Do you choose suffering?

Let us assume, for the moment, that you can escape all suffering by applying mindfulness. (I don't necessarily believe that, but I'll leave those details aside for now.)

You could then set up the following syllogism:

P1. You can escape suffering through mindfulness.

P2. You do not practice mindfulness.

C: Therefore, you choose to suffer.

With some malice, you can rephrase the conclusion:

C: Therefore, your suffering is your own fault.

Err, no.

That ignores one very important factor: You first have to know that there is indeed a way to mitigate suffering. You have to realize that mindfulness can help you. More than that, it is not enough to hear about it - you don't grasp its potential until you realize it from your own practice. And that comes at a huge cost: Time and patience.

Most of our culture, almost all of tv and youtube, all our upbringing teaches us the exact opposite: There is suffering, and you escape it by steadfastly ignoring it, or otherwise by bitching about it and blaming others. And benefits have to be immediate, or they are irrelevant.

In other words, the above syllogism ignores that you do not know about mindfulness, and it takes time and dedication to find out about it, and your ignorance is not your fault. For most of us (including yours truly), this means that we had to hit rock bottom before we were prepared to learn about practice.

Of course, now that I have practiced for a few years, I no longer have the excuse of ignorance. I still blame others, and I still blame myself, and I still do mindless stupid stuff - but each time I realize what I'm doing, I try and laugh a bit about my own stupidity, get back up and do some sitting.

My "method"

I was asked to describe my "method" of solo tantra ("edging"/"masturbation"/nonejaculatory orgasm...) over on /r/EdgingTalk.

I should probably give a little context: I went through several different stages over ~15 years. I initially started out with bdsm/chastity. Then I got into tantra, then buddhist meditation, throw in a lot of reading, and out of all that, came my little "method".

I'll give you the executive summary first:

• Breathe deep into the stomach
• Get aroused
• Use PC muscles
• Synch muscle clenches and breathing
• Use your focus 

Now for the gritty details:

I meditate daily, and I do at least some workout every day. I think this helps a lot.

I take at least an hour for the whole exercise.

I lay down, sometimes I lube up, and I do stroke the penis. I actually do go for the penis tip mostly, but I have a specific kind of stroke that works for me, it's not an up and down motion, more like a little massage. I am very aware of how soft or strong I go with this. Whenever I get hard, I stop the stroking. The way I do it, by now I simply know that it won't get me over the point of no return, but I guess everyone has to figure that out for himself.

Sometimes I stop the stroking altogether, not to avoid anything, but to feel the inner motions more strongly. I believe a lot of this has to do with focus, more than anything.

I avoid sexual imagery. It gets me over the edge fast, so I don't fantasize. Again, I think it's focus that matters most.

I focus on my breath, on my spine, on my prostate... I try to pull the focus away from the penis as much as I can.

I breathe deep into the stomach.

On the inhale, I try to completely relax the PC muscle, and I try to "push out" through the penis, as if there was sperm in there, as if an orgasm was already building up. I also clench the inner thighs, like one does in orgasm.

On the exhale, I clench the PC muscle, and I pull the stomach in as if I wanted to push out all the air. I find that combination very intense.

I change speeds, and I allow myself to be loud, moaning and groaning like in real sex. The vibration from the sounds somehow intensifies things even more.

I imagine the "orgasm energy" moving up the spine, mostly into my heart, and sometimes down again into the abdomen or even back into the genitals. I think those variations make very subtle differences.

Sometimes, when things get very intense, I completely clench my PC muscle for a while as hard as possible, or I kind of "vibrate" it, which I imagine is like a prostate massage of sorts.

Well, and that's it.

The most important part is not to expect a big "orgasm" that somehow ends it. It's more like orgasmic waves washing over me, again and again and again. It's a "the less you expect, the more you get" kind of deal. It's absolutely delicious.

The only downside is that there is no natural "endpoint", so I have to make a conscious decision to stop it, and that is really hard. But one cannot go on doing this all day, lol, and also, be advised that there may be surprisingly sore muscles after that exercise! It's all basically a stealth workout, hehe!

Meditation and Mindfulness

People often describe mindfulness as "paying attention to whatever is happening in the now".



