Exploring Awakening: Transitioning from Solidity to Expansion

Awakening involves transforming the body-mind experience from solid to expansive, reducing suffering through lighter states.

### Progressing Towards Awakening: Transitioning States of Experience from Solid to Ether
* 🧘 The goal is to transition states of experience from **solid to less solid**, finding in our experience parts that relate to **solid, liquid, gas, plasma, and ether**.
* 🌬 The process involves identifying and working on **points of solidity** in the body-mind experience, gradually moving them towards **more flowy, less contracted states**.
* 🔍 "One goal people can work towards is to have **no parts of solidity in their experience**."
* 🔥 Plasma is compared to a **super unstable condition** in our experience, such as finicky background flashings or subtle cosmic radiation static.
* 🌌 Ether is described as the far end of the spectrum, beyond perception and experience, suggesting what is **"beyond beyond."**
* 🧘 The speaker shares a meditation technique involving sitting in a stream, using the flowing water to **dissolve the sense of center and solidity**.
* 🏞 "Think about your journey in terms of **melting solidity** in your body-mind experience, this whole thing, and working towards **lighter, more expansive, less contracted states**, therefore **less suffering**."
* 🙏 The ultimate goal is described as the realization of "**nibana**," where all of the body-mind has been raised to the state of ether, resulting in **no experience**.

yo good people. I just got back meditating in the park with some lovely good people as well, and we were exploring this idea around what could be just potential signposts and ways of framing the goal in terms of Awakening. Like, what are we actually doing here? And although there's certain traps to being reductionistic about trying to pin down what this thing is, and there's always ways you can sort of counter-signal and say, Well, it's actually not that, but just to give people more clarity on the path, like, what are they actually doing? What is something worth aiming for? And coming up with this conception of thinking about transitioning states of our experience from solid to less solid, essentially finding in our experience which parts of our experience, this whole 3D experience space, relates to the matter, which we call solid, liquid, gas, plasma, and then ether. And a way of measuring one's progress is that there's less and less solidity in the body-mind experience. So, people start off from a

place of like living in a very hardened 3D concrete world. You know, the world out here is perceived as like a solid structure. Their body is perceived as very hard and, uh, even just bringing this up, that you cannot perceive it that way, that everything can become much lighter and flowy, and everything is perceived as not static and all in flow and movement, and bridging the gap between sort of either/or is a radical idea for people. Although we here and now actually, we can find properties of experience that are already not in the solid state. So, uh, one place I might point to in terms of finding air in your experience is gaseous air. So, this part of one's experience here already is very air-rated, right? It's so expanded, so not contracted, and it's just as much a part of your experience as here and all there. Uh, and can you find this expansive quality in the body as well? There will be like air-rated pockets and places like that, and then going into the really contracted places that

you feel in your body and seeing if you can pierce them with your attention, over-paralyze them, deconstruct them, and move them more into a state of like flowy liquid, then gas, then ether, and plasma, which I'll explain later what those are. You know, heating them up with your awareness and your attention, heating up the gross contractions and to being able to loosen them. Notice that even within a tight constriction, we even notice that if I touch something seemingly very solid like this wall, that sensation of hardness actually ebbs and flows. It's slight sort of, it's more hard and less hard, more hard and less hard in that sense of the tip of my finger, the sensations if you pay real close attention. And by training your perceptual faculties, you can lock in this upgraded, higher refined states of attention where you just, you perceive that it's, it is not a solid thing even as I perceive it now. So we go through this process, and one goal people can work towards is to have

no parts of solidity in their experience. So firstly, map the whole experience, recognize what you're working with, that your mind is not just this small thing in the head here, but actually it's this whole thing, right? And then scanning through and looking for points of solidity, and then working on those being tight semantic constrictions that we can loosen and let go of. And there's many, many ways to do that, but eventually we can come to a point where there's just no more solidity being formed in any particular point of experience, and that is a big game-changing moment once you get there. And then there can be continuous refinement through liquid and gas, just to speak on like what is plasma and ether. So plasma is a state of matter, like fire, where it's a super unstable condition that can't hold itself up. And we to relate to what parts of our experience might mimic sort of plasma in this way. Um, there's a lot of like finicky background flashings, um, static like thoughts and

