So, each of these fetters inquiries is an emptiness practice. There's an assumed Thing we think exists, and when we catch that assumption running, then look for it in direct experience, we don't find it, and we get in a rep of providing evidence for that default assumption to update. With enough prediction errors, these default assumptions update.
Fetters four and five point to how people assume there's a reason in experience to resist emotional experience, or to resist the sensations occurring in their experience they typically give emotional labels to. Maybe it extends to physical pain also, but that exploration isn't necessary for the update I'm talking about in the blog.
People perceive emotions as a source of their suffering before these fetters update, as a habit, even if intellectually they're bought into the idea that resisting the sensations is what causes suffering, not the original sensate groups we label as emotions.
An example of this from the blog: I perceived nervousness at the dance to be the source of my suffering. I was grouping together the original sensations and the resistance to them and calling both one thing: nervousness.
Looking for the button as a prompt worked for me because I was making this error of labelling two things as one. When I told myself to look for the button, I wasn't looking for the original sensation that one would label nervousness, I was looking for the reason to suffer. And looking for this button in my direct experience, not for an intellectual reason why I wasn't more confident.
And this looking accomplished two things: 1) it brought awareness to the subtle little parts of the experience I was previously resisting, or unconsciously cordoning off from complete conscious awareness, so the suffering evaporated. 2) it popped the balloon of reification that happens with fetters four and five, believing that there's a thing instance of this type of suffering that's there in direct experience that actually exists.
I've been using the button version of the inquiry less lately, and instead prompting people to look for the reason to resist in direct experience, or looking for the thing itself ("pain", "discomfort", or whatever label they're using for their suffering) in direct experience, and to notice the mismatch between the label they were treating as real and the evidence (that they can't find any real thing that is "discomfort" or "pain", only sensation).
I think creating the prediction errors is what separates this from other feeling your feelings techniques in its ability to cause the habit of resisting sensate experience to drop in a big way seemingly permanently. I think the reason the tiny pinpricks of pain (the label I was using for the remaining suffering in my experience) persisted despite me trying to work with them using different techniques like savoring 'em or treating 'em as the source of joy is that the core reification went unquestioned, the core assumption went unquestioned until I did the inquiry and looked from the center out to see if "pain" (reason to suffer) actually exists.
»people to look for the reason to resist in direct experience, or looking for the thing itself ("pain", "discomfort", or whatever label they're using for their suffering) in direct experience
I really like those and felt “reason to resist “was really intuitive after all the reactivity explanations around but for some reason nobody seems to use that around so i dropped it due to uncertainty of it working in the long term.
While i am now further along the process and have a good grasp and belief in it , i would appreciate a writeup from you regarding how you view the process and how you would go about it ;also maybe touching on some points of uncertainty regarding the process working .
Also appreciate the blogs about it a lot ; ive read it a lot again and again throughout . Its one of the places i picked up a lot of core ideas regarding how i go about the inquiry
hey, glad you found the blog helpful. Can you be a bit more specific about: "i would appreciate a writeup from you regarding how you view the process and how you would go about it ;also maybe touching on some points of uncertainty regarding the process working"?
Hey, I have seen this and will come up with a response bc I think I have better ways of describing than in the post now, it's just late here and I'm going to bed
Hey, np (: I think there's a few big main changes that dropping f4/5 caused for me.
One being no resistance to emotions i'm aware of. That's remained stable. There've been rare outlier experiences that I talked about in A Year Of Deep Okayness. I haven't really tracked precisely if there's been more.
I did some stints of repression work (Kiloby Inquiry) to erode some of the tendency to avoid certain emotions like hurt. I was warned it would be painful, but it wasn't, even when experiencing my primary repressed emotion (their terminology) seemingly fully (sobbing etc plus emotional patterns I'd label hurt plus some other indicators). Cathartic, not painful. Dropping f4/5 basically gives default j4 minus the level of collectedness you get on retreat, I believe.
The other qualities like non conceptuality or emptiness have deepened too. It's hard to draw the line between conditioning that's falling because of f4/5 update, or bc of an update around six or seven. I'm currently half-assedly working on f8.
A lot more could be said. Overall, stable and deepening.
So basically you're calling up imagined situations whose anticipation or memory frequently lead you into different emotional reactions, and then disambiguating the situation from the emotion?
That link works for me if I use incognito browser, it takes me to the comment I'm trying to point you at, but not if I open it in a new tab in the same browser window as this just fyi
Can you explain what you mean by “button”? Like, something that you could press like a button to make the feeling happen?
So, each of these fetters inquiries is an emptiness practice. There's an assumed Thing we think exists, and when we catch that assumption running, then look for it in direct experience, we don't find it, and we get in a rep of providing evidence for that default assumption to update. With enough prediction errors, these default assumptions update.