I think that this is a good example of how describing things from one's own experience, and then encoding them in religion, can lead to unfortunate results. (On the other hand, if you would like to preserve some "knowledge" that you deem worthy at ca 500 BC, man, what'cha gonna do?)

After all, when you're completely absorbed in your "monkey mind", then that's what you experience here and now, isn't it?

Just a few scattered remarks:

1) Mindfulness does feel like "paying attention to the here and now" to me - kinda/sorta.

2) Meditation is not the same as mindfulness. When we define mindfulness as above, then meditation might be the training ground. We practice a very specific (and deceptively simple) type of focus. This leads you away from identifying with your thoughts all the time, from being driven by that hodgepodge of melodramatic and emotional self-talk that (yes! from my experience, definitely yes!) we all engage in all the time. It makes sense to think that this leads you to a calmer mind (many people attest to that), which in turn might enable you to see things more like they really are (many people think that this is the case)... but is that necessarily true? Ugh. I don't know.

3) It is certainly true that whatever I experience now, including every thought, is precisely the "here and now", so why go look for it elsewhere? (There are people who think that liberation lies in realizing precisely this... look up "advaita vedanta" and nondualism.) But there is also the strange fact that we can look at our own thoughts from the outside, which is, in a way, what we do in meditation. So, maybe, we just build up an alternative way to look at ourselves, which might be practical or not, but probably can't hurt as long as you don't obsess over it.

4) Obsessing over it, ascribing way too much to it is one big mistake that is made all to often in "spiritual" flowery-powery newey-agey circles. And in buddhist circles, I guess. Some people do think that there is super-power in enlightenment.

5) Many people get into meditation by way of religion, often buddhist or hindu. Even without it, there are often "spiritual" overtones. So people go into it with certain expectations, and what they get out, unsurprisingly, tends to coincide with those. (Rare is the buddhist who got converted to Islam by her daily meditations. Not that they don't exist, I'm sure there are a few...)

6) "Seeing things for what they really are" can have a very specific meaning in buddhism which does not necessarily have a lot to do with "being in the here and now".

7) I do know that I am way less anxious, way more focused if I meditate regularly. I think I'm friendlier, and I definitely engage in fewer online fights. It is easier to eat good healthy food now, and I do my daily workout with joy instead of resistance. So, yeeey. (Could be shared cause instead of direct causation, of course.) I cannot deny that I sometimes think about "enlightenment", I do sooo like to dabble in half-buddhist thought, and sure would like to attain "it" - but I'm reasonably certain that that is bullshit, the brain does not allow for it, and one should give up on nirvana or anything of that kind.

8) I reject reincarnation, karma, and all that junk.

9) My favourite expression for my own goal wrt meditation is: I want to stop falling for my own bullshit. I have the impression that it does actually work.

10) If you want to try it, try it. If you don't, don't. If you try it, and it works, keep it. If you try it, and it doesn't work, then stop trying it and look for something else.

11) Enlightenment is shit on a stick.

I am enlightened!

It is done. The work is over. Everything falls into place.

Truly, the world does not really exist. I am but a part of the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. There is no more suffering. Not for me, man. I'm done with it.

We are all interlinked. Panta rei. Everything is connected to everything else. Discursive thinking is blahblah, duhduhduh, monkey minding monkey mind. You and me are all the same, that's the name of the rhyming... um... frame.

There is reason and purpose in the universe. Everything is exactly as it should be. You are perfect.

There is no self. No, not really, but there is not a self. There is not-self. And there is not not-self. And all of these, and not quite, but almost. The All is the One is the None. And I am enlightened.

Things are without essence, impermanent, unsatisfying.

Just let your thoughts pass. Let them go. The Buddha says what the Dalai Lama says what Thich Nhat Hanh says (and Thanissaro Bhikku, too, and basically Eckart Tolle) what I say what I like to be said by old sages. Some of whom can't defend themselves any longer on account of their being dead and rotten.

Oh, and Jesus, of course, says the same thing too. Basically.

And it's really a process, and nobody can describe it, and the Buddha and Jesus and Eckart Tolle didn't mean it that way at all, quite regardless of how you phrased it, you're always wrong, right from the start.

This is stream entry! Yippee. It's the first jhana. Let us jump into the flow!

I am an enlightened being.

All of these did I find. All of them, and then some. And yet, none of them at all.
All of them did I find in my meditation.

