2010.12.02 01:00 - Spiritual Bypassing and Recollective Awareness

The Guardian for this meeting was Zen Arado. The comments are by Zen Arado. Present were Calvino Rabeni, Observerm Resident and myself.

'Internality' of winter :)

Zen Arado: Hi Cal :)
Calvino Rabeni: Good day Zen :)
Zen Arado: I was just checking my mic
Zen Arado: settings
Zen Arado: I seem to be getting output even when I'm not speaking
Zen Arado: and I am using a headset and not using speakers
Zen Arado: how are things going for you?
Calvino Rabeni: Going well on many fronts, with the exception of "fiscal fitness".
Calvino Rabeni: How about you, what's on your mind these days?
Zen Arado: well - it isn't my favourite time of year
Zen Arado: it's really cold here atm
Zen Arado: we have had early snow
Zen Arado: so I don't get out so much
Zen Arado: we had a cold winter last year too
Zen Arado: so hope it isn't the way things are going to go from now on
Calvino Rabeni: Winter is pretty internal for me too. But a lot goes on indoors and in inner space. :) What's on your creativity or reading list?What's on your creativity or reading list lately?

About rethinking meditation techniques and Cal's spiritual bypassing salon:

Zen Arado: I am thinking about meditation a lot atm
Zen Arado: reading a book called 'Unlearning Meditation' by this guy
Zen Arado: http://www.buddhistgeeks.com/2010/08...ng-meditation/
Calvino Rabeni: Thats a wide topic.
Calvino Rabeni: Oh, let me check that out.
Calvino Rabeni: I went to an Integral Salon tonight and the topic was spiritual bypassing and discernment.
Calvino Rabeni: It sounds kind of hard core but we had a lot of fun discussing it.
Calvino Rabeni: http://www.amazon.com/Eyes-Wide-Open...1280794&sr=8-3
Zen Arado: sounds interesting
Calvino Rabeni: (looking at your link, meanwhile)
Calvino Rabeni: There's a kind of no-nonsense plain talk tone to it ...
Calvino Rabeni: I find the following somewhat negative but also hilarious:
Zen Arado: yes - but a bit unsettling also
Calvino Rabeni: "How to Recognize a Spiritually Transmitted Disease"
Zen Arado: I haven't much immunity to them I think :)
Calvino Rabeni: Its questionable or at least worth questioning the effectiveness of pathologizing these things, but I find it funny :)
Calvino Rabeni: heheh :)
Calvino Rabeni: I've been inoculated in a variety of ways, I think.
Zen Arado: you build up resistance
Zen Arado: but you have to stay open as well
Calvino Rabeni: 'In a way these two links are about similar issues
Zen Arado: so many people stuck in their assumptions of a 'right way' of doing things
Calvino Rabeni: Yeah, as if there's one and only
Calvino Rabeni: and as if doing were a one-sided thing

Wilber and his wackiness and otherwise good stuff:

Zen Arado: what is 'Integral salon'?
Calvino Rabeni: A community of people who meet to study and develop a community of practice around the ideas of Ken Wilber and later people inspired by large general integrative frameworks for understanding mind, spirit, consciousness, and related issues.
Zen Arado: hmm - Wilber can be a bit wacky though don't you think?
Calvino Rabeni: Yeah
Calvino Rabeni: He's made a big index
Zen Arado: some of his stuff a bit far out
Calvino Rabeni: Doesn't bother me though
Zen Arado: makes me suspect his 'good' ideas
Calvino Rabeni: its like a kind of encyclopedia of varying quality
Zen Arado: but I am prejudging
Calvino Rabeni: he's the compiler or curator
Zen Arado: that book looks interesting but it's expensive in the UK
Zen Arado: only $1.30 in the US?
Calvino Rabeni: well I got it on Kindle for $1.24
Calvino Rabeni: Yes
Calvino Rabeni: a bargain I thought
Zen Arado: it isn't on KIndle for UK
Zen Arado: and they want £15.29 for it
Calvino Rabeni: Hmmm, is there a way to send kindle files?
Calvino Rabeni: I could perhaps transmit it ?
Zen Arado: don't think so
Zen Arado: they got that one covered
Zen Arado: :)
Calvino Rabeni: I don't know how that works, -- does the non-UK Amazon site load outside the US?
Zen Arado: I can get for £6.21 from a reseller though
Zen Arado: anyway = the book about meditation is so against some of the things I have been practicing
Zen Arado: like just going with the content of thoughts instead of coming back to the breath
Calvino Rabeni: The "also bought" book list for that one has Ralston's book, so it seems it must be for people who like to sink their teeth into something and dig in.
Calvino Rabeni: Right, that's what I practice
Calvino Rabeni: Or something like it :)

Thinking in meditation and what to do with it:

Zen Arado: I do too but worry if I seem to be thinking too much
Calvino Rabeni: I'd say - no such thing
Zen Arado: difference between thinking and identifying with the thoughts I guess
Calvino Rabeni: yes
Zen Arado: if you can take a kind of meta stance to them
Calvino Rabeni: not is "not identifying" a desirable goal
Calvino Rabeni: *not
Zen Arado: well - if you just sit and think is that meditation?
Calvino Rabeni: just?
Calvino Rabeni: why should it matter
Calvino Rabeni: it's meditation if it's done with awareness
Zen Arado: but there has to be some kind of stepping back
Calvino Rabeni: I don't think so
Zen Arado: not lost in the thoughts
Calvino Rabeni: stepping INTO it is as aware
Calvino Rabeni: how about fully present, in the thoughts? I think that's the principle
Zen Arado: awareness of the thoughts is more like it
Zen Arado: seeing repetitive patterns
Zen Arado: but maybe your own experience tells you better than books
Zen Arado: seeing what works

