I have been practicing continuously full time every day for the past months. The progress has been steady: sitting on the cushion every morning the awareness continuum plays itself faster and mind is developing more flexible and less attached to certainty and solidity.

Doing guru yoga takes the mind to the high end of extraordinary perspective, non-dual automatic emptiness. After finishing guru yoga, when I take the view of Padmasambhava doing the meditation and not me, a steady slide starts to full brightness and unobstructness of rigpa without reference points. There are days when there does not seem to be enough openness and faith to let everything evolve automatically and I have to use some methods of no-method to iniate the crossing over to the perspective that no meditation technique can reach. On some days the awakened view may prove to be fickle and I will find myself back in the extraordinary view without noticing what happened.

Often though the awakened perspective becomes stronger the longer I sit and after sitting I can easily extend the view through my morning chores and during my commute to work as well. This is when it feels like the easiest thing in the world and it is hard to believe that it could even be lost.

As a result of familiarization with all the stages of awareness continuum, I can now pinpoint my own state of mindfulness on the continuum confidently with accuracy. This enhaces off the cushion practice dramatically as I can evaluate the current level of insight into emptiness and make appropriate corrections. As a result there is less doing and more trusting and allowing. At home or in the office, it does not matter. The basis of operation is automatic emptiness most of the time and easily becoming non-dual non-meditation, space and awareness merging with the sensations without the observer. From there occasional spontaneous dips into awakened perspective happen, mostly caused by briefly fully seeing the brilliant emptiness inherent in changing conditions of light and shadow. Or seeing the fantastic nature of a reflexion on a surface. Or maybe feeling the breathtaking infinity of the body for a moment, which pulls the the rug from under the feet of narrow minded conceptualizations.

One recent phenomena has been large amounts of energy coursing in the body. Lately it has been pooling in the lower part of the torso creating excitement and distinctly sexual flavour to the exprience. Apparently this is a result of not being able to fully relate to the energy, a side-effect of a subtle level of attachment. Stripping away all veils there is a dramatic shift. The energy is transformed and it shifts to the heart area. Arousal and desire are totally gone and what is left are feelings of connectedness, metta and compassion. The dividing line between those two ways of experiencing the energy is very fine indeed and it makes me think. It may help to explain how some infamous teachers of high level realization may still have unresolved issues concerning these issues of the lower chakras.

A couple of years ago, before getting into Mahamudra type of practice, I read many books and thought I knew what Rigpa or awareness knowing itself means. I had confidence that I had access to that perspective and could maintain it off the cushion as well. I was wrong.

Now I am a bit reluctant to use that word. Currently in my practice I am experiencing the effect of receding horizons. The deeper my sits go, the vaster the possibilites seem. What appears to be limiltess today seems narrow and restricted tomorrow in comparison. With the unfolding of this process, the state of being is becoming all the time more enhanced and refined. Truly wondrous!

I have been observing some clear changes to how this mind is operating off the cushion. This baseline shift has happened slowly and steadily during the past four months and with an accelerated pace during the past month.

The way I am currently experiencing the world is nothing totally new since there have been many peak experiences of heightened clarity as a result of various stages of awakening, especially stages 5 – 8, see Milestones. These were shifts of dramatic and sudden decrease in the level of discontentment and suffering, dukkha, but after the honeymoon period was over, things became more solid and ordinary again. Although the discontentment did not return, the magical glow surrounding everyday experience went away.

However, the changes I have been observing for the past year and especially for the past couple of months are different. There has been no sudden shift, but instad slow and steady increase and lately the pace has been continuously accelerating.

Some key features:

