This is a difficult line to thread, since while I can’t be sure which awakening experiences you’re opposed to in particular (incidentally, see the later paragraphs re: variations between them), as a general category they seem to be the consequence of your intuitive world-model losing a mysterious “self” node to be replaced with a more gears-like representation of internal mental states and their mechanisms.
However, you might be able to make it more difficult to “look” in that direction by using vipassana-style meditations with limited time. This should lead you to disproportionately ‘collapse’ your anxiety and other imprinted/background thought patterns and intrusive thoughts, which would start out clamoring for your attention, and not make much progress noticing the more fundamental phenomenological nature of experience itself. You’d also have to keep in mind an intention to not apply your mindfulness to the roots of your experiential state after the meditation period itself, since (in my experience at least) you continue to perceive your experiences meditatively for a while after meditation.
I am curious, however, what specifically you are avoiding from awakening experiences?
I’ll acknowledge (as someone who hasn’t yet experienced it myself) that “enlightenment” seems to be more a descriptor/category than a singular state, and as such there are ways to reach it which might not be the best by your preferences. Personally I’m trying to avoid preference-dissolution (I haven’t actually found any traditions which lead in that direction, but it’s a concern of mine regardless) or the methods which rely heavily on more-traditionalist interpretations of “Right View” to stabilize your normal mind through the dissolution of the assumption of self (which, being millennia-old and somewhat dependent on mostly-blind faith, tend to contradict my strong preference for non-supernatural, fundamentally-gears-like world-models).
But I’m finding it hard to think of a reason to be opposed to all the paths to awakening, especially since there exist some monks who explicitly claim no changes in surface-level mental structure from their enlightenment experiences (Enlightenments is an interesting article mentioning this, found in this LW comment), so it would be interesting to know the one driving you. Or is there some particular way The Mind Illuminated defines awakening which is problematic for you?
This is a difficult line to thread, since while I can’t be sure which awakening experiences you’re opposed to in particular (incidentally, see the later paragraphs re: variations between them), as a general category they seem to be the consequence of your intuitive world-model losing a mysterious “self” node to be replaced with a more gears-like representation of internal mental states and their mechanisms.
However, you might be able to make it more difficult to “look” in that direction by using vipassana-style meditations with limited time. This should lead you to disproportionately ‘collapse’ your anxiety and other imprinted/background thought patterns and intrusive thoughts, which would start out clamoring for your attention, and not make much progress noticing the more fundamental phenomenological nature of experience itself. You’d also have to keep in mind an intention to not apply your mindfulness to the roots of your experiential state after the meditation period itself, since (in my experience at least) you continue to perceive your experiences meditatively for a while after meditation.
I am curious, however, what specifically you are avoiding from awakening experiences?
I’ll acknowledge (as someone who hasn’t yet experienced it myself) that “enlightenment” seems to be more a descriptor/category than a singular state, and as such there are ways to reach it which might not be the best by your preferences. Personally I’m trying to avoid preference-dissolution (I haven’t actually found any traditions which lead in that direction, but it’s a concern of mine regardless) or the methods which rely heavily on more-traditionalist interpretations of “Right View” to stabilize your normal mind through the dissolution of the assumption of self (which, being millennia-old and somewhat dependent on mostly-blind faith, tend to contradict my strong preference for non-supernatural, fundamentally-gears-like world-models).
But I’m finding it hard to think of a reason to be opposed to all the paths to awakening, especially since there exist some monks who explicitly claim no changes in surface-level mental structure from their enlightenment experiences (Enlightenments is an interesting article mentioning this, found in this LW comment), so it would be interesting to know the one driving you. Or is there some particular way The Mind Illuminated defines awakening which is problematic for you?