When taken as true, stories tend to have the same effect, no matter their content. They create an identification with a viewpoint, with content of experience, and so also creates the appearance of an I with an other and all that goes with it. (Variations of stuckness and unease.)

I have not had any experiences I would call realisations (permanent shifts of perception / identity) but have had the occasional meditative experience of a dropping away (or significant reduction) of the implications the normally seem to self evidently follow from sense experience, I had thought to tentatively label this ‘emptiness’, the Heart Sutra says: go deeper.

I agree that it’s largely pointless to philosophize about insight and enlightenment without practising to realise the same, I have been trying to do the latter for 15 years, but no such luck yet. I’ve shifted gears recently to Vipasanna so maybe that will yield something worthwhile.

Thanks for the comment and for drawing parallels to other systems. I don’t know how they are related to Immunity to Change, as I haven’t done “The Work” or “E-Prime.” But they sound interesting.

With regards to your opinion that Emptiness and Manifestation are opposites, I would strongly suggest that you might want to realize that first before making the argument with anyone here. I say that because there are a lot of strong practitioners (Duncan included) who have realized for themselves that Emptiness and Form are intimately connected…

Best,

-Vince

Duncan> I think (but not realise) that Emptiness and Manifestion are in a sense opposites. In the illusory state we take sense experience to imply a self and various other things, the realisation of the emptiness of all things, IMH_O_, shows us that nothing implies anything. An intellectual treatment of the same can be found in ‘What the Tortoise Said to Achilles’ by Lewis Carroll.

Oh, and paradox has definitely been at the forefront of my life recently, so it seems there might something to that and this process (or the order’s). Either way, good stuff.

Yeah, Alan mentioned the interesting similarities or parallels between my description of Kegan’s work and of Grimes. It definitely made me interested in looking into Grimes work.

Yes, I would say that I’m seeing paradox everywhere, both in my spiritual practice and in other ways. Emptiness itself, does present an interesting “problem,” at least I think when it’s seen as being opposed to something else (non-emptiness). I think that’s a major paradox of a certain part of practice, the resolution of which, I guess, is 4th path. So many paradoxes!

Would you agree, that the way that Emptiness manifests in experience is precisely as a profound sense of paradox? You’ve made me wonder whether I used to – or to some extent may *still* – believe that this paradox too is ‘resolvable’… I can see what you mean about the assumption that paradoxes can be resolved is an impediment to progress!