--- title: "Spirituality, Phenomenology, and Practice" canonical: "https://spiritual-rationality.org" pages: 12 --- # Spirituality, Phenomenology, and Practice {#top} *The complete “Spirituality, Phenomenology, and Practice” chapter of https://spiritual-rationality.org, as one markdown file — its index page followed by every page beneath it, in reading order. The whole book in one file: https://spiritual-rationality.org/llms-full.txt* ## Notation {#notation} Source notation, not standard markdown: - `::gloss[…]` — definition of the heading above it. Invisible on the site; it is the hover card for links to that heading. Read as a definition. - `::gloss[…]{#id}` — defines a term holding its own anchor. `#id` is the link target; the block below is what it annotates. - `::nogloss` — heading deliberately has no definition. - `:::note[…]` / `:::info[…]` — callouts (MyST/Docusaurus admonitions). Footnotes are GFM. Heading anchors are GitHub-style slugs, written out as `{#id}` in the combined files. ## Contents {#contents} - [Spirituality, Phenomenology, and Practice](#practice) - [Spiritual Practice](#practice-spiritual-practice) - [Somatic Phenomenology](#practice-phenomenology-somatics) - [Misc. Features of Spiritual Practices](#practice-practices) - [Meditation](#practice-meditation) - [Introspection (and some "Transformative Practice")](#practice-introspection) - [Content, Healing, and Integration](#practice-healing) - [Criticizing Somatics-and-Trauma Models](#practice-healing-criticizing-trauma) - [Other Models of Healing](#practice-healing-other-models) - [Mysticism and Awakening](#practice-mysticism-awakening) - [Paths and "The Path"](#practice-paths) - [Transformative Practice](#practice-transformative-practice) --- # Spirituality, Phenomenology, and Practice {#practice} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/practice — also at `/md/practice.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `practice--`.* *In this chapter:* "Spiritual" practice in broad strokes, and some important related phenomenology: - [Spiritual Practice](#practice-spiritual-practice) - [Somatic Phenomenology](#practice-phenomenology-somatics) - [🔨 Misc. Features of Spiritual Practices](#practice-practices) Meditation, introspection, and healing, each intertwined and often laden as concepts: - [Meditation](#practice-meditation) - [Introspection (and some "Transformative Practice")](#practice-introspection) - [Content, Healing, and Integration](#practice-healing) - [🔨 Criticizing Somatics-and-Trauma Models](#practice-healing-criticizing-trauma) - [🔨 Other Models of Healing](#practice-healing-other-models) *Awakening*, mysticism, and "the spiritual path": - [Mysticism and Awakening](#practice-mysticism-awakening) - [🔨 Paths and "The Path"](#practice-paths) Lastly, contextualizing transformative practice in modern secular culture more broadly: - [🔨 Transformative Practice](#practice-transformative-practice) --- # Spiritual Practice {#practice-spiritual-practice} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/practice/spiritual-practice — also at `/md/practice/spiritual-practice.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `practice-spiritual-practice--`.* I broadly speaking agree with the take that "religion," "spirituality," and "spiritual practice" are not really natural kinds anthropologically or psychologically, and that the modern Western conception is contingent on the specific history of the western church, its relationship with European states, etc. More specifically, my sense is that various societies have constructed a boundary between "religion" and the rest of society in different ways, or not at all, and that the underlying patterns of human behavior and experience seem much messier, and overlapping with politics, philosophy, "science," etc. Nonetheless I'll at least want to make some kinds of distinctions, so I'll refer to a few broad clusters here, with quite a lot of overlap. These definitions aren't unusual but are slightly idiosyncratic: **Religion**: the practices and beliefs of organized spiritual communities, usually as part of a larger organization, and especially those with organizational hierarchies and explicit dogma. **Spirituality**: the domains of meaning relating to the sacred, devotional practices, mysticism, and ultimate existential meaning. **Mysticism**: the practice and experience of non-mundane reality, altered states, theophany, and transcendence. Sometimes also includes **esotericism**, which usually refers to mystical symbolic systems, especially when culturally marginal or restricted only to those initiated. **Transformative practice**: practices and theories of psychological and spiritual *development*, inclusive of eg. prayer, Western therapy, often "mystical" practices, rites of passage, and sometimes even secular training regimes like those used by militaries. I'll describe each of these in a little more detail as I conceive of them, how they relate, and what claims various traditions of each of them make. ## Religion {#practice-spiritual-practice--religion} Religious traditions, moreso those larger and more organized, and especially the so-called "world religions," generally consist of a. dogma and a community of believers; b. sacraments, and often initiation; and c. communal