I'm curious if you could point to where this comes from for you: "I think, traditionally, what I’m ‘supposed to do,’ as a meditator, now, is to make this my automatic mental reflex to the extent that I never live in stories."
I hear this a lot from meditators and teachers alike and it sounds like a misunderstanding of the very core idea of "being with what is". I notice this with all the Jhana talk lately. At the end of the day you're still prefrencing a phenomenological experience, which all experience essentially is.
I'm not saying that there isn't a gradient of more or less suffering to be had from these different states but ultimately associating meditation only with a specific flavor of experience (purer, more relaxed, clearer etc) is missing the point.
This is not directed specifically at you btw, somehow I feel like you get this (based on other stuff you've written and your use of quotation marks), this is just becoming a pervasive attitude to practice that I find concerning because it can't, by definition, be liberating.
I'm curious if you could point to where this comes from for you: "I think, traditionally, what I’m ‘supposed to do,’ as a meditator, now, is to make this my automatic mental reflex to the extent that I never live in stories."
I hear this a lot from meditators and teachers alike and it sounds like a misunderstanding of the very core idea of "being with what is". I notice this with all the Jhana talk lately. At the end of the day you're still prefrencing a phenomenological experience, which all experience essentially is.
I'm not saying that there isn't a gradient of more or less suffering to be had from these different states but ultimately associating meditation only with a specific flavor of experience (purer, more relaxed, clearer etc) is missing the point.
This is not directed specifically at you btw, somehow I feel like you get this (based on other stuff you've written and your use of quotation marks), this is just becoming a pervasive attitude to practice that I find concerning because it can't, by definition, be liberating.