Reddit Reddit reviews Shift into Freedom: The Science and Practice of Open-Hearted Awareness

We found 3 Reddit comments about Shift into Freedom: The Science and Practice of Open-Hearted Awareness. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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Shift into Freedom: The Science and Practice of Open-Hearted Awareness
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3 Reddit comments about Shift into Freedom: The Science and Practice of Open-Hearted Awareness:

u/jplewicke · 6 pointsr/streamentry

This week, I started doing more practice using a ceiling fan as a kasina object, since I'd seen four weeks ago that it could be a useful practice method for both concentration and insight. I'd tried it several times previously, but was usually really sleepy for most of those sits and found it hard to focus while lying down. I started getting some better sleep and was able to focus much better on it in the mornings.

My usual practice has been to lie down and watch the ceiling fan while either noting or using a mantra. There are a lot of different visual effects that can appear, and make it easier to focus on. It’s also a very good demonstration of impermanence, since they arise and pass away so quickly. I usually feel some quasi-jhanic feelings arise while I’m lying down, and try to just remain equanimous to them. After I’ve done that for most of my sit, I get up and do some of the Mahamudra glimpse exercises from Shift Into Freedom, which mainly involve trying to move the location of your attention/awareness in a way that hints at what it’d be like to be fully enlightened(i.e. every object of awareness aware of every part).

When I just was doing the glimpse exercises on their own, they were frustratingly vague and inaccessible. I had a couple of sporadic incidents where I was able to get partially pick up on the qualities and perspectives that they’re trying to point out. I’d put them aside in my practice since I wasn’t able to access them directly. However, this week I’ve found that doing the ceiling fan kasina practice first seems to make them much more reliably accessible. It also seems to magnified by how long I’ve been doing the ceiling fan kasina first — they made some sense after doing it for 25 minutes on Friday, but had way more impact on Saturday when I was able to do the ceiling fan kasina for 65 minutes first.

There’s one of the glimpse exercises where you turn the visual field awareness around — instead of “you” looking out at stuff out there, you have some portion of the visual field become aware of your bodily sensations and emotions. This worked completely for me on Saturday, and persisted for a couple hours off-cushion. It was really weird — like my body perception was being projected back from everything in the environment. When I went up, or down stairs, it was like the shifting environment was reconstituting me incrementally with each steps. It stopped happening by default after a few hours, but I found that I could intentionally tune into it by trying to be aware of a non-visual area of awareness from the visual field, or just by trying to be aware of some area of perception from a different area that I don’t normally use. Each time I did any of these, I’d get some intense wavelike piti.

I wasn’t able to sit on Sunday or Monday since we had company with us this weekend, but was still able to tune into the mutual awareness stuff. I’m looking forward to returning to both the ceiling fan kasina and the glimpse exercises this week and to see how they go. I’d also be curious to hear how the ceiling fan kasina works for other people, and would be glad to answer any questions people have about the details of how I’ve been doing it. I haven’t had a chance to try the candle flame kasina yet, so I’m not sure how it compares to other visual kasina methods.

u/bardeeeey · 2 pointsr/awakened
u/CoachAtlus · 2 pointsr/streamentry

Maybe so. These are good pointing directions and useful koans to contemplate. But how does that idea drop? How do you stop looking? From a practical standpoint, those are the questions we are seeking to address.

"Just stop." "Just see." Again, these are useful pointers, but for many practitioners there's a felt resistance to remaining still in the space, perhaps generated by all of our habitual conditioning. In my experience, the mind seems to have to run around a lot before it will just collapse, surrender, and be still.

The direct pointing methods have never really clicked for me, but if these sorts of practices, ways of looking, or ways of attempting to see resonate, I highly recommend Loch Kelly's Shift Into Freedom, which is a very practical non-dual/direct pointing manual. (To be candid, I still have not finished this book, but the early chapters indicate quite clearly that Loch Kelly knows his stuff. Adyashanti wrote the foreword.)