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p2:

(New, see also: manipulation-themed pith instructions)

(Note, compare with: p32 (effortlessness))

will = will(/intend/plan) [that P]; do something volitional that alters expectations for future in a specific way; willing[/intending/planning/expecting/intent [to produce (an) effect (that)]; goal, purpose, for-what-purpose, for-what-further-good(ness)-If-any, for-ness, in-the-service-of
acting/doing/do = do/act/cause/maintain/enable/incept/start/prevent/block/stop/end/facilitate/retard/stabilize/change/think/know/sense/judge/evaluate/ compare/differentiate/hear/see/smell/taste/look/listen/appreciate/enjoy/contemplate/imagine/grasp/accumulate/suffer/think/feel/have part in/querying/asking/wondering/imagining/storytelling/narrating/what-if-ing/solving/solutioning/what-would-they-do-ing/questioning/assessing/judging/evaluating/participate in/push/pull/raise/lower/attend/image/envision/visualize/interrupt/preempt/interleave/substitute/switch/meaning-making/meaning-dissolving, [language-ing, say-ing, word-ing, verbalizing, phrase-ing, sentence-ing, meaning-ing,] experimenting, waiting, observing, interrupting, moving, stabilizing, tuning, sounding, querying, testing, assessing, aligning, rearrangeing, ideating, simulating, gesturing, projecting, anticipating, predicting, expecting [A]/A

Background intention:

For which it’s good to do so and you can do so, will that you become aware of potential and actual willing, doing, faith/forbearance, and release that is or will be currently good to become aware of. And, simultaneously, for which it’s good to do so and you can do so, will that you do not become aware of potential and actual willing that is or will be currently bad to become aware of.

Will Instructions Part 1:

If you become aware that it would be good to directly and immediately will [in such or such and thus a manner/sense/way] that or something like or in the neighborhood of [proposition] P at or during a particular time/moment/instant or interval/duration, and, at or during that particular time/moment/instant or interval/duration, you can do so, and it’s still good to do so, then do so; allow or participate in that happening.
If you become aware that it would be bad to directly and immediately will [in such or such and thus a manner/sense/way] that or something like or in the neighborhood of [proposition] P at or during a particular time/moment/instant or interval/duration, and, at or during that particular time/moment/instant or interval/duration, you can do so, and it’s still good to do so, then don't do so (don't start doing so or stop doing so); have the [minimal] absence of that willing; allow or participate in that happening.
If you become aware that it would in some sense have been good to do so but you can’t (a) will or can’t (b) have the absence of willing that or something like or in the neighborhood of some particular [proposition] P, at or during a particular time/moment/instant or interval/duration, then stop trying completely, will that you have the absence of willing that P and ultimately release even that; allow or participate in that happening.

Will Instructions Part 2 (the "opposite" or "absence" or "antidote" of/to will):

If you become aware that it would be good to have faith [re faith: it or something will work out; something agentic or inevitable or spontaneous causally working on your behalf—the rest of you, or deeper parts of you, or entropic dissipation, or causal law, or the minimization of free energy, or god, or the entire experiential field, Buddha nature, synchronicity, something that you don’t directly and immediately identify as "volitional-you-proper" is figuring it out for you and changing you] or acceptance or forbearance or [even] resignation about something relative to your fate/destiny/inevitability/choicelessness/expectation, and you can do so, surrender into, or surrender into facing that[(temporarily?) (locally or globally) abdicate responsibility ][(temporarily?) (locally or globally) disclaim volitionality][release preconceptions], forget, dream, daydream, fantasize, reverie, entrance, be moved, be drawn towards, have experience, non-effort, non-force, forcelessness, effortlessness, let [it] relax, let [it] recede, let it undo itself, dream, get lost, be lost, forget, allow, surrender, suffer, free-associate, be confused, be uncertain, be out of control, let go, ‘controlled/channelized "falling backwards [into]")’, give up, fail, give up completely be overtaken, be overwhelmed, be undone, be overcome, fail, give up, fail forever, give up completely, give up forever, forget, forget forever, forget temporarily, forget permanently. Easy in the harness.
If you become aware that it would be bad to have faith or forbearance or resignation or surrender or giving up, etc. about something relative to your fate/destiny/inevitability/choicelessness/expectation[e.g.][(temporarily?) (locally or globally) abdicate responsibility ][(temporarily?) (locally or globally) disclaim volitionality], to forget, dream, hypnogogia, entrance, be moved, be drawn towards, have experience, non-effort, non-force, forcelessness, effortlessness, ‘controlled/channelized "falling backwards [into]", fall-backwards-into, fall-forwards-backwards-into)’ [...], etc., and you can (not) do so, do not surrender to that, don’t do that. [e.g./for example maybe: fight, resist, will, try everything, try different things, go back to the drawing board, exhaust every possibility, give it everything you have, try more things, etc., or not, or don’t]
If you find you can’t do one of the two above, then stop trying completely, will that you have the absence of trying and ultimately release even that; allow or participate in that happening.

