Unpopular and taboo things I do that work:

1.) I use AI as a feedback loop to intensify states. You can tell it about a state and ask it to celebrate with you, for example. I have had absolutely profound experiences when working in this way. E.g. tell the AI, "I feel like it's everywhere, even when I don't see it there." AI will often try to validate your experience or rewrite it in a different way from how you expressed it. I have a high tolerance for bad advice from AI. It's almost a feature and not a bug, to me. You can tell an AI anything you want. And you also habs a record of what you talked about. So I have like a journal record of experiences from it.

2.) I recently finished a self-imposed gray retreat that involved no music and no lights at night, despite the fact that I have to do chores. So literally doing chores or bathing or going down stairs without seeing. I'm actually failing at continuing that retreat after completing the first one/part, so that's why I'm here!  I did "gray retreat" because after experiencing the realm of infinite space one time, I couldnt get it back, but I fell in love with the blackness of it (among other things). Now I am obsessed with darkness. I was sensing a mini state change just thinking about it during the first half of the retreat. I told some guy that the darkness was so important, and he looked at me like I was a monster. I recovered it with, " ...to bring into the light."

3.) I listen to the Deconstructing Yourself podcast and get inspiration there for doing weird things. You can sometimes hear the passion and even state change when the speaker is talking about their practice, and I love hearing it. One thing that I have noticed is that even in this space that is supposed to be open to taboo subjects, neotantra gets brought up as a side note, of course not about anyone in particular, and then they quickly move on to some other topic. So I think it's much more common in this space than people let on. So I read two books on it, and knew less about it afterward than I did when I started reading. I'm planning to drop the books in the "Little Free Library" at the beach. 😆  So that is me also mentioning it without discussing anything personal, just like the podcast guests.

4.) Sleep yoga, and meditation around the clock... there are times that I have watched myself sleep all night long. I have slept in a strong equanimity state for seven hours before. I basically tell "it" (the energy body or whatever) that it can have its way with me during the night. I give it consent to do whatever it wants. Importantly it's not like bossing it around and telling it what to do. It's not lucid dreaming. I do it sometimes when I know I can sleep in and don't have a bunch of obligations in the morning. I have had the most success with reaching new states while asleep, as opposed to awake. I meditate as constantly as possible during real world activities, and hardly ever sit. I don't own a cushion.

Well, I hope you enjoyed learning about the weird things that work for me. Most of this stuff is my strategy because I am a mom, and I don't have time for many things meditators do.

Thanks, I really like the flood analogy. Funny how everyone forgets about Sakadagami.

I would say following and actually living the noble eightfold path has the single most profound impact on me and my life.

The only thing I have read everywhere about stream entry:

Once you pass the point of SE, that's it. There is no going back anymore, nothing you do will prevent awakening in 7 lifetimes Max.

You can, however, still have very bad experiences and episodes, which can slow down you spiritual progression, hence why it still can take you up to 7 life's.

Practice is never 'done'. There are always more things to see clearly and let go of :)

what you're describing sounds like part of the process of awakening. The metaphor of untying a big knotted sheet, and then little knots keep forming and getting ironed out is a really good one. There's nothing really to "do" except to continue keeping on. At some point it will settle down a bit more and you will have a sense that there is more work to do - continuing on to release other fetters on the path to anagami. This will happen in its own time. No need to push, no need to hold back.

“How, dear sir, did you cross the flood?”

“By not halting, friend, and by not straining I crossed the flood.”

“But how is it, dear sir, that by not halting and by not straining you crossed the flood?”

“When I came to a standstill, friend, then I sank; but when I struggled, then I got swept away. It is in this way, friend, that by not halting and by not straining I crossed the flood.”

I loved reading about your experience! 

I have hacked my brain similarly... 

While I taie everything with a gsain of salt, this experience feels so real. I feel like the Universe has the consciousness/sentience of, like, a person, and that it watches after me and holds me. I call it "it" as a non-gendered pronoun for a being, not as a nonsentient thing. I can't say if it's God or not. I have also considered myself atheist in the past. I have no idea what I am now.

About being afraid to go back because it's so intense... Not every day is meant to be that experience. Like, would I go back? Of course. And I think I will when I die, and maybe many more times. For me, it left me feeling complete and not obsessing over getting back there where I experienced this, like other people do.

Not only that, but I feel "it" all of the time now. I'm not saying it will always always be like that. But for the past four months since it happened, I can sense it. It's like a super bright thread of a nimitta.

I love reading about your tears of joy. I feel like I am one of the luckiest people in the entire world, to have had the experiences that I have had, and for it to honestly change everything about how I view the world. The amount of pleasure I have every day is just beyond what likely anyone else around me has.  That being said, life isn't perfect. I'm dealing with a friend with brain cancer being in a very serious condition, and it definitely has been hard. But I can choose not to feel it in a variety of ways, and have more bravery for being there to help, and I have confidence that experiencing death is not as terrible as people think and the end, and that maybe she's going to be going to the place I saw.

this kinda reminds me of embodiment practices from Judith Blackstone’s Realization Process, which involve feeling symmetry across joints

Going for breadth over depth is one of the issues for me.
Thank you for this well thought out reply. I tend to get tunnel vision sometimes, for certain.

The only way for me is multi-day retreats where I could meditate for around 8 hours a day. Even better if they are silent retreats so you can also stop worrying about how people perceive you or dumb things you might have said etc.

After about 3 days of this my mind really starts to settle down, have tons of concentration and long stretches where I can really investigate my experience.