  • Magical dream like nature of all experience is becoming stronger all the time. There is vividness and clarity that is enhanced by the fact the mind stays like a mountain on whatever it is experiencing.
  • All sensations are felt to be empty, transparent and illusion-like and they have an undertone of sweetness and bliss.
  • Sensations and thoughts are handled differently by the mind. They arise as a unified field of unbounded totality instead of happening in a row. When they arise, there is a hard to tell quality of eternity to them, like they were here already forever.
  • Time does not seem to be operating the same way as before. The space of awareness is felt to be unchanging and beyond time and this is true to all of it’s manifestations as well.
  • Sensations and thoughts have lately started to merge together. When I am riding a bike, it is hard to say if I am moving or the landscape flows through the space. There are sensations of air’s movement on my skin, sound of the wind in my ears and some thoughts about it as I am analysing the experience. All these various phenomena appear as liveliness of the space itself, already empty and like illusions. Instead of arising as a row of different sensations, they are felt to be a single multifaceted burst of energy of the unified field itself.
  • Off the cushion mindfulness has started to resemble more the enhanced way of experiencing when I am meditating on the cushion. Keeping the mindfulness going during the day has never been this easy. There in a built in stability to this view, like it was maintaining itself.
  • At first the boundaries of the body became transparent, then went away entirely. Unpleasant and contractive body states very seldomly arise and there is a pleasant hum underlying all sensations. Even negative ones. Body sensations have lost their harshness and have become sweet and blissful. There is still reluctancy to face distinctly unpleasant sensations like extreme cold. The energy of those experiences is just too much to handle.
  • The mind has become clear like crystal revealing various movements of mental processes of previously unseen subtlety. Maintaing this view does not require effort, quite the contrary, dropping the effort increases the clarity.

45 min sit

Guru yoga purifies body, speech and mind, all gross elements that make up the experience dissolving into pleasantly vibrating clear light. The awareness continuum flows through, opens up to itself. Soon at the final stage of the extraordinary perspective I take the view of Padmasambhava himself sitting on the cushion. The shift of perspective is swift, abruptly plunged into sky unlimited, gasping awestruck. This insignificant little turbulence on oceans surface unravels itself for the remainder of the sit.

After the sit jogging. Not really moving at all, the landscape flows through the space suffused with knowing.

There is an ongoing process going on, the space of awareness is making itself vaster and more stable as the days go by. As the baseline is shifting, the extraordinary perspective of nonduality is becoming more intangible and it’s reference points are eroding. The envelope of space that has been held in place by the nails of attachment is slowly becoming loose, untamed and colossal. As the awareness itself is coming more to the foreground, concepts like meditation and mindfulness fall short and maintaing the view during the day becomes effortless and very hard at the same time. Things are slipping away easily.

The results of this development in daily life are at times curious and breathtaking. The brightness and vividness of ordinary experience can be otherworldly, magnificent. There is a deeply felt connection with the natural world like trees, clouds and hills that can even be close to supernatural. There is also at times a slight continuity of the brightness of awareness in dream state. I can for example nap for an hour remaingin aware but not concious.

There is still grasp left to the arising thoughts and this results in a clouding effect during the day which can be frustarating. When sitting with the awakened perspective fully recognized, thoughts are pure energetic manifestations of the awake space itself, no problem. Looking straight at the fleeting mental images and disconnected proto thoughts on the cushion helps me to familiarize myself with the true nature of this phenomena. Pure unobstructed energy on the move. This has helped me to recognize the same features after my sits.

New cutting edge of everyday mindfulness is developing for me. Wherever I look, the inherent emptiness of visual forms is pure bliss. Body sensations are swarms of sensations hanging in nothingness. Thoughts are like gusts of winds blowing through the vastness and all phenomena share the same taste of empty awareness. Not only is this view completely effortless, but moreover seeing the true nature of the phenomena themselves make the awakened perspective brighter and more stable with every passing thought or sensation.

This level of clear seeing during the day is still brief for me.

I am sitting as awareness itself in the plane and letting the mind go to sleep. I am asleep and awake at the same time. I know that my eyes are closed, but I can still see my hands and my feet and the backrest of the seat in front of me clearly. Everything is luminous and bright.

This has been my formal practice for over two months now. The differences between the unfolding phases of awareness have become clearer both on and off the cushion. During the past couple of weeks, my off the cushion practice has started to resemble more my formal sitting sessions. It is now easier to recognize the various developing qualities of the awareness continuum and going through the phases is more natural and requires less effort.

Preliminary practice

I start my sits with guru yoga, first doing a visualization of benefiscial beings of dharmakaya and then Padmasambhava, all of whom will kindly clear the obscurations of the body, speech and mind. After the routine, there is feelings of devotion and bliss and the body feels light and spacious. The mind is clear and unobsructed with little fluctuations.

The clarity and stability increases as I continue the practice with a short round of concentration meditation until all arising phenomena loose their solidity and become a flow of energetic and rapidly changing vibrations. This marks the shift to the subtle level of the mind. After easing up on the concentration, the flow of sensations becomes steady and orderly, the automatic concentration is on. This creates proper foundation for the insights of emptiness meditation.