Action Instructions Part 1:

If you become aware that it would be good to directly and immediately do [in such or such and thus a manner/sense/way] that or something like or in the neighborhood of [action/behavior/doing/self-happening—do/act/cause/maintain/enable/incept/start/prevent/block/stop/end/facilitate/retard/stabilize/change/think/know/sense/judge/evaluate/ compare/differentiate/hear/see/smell/taste/look/listen/appreciate/enjoy/contemplate/imagine/grasp/accumulate/suffer/feel/check/test/try/experiment/have-part-in/querying/asking/wondering/imagining/storytelling/narrating/what-if-ing/solving/solutioning/what-would-they-do-ing/questioning/assessing/judging/evaluating ... participating in/push/pull/raise/lower/attend/image/envision/visualize/interrupt/preempt/interleave/substitute/switch/meaning-making/meaning-dissolving, [language-ing, say-ing, word-ing, verbalizing, phrase-ing, sentence-ing, meaning-ing,] experimenting, waiting, observing, interrupting, moving, stabilizing, tuning, sounding, querying, testing, assessing, aligning, rearrangeing, ideating, simulating, gesturing, projecting, anticipating, predicting, expecting] [A]/A at or during a particular time/moment/instant or interval/duration, and, at or during that particular time/moment/instant or interval/duration, you can do so, and it’s still good to do so, then do so; allow or participate in that happening. [Selecting from space of all possible actions...]
If you become aware that it would be bad to directly and immediately do [in such or such and thus a manner/sense/way] that or something like or in the neighborhood of [action/behavior/doing/self-happening/etc.] A at or during a particular time/moment/instant or interval/duration, and, at or during that particular time/moment/instant or interval/duration, you can (not) do so, and it’s still good to (not) do so, then don't do so (don't start doing so or stop doing so); have the [minimal] absence of that doing [A]; allow or participate in that happening.
If you become aware that it would have in some sense been good to do so but you can’t (a) do or can’t (b) have the absence of doing that or something like or in the neighborhood of some particular [action/behavior/doing/self-happening] A, at or during a particular time/moment/instant or interval/duration, then stop trying completely, will that you have the absence of doing A and ultimately release even that; allow or participate in that happening.

Action Instructions Part 2 (the "opposite" or "absence" or "antidote" of/to action):

If you become aware that it would be good to (instead) revert/have become labile/undo/invert/reverse/inverse [operation]/release/"incomplete"/let go of/redo-to-undo/replay-to-undo/revisit-to-undo/return-to-to-undo/juxtapose-to-undo/allow-to-undo/dream-to-undo/reverie-to-undo/do-to-undo/go-true-backwards/go-perfect-backwards/‘controlled/channelized "falling backwards [into]"; fall-backwards-into, fall-forwards-backwards-into)’ the immediate effects of some particular acting/doing A, and you can do so, then do so; allow or participate in that happening.
If you become aware that it would be bad to revert/have-become-labile/undo/invert/reverse/inverse-[operation]/release/"incomplete"/let-go-of/de-reify/un-reify/‘controlled/channelized "falling backwards [into]")’ the immediate effects of some particular acting/doing A, and you can (not) do so, then don't do so (don't start doing so or stop doing so); allow or participate in that (not) happening.
If you become aware that it would have in some sense been good to revert or have something become labile (or not) but you can’t, then stop trying completely, will that you have the absence of such and ultimately release even that; allow or participate in that happening.