rites. (As it happens, Buddhism doesn't really fit this mold, especially b. and c., but it's so anodyne even in Asia, and irrelevant politically everywhere else, so this is often ignored. Hinduism at least historically is also much messier or leakier with respect to the identified community of believers, since there was no such thing as "Hinduism" until the British Raj, and smaller sects were sometimes porous.) Religious dogmas (again at least among "world religions") almost invariably define a [metaphysics](/md/metaphysics/what-why-metaphysics.md), defining an axiology with respect to a particular cosmology and ontology, generally featuring some kind of life after death, a God or gods, angels and spirits, and supernatural abilities or miracles. They very often feature a soteriology, seeing the current world as incomplete or fallen, and either having a heaven, salvation, or an escape from this world. They also generally prescribe practices, covenants, and social structures for upright communities to maintain, lest a bad outcome occur, usually in whatever life is to come after this one. Those traditions most importantly revolve around [devotional practice](#practice-practices--devotion): practices which involve scripted or spontaneous performance of submission, devotion, and adoration to a deity, spirit, or saint. These practices are generally meant to be [imaginally](#practice-practices--imaginal-practice) rich, bringing a person into a [way of seeing](/md/metaphysics/ways-of-seeing.md) in which they feel they *are really* communing with a spirit or deity. Often, the sense of [the Sacred](#practice-practices--the-sacred) includes religious paraphernalia or specific holy sites, but most importantly includes the communal-imaginal space created by a religious community. Devotional practice often involves an important aspect of *faith*, or what's sometimes called "[hyperstition](#practice-practices--hyperstition)." On the gentler side, these practices can range from personal [prayer](#practice-practices--prayer), communal devotional rites (often surprisingly similar, in the broadest outlines, to familiar Western Christian church services), to Jihad, religious crusades, matyrdom, or extreme acts of pious self denial. Reports from practitioners in these traditions almost all describe them as ecstatic, joyous, deeply heartfelt, and profoundly meaningful. More specifically, devotional practices are often an overwhelming part of how religious people apprehend goodness, often acutely being some of the most important experiences of people's lives, or a steady source of positive emotion throughout theis lives. (Obviously, many religious people, especially in modern times, experience their religion more as a very socially important institution, but not quite as "the basis of their apprehension of all meaning" or whatever.) Some religious traditions nominally view devotional practice as a kind of duty, hopefully joyous, but that knowledge of goodness comes through the dogma itself, whereas many others view spiritual practice as *the gateway* to knowledge of ultimate meaning, and often to direct communion with God. The latter stance shades into or whole-hog becomes mysticism ([see below](#practice-spiritual-practice--mysticism)). See also later on [gnosis](#practice-mysticism-awakening--gnosis). "World religions" are generally the output of a process of [memetic evolution](/md/culture-trauma-memetics/memetics.md), and the most fecund religious memes have tended toward these features, generally prioritizing legibility and transmissibility, usually in the form of universalism. On the other hand, so-called "folk religions" and sometimes "shamanic traditions" are much less systematized if at all, this group is such a various and riotous mess that it's hard to say much about in general. Anyway, my impression is that veneration, obeisance, and appeasement of spirits are very common features, while dogma is much weaker if present, and stories of ultimate existential meaning are often absent. Broadly it seems like "world religions" didn't invent the sacred, but probably *did* invent (or they might prefer "received") universalist religious cosmology. ## Spirituality {#practice-spiritual-practice--spirituality} There's fairly little that's *in* "spirituality" that's not in religion, but spirituality is a particular angle on the same broader cluster, which excludes many structural features of religions as institutions. One take here might be that spirituality is the personal, relational aspect of this cluster, whereas "religion" makes salient the structural and institutional features that are present in the spiritualities of most humans alive today. More generally, 'spirituality' usually has the connotation of "sacralized transformative practice" or "sacralized / magicalized practices of connection with self and mundane meaning." Often, in the modern California style, one can be "spiritual but not religious," but also even a devout religious person's spirituality isn't necessarily coterminous with the orthodox view in their religious tradition. Moreover, if we widen spirituality, as some anthropologist and sociologists do, to mean just practices of private and communal creation of spaces of sacredness and devotion, then we end up including practices and