Recollective Awareness:

Zen Arado: he suggests what he calls - 'Recollective Awareness'
Zen Arado: keeping a journal and writing about what happened in a meditation session
Zen Arado: I find I forget what happened :)
Calvino Rabeni: That can be a useful practice
Zen Arado: yes - it might promote more awareness
Calvino Rabeni: But it can't be just words or descriptions - it needs to be something that stimulates a fuller memory or recollection - bringing aspects of the expeience back into presence in the current moment
Calvino Rabeni: And the goal isn't the description or abstract learning
Calvino Rabeni: It's more of a mind training exercise
Calvino Rabeni: and also a process of integrating the experience
Zen Arado: no it's the fact it makes you stay more alert during a session I think
Zen Arado: because you know you will have to write about it
Calvino Rabeni: it brings aspects of the experience into the normal waking state
Calvino Rabeni: that could be part of it ... basically it makes a bridge
Zen Arado: seeing questionable assumptions we make
Calvino Rabeni: otherwise experience is very state-dependent
Calvino Rabeni: disconnected
Calvino Rabeni: the idea there is to begin to connect the islands of consciousness
Calvino Rabeni: No doubt it contradicts some philosophies
Zen Arado: maybe we fear that knowledge
Zen Arado: read somewhere that drifting off into sleep or drowsiness is a protective mechanism
Calvino Rabeni: Its more a challenge in remembering ... even if the experience were pleasant and attractive it would still be difficult
Zen Arado: our mind doesn't want to face something that would come up

Drifting off and control:

Zen Arado: he says it is ok to drift off in meditation
Calvino Rabeni: but you're right, self remembering is harder when there is fear
Calvino Rabeni: because its aversive
Calvino Rabeni: I agree it's fine to drift off in meditation
Zen Arado: well - that's totally against what I have learned in the past
Calvino Rabeni: the "nondoing" of meditation involves awareness no matter what the mind does, without preference, and letting it be completely natural
Calvino Rabeni: I understand
Zen Arado: so I find that one hard to swallow
Zen Arado: but maybe I try to control too much
Calvino Rabeni: Perhaps if you think of it as a form of nonattachment and equanimity
Calvino Rabeni: yes
Calvino Rabeni: control is generally egoic
Zen Arado: we have an idea of what meditation 'should' be and conform to it
Zen Arado: yes
Zen Arado: ego wants it to go a certain way
Calvino Rabeni: thinks it ought to be a certain way, does not understand the fuller flowering of the possibilities
Zen Arado: not allowing it to develop on its own
Calvino Rabeni: plays favorites
Calvino Rabeni: yes true
Calvino Rabeni: theres a lot to be said for trust in the natural process
Calvino Rabeni: tao of mind, if you will
Calvino Rabeni: and not contradicting it
Calvino Rabeni: why people want to control... well fear is part of it
Calvino Rabeni: fear of what may arise, of being "out of control" as if that would somehow be a disaster
Calvino Rabeni: of not-knowing what will happen
Zen Arado: even noticing that tendency to control is a big step
Calvino Rabeni: of not-knowing who "it" will be next
Calvino Rabeni: yes
Zen Arado: it is so subtle
Calvino Rabeni: isn't it
Zen Arado: so fearful to stay open
Calvino Rabeni: I heard someone say a while back - when getting ready to meditate - that they weren't quite ready, they had first to push some emotions to the side so they wouldn't be distracted from breathing
Calvino Rabeni: that's spiritual bypassing
Zen Arado: yes - it seems to be the same thing
Calvino Rabeni: being unwilling to have the natural experience and be aware of it, thinking it would interfere with "correct" meditation
Zen Arado: we follow our idea of it and not allow the real thing
Calvino Rabeni: yeah
Calvino Rabeni: and that idea, is often an expression of fixated patterns of attention
Zen Arado: Hi Observerm
observerm Resident: hello
Zen Arado: I 'm sorry but I have to go shortly
Zen Arado: I'll leave you with this quote:
Zen Arado: "The question would be, 'Well, what's going to happen then? Am I just going to be sitting and thinking all the time? Is it going to be really chaotic?' And so we generally may have fears around what this may mean and instead of saying the fears are just fears and maybe just imaginations, to really look at the fear being genuine. That there was something about the practice I was doing that really contained my experience in a certain way. I needed to have a certain amount of control and a sense of a task, and that was useful. So just to loosen up around that, to have that permission to do the instructions when you want, or not to do them - to let yourself just go with whatever comes up is a good middle ground here."
Zen Arado: we were talking about a new way of meditating Observerm
observerm Resident nods
Zen Arado: so that sums up a new approach to it I am going to try
Calvino Rabeni: Same here, observer, basically we're reaching the end of the session (it started at 1am) and I'm afraid I'll need to go too
Calvino Rabeni: but come again another time... you know when we meet?
observerm Resident: ok
Zen Arado: obsrverm has been at other sessions I attended
Calvino Rabeni: (1am 7am 1pm 7pm) every day, 24/365 :)
Calvino Rabeni: OK, I was seeing a number of Resident last named avatars, couldn't quite remember
Calvino Rabeni: thanks
Zen Arado: bye and thanks for coming Cal :)
Zen Arado: always good to talk to you
Calvino Rabeni: _/!\_
Calvino Rabeni: See you later ... likewise