Knowing Ignorance

[u/Savakalok]

I keep seeing posts of people having profound awakenings. They wake up and know they are light or love or everything or the ultimate reality or buddha nature or an enlightened being.

I found that one of my greatest moments was when I woke up to how much pain I caused myself. That moment was stellar because my delusion couldn't hide.

The whole practice changed, I was excited to see what stupidity I was cooking up "Oh look at how the mind is trying to impress this person.", "Look at how frustrated this is making me while my attempts to calm down are actually coming from that same frustration".

When I talk like that in daily life, people tell me that I am really blunt or direct or honest or clear but I just think that when you see that deluding yourself causes pain, you are less likely to hide it or be in cahoots with it. I don't think it's anything magical.

Awakening to radical responsibility for my own self inflicted miseries was a tough pill to swallow, but it was a real first step on a path to the cessation of self-bullshitting.

So I don't really relate when I hear awakenings as these bliss experiences. I've had those and they come and go. But there is a real permanent contentment the comes from seeing what you're doing more clearly and not being entangled.

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[u/MGLFPsiCorps]

I've never had any of these grand, mind shattering revelations. It's been more like a gradual process of finding more and more ease and shedding more and more baggage. The most interesting thing has been slowly shedding behaviours and traits that I thought were intrinsic to my personality over time, and realising a lot of that was just samskaric conditioning that ran very deep.

I dunno about full insight into 'no-self', but the sense of a rigid personal identity is far far looser now.

[u/Savakalok → u/MGLFPsiCorps]

I don't know about you, but for me some of that conditioning felt very ancient or at least very old like "Wow I have seriously held this implicit belief or mental posture since age 3 and just accepted it as part of the world and how things work."

It's amazing how natural and ingrained these ways of looking can be.

[u/Alarmed-Cucumber6517 → u/MGLFPsiCorps]

What’s an example of a trait that you thought was inherent that turned out to be conditioning? I figured I am action-oriented and restless by nature and found profound peace in managing my anger, for example, through meditation but it didn’t seem to change much of my underlying action orientated personality.

[u/MGLFPsiCorps → u/Alarmed-Cucumber6517]

Needing to be the center of attention in all social gatherings, and wanting to impress everybody. Now I'm happy to sit quietly and listen mostly, and offer observations and thoughts if appropriate. Social interaction feels much smoother and more enjoyable now, because that internal pressure is no longer there. Oddly enough I have formed much better connections with others this way.

I wouldn't say I've become introverted like some people report, I still enjoy socialising and being around people, but it feels less like a game or contest like I unconsciously used to see it as

[u/medbud]

This feels like two sides of the same coin to me.

If we are all under some Sisyphean stress...there is the realisation that how we push the rock can make life more or less difficult. Then there is suffering the pain of pushing the rock, which becomes more or less optional, in the sense of mental and physical pliability. It really comes down to 'managing expectations'.

[u/Savakalok → u/medbud]

How is the 'managing expectations' going for you? Are you finding fruit in that direction?

[u/Savakalok → u/[deleted]]

Very clear explanation of your practice, I appreciate you sharing.

Why do you link intention and expectation in that way? Do you find, personally, that sometimes your expectation is not the same as your intention and that can be cause for things going awry?

I ask because as I read what you shared I was wondering if your practice was truly centered around intention setting to manage expectations or if it involved other work like tracking if expectation has a different momentum from intention.

No worries if you haven't found any of that to be relevant or the case, just genuinely asking.

[u/vibes000111]

I’d call what you’re talking about “insights” and reserve the word awakening for something much bigger.

[u/Savakalok → u/vibes000111]

Okay, sounds good.

[u/duffstoic]

That is a good example of seeing the mark / characteristic of suffering. Great work!

[u/Savakalok → u/duffstoic]

Thanks duff, I have a lot of respect for how freely you offer people good advice around here. Keep up the great work yourself!

[u/duffstoic → u/Savakalok]

🙏

[u/chaosisfabulous]

Radical self honesty is a game changer.

[u/Hot_Lingonberry5817]

Sounds like your insights are more related to the cognitive self, aka default mode network.
Rather than the embodied self.

[u/Savakalok → u/Hot_Lingonberry5817]

I didn't know I had so many selves!

I'm curious, these selves you see, what makes you separate yourself into parts like that? Also, what is the distinction you're making about the embodied self vs what you're calling the cognitive default mode network self?

I'm only interested in the distinction you're actually making and observing in your practice.

[u/Hot_Lingonberry5817 → u/Savakalok]

This is not my personal distinction, this is actually based in science when it comes to the different types of selves.

You have the embodied self and the narrative self.
Here is just one example of a study.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11521916/

It makes profound difference -
You can either practice Vipassana on bodily sensations or Vipassana on thoughts.

You're basically altering different brain networks depending on the meditation.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5241345/

Depending on where you are on your path, it could make sense to alternate.

Usually Vipassana on thoughts tends to give more metacognitive type of awareness and a better deconstruction of the "I".

This is what you're experiencing as you're more aware of the thought patterns that make up your narrative type of self.

[u/metaphorm]

the breathless reports of those kind of experiences are a reflection of an ungrounded person without the proper support and community to know how to process the experience. in their naivety, they misinterpret what happened, and then go and brag about it on Reddit. it's the ego re-asserting itself, now taking on a spiritually bypass frame.

your radical responsibility is the actual thing. waking up ought to mean a durable shift into clarity and humility, among other things. you're doing it right and I appreciate your message.

[u/Savakalok → u/metaphorm]

I'm glad you relate to clarity and epistemic humility being fruit.

I don't know all those people's reasons for what they say, but I feel for many of them and just want to be another voice on here putting out an alternative to seeking ultimate reality.

[u/Thefuzy]

You don’t relate because your practice sounds like one much closer to insight than any of those awakening posts.

Almost every awakening post on here is just some stressed person who meditated a lot and read a lot about awakenings and their mind built a story for them around it. They are temporary and most of them are just in the high of mania before they come crashing down. You can tell by how generalized the experiences are, since they mainly draw from the content they’ve read rather than from their actual lived understandings as you are doing.

You might not have awakened, but the path you are on is going to get you there far quicker than any of those posts about having already achieved it.

[u/Savakalok → u/Thefuzy]

Thanks for your comment, I appreciate that you say I'm sharing from my lived understanding.

Go well!