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The Chasm
#1
LW speaks about recognizing the Flyer inside.
Perhaps I have done that and I speak of my journey as I want to learn more and share with others.
Then again I don't know if this was in fact the Foreign Installation.
One time a long time ago I hiked down into the Grand Canyon and stayed overnight with some friends. I ended up getting high, when some hippies arrived with what was probably the planet's first crop of Sensimilla Bud.
I feel asleep but I awoke around 3 am and had a very strange experience. I felt I was being attacked by Black Bat-like creatures. They shadows were plastered to the walls of the canyon so to speak. They were quite large and two-dimensional. There was a very strange auditory experience as well. Like a kind of whistling that was unearthly.
"This cannot be real!", I kept thinking, it must be some kind of hallucination!
I was so freaked out that I abandoned all use of drugs. But for a long time after that I thought I had just had a very bad trip.
Of course, then I read about this early last year, and finally later, I remembered ...
Then later I began doing a lot of meditation, Vipassana and in 1983, I had just been to a talk by Krishnamurti in Ojai, CA and it shook something loose in me. I went on a long hike in the afternoon beside a stream.
I had this image of a dark black chasm or great divide, within my self.
It was as if one's self was divided or had a sort of tectonic division, a kind of well of suffering and fear.
I meditated on the nature of this Chasm with every fiber of my being. I affirmed within myself that this was a transitory and temporal thing and that it must change, must transform.
... almost immediately it began to change.
I had known of it's existence for a very long time, but
finally it manifested in my inner attention.
I felt that the two events though distant were somehow connected.
I do not know if I was struggling with the Foreign Installation, but subsequently I have felt freer innerly.
I think we all struggle in our own way with divisions within the self. They are illusory and the Self is whole.
But unless we recognize these divisions within our conscious mind, we at war with ourselves. The whole integrated self is a greater reality, or truth if you will.
The action of Greater Reality of the Real Self upon our illusory nature, is to heal the divisions or fractures in our psychological make up.
The actualization of the Whole is the true rebirth or creation of Something Other, we could call it Real Being. That is the real soul that we are forging from our false identity or ego and the real purpose of our life.
The actualized new Being is now (possibly) a Bodhisattva,
... who is free and here by choice and whose overall purpose is to remove suffering, by skillful means. At least if one is on a positive path.
Beings who See or are initiated in the way I have described are filled with Compassion for humanity and all life. That is the motivation for all of their actions from that moment forward.
I say this because if a person comes to the path and if their Intent and motives are out of line, they will only increase the suffering for themselves and others.