communities structured around national or ethnic identity, brotherhood, civic responsibility[^practice-spiritual-practice--jan-6], and definitely stories about the long term future of our species, whether good or bad. These often evoke similar emotions and [imaginal-relational stances](#practice-practices--imaginal-practice) as more stereotypically "religious" practices. I'm in this case basically down with the [Durkheimian hypothesis](/md/goodness/metaphysics-axiology.md), that religion, spirituality, and the Sacred exist more as stories that allow human communities to coordinate and trust each other, basically orthogonally to their being *true*, or the specific claims they make. [^practice-spiritual-practice--jan-6]: I remember being both taken aback and touched by a video of a capitol police officer on January 6th, addressing some of the er, "rioters"? "demostrators"? who had gotten into the floor of the house, saying "you know this is the most sacred place?" I'll add that maybe on average, spirituality is more likely than "religion" to include things like mundane beauty, family life, food-as-spiritual-practice, etc. etc. In any case, I don't think there's a *fundamental* distinction here. I should say also that both the word, etymologically, and the concept of 'spirituality' as distinct from 'religion' are pretty modern (maybe 16th century), and *quite* modern in the "spiritual but not religious" sense. Still, it's useful to be able to refer to this concept and distinguish it from religion, when that's meaningful. ## Mysticism {#practice-spiritual-practice--mysticism} ::gloss[*Mysticism* is the practice and experience of non-mundane reality, altered states, theophany, and transcendence.] Mysticism is yet more nebulous and yet more varied than the dogmas of "world religions." Very broadly mysticism is concerned with experiences of self-and-world which are very different from ordinary daily experience. Maybe a good definition would be the mystician is about [gnosis](/md/spiritual-truth/gnosis-confabulation.md) of "spiritual reality." Reports from what I would categorize as mystical traditions and practitioners, often include (hardly exhaustive): - Visions (usually experienced as intense and phenomenologically encompassing) of angels, hell, other planets, the far future, etc. - Extremely altered states of attention and perception, sometimes leading to very strange experiences of self-and-world - The body as unreal, paper-thin, jumbled, or absent - Same, for the world - Same, for "the self," "me," etc. Sometimes also appearing to be contiguous with the external world - This one people have a big hardon for, and it's often reported as an utterly profound change in their life, and even the most important experience in their life. - Speaking to or witnessing God, gods, spirits, "entities," etc. - I would regard these experiences as distinct from visions, they're broadly usually crisp, vivid, often interactive, and "live," rather than reported as more timeless, recollected, or "futuresight." - "Union with" God or the universe - Knowledge of the ultimate truths of reality, meaning, or value - Eg. knowledge of past lives and the cycle of rebirth - Intense bliss states, sometimes bliss-beyond-pleasure, leading into dissolution and transcendence - Intensely hellish states, including images of horrors, sometimes seemingly contentless intense pain, etc. Common techniques used to achieve these experiences include: - """[Meditation](#practice-meditation)""" - We might include under this physically active but "meditative" practices, eg. Tai chi or Asana Yoga. - """[Prayer](#practice-practices--prayer)""" - Fasting, deprivation, intense sensory experiences otherwise (usually unpleasant but sometimes pleasant), sometimes called "shamanic ordeal" - Deliberate alteration of the breath, often extremely fast or slow, sometimes more precise control interacting with [somatic phenomena](#practice-phenomenology-somatics) - Psychoactive drugs, obviously including traditional and modern psychedelics, but also sometimes marijuana or even some forms of tobacco - Rhythmic and hypnotic practices, eg. mantra, drumming, chanting, or some kinds of dance There are also many reports of mystical experiences occurring spontaneously, with no prior practice or experience, as well as after many years of practice but during downtime, on a walk, or in response to some utterance from a teacher. There are also many reports of these experiences or qualities of perception [creeping up](#practice-paths--gradualism-and-suddenism) on a person over a long period, eg "one day noticing that there just isn't much self around," etc. ## Transformative practice {#practice-spiritual-practice--transformative-practice} ::gloss[*Transformative practice* includes practices and theories of psychological and spiritual development, from prayer and therapy to rites of passage.] Lots of traditions and communities are concerned with the development and transformation of their members' attitudes, perception, experience, behavior, etc. This includes of course institutional religion, but also of course modern psychotherapy, militaries, penal systems, marginally (but in a real way) educational systems, and much weirder more culturally marginal groups otherwise. The goals, techniques, and