Emptiness, subtle level of the mind

Emptiness meditation will further refine the flow of sensations: gross level grasping ceases and arising phenomena are no longer experienced as me or mine. There is a feeling of spaciousness in the body as the observer can no longer be located in it’s volume. The feeling of certainty about the dubious nature of the agent has been a ongoing feature of my baseline for a while, so at this phase not much negating is needed. I look at the transient and transparent essence of self and affirm the mind perspective (sensations and thoughts are experienced as fluctuation of the mind field) and it’s emptiness as the basis of operation. Because a cloud of gross selfing would prevent further refinements, strong view on the emptiness of self is essential.

Timeless, very subtle level of the mind

The awareness opens up as changeless, infinite and ever-present expanding field. Unconditioned cannot be constrained by concepts like time and space. As the mind looses it’s grasping on temporality and fixed dimensions, a considerable expansion takes place and the basis of operation shifts to the very subtle level. With the expansion comes a feeling of peace and tranquility. Everything appears freshly and vividly and there is a dream-like quality to the experience.

Although the space feels huge and unchanging, at this stage it is still stuck around the shape of the body. The diffuse volume of the illusory agent that is observing the space is preferred over rest of space. The two perspectives, mind and events, are experienced as separate components of existence which gives rise to duality between the observer and the object of observation. Without fully experiencing the emptiness of time and space, even more fundamental merging of those two perspectives is possible.

One taste, extraordinary level

There is a clear difference between observing the unobstructed field of awareness (very subtle level) and being and embodying it’s vastness (extraordinary level). As the sitting develops, the boundlessness matures and continues to expand in stages as exceedingly subtle layers of grasping are let go of. The world around the meditator is no longer ”out there”.

At the lower level of one taste, all sensations, emotions and thoughts are experienced as manifestations of the awareness itself, arising and passing away in a playful manner, like a vibrant shower of colors, shapes and mental events. They merge together into a unified field of perception, everything arising more rapidly and brightly. Moving mind becomes equal to the mind staying still. When seeing, there is no difference between the centre and the periphery and as a result gross movement of the mind towards visual objects cease.

As it develops further, all duality between mind and event perspectives collapses. From the mind perspective there is huge vastness vividly manifesting itself in various forms and shapes. From the event perspective, there are various vivid forms and shapes that are made of huge vastness. Looking at a wall at arms lenght feels like being face to face with unobstructed space of empty awareness. All seeing is infinite awareness, all body sensations are infinite awareness and all mental events are nothing else but infinite awareness. This is true non-duality.

Complete equality of sensations and their impermanent and interdependent nature brings forth a feeling of appreciation, bliss and joy. As the view is stabilized, it will develop into automatic emptiness. At this point there is no need to look for the empty nature of arising phenomena. All phenomena present themselves already empty upon arising without any grab to them, an unimpeded flow of emptiness.

At this stage the mind stays completely effortlessly and there is no need to apply any kind of remedy to keep the mindfulness on the object. Staying on the object is technically not even possible. Awareness is undivided from it’s manifestations and there could hardly be any observer separate from the object of observation. All duality is gone, the heat of the fire is none other than the fire itself.

At this high end of extraordinary perspective, there is no doer left and nothing to do. The mind stays contentedly on it’s own empty nature. Abiding in non-dual nature of the mind and the automatic emptiness inherent to it, are the two prerequisites to see beyond the last remaining cloud. The agentless awareness still has a strong habit of taking in the experience only in tiny parts. This pre-stimulus like involuntary movement toward objects in mind space, also called ‘attention bounce’, is faster than intention itself. Taking in unbounded union of awareness is just not possible when this mental process is going on. It is felt as a subtle remaining restlessness that limits the lucidity of the awareness itself. Because of this, all manifestations of the awareness still seem to happen relative to a reference point in space. There is nothing a meditator can do to make past this point, now the view itself is the meditation. This view is taken with the help of crossing over instructions and as a result there is no longer taking to mind anything particular.

Knowing mind’s essence, Rigpa

Pristine unobstructed and naked awareness blissfully abiding on the totality of experience. All distinctions has ceased so there is no abiding or non-abiding. Pure beingness fills all of space like water pervades all of the ocean. Now the lucid nature of the mind shines forth making the whole experience translucent that is very special and utterly normal at the same time. The mind space now flows through completely unimpeded, the smallest details are as much in focus as the space itself around them. All points of reference are lost.