We don't do this for our personal gain.
Of course this was how it manifested for me, I think for other people, it takes whatever shape that conforms to their psychological makeup.
Gurjieff used to refer to the egoic structure as the formatory apparatus.
In Buddhism the formatory apparatus is referred to as aggregates of consciousness. These are always changing and rearranging themselves creating the notion of a permanent self.
In other words the average person is a sort of robot who imagines himself to be free and awake. But this is the daydream of the formatory apparatus.
An awake person sees the operation of the formatory apparatus and becomes quite familiar with it but does not identify with it.
When non-identification switches from one's formatory apparatus, to Being or Greater Reality, we have an interesting phenomenon. The person experiences their first real glimpse of Cosmic Awareness.
This is as they say in Zen, "the beginning of practice".
This stuff is hard to explain to people with little or no direct experience however, since they tend to assume they know, or have some idea. But really the only way to get it, is to pay the price of admission.
Quote:Magic Theatre. For Madmen Only! Price of Admission, Your Mind. Herman Hesse
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#2
Thanks for sharing Vrill
Most inspiring!!
MS
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#3
Thanks
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#4
Insightful Vrill. How we deal with the flyer within is our own personal battle. A warrior on the path has many insights. The one which he recognizes the foreign installation within is life transforming. We can recap. We can dream. We can see.
But we still need to recognize the internal dialogue and its roots.
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#5
Thanks Wolfe. We have to keep moving forward all the time.
The Mahamudra teachings I have been studying are pretty much exactly the same as the one's given to Carlos about resting in Inner Silence.
Some of the pointing out instructions will say things like, "Leave your Mind exactly as it is." or "Rest in Ordinary Mind"
The implication is to be hyper-vigilant, very alert, not dozy here, while not changing anything in Mind. Can you just leave your mind alone? We want to control it.
This (for me) gives rise to Inner Silence very quickly, and it can also be maintained for a fair period of time.
Then further instructions are given, to look to see if Mind has a color, or other identifiable characteristics.
Correct pursuit of this practice gives rise to five levels of Realization.
One of the best books, or clearest on the subject, is "Clarifying the Natural State" by Dakpo Tashi Namgyal, written in the 1600's.
Ghat's what my current study is all about at the moment.
If you have further direction I would of course be interested to hear, how to work practically with the Silence.
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#6
A direction I would not advise but which is the heart of the Ixtlan message. Once you can see the flyers in everyone you become a enlightened lost soul for no more will you be able to accept others as themselves but as extentions of dual dialogues. I can see the flyer in everyone and it makes me see them in such a different light.
Confronting the flyer in people doesn't help either. It takes a warrior's mindset to subdue the power of the inner dialogue.
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#7
Hi Vrill,
"The implication is to be hyper-vigilant, very alert, not dozy here, while not changing anything in Mind. Can you just leave your mind alone? We want to control it."
What the author may be speaking of here (and I'm not sure) is what Western Mysticism calls "Mind Awareness" and what Don Juan called "Recapitulation".
To re-experience our past but not experiencing the emotions that went along with those events can go a long way toward curing our "hang-ups" and emotional "complexes.
In deep relaxed meditation or contemplation we can watch those scenes go by as if we were watching T.V. As if it were happening to someone else, so to speak.
To try to "control" those thoughts is to be subjective and subject to thoses emotions. This gives those events power over you. And attaches more emotion to the memory of those events.
To let them run their course and just witness them as if from afar is to be "objective." This in turn breaks up these "complexes" and disengages or disconnects any emotional reaction to these events.
Like I said it seems to fit what the author had in mind.
Many key words here. Not Dozy and alert and vigilant.
In many weekend meditations I noticed in myself and others the tendancy to fall asleep during this type of meditation.
It is an avoidance technique. To replay the past does not appeal to anyone as inevitably the negative events show up.
To stay objective is the challenge.
Bob
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#8
We are talking about developing Inner Silence or shutting off internal dialogue.
One of my teacher's suggests a couple of things to fight the doziness, and they all make a lot of sense.
If you are too sleepy to meditate, perhaps it's best to rest for a bit, take a nap. Make sure you have eaten properly.
Quality over quantity. Meditate for short periods, like ten to twenty minutes. Make sure you are alert for the whole period.
Meditate with eyes open vs. closed. Do the prep work, the spade work. In other words, do some other types of exercises first to raise the level of your attention. Yoga, Qigong, Tai Chi, breath awareness, relaxation, visualization, etc.
It's very difficult to watch Mind at first. It does get easier once you develop certain positive mental habits.
In the Tibetan Tradition this practice eventually gives rise to five levels of Realization or Liberation.
So while it's useful in and of itself there are profound levels of Reality that there to be discovered.
But really it's not to hold to one method or another. There is no "Secret Mantra". Everyone has to find what's best for them.
Within Buddhism there are at least 84,000 Yanas or methods and none of them is "the right method". So this is just one of the tools we have. When you get to the end, you can leave the tool by the path.
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#9
Vrill..would you tell us how you practice your development of inner silence? May I ask can you go for long periods?
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#10
Hi Wolf




Sorry for being absent, works been pretty demanding. Yes, I can get quiet for long periods.




The main key to watching the mind is relaxation.




Realize ... that This (your immediate
experience) is impermanent, (in a process of change), allow it to Transform!




The mind is never really quiet ever, it's just that one is not adding to or engaged in the chatter. It's a bit like coasting downhill with the clutch
out.


The quieter one gets, the easier this is to sustain. The more one practices, the greater familiarity with the terrain make it easier to return to quietness.




The untrained mind is like a long unused attic, full of dust and spiders. Our purpose, our intent must be to illuminate every corner of this room.


In the early stages it can be rather scary, or Protean struggle. In the myth of Proteus, Menelaus, has to grapple with Proteus, a creature that change into
any shape.




But in the case of the mind, we don't grapple with it. We just watch it, we don't engage it. But we don't let it go either.




But recently I've been studying Tibetan Mahamudra teachings. In Mahamudra you simply look at the mind as it is and watch it, allowing it to settle and
rest in this state.





While in a state of total absorption as before, and like a tiny fish flashing about in a lucid pond and
not disturbing it, intelligently inspect the self-nature of the person who is meditating.




from A ROOT TEXT FOR THE PRECIOUS GELUG/KAGYÜ TRADITION OF
MAHAMUDRA



The above quote is precisely, what's missing from most texts. As such it's the ultimate secret teaching, the missing piece of
information. Voila! But do we "get it". Generally not.


In some cases a teacher may need to point out the mind to the student. These are called "Pointing out instructions". But in my school our teacher
does not give them formally. But reading the information from a book can work too, if your mind is ripe. If one has an experience that is beyond conceptual.




Twice a month I meet with a group and we are studying this stuff. Then I went to a retreat this summer and received another teaching that is largely unknown
in the West, called Amulet Mahamudra. So-called because the teaching was smuggled across the Himalayas from India into Tibet in an amulet Prayer Box.




