lists and more

when/​if things are bad / (not your) fault / determinism:

[first draft written with thumbs on the phone, a bit repetitive or confusing in places until edit]

All the warnings and all the wayfinding might imply a certain “responsibility.” [1], [2], [3]

"Well if you get into trouble it’s your own damn fault, you made your bed now lie in it, told you so."

First it's worth noting that even when a great deal of progress has been made stuff cam come up with 100% intensity even when 80-99% “done” with that stuff. It can be very digital. [5]

But more to the point in this section, cf. all the warnings at the top of the doc and elsewhere, cf. the whole idea of global wayfinding [4] (and cf. homunculus issues [6]), all of this can make it feel like: / “if you’re suffering or overwhelmed, especially if it’s “big” )and also if it’s medium or small), "it’s your own damn fault and you should feel bad, guilty, ashamed." /Or , all the warnings and all the wayfinding might imply a certain “responsibility.” / "Well if you get into trouble it’s your own damn fault, made your bed now lie in it, told you so."

But, it could be my own bias and blindspots, but because of redo to undo and nonmonotonicity, I think things are almost always kind of bad, at least a little around the edges, and sometimes extremely bad, though I think this is person dependent.

Maybe if one precisely hews towards precisely understood and pointed out things (via teachers or books), like “do this first,” with respect to emptiness or lovingkindness or compassion or ethics or relationships or prostrations, or theory, or “view”, or concentration, then a lot of the hard stuff can be softened or shortened. (Or even/especially, do this global wayfinding thing with this meta protocol!!!!) I’m skeptical, because of tue precise ordering and wayfinding that some people need, I imagine at least some people would “grind or jam” if they tried to perfectly “prepare the ground,” first. But maybe traditions that have been around for thousands or years are onto something. I'm not sure, at this time, excepting that I've seen a lot of problematic missteps in at least some purported continuations of old traditions.

Are contemporary traditions that emphasize equanimity, sweetness, and relief lying? I don’t think so, in the sense that so many things get palpably better as well as a growing (correct, in my experience) sense that things can get better and better and better still. That's the whole point, etc., etc., modulo one is also opening onself to future pain, as part and parcel of that.

But, as mentioned in other sections, the very hardest things can get worse and worse before they finally get better, for months or years, and the very bad thing that perhaps may have (sublminally or not) inspired you to meditate in the first place, as mentioned elsewhere, may get worse and worse for the whole 10,000 hours before you relief.

“New bad” can seem to be a thing too, not just old bad that you kind of knew about or half knew about. Maybe it's latent karma you weren't aware of or something you picked up through subtle interaction, when you temporarily became extra sensitive, while a bunch of stuff was refactoring? Over time you’ll sort of forensically tease out the causal history of all these things. That’s a critical and semi-spontaneous thing that happens over time.

But, in the meantime, a contemporary teacher notes how at least several of their students experienced “unimaginable suffering.” (I’ve experienced this, too, though prior to version one of the protocol and so also prior to usage of the meta protocol.) What the heck? Did this not make it into the sutras? Are contemporary teachers and students doing something wrong? Unclear at this time. The end result, modulo good global wayfinding, implicit or explicit, is still the same (groundlessness, deconditioning, etc.!), at least.

Anyway, in any case, a main point: there’s always going to be at least one relevant sense in which you didn’t do anything wrong and you’re not doing anything wrong.

But, you might say, “Well I saw this coming, I should have known, other people warned me…” (if only; could’ve, would’ve, should’ve…)

Yes and no.

First, it’s ok to regret and review, that’s part of the learning, refactoring, integrating process for much of the path. And it’s ok and sometimes really, really good to explore the best version of what could have been. Something really deep there.

Second, it’s also ok to take refuge, sort of, in “determinism”: gonna do what you’re gonna do, what is happening is what was going to happen.

It’s nuanced, this isn’t fatalism or abnegation of responsibility, or victimhood, and exploring/reviewing counterfactuals (not to reify exploring/​reviewing and counterfactuals) and also determinism can be freaky until/unless it isn’t.

(And like yeah “if only you had/hadn’t”—but maybe not, this might’ve been much better than something else! (There's that old taoist story where a seeming good thing leads to a seeming bad thing leads to a seeming even better thing leads to a seeming even worse thing leads to...)

(There’s also important point mentioned elsewhere, that you may have a sense you’re doing something wrong for hundreds of hours, because momentum, karma, redo-to-undo burnoff, and that might well be optimally executed practice, no other alternative.) [7]

Anyway, hard to say whether a better thing could have even happened, maybe stably same-ish outcome even given a lot of perturbations or even sharp counterfactual, very ok to retrospectively and prospectively explore though, and/​but/​also, because of causes and conditions (not to reify those, either), what’s happening is what’s happening, and now, and now, and also it’s ok to escape from that into reverie, and so on, and so on. Consider: not your fault.

*

1071 words · main · also: 148d