A quiz! (I am jokingly taking this in exactly the spirit you warned against.)
85% or more of your suffering falls away suddenly. It’s been a year since then and it still hasn’t come back. (This can happen more than once, with compounding effects.)
No, I’ve never had anything like this. My attitude is more, shit happens, I deal with it, and move on. (Because what’s the alternative? Not dealing with it. Which never works.)
You no longer feel that your “self” is in a privileged position against the other stuff in your consciousness.
Does experiencing my “self” as including all that stuff count? I am guessing not. I have a strong sense of my own continuing presence.
You accidentally touch a hot stove and don’t feel any pain. It’s been months since your sensory inputs have congealed into pain.
Sounds dangerous. It was certainly painful when I closed a car door on my thumbnail a few months ago. (The new thumbnail may have grown back in another few months.)
Your conscious perception of time and space break down such that they are directly perceived as mental constructs rather than immutable aspects of external reality.
Way beyond me.
I seem to score a zero on this.
I’m sure I’ve notched up some 100s of hours of meditation, but spread over a rather large number of years, and rarely a daily practice.
Does experiencing my “self” as including all that stuff count? I am guessing not. I have a strong sense of my own continuing presence.
I’m not just talking about your thoughts and feelings. When I say “everything in your consciousness”, I mean [what you perceive as] the Sun, other people, mountains in the distance, the dirt on your floor, etc.
You accidentally touch a hot stove and don’t feel any pain. It’s been months since your sensory inputs have congealed into pain.
Sounds dangerous.
Not really, unless you plan to light yourself on fire to protest something. It’s still unpleasant, and the reactive instinct is still there.
I seem to score a zero on this…. I’m sure I’ve notched up some 100s of hours of meditation….
I think I hit this stuff with fewer hours of meditation than is typical, and that most people require more hours on the cushion. Also, it depends on what kind of meditation you do. Not everything branded as “meditation” is equally effective at jailbreaking the Matrix. Whether you’re doing it badly is illegible too.
I’m not just talking about your thoughts and feelings. When I say “everything in your consciousness”, I mean [what you perceive as] the Sun, other people, mountains in the distance, the dirt on your floor, etc.
To me, the Sun etc. are out there. My perceptions of them are in here. As anyone with consciousness of abstraction knows at a gut level, the perception is not the thing that gave rise to that perception. My perceptions are a part of myself. The Sun is not.
A quiz! (I am jokingly taking this in exactly the spirit you warned against.)
No, I’ve never had anything like this. My attitude is more, shit happens, I deal with it, and move on. (Because what’s the alternative? Not dealing with it. Which never works.)
Does experiencing my “self” as including all that stuff count? I am guessing not. I have a strong sense of my own continuing presence.
Sounds dangerous. It was certainly painful when I closed a car door on my thumbnail a few months ago. (The new thumbnail may have grown back in another few months.)
Way beyond me.
I seem to score a zero on this.
I’m sure I’ve notched up some 100s of hours of meditation, but spread over a rather large number of years, and rarely a daily practice.
Hahaha!
I’m not just talking about your thoughts and feelings. When I say “everything in your consciousness”, I mean [what you perceive as] the Sun, other people, mountains in the distance, the dirt on your floor, etc.
Not really, unless you plan to light yourself on fire to protest something. It’s still unpleasant, and the reactive instinct is still there.
I think I hit this stuff with fewer hours of meditation than is typical, and that most people require more hours on the cushion. Also, it depends on what kind of meditation you do. Not everything branded as “meditation” is equally effective at jailbreaking the Matrix. Whether you’re doing it badly is illegible too.
To me, the Sun etc. are out there. My perceptions of them are in here. As anyone with consciousness of abstraction knows at a gut level, the perception is not the thing that gave rise to that perception. My perceptions are a part of myself. The Sun is not.
I hope I am not de-enlightening anyone by these remarks!