There are usually many energetic side effects at this phase of the sit. Undistractedly continuing like this on the cushion strengtens the view. The purity of the perspective grows and it gathers momentum like a stone rolling downhill, making it self-sustaining.

For me, this perspective usually develops slowly as I continue the sit after the shift from the extraordinary perspective to rigpa. It can also be very spectacular when it happens suddenly, like a picture of a sky was suddenly replaced by a direct unbounded experience of it.

Many times during my practice history I have had periods of clarity during the dreaming state, but they have not lasted for long. This period of remarkable dream activity started the first night of the retreat and has been going on for a month now.

The retreat started in Friday evening with an introductionary lecture and a marvellous guru yoga practice that left me speechless. After the meditation, I realized having just received powerful pointing out instructions in the form of a visualization practice. That night I slept lightly and woke up several times. Every time I woke up, it felt like the same dream of clarity had been continuing throughout the night. After finally getting up, I did not remember any exact details, but there had been a group of tibetan fellows in the dream giving me some teachings. I could not recall the contents of those teachings, just the general feeling of awe and gratitude.

The same thing happened again a couple of days later, except this time there was only one yogi present. He taught me how to apply one of the more abstract techniques called ”The lion’s gaze” that helps to sustain the extraordinary pespective throughout the day.

During and after the retreat, dreams of doing various meditation practices as well as spontaneous lucid dreams have been more common than normally. There is a kind of magical lucidity and transparency to the daily experience as well that I recognize having experienced sometimes before, that is nowadays very usual perspective. Everything I do, walking, sitting, interacting with other people etc., seems to be happening in a dream of outstanding clarity. Although the reality may appear solid, I know that is not really the case. Body sensations, sounds, sights, thoughts, feelings, all of them seem to share a common taste of surreality that is impossible to pin down or describe.

I may have been up and busy for a long day, but the mind is usually not so tired in the evening. Going to bed is like following a habit. A week ago I was doing downhill skiing on a mountain in the north with some friends. When I went to bed that night and closed my eyes, suddenly an image of the mountain appeared in front of my mind’s eye like a flash of lightning. The abruptness and raw clarity of the appearance made me jump and I had to turn to my side to break away from the scary vision.

Almost every night I sleep for 30 to 60 minutes less than normally, instantly waking up clear-headed and well before the clock rings. Brightness and clarity seem to be the baseline for the time being, except for some clouds of intense drowsiness and dullness that arise from time to time. Their appearance make me realize that there is some attachment to the perspective of clarity.

Paying attention to the awareness continuum helps me to identify the basis of operation of the mind on any given moment. Being mindful of the baseline is my main off the cushion practice at the moment. This kind of mindfulness leads to more continuous presence of the nature of the mind.

There are a couple of variables, clearly affected by the level of subtlety of the mind, that I have been keeping track of during the retreat and after.

Forming of mental constructions

Just by practicing some basic shamatha meditation, it is easy to see how the forming of mental content changes from complicated and elaborated forms to more simple ones during the sit. When mind shifts to more subtle level, concepts dissolve, body feels like a cloud of energy in space and thoughts are just fleeting flashes with no definite content. Emotions are no longer solid constructions but diffuse vibrating body states with no grasping left.

Although pure shamatha practice on the cushion is necessary to master, it reveals only part of the big picture. A more educating sequence of decontsruction takes place as mind shifts gears in daily life situations. Transformed mental content and ways of experiencing feel completely ordinary and natural at the time and can be fully compared to normal only afterwards. The problem is one can be only in one state at a time, so the comparison is always done by using memories of the other perspective.

Because the mind is no longer making normal solid mental representations and the grasping for phenomena has ceased, the overall experience becomes more flowing. It is almost like the body and the mind are transformed into transparent holograms and sense perceptions and fleeting thoughts pass through them with no friction at all. There is a definite vivid dream-like quality to everything as all arising sense perceptions are seen to be part of the fabric of awareness itself. Whatever is perceived have the same one taste of emptiness.

At the far end of the spectrum at the level of awareness being aware of itself, rigpa, the whole sphere of experience is fo fully integrated into one undivided whole that the mind is no longer taking in any parts of it as separate units. If I am deliberately paying attention to a small portion instead of the stream of sense perceptions as a whole, let’s say being mindful of my own body, the undivided boundless wholeness is present nevertheless at the same time with the body and there is no contradiction between simultaneous zooming-in and zooming-out perspectives. It is as if the entire universe is present in the very experience of the body.

