what is the difference, as you understand it
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My whole life I spent bored and inhibited, miserable. Early brushes with Buddhism had me convinced it was a four noble truths problem.
Now I believe it was conditioning problem. I had strings, but now I'm free, there are no strings on me...
(Ok, still some strings on me, but!)
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Most suffering I experience today is like waves or current. It only has power when it sticks to traumas I haven't released yet, and I can tell when it does.
Sans traumas, it's so small I can barely see it. I care very little about it anymore, except when it gets in my way.
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It's also becoming quite clear that it can be refined into fuel with practice (I am still bad at this).
When I get the mixture right, I get wild kundalini releases and weirdly clear intuitions, plus profound emotional mastery. I can suddenly do almost anything.
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It's not perfect, and there is a lot there I still don't understand. But walking with fire is a lot more fun than the sense doors ever were (to me)!
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I don't think Vipassana as currently practiced has much to do with the Buddha's original teachings, honestly.
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No, but my point was mostly that the tantras are where I really started cracking things.
I still surprise myself with how much less fear there is in my body.
I have almost totally lost my fear of heights, for instance, and of being caught in transgression, and of anger...
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well, the end of fear (existential fear) is the goal of tantra as I was taught it. You cannot be said to be enlightened if you fear.
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Uh-huh. I would definitely not describe myself as enlightened. But increasingly feels like I should add a "yet" to that.
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lot of people get what they think is "it", something nice, then find out years later there's more.
But clearly things are going well.
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For me, if anything, it's revealed how much there is yet to do. Things are moving really fast, and still there is so much left to explore.
And that's just within the scope of what I see *now*.