Notes:

superstitious meditation, muscle tension, and will
good; cf. ok, good, better, best
bad; cf. bad, worse, worst
The order in which you do things matters. Some things will be bad to do now but good to do later and vice versa.
A "doing" or "willing" can be any of atomic/punctate, a discrete/bounded interval/duration, or a semi-indefinite/ongoing modulated continuity/continuousness ["modulated continuous/unbroken application"].
Sometimes, rather than stopping (or not doing) a bad thing and starting a good thing, it can be good to make changes to improve the bad thing, to make it better.
Sometimes a composite "doing" or "willing" will be bad or good, e.g. a willing that has one or more part 1’s and one or more part 2’s all happening simultaneously (in different "places" or "locations"). [e.g. "controlled or channelized falling backwards", "surrender or have faith in the midst of stuck-forwards-ness"]
Sometimes a complex combination of willing and not willing and acting and not acting all together at the same time will be good or bad. (e.g. "deliberately don’t do X [e.g. everything that hasn’t worked or has stopped working or has had mixed results] or actively refrain from doing X plus have faith")
Summary outline: good/can presence of will do; bad/can presence of will don’t; can’t then stop; good/can absence of will do; bad/can absence of will don’t; can’t then stop; good/can presence of action do; bad/can presence of action don’t; can’t then stop; good/can absence/undo action do; bad/can absence/undo action don’t; can’t then stop.
Active willing and doing can be a continuous, experimental molding of propositions and actions or will and acting as such, rather than stopping and starting bad and good willing and doing. Stopping and starting good and bad willing and doing, and so forth, as specified above, is good, too.
Will and doing can be as simple or complex as is good and can have qualifiers or "guards," e.g. "will that P via(/by way of first Q[, then E then H), and including that no bad second-order effects happen, including but not limited to these T, V, F..." and that complexity (and simplicity) can be explicit/verbal, liminally verbal, "hidden" in the "implicit" part of an explicit proposition, as it were (making no ontological commitments about minds the existence of propositions), or fully nonverbal/implicit/felt/etc. One can specify the "how," more or less concretely or abstractly, or one can leave out the how, depending on what happens to be good.
Willing and doing can contain problematic metaphysical, ontological, or mechanistic/causal errors, explicitly or implicitly, in presuppositions, premises, implications, or other ramifications. Willing and doing can be part of strategic errors, of course—timing and ordering errors as well as other suboptimalities.
An example P = [I will that] I am able to make sure that I’m safe for self and others in a way that is costless and unreflective and becoming this way itself didn’t cause undue or irreparable harm to self and others... [do your best to have a maximally wide conception of what a valid P could be, aspects both verbalizable and very difficult or impossible to fully verbalize]
An example A = carefully make sure that I’m aware that I can be aware of the skin over my bicep while attending to my posture as a whole while making sure that... [do your best to have a maximally wide conception of what a valid A could be, aspects both verbalizable and very difficult or impossible to fully verbalize]
"do so" can mean both start doing so and keep doing so (allow, participate, etc.); "don’t do so" can mean both stop doing so and deliberately refrain from doing so (allow, participate, etc.)
"good/bad to (not) do/will X" can possibly be read as "good/bad to (not) do/will X contextually for me in this case"; there are other readings.
One might will a conditionally; e.g. I will that X (only) if Y; e.g. I will that (it the case that) X (only) if (it is the case that) Y.
[...is/be/become/is-already/... the case that...]
[... I will that I believe/expect/predict/anticipate/feel/stand/live/stance/hold-myself/etc./... in such or thus way/sense/manner that it is the case that X if it is true that it is the the case that X in such or thus way/sense/manner; I will that I appropriately either believe/expect/predict/anticipate/feel/stand/live/stance/hold-myself/etc./... in such or thus way/sense/manner that it is not the case that X in such or thus way/sense/manner or that I have the absence of a belief/expecting/expectation/prediction/anticipation/feeling/standing/living/stance/holding-myself/etc./... in such or thus way/sense/manner that it is the case that X if it is false that it is the the case that X in such or thus way/sense/manner; ...]
Sometimes willing and doing will have good parts and bad parts. And if you decompose them you can leave out the bad and do just the good.