Fetters four and five point to how people assume there's a reason in experience to resist emotional experience, or to resist the sensations occurring in their experience they typically give emotional labels to. Maybe it extends to physical pain also, but that exploration isn't necessary for the update I'm talking about in the blog.
People perceive emotions as a source of their suffering before these fetters update, as a habit, even if intellectually they're bought into the idea that resisting the sensations is what causes suffering, not the original sensate groups we label as emotions.
An example of this from the blog: I perceived nervousness at the dance to be the source of my suffering. I was grouping together the original sensations and the resistance to them and calling both one thing: nervousness.
Looking for the button as a prompt worked for me because I was making this error of labelling two things as one. When I told myself to look for the button, I wasn't looking for the original sensation that one would label nervousness, I was looking for the reason to suffer. And looking for this button in my direct experience, not for an intellectual reason why I wasn't more confident.
And this looking accomplished two things: 1) it brought awareness to the subtle little parts of the experience I was previously resisting, or unconsciously cordoning off from complete conscious awareness, so the suffering evaporated. 2) it popped the balloon of reification that happens with fetters four and five, believing that there's a thing instance of this type of suffering that's there in direct experience that actually exists.
I've been using the button version of the inquiry less lately, and instead prompting people to look for the reason to resist in direct experience, or looking for the thing itself ("pain", "discomfort", or whatever label they're using for their suffering) in direct experience, and to notice the mismatch between the label they were treating as real and the evidence (that they can't find any real thing that is "discomfort" or "pain", only sensation).
I think creating the prediction errors is what separates this from other feeling your feelings techniques in its ability to cause the habit of resisting sensate experience to drop in a big way seemingly permanently. I think the reason the tiny pinpricks of pain (the label I was using for the remaining suffering in my experience) persisted despite me trying to work with them using different techniques like savoring 'em or treating 'em as the source of joy is that the core reification went unquestioned, the core assumption went unquestioned until I did the inquiry and looked from the center out to see if "pain" (reason to suffer) actually exists.
Oh this is great, thank you so much for taking the time to write it all out. I’ll be coming back to this, and sitting with it
»people to look for the reason to resist in direct experience, or looking for the thing itself ("pain", "discomfort", or whatever label they're using for their suffering) in direct experience
I really like those and felt “reason to resist “was really intuitive after all the reactivity explanations around but for some reason nobody seems to use that around so i dropped it due to uncertainty of it working in the long term.
While i am now further along the process and have a good grasp and belief in it , i would appreciate a writeup from you regarding how you view the process and how you would go about it ;also maybe touching on some points of uncertainty regarding the process working .
Also appreciate the blogs about it a lot ; ive read it a lot again and again throughout . Its one of the places i picked up a lot of core ideas regarding how i go about the inquiry
hey, glad you found the blog helpful. Can you be a bit more specific about: "i would appreciate a writeup from you regarding how you view the process and how you would go about it ;also maybe touching on some points of uncertainty regarding the process working"?
Hey, I have seen this and will come up with a response bc I think I have better ways of describing than in the post now, it's just late here and I'm going to bed
Happy to hear this, king — thanks for sharing. Curious how stable things have been since?
Hey, np (: I think there's a few big main changes that dropping f4/5 caused for me.
One being no resistance to emotions i'm aware of. That's remained stable. There've been rare outlier experiences that I talked about in A Year Of Deep Okayness. I haven't really tracked precisely if there's been more.
I did some stints of repression work (Kiloby Inquiry) to erode some of the tendency to avoid certain emotions like hurt. I was warned it would be painful, but it wasn't, even when experiencing my primary repressed emotion (their terminology) seemingly fully (sobbing etc plus emotional patterns I'd label hurt plus some other indicators). Cathartic, not painful. Dropping f4/5 basically gives default j4 minus the level of collectedness you get on retreat, I believe.
The other qualities like non conceptuality or emptiness have deepened too. It's hard to draw the line between conditioning that's falling because of f4/5 update, or bc of an update around six or seven. I'm currently half-assedly working on f8.
A lot more could be said. Overall, stable and deepening.
Fantastic, super glad to hear, congrats again!
So basically you're calling up imagined situations whose anticipation or memory frequently lead you into different emotional reactions, and then disambiguating the situation from the emotion?
Yes, on calling up situations to cause emotional reaction. No, in that the technique is not just disambiguating situation from emotion. You can do the technique when there's emotions in experience without an obvious related situation like the painful pinpricks I talk about in the blog. Here's another description of the technique that might make what I'm talking about more clear: https://blissbrah.substack.com/p/a-simple-technique-that-helped-me?r=39infn&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=269033620
That link works for me if I use incognito browser, it takes me to the comment I'm trying to point you at, but not if I open it in a new tab in the same browser window as this just fyi