comparing it to other mystical traditions.

The Tao is jamais vu.

I never replied to this, but I think this may point to the same thing. Maybe one person's emotionlessness is another persons emotional perfection and another person's emotional matrix (filter?). I tend to look at things in a very experiential sort of way, so I try to look for the most descriptive words I can. To me, this state feels like it's free from emotions - but I can also see the emotions manifesting in a physical non-emotional way. These physical remnants tend to fade completely if the state is maintained for a longer period of time, since there's no more emotional/mental fuel for the contractions. At that point it becomes very stable and effortless in a self-perpetuating way. That effortless quality is what gives me hope that it could become a baseline. Actually, this brings to mind something else I haven't mentioned. There is another state that I might call a "perfect inner world" which is basically complete absorption into universal bliss/love - or a complete attention to a contracted heart center that is read as positive. This state is very nice, but it's still inferior to the "outer world" (in my subjective opinion). Luckily, it tends to make the transition very easy, since it loosens the heart center and fades out into the emotionless state fairly quickly if I don't hold on to it. It's also self-perpetuating, but when I was aiming for it in practice it ended up turning into a kind of clinging because I was looking for an emotional change. The emotionless state seems to be much more directly linked to "letting go", so it's difficult to form anything to cling to. I was, however, clinging to the sensory effects which caused a bit of a delay in my progress over the past few weeks. The original post probably puts too much emphasis on control - moving into the senses intentionally. I didn't realize that it was the abdication of control that allowed it to happen naturally. My method at this point - if it could be called a method - is to "just enjoy the current moment for as long as it lasts." It's kind of stupidly simple, but that's all there is to it. Maybe that's why it's so hard, haha.

Benevolent indifference sounds perfect. There is no motivation or reason to have aversion towards anything, so it's benevolent. But that benevolence is not moral or reasoned, it's just the result of indifference. The indifference isn't apathy, though, just the truest meaning of the word. Everything is equally satisfying. I've been trying to understand if it's impersonal, but I'm not sure I understand what that means. I've overthought the idea of anatta over the last few months so it's almost meaningless at this point. The state has an immersive quality, which could be called "non-dual" but that might be too subtle. I tried to look up "the state of wu" but google failed me. Any references/descriptions?

@ Stosh: It's true that you've all been very encouraging, so thank you for that. That said, I do feel misunderstood - i.e. I'm not really doing a good job conveying what I mean. Most of the replies have been in defense of emotional thinking as either too dificult to control or unhealthy to remove/suppress - or even that it's a long process to become more moral/compassionate/happy. This is true, which is why this mind-frame I'm talking about is so miraculous. It spontaneously removes all of this emotional world and replaces it with perfection. There is no emotional work to do, because the emotions are transcended completely and you simply feel content and benevolent towards everything because there is nothing you want or need. I'm not really sure how else to explain what I'm talking about, so that's why I said there wasn't much more I could add. Maybe if I'm able to spent more time in this mind-frame and integrate it into everyday life, I'll be more able to explain it in a way that doesn't make it sound negative to people.

I like you sig CT. I'll try to remember to forget about goals. Seems like thats the fastest way there anyway, haha.

Thank you all for the discussion, but I'm not sure there's anything more I can add. I think it's probably best to assume that I can't properly explain what I'm talking about. I will continue to practice and maybe make another thead in a few months or years stating whether I've been successful in reaching my goal. I have read of a few people who have gotten where I think this is leading, and they talk about a spontaneously perfected reality. This is what I've found. While it IS seen as a state in my current experience, because it comes and goes, what has extended it over time is applying it to what I would consider "mundane" reality. It's a frame of mind, not a state of mind because it absorbs all states. If enlightenment exists at all, there is obviously something that changes. That change has to be able to account for all situations, yes, but it doesn't mean the mind is unchanged. After what I've seen, I don't think I could settle for calling anything else the "end". There really is a way to free the mind from all desires, and it really is as good as the mythology claims. It has one taste - complete freedom.

If you don't have any desires, why would being with someone be different from being without them? Why would seeing a flower be different from seeing a rotting corpse or a pile of used plastic containers? Why would recieving a PM or driving a sports car be different from sitting quietly in an empty and featureless room? I'm talking about perfect contentment that relies on nothing at all. Everything is equal until the mind makes divisions. These divisions are the cause of stress, not anything in the world. We make our own limitations by choosing to call some things good and others bad. Emotionlessness is one way of describing the mind that has gone beyond this process. This mind is free from emotional thinking, not supressing emotions or removing them. Emotion simply becomes a meaningless word because everything is perfect and nothing is seen as more valuable, more interesting, or more worthwhile than anything else. This is not a cold or empty feeling, it is a feeling of completeness, perfection, being beyong the poles of judements. Everyone is your friend, even solitude. Everything is as beautiful as a flower and as exciting as driving a sports car. Using these words is wrong, because excitement and beauty and love are divisive and stressful by comparison, but if you haven't seen the mind-state I'm referring to, then it's the best I can do to describe it.

@Marblehead: Not to be picky, but I never said not to express emotions. Consider this, if a person has no desires, what emotions would they feel? @3bob: It might be worth the time to skim a few of my other posts. I've tried to clear up some of the main objections/misconceptions. I don't think I've been able to communicate what I intended to very well, but theres not much more I can say at this point. ^^ @stosh: I'm only on the tablet right now so I'll try to come back later and attempt a comparison.

I'm not sure I've experienced emptiness, or that I have any idea what it means. ^^ However, on the Dharma Overground forum, they say that the only thing that could be called emptiness is a complete cessation of consiousness and perception. So they say you don't experience emptiness, you only experience the moment before and the moment after. This is supposed to feel like a skipped beat in reality and it can last from a few moments to a few hours. I don't really subscibe to this view, though, because it doesn't seem to match what various scriptures say. The phenomena exists, as lots of people report it, but I don't know what use it would have. For exmple, the buddha said he lived in emptiness. This makes it seem like an experience that is empty of desire, not empty of everything that exists. You seem to be describing an experience as well. I once had an experience that is something like what you describe. I was laying in bed, ready to fall asleep and my mind was wandering. Suddenly I experienced a complete stillness. It didn't seem to have any kind of sensory activity or thoughts, just perfect oblivion. It lasted for an indeterminant period of time, then I kind of popped back. It actually took a few moments to realize anything had happened.

I do a lot of standing these day. Standing at the window watching the wind in the grass... It's a different kind of meditation, I think. No special effects, just the senses doing their thing.

Your dream actions and mind-states tend to be a reflection of your real life actions and mind-states. If you practice acceptance of your emotional states and awareness of the senses during the day, this will spill over into your dreams. You can flow with the dreams during the night and wake up in a benevolent mood. I know what you mean by all this, though. Sleep has a way of resetting things. Just remember to start your meditations right away in the morning. Flow with the feelings - no matter what they are - once you've emerged from the dream state, and they will become more integrated into your peaceful mind. Then, when you feel them in your dreams, you'll be less likely to resist, and they won't disturb you. Some of my greatest "victories" have been waking up to realize I had accepted something disturbing in my dreams. (Usually large spiders lately, haha...)

Have you ever heard of the jhanas, Manitou? (You probably have after 30 years of meditating, but I'm throwing this out there in case you haven't.) This sounds like a formless realm experience - perhaps the "sphere of infinite space" or "the sphere of nothingness". Was it preceded by any other experiences, like a feeling of the body dissolving into space, then an expansion of the mind, or did it seem to come from nowhere?