If some willing or doing is or would be good to do except for some bad thing about it, then, if you can, take apart the willing or doing so only the good part remains and do that. Or, find a way to compensate for the bad thing, that you can do and is good to do, and also do that.
p2 ~= willing/absence, surrender/absence, doing/absence, undoing/absence
ex: will that I know what’s good to will through a sequence of self-states that are not too bad
ex: will that I know what’s good to do through a sequence of self-states that are not too bad
(1) If good to will and can will (or keep willing) do so. If bad to will and can stop or prevent, do so. If good to do one of those but can’t, then make sure you’ve stopped trying completely. (2) If good to surrender and can surrender (or keep surrendering) do so. If bad to surrender and can stop or prevent, do so. If good to do one of those but can’t, then make sure you’ve stopped trying completely. (3) If good to do and can do (or keep doing) do so. If bad to do and can stop or prevent, do so. If good to do one of those but can’t, then make sure you’ve stopped trying completely. (4) If good to undo and can undo, do so. If bad to undo and can stop or prevent, do so. If good to do one of those but can’t, then make sure you’ve stopped trying completely.
Sometimes a doing or willing will be both good and bad, that is one or more (sub-)parts of the willing will be good and one or more other (sub-)parts will be bad. This can be fractal as (sub-)parts can have (sub-)parts that can be good and bad. One can use doing and willing (if good and possible) to break apart willings and doings into (contextually) good and bad parts or "neutral" parts that can potentially be done by themselves or recombined into larger units and done as a whole. [How to do the actual "breaking apart" is hard to specify generally; it will be contextual, contingent, and idiosyncratic. See p8 for evocative possibilities. Briefly, you might ask what’s good or bad in or about things. Again, please note that none of this is intended to presuppose or make ontological (or even/including methodological) commitments about how to do this or the nature or essence of such parts. Remember to not inappropriately reify anything, including notes like this.]
There is a "special" class of doing, the doing that precedes/enables/causes/facilitates not doing or the absence of doing. X might = suppress, dispel, dissolve, prevent, block, have the absence of, do-to-not-do, do-in-order-to-not-do, hold-back, allow-something-else-to-happen, etc. [Remember to not inappropriately reify any of this.][cf. pleasant distraction or pull-away is not always good to follow or surrender to. See distraction/diversion/displacement in p3.]
Don’t improperly reify "proposition," don’t take that too seriously. "Propositions" might have an "implicit component" not fully accounted for by the words.
All the above applies to willing/doing you’re already willing/doing—if become aware you’re willing/doing it, you can keep doing it or stop/have the absence of it, as per the rest of the instructions.
good [to do] = contextually good [to do], now, at the very least
compare "good" with "good (enough)"—when same; when different?
Example: "have been good to do so" ~= Like, you try to (a) do/will X or (b) have the absence of Q, because it seemed like that would have been good. But you find you can't. And then you explore whether there's still a part of you, something, somewhere, that's still trying to have (a) or (b) happen.
Your generally available set of actions/doing should expand over time, more fine-grain, more differentiated, lighter, omni-directional, multifarious, start-on-dime, stop-on-dime, interleave rapidly. They should also ideally become applicable in more and more contexts, more body locations, more phenomenologies, more senses/meanings/etc. Sometimes your available actions will shrink to a point, and that’s ok. But generally you want more and more, and more and more subtle, sometimes fast, barely nameable, barely effable, beyond language, and so forth. You might sometimes have mental tags or phenomenological tags or verbal tags or "knowing contexts" for them, and that’s great. And, there will be times when you’re taking relatively more new and/or unique/one-off/instance-of-themselves/unclassifiable actions/doings. (In some sense they’re all unique by virtue of their preconceptual referent and context.)
There can be doing on the border between surrender and doing or vice versa, where are you sort of doing but you also surrendered, or vice versa. Liminal doing; liminal surrender.
