Having a bad day over here. 
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Sorry to hear it.


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Yeah it happens. Like you said!
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1/ Many meditators, east and west, presume practice is primarily a matter of creating a kind of peace and calm. Included in that presumption - esp. among modern westerners - is that meditation effects a psychotherapeutic healing of unpleasant emotions and the like.
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2/ And, of course, while there are in fact many forms of meditation, such benefits as peace, calm, and elements of emotional healing frequently correlate with practice (and, for some persons, that's what they're in it for).
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3/ But there is also a more fundamental - and, as it were, more fundamentally simple - benefit and purpose for meditative practice. And that is to allow a shift in our *relationship* to any and all experience, pleasant or unpleasant.
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4/ Put in fancy language, that shift goes from one of intentionality- looking to modify the nature of contents of what we experience & are aware of- to one of ontology. With the latter, the ultimately miraculous fact we have awareness *at all* becomes a most salient realization.
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5/ Put more concretely - as an illustration, I sometimes meditate *in my sleep,* namely, in "sleep practicing" the Old School Buddhist jhānas, which are very distinctive experiential states and unfold in a sequence, and I sometimes wake up at night in the middle of the sequence.
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6/ What that illustrates for me is how the jhāna states, and the dreamless sleep state, and the ordinary "what I most habitually identify with" waking-thinking state - they're all generated phenomena. They all "come from somewhere."
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7/ And that realization of, say, waking experiences as something generated - including moments of felt anger, sadness, or fright - allows a wider appreciation of the miraculousness, the "privilege" even, of experiencing anger, etc.
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8/ Which is to say, that realization positions us well to "suffer" less from painful states and affording us both the prospect of identifying with them (i.e., "clinging to" them) less and of also of even enjoying the "wonder" of such events.
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No! I DEMAND that you be perfect!
Also, I want a unicorn. - End of conversation
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You say it often because you are one of a handful of teachers willing to say it...so keep saying it...please.
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Vulnerabilities are infinite, I vow to embrace them. And also be annoyed by them
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Meditation is not salvation. Salvation is against the reality of our evolved human natures- a collection of trade offs and compromises. It won't turn you into a God.
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Doesn't mean we shouldn't practise, just that looking for permanent salvation, a superself or godlike impermeability is the essential problem. Or even delusion. You can't expect a super delusion from a method that allows you to see your delusions
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But Michael, what if I REALLY don't want to have bad days??
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Yeah, we remain human, flawed, layered. But there is realistic hope.
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Sentient comet
Meditation freak
Author
Podcaster
SF nerd
Serial comma enthusiast
Raised by wolves
Bad influence 