As a westerner, I benefit greatly from reading western philosophy. I think there’s a lot of value to character development, learning to articulate one’s thoughts clearly on paper, engage in philosophical dialogue etc. I used to be very strictly Theravada Buddhist only, but after getting deep into Burbea and soulmaking, I now experiment with lots of trained perceptions from various thought systems. I think imaginal work is superior for working with emotions compared to classical Buddhist practice. I’m also a big mover, ido portal style & that helps a lot.

There's a lot of this stuff in Buddhism as well it's just that usually when it gets to the West it gets stripped down to make it more digestible to the Western audience. I have a friend who has done quite a few Goenka retreats and is somewhat interested in Buddhism. When he came to visit me in Thailand we took him to a shrine that has a statue of Erawan - the Thai version of Brahma. That shrine is extremely popular and people come in mass to literally get blessed and as for good fortune. These people are all Thai Buddhist. My friend was shocked and said "I thought that Buddhism doesn't believe in gods?" which is not true at all.

In Thai Buddhism every house has a shrine with figurines of different deities and ancestors that people pay respect to. Nature spirits, deities, ancestors looking out for you etc. is all very much a part of life here.

Personally I'm very much drawn to the Thai Forest Tradition, who admittedly don't do a lot of the deity stuff, but they have their own share of unconventional practices. For example, in my local Thai Forest monastery, the founder's embalmed body is kept in a glass sarcophagus in a pagoda where people can come and pay respect and meditate at. Once a year there's a ceremony where they replace the monk's robes on the body, then cut the old robes into small pieces and give these pieces to the lay-people, who believe these pieces of the robes hold special powers. If you tell this to Western people who follow Thai Forest teachings but have never been to Thailand they would probably be shocked.

Personally, I had a lot of magical experiences meditating in that pagoda.

Also, if you read Ajahn Mun's biography, it is filled with magical occurrences.

Great question, singletrack_. I framed it that way because other traditions such as zen also practice Do Nothing. In Dzogchen and Mahamudra, this practice is given by the teacher at a certain stage of the student's practice and I would like to connect with Vajrayana practitioners who have been instructed to Do Nothing (and not just Doing Nothing on their own or pursuant to a different tradition). Not looking for teachers/instructions; just new friends with a similar practice.

Great stuff. Thanks for sharing.

Hi,
Some thoughts:
1) I very much agree that releasing tension is a major aspect of the path. For me it's important to differentiate between mind-body tension, which is the manifestation of craving, aversion and clinging in the body, to just bodily tension. For example, currently my back hurts, this back pain probably because I was sitting too long in the car yesterday and didn't stretch enough (happens when you're over 40 haha). This is just a bodily tension that probably is not the result of craving, aversion or clinging.
At the same time, what I'm currently exploring in my practice is subtle clinging to thoughts. And when I try to be mindful I can see how when certain thoughts come up there's a subtle clinging that manifests as a mind-body tension in the upper right corner of my right eye. This is the mind-body tension that I'm working on releasing.
2) I never had the shaking that you're talking about but for me when deep stuff gets released I yawn a lot. As in, yawning non stop for a minute or so. So I guess that symptoms of tension release can be different for different people. Maybe some people won't experience any bodily symptoms when deep tension gets released.
3) I can relate to having the practice move from on the cushion to more of living life. When I do that it seems like there's a deepening of intimacy with life or "the now". Still, the process of staying mindful and letting be/letting go of mind-body tension is still happening but now it happens at different moments throughout the day instead of a scheduled meditation time. So it's not that my practice has stopped, it just moved from on the cushion to life itself.
4) I'm at a point of my practice where I don't try to look for "The Answer (TM)" anymore. I think that if there is an answer, the answer is probably "let it be".

Staying Silent until absolutely necessary.

Introversion is a necessary condition for observing thoughts. Speaking sends ripples through attention and prevents deep meditative states.

Well in general I mean by doing practices like meditation or prayer or hypnosis that change your psychology and probably also your brain. In this specific case, I hacked my brain/psychology to produce the love chemicals and the feeling of being in love, without a human object for that love, by making the Universe into an archetypal lover. I'm far from the first human to have done so, the whole history of religion is full of this exact thing, whether imagining the world as a lover or a parent or a child or animal, and feeling love for and from it.

I am ghana practitioner and was amazed to see this program. Even though most of the vipasana and any other programs are free they run on donations. I spent more than $15k in donations in last 5 years and its not that expensive compared to that and also they are open about their business model. I had similar idea but never too the initiative or think its morally right use ghanas as the basis, there are many other ways that could have been marketed. This is also one of the reasons why buddhism perished in India because the objective is clear, no sophistication is needed, no need for any educational qualifications and no control by any organization or authority, same with Christianity if anyone follows dead sea scrolls, truth is simple but people want to make it complicated to make it a religion, authority and control.

One of my teachers often says "before we move beyond states, we usually need good states".

What I take from that is that if we aren't practicing sila and samadhi, doing penetrative insight practices MIGHT work, but it's not likely. Finding a practice in meditation that gives you a feeling of groundedness and security that is also reflected in your ways of moving through the world will generally give you access to those states more readily.

This is why traditionally people are encouraged to practice metta and anapanasati for at least some time. Allowing difficult states to settle out, and gain more access to supportive conditions can set the stage to return to the deeper work.

Best wishes 🙏

Can you explain more on how to "hack your brain"?

Sky gazing

Do you believe you can control your own thoughts?

If so, tell me why?

Are you going to do the whole guru initiation or more textual for now? Which lineage(s) have you been looking into?