This different way of handling sensory data becomes obvious when one is for example walking along a street that is completely familiar through years of previous experience. Because of the vividness and brightness of the visual field, the reality seems enhanced. Even though the surroundings are well-known to the point of being boring, there is now a quality of freshness and magic to the experience as the conceptual memories are not accessed and overlayed on the reality. The awareness is lucidly and reverently reflecting an undivided stream of raw sensory data in detail like a stainless mirror. No mental constructs are being fabricated to make sense of what is happening.

Relating to space

Seeing through the sense of self on the subtle level of the mind gives a lot more room to the restricted and contracted ordinary experience of me-ness trapped in the confines of the body.

The shift to the very subtle level is a completely different story. Now there is no body left as an entity, there is just somewhat denser local region of awareness in the whereabout of the body. This field extends to all directions without boundaries and sense of self is dissolved into the felt sense of being the great ocean of awareness. Although this vastness is felt to be limitless, it is still experienced from a vantage point inside the volume of the body. There is a feeling of limitless possibilities as the mind perspective is completely identified with space, as the transparent personality is no longer clouding it.

The limits of the previous perspective become obvious only after moving on to a more subtle level still. Now the awareness is turned around to itself and there are no reference points left in space. For me this feature has become the most reliable sign of being firmly anchored in the extraordinary perspective. Although the surrounding space was previously felt to be all-expansive and limitless, it now opens up further and futher still to all directions and there is feeling that it could go on expanding forever. At times this shift is accompanied with a is feeling of vertigo or disorientation as all the familiar anchor points are dropped in favor of complete openness to all experience. The space is all-pervading and completely unobstructing the arising phenomena.

I just got home from a week long Mahamudra pointing out retreat and will be writing a series of journal entries on the insights and experiences during and after the retreat.

Being the field of awareness where all phenomena arises has been one of my main practices for past couple of years. I have noticed how the experience of being that awareness can vary a lot depending on the current level of grasping. Now the overall picture and the cotinuum of the level of profundity of awareness from the coarse ordinary level of mind to the extraordinary level of awareness or rigpa (a technical term for knowing the nature of the mind, awareness knowing itself), has somewhat matured.

Ordinary

The mind is operated on the level of coarse mental content of thoughts and emotions. Self seems continuous, solid and independent agent that appears to be responsible for all the content of the mind. Body feels completely solid as well, because the conceptual level of physical experience is not yet penetrated.

Subtle

The basis of operation is gone beyond thought, conceptional ideas and separate self and the actual experience behind them is now known. Thoughts, emotions and external phenomena are realized to be empty and dependent on the mind and as a result, sensations and mind moments arise as impermanent manifestations of energy in space. Self no longer appears to be solid, but instead an empty cloud of mind processes that is at times useful for organising everyday life.

Because of longer gaps between individual thoughts, the awareness itself or mind perspective can be experienced separate from thoughts. This knowing quality of awareness is spacious and clearly operates without an agent, but there is still clinging to a diffuse shape in that space that acts as an witness and obstructs the deeper integration with awareness.

Very Subtle

Realization of timeless, ever-present quality of awareness has been brought to the foreground making the spacious aspect limitless to all directions. There is still a subtle fixation to a reference point in that space remaining, like preferring a part of a limitless volume of space over the rest, which acts as an obsctructing cloud. No part of the experience appears to be ‘out there’, but arising as waves of the same infinite ocean, spontaneously known by the ocean. Thoughts and emotions arise already as empty and vanish. If they at times are elaborated to more complicated thought contructs, no grasping is left.

The next step is not possible without realizing the non-dual nature of awareness and arising phenomena. Whatever arises in the space of awareness is inseparable from it’s knowing quality. The awareness knows itself thought the lively and empty manifestations of appearance.

All limiting beliefs, doing and manipulating must be seen empty as well to prepare the mind for staing in a state of freshness and complete openness and with no expectations.

Extraordinary, Rigpa

All reference points are lost, the awareness and it’s objects are one inseparable field of knowing/moving. Mind takes everything as a undivided whole and there is no contradiction between a pinpointed focus and limitless panoramic view.

When this perspective is maintained for longer periods of time, the timeless qualities of awareness start to shine through coloring the experience vivid, magical and dream like.

Recognizing where I am on the continuum of awareness at any given moment has had a great impact on my practice.

Seuraa

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.