Bingo! Very well put and not said often enough. I can’t think of anything more dualistic than erecting an actively cultivated ‘detachment’ between oneself and the rest of reality.

I also have never really jived with that description of things. Emotions or thoughts arise and I am detached from them. What does that mean? I’ve never had the experience of being “completely” detached from anything that arises in experience. This to me, is also not what real freedom is about. It’s a nice idea, but why would we walk around detached from our emotions? And can we really detach ourselves from certain emotions (for instance, the one’s we don’t like) and then still experience positive emotions fully (wouldn’t we be detached from them as well)? That to me, doesn’t sound like something I want at all. I want to be free to experience everything fully as it arises. That to me, is non-duality. When everything is as it is. There isn’t detachment, there’s full-hearted engagement that is simultaneously not exclusively identified with the experience (in other words, it isn’t merely “me”).

My experience has been that I feel emotions more clearly, as time goes on, and as my practice is deepened. Sadness is more real, if anything. Fear is clearer, if anything. Anger is more like anger. There is, for me, less of a problem with the emotions, less of a cascade of internal reactions, and honestly a different relationship to them, but that isn’t the same as saying that I’m detaching from emotions. Rather, I’m just letting them be as they are, completely. And as a result, I really don’t see a problem with these emotions, and would never expect to have them disappear or be detached from them. As my teacher, Jack Kornfield, often says, “ah Mara, I see you. Please, come join me.” My practice now is to invite Mara (difficult emotions). The strategy of avoiding these emotions, or secretly hoping they’ll disappear one day, is the same strategy that prevents being able to see them clearly.

Best of luck in your practice.

That’s not what I took from his comments. When someone says, “That is not total enlightenment, as people like Buddha and Ramana Maharshi proved with their full attainment,” that very much sounds like a there is some distinct endpoint, and for him that endpoint has to do with completely eliminating certain types of thoughts and emotions. That seemed pretty clear from his comment.

And that is very different from saying that, “There may be a clear awakening, but how it is expressed through this human life is a process and it includes healing, maturing and refining skillful means.” That, my friend, is what i was trying to say, and unless Ray pipes in to refine his view, I’m going to have to stick with my interpretation, of what is honestly a pretty common (and I think mistaken) view on awakening.

That said, I’ve seen people who on the one-hand do hold that the spiritual life is about healing, maturing and refining skillful means. But, somehow, they still hold this strange ideal that certain human emotions or thought patterns can be completely eliminated from experience. Why should we hold that view, if we see the process as unending? We wouldn’t. Perhaps we’d hold it as an ideal (like the ideal of Buddhahood), but even that ideal is dangerous if we take it literally. Then you get teachers, and I’ve sat with many of them, who will drop in disempowering comments about awakening not being possible. I think that really confuses students (it certainly confused me) and so should be challenged.

I think that is what Ray was saying. (At least how I read it initially.)

There may be a clear awakening, but how it is expressed through this human life is a process and it includes healing, maturing and refining skillful means.

This is a working model for me, and one that seems much more realistic, as more people I know have actually experienced something like what is being described in this model. And for me it’s much more helpful, because of what my experience has told me along the way. Namely, that there is nothing wrong with any thoughts or feelings that arise whatsoever. Not on a fundamental level, and this is why I don’t hold to a model of awakening that talks about eliminating certain kind of thoughts or emotions from what one can feel. Also, and I’m afraid to say I can’t speak for the Buddha or Ramana Maharshi, but there really aren’t any people I know of today that have done this, and to which it is clear. And if it were clear, then we should be able to bring them into a neuroscience lab and all the areas associated with what you are called “egoic thought” or “separative emotions” just wouldn’t operate. None of the advanced meditation practitioners who have been brought into the neuroscience labs, have showed a complete elimination of the activity areas of fear, etc. I’m afraid that people who claim this is awakening, and that it can be done, can’t point to anything besides mythic stories and dogmatic, unfounded belief about other people’s awakenings. I’m interested in real people doing it right now. And I’m interested in verifiable facts.

All that said, I still want to work to free myself of neurotic emotional patterns and to be as skillful as I can with the emotions that arise. I think that the mature spiritual life has to do with working with what’s here, not with trying to eliminate it. If fear, anger, etc. are reduced in the process, fine. If they stay the same, fine. If they actually increase (whoa, imagine that, a model of awakening that says that a human being actually experiences MORE from awakening!) then fine. I’m not making an enemy out of anything in this human experience, and anyone who does, I believe, is not living a mature spiritual life yet.

BUT if there is still egoic thought (“I” noise) and emotions (separarive emotions like anger and fear – I feeling afraid of that etc) arising in non dual awareness, then there is still duality deeper in the psyche that remains unresolved.

That is not total enlightenment, as people like Buddha and Ramana Maharshi proved with their full attainment, proving that can be done.

Yeah, I think you’re right that it probably is a radical shift that jumps out of the context of I-other, no matter how subtle. And because of that shift maybe it does take more time, though as you say it may or may not be the case. I have so little evidence, and most of what I do have is anecdotal.

This is maybe a little naive, but I wonder if the reason why it tends to take longer (if that is the case) is because all shifts up until this one are still within the context of a sense of I-other, and this is a shift out of it. It is in many ways the most radical shift of them all.

I particularly like the description of the wisdom eye. Would love to get your take on the dharma eye as well, as I’ve long been curious for a description of it (what its role is, how it fits into the insight cycle, stuff like that) from someone who is more versed in the literature.

Just trying to throw some fuel on that particular fire, if you know what I mean. =)