Regarding "undo," this can sometimes apply to things that "just happened" and can also apply to very old, localized or pervasive aspects of the system. It can be helpful to note that "undo" or "inverse operations" are happening all the time, like when a person learns something that contradicts an old "belief"--there will be some "layering," all things being equal, at least early in on meditation, but, mixed in with that, even at the beginning, will be some "undoing," too. Ditto for changes in behavioral propensities, preferences, etc., etc. etc. "Undoing" is very general and won't necessarily feel like "anything in particular"; it's almost a "contentless concept" or "empty concept" (perhaps concretely, phenomenologically speaking) that's directly-indirectly [sic] inferred. Eventually, there will be a tremendous amount of undoing (alongside all sorts of other things), during meditation.
A collaboration comments, "The first half of Awareness Through Movement [see bibliography] clarified a lot of p2 and p3 for me at a technical level."
One way to "bootstrap" p2 could be to think about it as "tinkering," that is, directed, minimalist, iterative, and experimental--the tiniest intervention, the barest twitch of "body" or "mind," almost nothing at all, from nothing, with no windup (not always possible!), and then wait and see, then surrender/learn, then something different or something similar--with (very qualifiedly!!!) decisiveness, continuity, confidence, and conviction increasing over time (though, so, still, overall, something like--extraordinary patience, provisionality, humility, contextuality, even caution)
It's very, very ok if, at first, things are just "rushing past" when trying to do p2 (or any practice). Like, "things," anything are sort of long gone before anything like p2 can be done in relation to them. It's always ok then to sort of surrender to all that, do your best, allow, participate, and so on. What happens over time is that you sort of start to "catch up" with everything, or you sort or rise to meet as it appears, synchronously. Or it starts to feel like you're not always a little bit (or hopelessly) behind. There's spontaneous, effortless anticipation or synchrony, like subtly inhaling before you speak and then entering a converversation at just the right time, or riding a bike, or driving a car. You can always patiently rest, wait, watch, flow, forget in acceptance or surrender or reverie, etc., as this is a top-level part of p2. This is also an antidote to top-down-ness or head-y-ness.
Regarding reverie and surrender, this might not feel like meditation at first. Like, it might feel that too much time in reverie and surrender mean that progress won't occur, because you're already in reverie a lot when you're not in meditation, right? And that didn't seem to necessarily do anything useful over the course of your life? But, it's the relationship between what's happening when you sort of "are there" to reverie, surrender, etc., that makes reverie in meditation valuable. Say you're sort of "there," you're kind of actively doing or participating/allowing p2 kind of as such or implicitly. Then you slip into reverie, without having realized that this is happening (and that's ok!!), and then you kind of "come back" and realize that you had just been in reverie. That's doing p2. When you "come back" you might review what was happening in reverie or what was happening right before reverie, and the transition into reverie. But, you don't necessarily have to do this. This isn't necessarily contextually good to do. I'm just using it as an example, here. The point is more that, it's ok to "go away" because what you're doing when you're "there" has a relationship to what's happening when you "go away," and you can do things when you're "there" that change what happens when you "go away." Even if you don't remember exactly what happens when you go away, that's still data for the system; that's still having a relationship to what's happening when you "go away." (So, to be clear, I'm not implying you should ever try to remember exactly what happened when you went away; sometimes it might be contextually good to do and other times a gazillion other things will be. It's just one possibly "the contextually good thing to do" out of gazillions, with respect to a concrete situated contact with you and/as your landscape right there and right then.) Anyway, recall, "going away", surrender, reverie, etc., is essential for letting the mind do all the things it needs to do. Over time, there can be a smooth, clean, undulating, non-self-recriminating (if you are/were self-recriminating, as a holdover from other meditation systems!), seamless, minimal handoff, back and forth between sort of "being there" and "not being there" (in reverie, etc., including sleeping and dreaming).