And I came out of my meditation, same old me, with my scars and fears and anxieties.

All of these, did I find them in meditation?
It would seem so, when I sit down and when I gather myself up again.

But who did say what, who said what first? Did I honestly find it in meditation? Or did I just take it with me into my sittings, and then pretend? When I first sat down, did I not go in with an expectation already established? Is it any surprise that I found just precisely what I had read in the books?

If I found that the self is eternal, that discursive thinking is the only reliable path to truth and math describes the universe perfectly, that things are eternal and solid and real, that the Buddha was wrong and Ajahn Brahm was a big fat liar... now, THAT would have been a surprise, and it might have had some significance.

If Siddharta Gotama himself had come out of his final enlightenment experience, telling everyone that the sun consists largely of hydrogen, or that there was no reincarnation, the Jews were right all along, and karma was a false teaching - now, *that* would have been significant.

As things are, I only managed to solidify my beliefs and get my hopes high. And so did dear Siddharta. Or not?

I am so fucking enlightened, it's not even funny.

(Sorry for my little ruse. I hope you saw through it right from the start. If you didn't, I hope you were able to get a bit of a healthy shock out of it.)

Mindfulness is not a value in itself, but it is a core skill

I advocate three core skills:

Rationality and compassion, supported by mindfulness.

I recommend basic mindfulness meditation - sitting, breathing, focusing on the breath - as the best tool I ever learned to develop mindfulness.

For those who are interested, I suggest to learn basic "tantric" exercises - breathing, pelvic floor training, letting go of orgasm as the primary goal of sexual activity.

If you really want to, I suggest to experiment with some form of chastity/nofap/semen retention, and visualisation. In my experience, they make life easier and more fun.

I suspect that every exercise that incorporates mindful breathing and gets you more "into the body" will be a good supporting practice: yoga, qi gong, tai chi, etc.

Imagine...

Assume that it was possible to be in a state of bliss nearly all of your waking time.

Try to go beyond the nice little fantasy that probably evokes. Imagine it's really, really possible. You have reached that state. You can have that.

Would you want it? I mean, really, truly want it? Would you consider it a good thing? Might there be a downside to it, such as losing your sex drive, your passion for art or for your significant other?

These days, I often have the impression that I could be going there, at least for a while. All that tantric breathing stuff seams to really pay off now. At least, I am very much closer to this goal (which I never really knew I had, to be honest), than a few months ago.

I'm not at all certain if this is such an awfully good idea.

My Enlightenment

I distinctly remember the moment. It must have been 8 years ago, and I can still remember the subway station and the escalator I was riding.

I was deeply into buddhism and self-improvement back then, and I was trying to meditate or at least working on my mindfulness every second I could spare.

That moment on that escalator, I was enlightened.

Of course, a few moments later, the experience was over. I tried to get back into it, but to no avail. On the other hand, I couldn't quite shake the feeling that this was actually it, the real thing. It had lasted a little longer than those experiences usually used to, and it had felt as if it actually were to last this time.

There is a certain humor in buddhist books when they talk about enlightenment experiences, a kind of humor I tended to enjoy, and which I still think provides a certain safeguard against fundamentalist idiocy. They talk about how nibbana is not a state of being, and how reifying it is itself a block on the road to nibbana. They revel in the paradox, and that's fine and very appealing.

But still, I did believe that enlightenment was a real possibility in some way, a goal to be reached at some point.

Looking back, I think that this is a huge problem, but nog quite in the way the buddhists say. It is a problem because, from what I have read in the meantime, and from what I see in the world and in my own life, I gather that enlightenment is just not possible. Our brains just don't seem to be wired in a way that would allow them to overcome their own illusory self. The oh-so-bad discoursive monkey mind will always kick back in.

Looking back on what you might call my "spiritual journey" (blargh), I think that this change of mind has proved to be a good thing. Very good indeed. Now I judge my mindfulness - and boy, do I judge it! - based on whether it is useful to myself, my life, and probably the lives of people around me.

I think that this is way more down to earth, realistic and mature. It certainly has me use less of the jargon, even in my internal monologue (I always tried to avoid it in public anyway). Less attachment to enlightenment. It was an act of letting go, disentanglement, un-identification, de-attachment.

It has me pretend less, see more of how things actually are. And that's ultimately what enlightenment is about, isn't it?