Reality vs actuality - warrior meditation

[Che Guebuddha]

Hi friends.

I read many stories on this site where people mention being afraid to open up the pandora box so to speak, afraid to face with their mind content. Most have feeling it will be overwhelming, too much to bare. I can recollect walking in the same shoes.

Since the day i started practicing Mindfulness meditation i seemed to be developing more and more actual courage to plunge into this mind i call mine.
The more i sat in silent observation and calming the body the more of the scary stuff would be objectified and once its not in the subjective zone those demons where not me anymore. What does all this mean you might ask.

You see, thanks to practicing daily mindfulness meditation (which is in Tibetan and Theravadan Buddhism called Samatha-Vipassana and in Zen Buddhism called Zazen) i have gained Insight into the nature of my mind.
During the sitting practice i beggan to notice thoughts, enotions and other sensations as phenomena which have one thing incommon, Arising and Passing Away aka Impermanence.

I called this thread Actuality vs Reality for a reason :) and now i will say why.

Most of us will agree that our Reality is difficult or good or sweet or sour etc...
I remember only 2 years ago before i started practicing mindfulness meditation i was terified to sleep in our summer house. Now i go there on my own and sleep like a baby. Yes still sounds can wake me up in the night but i dont cling to the mind proliferating tendency anymore. I have developed a skill to objectify with those fearful mind arisings.

"My Realty" was made up entirely by my culturaly conditioned trumatised mind which is at all times proliferating into dramatic story telling. All stories are subjective and therefore happening to Me. But this is far from the truth.

You see the war which invoked traumas in me happened long time ago and while it was happening, actualy taking place in the moment of the avtual time it was my Actuality. Today it seems to live in my mind as my Reality or creating my Reality.

If i look closely while practicing sitting meditation while counting the breath or simply being mindful of each in and outbreath, i notice the Actuality of this living being i call myself.
The Actuality is made of all which is Actualy taking place right here right now and that is Sensations. Our Sensate Universe is the Actuality/Suchness of our being (hotness, coldness, itchyness, stiffness, joyfulness, blissfulness, sorrowness, hearingness, tasteness, touchness, breathness etc... )

While being mindful of the Actuality which is the Continuity of arising and passing phenomena i clearly see paralell with it the proliferating tendency of my mind which creates stories out of the Sensations and thus creating my Reality (usualy stressful filled with aversion and desire).

Lets say while sitting silently and still my neighbour starts hammering the wall for some reason ... The sensation is hearing. I have the choice whether to let the mind cling to it and let it create a dramatic story infusing my Reality with stress hormones or i could simply Continue being Aware of that One Simple sensation which is hearing moment to moment remaining still and silent.

Now, it is inevitable that hammering sound will create reaction in the mind so i just carry on practicing total attention to what is arising and being aware when it passes away. By doing this i objectify theobserved phenomena and it looses its grip on me.

Simple noting without going into the mind telling stories aboout that neighbour hammering the wall :)

Noting: hearing ... Hearing ... Hearing ... then i note an unpleasant emotion like anoying so i keep noting unplesent ... Unplesent ... Unplesent ... Unplesent until it passes away BUT :) each Arising is followed by Passing Away AND each Passing Away is followed by new Arising :) This maybe overwhelmingwhen a begginer meditator but later it becomes the Acuality of the being we are. So, theunplesent passed away and a thought has arisen instead stating "this is stressing me", so instead of clinging to the habitual mind proliferation I simply disconnect from it by nor pushing it away but by Noting it ... Thought .., thought... Thought... Thought... And then it passes away and new Sensation takes place in the Actuality like Ichiness .... Ichiness ... Ichiness... Thought "i like toast" ... Thought"but i have no butter"... Noting that i got cought up in proliferating story telling which is creating my Reality so i go back to mindfully Noting ... Wondering ... Wondering .., wondering .., them it passes away replaced by another Impermanent Phenomena/sensation.

We create suffering by clinging to that phenomena, by feeling Aversion towards it trying to push it away or by feeling Desire towards it by wanting to feel different than this. Instead i realised through the sitting mindfulness practice that the Immediate continuous universe of our Actual being is perfect as it Is :) I realised that I am not those mind proliferating stories and emotions. But this took at least 6 month of daily 30-45 minutes sitting practice. Now after more than year and a half of daily meditation i can note the phenomena /sensations even when in normal life like shopping, talking to people etc ...