Concepts and ideas and things that kind of popping in and out of existence in our experience that never really stabilize, and you couldn't um sort of pin them down or concretely Define them, but that's a lot of what's going on. So uh people may get into highly expansive States like big open spacious awareness. So we can think of that as like the gaslike quality has really pervaded experience, and a lot of the rest of experience of the solidity of the body has been loosened. Uh but within that, you might notice like subtle Cosmic microwave background radiation static kind of buzzing. So we can relate that to plasma, and then ether is hard to talk about cuz it's this, it's purely theoretical and conceptual in this way. But it's, it's noticing that that spectrum, that trajectory of going from solid to less solid, and where this could go, where the far end of that Spectrum can take one, and ether being you can't perceive it, you can't measure it, you can't experience it, but the Mind suggests something there, and what

using that as a pointer to suggest what is kind of beyond beyond right and finding this finding this this non-quality quality what does ether suggest what does it conjecture towards can you can you find that in your subtle presumptions in the in the gliding towards less solidity more expansion there's a a presumption of an extreme there and that's that's just a feature in experien this is where the sense of the um imminent and Transcendent codependent arise and come together um it could be very hard it's very subtle very refined but it's it's not there and an experience where all an experience where all of the body mind has been raised to the state of ether is no experience AKA this would be sensation and the realization of nibana I'm losing my voice nibana uh in the meantime before going there we can still realize earlier States on this Continuum and I wanted to share a cool meditation I found quite spontaneously while hiking this is like an elemental meditation if you ever come

across a stream, there's a good amount of flow with it. And if there's a safe place in the middle where you can meditate, like a rock, and then you have the river passing around you, and you just tune into that current, close your eyes, tune into the flow, and you hear it going around you. You might be able to use the sensations and the benefit of your imagination even to get that flowing right through you. And I found that was amazing for dissolving solidity. And before the center point disappeared for me, that was something I did. I remember it was like washing, eroding away sort of the sense of a center. So if you ever get the chance, I recommend doing that kind of meditation. So anyway, just a cool goal posting, giving people some direction here. Think about your journey in terms of melting solidity in your body-mind experience, this whole thing, and working towards lighter, more expansive, less contracted states, therefore less suffering. Hope that helps, and cool little idea I wanted to

share uh thank you very much, and have a good rest of the day. Goodbye.

What is A Good 'Goal' to aim for? - some simple directions on the path to Enlightenment.

Roger This

The discussion revolves around transitioning states of experience from solid to less solid, aiming for a lighter and more fluid perception of reality.

Progress is measured by experiencing less solidity in the body-mind, challenging the notion of a static and hardened existence.

The concept of finding expansive qualities, like gaseous air, in one's experience is highlighted as a way to bridge the gap between different states of being.

The process involves using attention to deconstruct and loosen tight contractions in the body, moving from a solid state to liquid, gas, ether, and plasma.

By training perceptual faculties, one can perceive the non-solid nature of experiences and work towards eliminating solidity.

The journey includes mapping the experience, scanning for points of solidity, and refining through different states of matter, ultimately aiming for a game-changing moment of no more solidity in any part of the experience.

The Fluidity of Experience and the Concept of Ether

Experiences often fluctuate and cannot be easily defined, with states of expansive awareness and subtle buzzing being common.

The transition from solid to less solid experiences suggests a spectrum, with ether representing the theoretical and unmeasurable end.

This continuum of experience raises questions about the imminent and transcendent, ultimately leading to the realization of deeper states of being.

Meditating on a rock in the middle of a flowing stream can be a powerful experience for dissolving a sense of solidity.

Tuning into the current of the water and using imagination can help create a feeling of flow within.

This practice can lead to lighter, more expansive states of being, ultimately reducing suffering.