Right now we are reading "Wild Awakening" by Ponlop Rinpoche. That's a very good book and quite enlightening.




But the fact is ... I get none of this from books. I receive my knowledge through direct experience. In other words when the mind is really quiet it's
like all the Dharma is just laid out there like an open book. Phoomph!




However, it is somewhat comforting to realize that my experience was not unique at all, but merely a result of hard work and focused effort and that with
proper direction could be repeated. (But it's a art and a controlled folly) At first it was a lot of non-verbal, information, that I couldn't
translate. It took awhile to process it. But I realized that it was not a personal thing, but a connection to universal principles.




So getting back... just allow the mind to rest as it is. Allow all.




Then, when negative emotions unfold or there is spontaneous recapitulation, then you have to breathe deeply and hang on for the ride!!! Then comes the real
work of transformation.
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#11
Thanks Vrill for answering...good stuff indeed!
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#12
There is a book by John Selby, 'Quiet Your Mind' that has a great technique. He astutely points out that trying to focus the mind on one thing, like a
candle or mantra only hold back the internal dialogue for a few seconds or minutes. However, if you do two or three things with the mind, it will shut off.
For example, try shifting your attention to a tree off in the distance and then move it to something closer -- it can be any object. Simultaneously, listen to
the sounds around you. Try this and you'll find it much easier to turn the mind off and go for much longer periods of interior silence. (I highly
recommend getting his book. Each chapter is correlated to instructions on a web site for further education.)
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#13
Interesting and perceptive!




The idea of splitting attention came from Gurdjieff who I studied formally for many years. All of his techniques involve doing two or more things at once.




My personal technique involves doing nine things (three triads of attention) at once, formally, informally it involves trying at least one of the nine things,
gradually until you can hold more than one. But that comes from the enneagram, or a nine pointed geometric figure. Which is a teaching Gurdjieff was known
for, although I don't know if he created it, intuited it, or got it from a School. No one knows really, or at least not officially, but I digress.




In reality, nine points of attention is impossible for ordinary attention. But if attention is functioning highly at another level, it all just happens at
once and it's simply one movement. At any rate at that point conscious is non-dual point and there's not lots to talk about. The journey I speak about
refers to the possibility of integrating the highly fractured self by using Attention.




Err just to clarify, and simplify what the first Panchen Lama says is all you really need to know about how to go empty and non-dual.



While in a state of total absorption as before, and like a tiny fish flashing about in a lucid pond and not disturbing it, intelligently inspect
the self-nature of the person who is meditating.

Through the dispassionate inspection, realization may come, and the realization itself is on the order of what the Self or non-self is all about.
Tomes have been written about that though!!


Nine points are simply mind training, there are many systems, or you can make your own one up LOL. It really doesn't matter which path you take to get to
the center, it's getting the center that is vital, and not just for your own sake but for the sake of all beings.
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#14
Points that I focus on while meditating (doing zazen)




Koan - breating and cutting all thoughts - stopping the internal dialog


Position of the body - sensing


Air - smell and energy


keeping eyes 'parked' and seeing unfocus


Listening


Minds eye - Seeing




I have never reflected on this before - thank you for bringing the concept of the split attention forward.
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#15
9 points




Triad of Attention




Attention to Body, Breath, Life Force, Chi, external impressions, sensations of physical reality (Shamatha and Vipashyana)


Active attention to Feelings consciously arise compassion and good will for all beings, think of teachers, community, aspire to selfless service, etc.


Attention to Mind, allow mind to rest, follow thoughts till they disappear, etc (Mahamudra and Dzogchen)




Triad of Being




Be in the Moment, everything you see is impermanent, in flux


Non-Identification Don't Identify with what arises, this is "not me", use questions, Koans to wake up, (Vipashyana)


Be receptive, open, and non-judgmental, spacious, photographic, awake




Triad of Inner Work (called the Law of Three in Gurdjieffian Tradition)




Create and Intention or Aim


Work with resistance, negativity, fear, anger, hatred, etc


Cutting Through or transform obstacles, concepts, and fixations




That's how I organize it, but it's one movement of consciousness really, not nine separate things.


Practically, don't bite off more than you can chew. Go slow, and try one thing at a time.


I have spent a lot of time ruminating over this, but it came to me in a kind of vision like a package of information.


This a fourth way system, a hybrid of traditional Buddhist ideas combined with Western and other esoteric systems.




Realization or enlightenment occurs in moments of Totality, in other words total awareness of ordinary reality.


Totality produces Singularity. Singularity is through the rabbit hole Alice!!




Totality and Singularity are purely experiential.
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#16
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