nonduality (far reaches) [stub/scratch]:
[much of this is extremely deprecated / inadequate but i'm going to leave it here at least for now]
I'm going to use "not two; not one," here, and I'm probably not using it right, but.
Ok, not two:
For some meditation systems this is maybe the thing, though I treat deconditioning and reconditioning (and radical, natural, ordinary structural fluidity, no /fixed/ goal...) sort of as the thing, where stuff like the below is inexorable, inevitable, part-and-parcel with full de-/re-conditioning and not something that has to be regarded as particularly special or salient. Like you sort of get it for free along with everything else. Anyway, though, in any case, it's pretty cool and is coincident or interwoven with phenonological-conceptual-emotional insights that do make things nonmonotonically/net better as things untwist in a good way as per usual.
So, first, back in the day, it's like there's sort of "two modes, magisteria, realms, realities, something." There's "out there" which is like "the external world" and there's "in here" which is like much of thoughts, emotions, imagining, etc. And you might notice that often (usually?) that sort of can't coexist? Like if you're aware of "out there" then "in here" sort of goes quiet, and if you're "in here," like thinking, daydreaming, in reverie, etc., then "out there" is not salient, and you might be navigating "out there" on autopilot. So again it's not just that there's like "two realms" but also, to some degree, they're sort of not in awareness together. (There might be more than two. Daniel Ingram's discussions of "out of phase" phenomena seem important, here. Like, one could maybe chop it up further into like "out there," "in here in phase," and "in here out of phase," or something. Or there's like a continuous or discrete gradient. Anyway.)
Anyway, what happens, slowly and sometimes abruptly, is that, more and more, and/or more and more often, "out there" and "in here" are sort of coarising in the same "space," and, further, just like you can sometimes take in like a visual or auditory scene "all at once," there's sort of a temporal and experiential simultaneity that's conditionally available that doesn't always cut across the previous inside/outside thing.
(Relatedly, I think it's very important to not try to "force" this or to directly strive for it. Kind of directly trying to see everything at once or to see your thoughts as objects or etc., if done directly, is sort of potentially reifying or entrenching "dualism" ("watcher," "doer") because you're sort of not "behind" the "attentional armature," yet, as it were. "Attention" is still too heavyweight; a "thing (to be done)" [even if spontaneously]; it hasn't eaten itself become lighter and lighter, it's lightest self, yet, sort of.)
So then there's the "(but also) not one" part:
I'm less clear exactly what's being pointed at here (and for better and worse I haven't read commentary in the relevant tradition) but this is maybe in part referring to something that's initially paradoxical-seeming but there's like increasing decorrelation (“separation,” “independence”) of "sensations" [but also increased knowledge of their interdependence or at least dependence on causes and conditions etc. etc.] and while there's this “separateness” or "separation" or "difference" there's still positive "indistinctness,"---so "not one"---and/but also "wholeness" or "completeness" or "unity" but not to reify any of that and also all of this is empty, nebulous, provisional, groundless, etc.
cf. "positionless position" cf. groundlessness and no /fixed/ goal(s)
*
say there's (a) non-automatized top-down managing and (b) automatized top-down managing.
and then there's (c) bottom-up spontaneity
interleaved, "you":
(1) de-automatize (b) top-down managing during/after which the system learns how to bottom-up (effortlessly) automatize the thing or refactor it or everything (existential, cosmological, metaphysical, mundane and meaningful solve and dissolve of seemingly or initially or heartfelt important and critical problems) such that that can be a thing for the bottom-up system to do. so (b) transforms into (c).
(2) sort of teach the bottom-up system how to do (a)'s job, or, one learns how to trust (b) and how to teach (b) to be trustworthy and when (a) didn't actually need to be a thing at all (e.g.) confusions, superstition
(3) and, the bottom-up system needs lots indirect of de-automatizing and re-automatizing, too, which happens in the course of all this.
(in the course of this you sort of learn even (a) and (b) are bottom-up (c), but. [sic])
the bottom-up system has vastly more capacity than the (a) top-down non-automatized and (b) the top-down automatized. eventually you / the system sort of run out of stuff that needs to be managed ((a) and (b)) because the whole system (top-down and bottom-up) working together figured out any of:
a bottom-up (effortless) solution via solving, refactoring, or realizing it didn't need to be (effortlessly) managed before or now, or that there's a better way (c)
eventually just run out of stuff to be top-down managed, which involves sometimes multiple near-global involutions and untwists and so-on. one sees that "doing" or pushing or managing or controlling involves a fluctuating narrowing of attention or darkening of the attentional/awareness periphery and involves sort of a "going into" like an empty (in the technical sense) inner space that isn't necessary or essential, sort of.
(in the course of this you find deeper and deeper and subtler and subtler pockets of doing, willing, pushing, controlling, managing, forcing, etc., through unwrapping and untwisting and unraveling and opening and exposing and so on. "deeper" is a little problematic as a term, sort of since ultimately it's all "surfaces," sort of, with little dips into pockets, sort of, but it's mostly exposing and letting things come to you versus like trying to get somewhere deep, also altered states are sort of the exception and not the norm though are on and off a part of this.)
thus, spontaneity, [non-deliberateness [in a good sense]], non-controlling, non-managing, but/though nevertheless still preference [in a good sense]
and also there's a series of phenomenological-conceptual-cosmological-metaphysical corrections, over time, including realizing that "you're the whole universe" rather, "you" are a phenomenological world model that models contains/models "everything". [thx to scott alexander for this formulation. he doesn't necessarily endorse even 0.000001% of any this or even that formulation, etc., etc.] [find where he says this, i'll have it linked in doc also elsewhere.]
also that "narrowing" or "going elsewhere" runs out or stops and the periphery (and everything/"everything") becomes the foreground, sort of, first-pass
and again all this takes on the order of 10,000 hours because of sort of the nebulous combinatorial all-to-all-ness as the system transforms globally via the what-there-is-right-now local[ly "raised"] and then fundamental rate limits on synaptic potentiation and depotentiation plus synaptic renormalization during sleeping, or something [see other sections for more on this]
*
scratch:
- knowing of the self versus knowing of the world cf. behindness / knowingness with respect to "sensations" / body sensations versus self sensations versus world sensations and [at first] siloed knowingness for each thereof
- cf. centerlessness, agencylessness, no-doer, no-watcher, a la Daniel Ingram