[tortured sentence incoming:] I think an important point is that if one has any concerns about content or process, with respect to reverie, sleep, or things not remembered, one can do things, before and after, in relation to that not remembering or not being in control or present--or, what one does, or how one relates to everything else, when one “is there” or “does remember,” affects what happens when one “isn’t there” or “doesn’t remember.” And it’s enough. It’s all you need. // Lightly inclining towards remembering can sometimes be good (the theravadin technical term “sati,” often translated as mindfulness [bleh], apparently has connotations of memory), but definitely not as a general rule. It’s ok to let things do their thing. // And long-run meditation is reallllllly letting things do their thing, safely and competently and happily take care of themselves (“unconsciously”), so one can focus on and/or remember the fun stuff (which will be different things for different people). // (it can be good (sometimes!) to notice sort of attentional discontinuities or dropped stuff. more and more, mostly on its own, over time, attention is sort of seamless and liquid, with smooth handoffs, and generally (but not always!) easier reconstruction and place finding if things get interrupted.) // and, kind of back to the above, smooth handoffs between sort of “being present” and “not being present,” just kind of gently moving back and forth, quietly and trustingly passing the baton back and forth, every few seconds or minutes, depending on whether it makes sense to do something with “you” there or for it to happen with “you not there,” sometimes remembered, sometimes not remembered.
a gloss/schema/walkthrough of about 12% of p2: 1. look around for / is anything happening right now, where you'd conceive of yourself or it vaguely seems like "you're as doing it" (whether you or you-you or etc.). 2. gently incline towards stopping doing it. you probably can't or partially [99% of levers not immediately or one-step available]. 3. for what you can't, gently incline towards stopping trying to make it stop, for a time. 4. repeat / back to (1). commentary: as you do this, over time, you will expose more doings that you weren't previously aware you were doing, and sort of the dashboard will blink and flicker with respect to which ones can/can't stop, in any moment, with more and more flipping to "can stop," over time, at the right and good times. additionally, your construal of what does and doesn't constitute "doing" will fluidly change/improve, over time.
cryptic note: almost one of those reverse psychology things: willing almost added as one of those things to make salient that especially want it to eat itself. doing+effort but effort is usually heuristically bad. almost just for completeness bc such a sociocultural big deal and a weapon/adversarial. used and abused. direct or indirect flavors.
This should maybe be split out into a section: Sometimes I suggest "gently [directly] inclining towards X" or "gently [directly] experimenting with inclining towards X". This is sort of synonymous with "willing X." Perhaps if any associated "effort" is dialed down to zero then one is left with "mere bottom-up/spontaneous doing." Or paradoxical "effortless, costless willing" might be termed "participation" (cf. A. Chapman). (The formal/theoretical/terminological details should always be allowed to be a little swimmy, in my opinion, a la nebulosity, etc.) Direct inclining can sort of "leave out" "ordering." And I note a bunch that one can't choose the ordering of how things change [or what they change to] in advance. Ignoring negative lead indicators with respect to ordering can lead to grinding and jamming, or muscle tension, or at least scraping against/along a wall for a while. (And of course, sometimes, often one finds oneself compulsively or uncontrollably "out-of-ordering" for hours, days, or months, and that's ok! That's part of it.) So I suggest gently inclining to beginners (qualified with caution) on the chance that they may more quickly experience "something actually happening" and also one sort of tacitly finds their way to this while doing p2, as an option. But X% of the time---50%? 99%? The right thing to do is to "indirectly, spontaneously fall into something" because that will "stick/settle all by itself, nothing left to stick" where "direct inclining" if not grinding or jamming, is sort of highly likely to "flop back." That is, because it's likely to be out of order, it's sort of pushing things to not their (relatively) "final" shimmery, settled spontaneously-stably-resting place, as it were, so it's not stable and has to be "managed" which is sort of "the exact wrong local/global direction," etc. etc. etc. versus "more and more and more spontaneously, costless, effortless, completely takes care of itself." So, no hard and fast rules, sometimes gently-directly-inclining is the right thing to suggest---and to play with! to experiment with! there's good stuff there! it teaches the system things! under urgency or duress or all sorts of lesser good reasons it's the right thing to do! but it's helpful to make the distinction between it and other things. [Thanks to a collaborator for a conversation which drew out a bunch of this articulation.]

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