Thank you for reading and please share your opinions and experiences about this manner :)


May you all be happy and free from suffering (it is possible i know many who did it)

 

[reallydown]

You see the war which invoked traumas in me happened long time ago and while it was happening, actualy taking place in the moment of the avtual time it was my Actuality.

Wouldn't it have been you reality, I mean at the time it was happening? Sorry, I'm kind of slow and have been ill these days so maybe I'm just misreading your post. Having had laregely negative experiences with Western psych...I am considering trying meditation etc...so I find your post very interesting...War is everywhere these days...Libya, for example, triggered a LOT of sh*t for me...and there's no gettign away from it...At least I haven't found a way yet...

 

[Mrs. T]

This is how I understand it from what I just read. Actuality is the facts: what happened? Reality is how you perceive the situation, influenced by your upbringing, personality, culture, etc. So even something that happened in the past can be your reality when it is real to your mind today.

Hope I am understanding correctly.

 

[reallydown]

Thanks, Mrs. T...That makes sense :)

 

[Che Guebuddha]

Mrs. T got it right :) that is exactly what i ment.
The mind has the tendency to keep rolling on the past time experience we all can agree on this one. This inevitably creates our daily Reality which ignores the Actuality of our daily moment to moment experience. This is what people call "living in the now".

I am no expert in Mindfulness meditation like Zazen or Shamatha-Vipassana (practicing daily for just under 2 years), so please take all i say with a grain of salt. I can tell from my experience that such practice has benefited some aspect of my suffering and that is the fear of sleeping, panic attacks and social phobia. I have better understanding of the paranoid fear when in a forest area or when at night on dark empty streets. But note that such meditation practice can also bring up lots of inner unresolved stuff which at times can be very frustrating to both the practitioner and his family. This why i think talking therapy would have benefited me saving so many frustrated moments for my wife and me.

Such meditation is dinamic realy.

Only a couple of days ago i realised how Anger comes to be. Not intelectualy but Actualy while in sitting posture i could see three phenomena arising;
1. A stiff and heavy feeling arising in the chest, face, belly, shoulders, hands, neck
2. Soon after clear feeling of Anger
3. And immediately after the Angerer came into being.

Now, this was very interesting for me to see.
There was this created "my reality" the reality of the Angerer and there was my Actuality percieved through pure non-judgemental Awareness in form of body sensations and feelings, thoughts ...
In this case I could feel the Angerer going on about an issue and i felt stress building in the body.
This is the first part ofthe proliferating mind.

The second part i observe is the concious mindtrying to push away the Angerer as he is causing stress. By pushing it away Conflict is created and even more stresstakesplace in form of restlessness and despair.

Now there is a Desperator and Restless-self created also caused by the chain reaction (cause and effect) and all sprang from bodily sensations which the mindinterpreted as unplesant.

Next time when Anger feeling came I gently embraced the anger-feeling with a non-judgemental Awareness and something interesting had happened. The Angerer was cut off on its own accord. The cause and effect was cut off.
Angerer cant become without the anger-feeling. Awareness cut it off by gently embracing the Anger-feeling which in my case transformed quicly into a sad feeling. So i sat there embracing this sad-feeling instead otherwise if not the Sad-self will grasp for the feeling creating a sad scenario as angerer likes to create justified scenarios.

I know this can sound confusing because im speaking from my current experience which i know i would not totaly comprehand one year ago. This is because such practice is experiential and gives actual insight into the nature of mind phenomena we take for scary demons at times we hit rock bottom (was there) but once i started seeing those thoughts, sensations and emotions as a dependent originitation, devoid of the Self it looses its scarriness.
I call it Selfing :) Feelings, sensations, emotions, thoughts are just that and nothing more unless the Self attaches to them. This is where Mindful Awareness plays its most important part.

But to arrive at this level of Mindfulness a Calm body base is to be build. The body is holding in all the traumas not the mind. The traumas get reflected in the mind coming into a drama story (reality). If the mind is not clinging to the arising thoughts, emotions, feelings, body sensations but all is embraced with gentle non-judgemental awareness the suffering cant take place. For suffering to become the sufferer must arise :)
As someone said "pain is inevitable, suffering is optional".

As said im still walking the path to shed this suffering. Not there just yet ;) So take my words with a grain of salt.

Be well