outcomes of these groups are so varied that it's also hard to say much in general here. Still, these often include: - Most of the practices described under religion and mysticism above - Ordeals which are meant to arouse more capacity, bravery, or intensity from a person than they were previously capable of - Practices and experiences meant to lead to changes in values or orientation, eg. "scared straight" type of stuff, but also intense positive experiences, eg. some kinds of outdoor education for delinquent teenagers, or some kinds of communal religious practices; perhaps some aspects of hazing and military training - Explicitly trying to counter or cover over undesired mental qualities, eg. many things that describe "changing one's thinking," but also eg. most of the techniques of Alcoholic's Anonymous - """[Introspection](/md/spiritual-truth/gnosis-confabulation.md)""" - Various angles intending explicit catharsis, whether "structural" (that is, introspective), "purely [somatic](#practice-phenomenology-somatics)," or more unusual variations Modern Western schools of transformative practice often have a priority on introspection, or sometimes a kind of, er, "extrospection" aided by a therapist, oriented specifically towards what's often called "insight" (not that this is really one thing). --- # Somatic Phenomenology {#practice-phenomenology-somatics} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/practice/phenomenology-somatics — also at `/md/practice/phenomenology-somatics.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `practice-phenomenology-somatics--`.* Both hippies and traditional spiritual lineages have some big fetish for *somatics*, by many names, and mostly for good reason. Saliently, most of the reports of somatic phenomenology from both sets of sources are (afaik) all-but-unattested in academic psychology, and to a decent extent seemingly absent or at least pretty shallowly understood in Western culture in general. Briefly, there are a variety of reported phenomenological patterns which are experienced as sensations "in the body." Reports here vary from simple but amorphous feelings often reported in association with positive emotion, to complex, bizarre and incredibly rich. I'll use the word *somatic*, or *somatics*, to refer to this kind of phenomenology, agnostic of its relationship with eg. physiological mechanisms. Some assorted reports, evocative of the breadth of the space: - A wide palette of sensations variously described as flowing, tingly, buoyant or heavy, or as though one is feeling a magnetic field - This is often called *energy*, and the space or stratum within which it "occurs" is often called the *energy body*. ('Energy' is also used to refer to a variety of other phenomena, [see more below](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--energy).) - Nebulously felt happiness or positive feeling otherwise, with no salient location or boundary - Emotions identifiable as spatially localized clusters of sensation, with specific felt flavors or tones, as well as sometimes common movement patterns. - Knots, dislocations, or regions of contraction in the energy body, sometimes very subtle - These are often called "blockages." ([see below](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--blockages-releases-and-somatization)) - There are also common reports of blockages dissolving, unraveling, or exploding due to "healing" practices, most often into intense negative emotion. ([see more later](#practice-healing--releases-and-openings)) - Specific reports of localized centers of sensation in the body, with specific semantic associations - IIRC there's a few different mostly unrelated traditions of such systems, but in the most common cluster of such systems in the West, they're known as *chakras.*[^practice-phenomenology-somatics--hareesh-chakras] Cf. also meridian systems, some of the "subtle body" systems, etc. - Claims of psycho-somatic effects causing gross (medically identifiable) illness, in rare reports including up to cancer (!!)[^practice-phenomenology-somatics--psychosomatic] ([see below](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--blockages-releases-and-somatization)) - Acute states of intense pleasure, bliss, or profound peace, reported as more intense than sex or drugs, arising at least initially from ordinary body sensations - Variously, extremely fine sensitivity to specific emotions, both in oneself and others. - Specific patterns of somatic resonance, both re very specific qualities and patterns of sensation, and very specific locations ([see below](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--meaning-and-resonance)) - "Profound and subtle wrongness" - Persistent sub-personalities with emotions and attitudes substantially *separate* from that of a person's experienced personality, usually localized to specific parts of the body - (Often called "[parts](#practice-introspection--partswork-briefly)," but also "critters") [^practice-phenomenology-somatics--psychosomatic]: Just to be clear, I'm pretty sure the cancer stuff is bs, but some subset of these reports I expect are basically real. [^practice-phenomenology-somatics--hareesh-chakras]: As it happens the systems from which westerners learned about chakras were *prescriptive* rather than *descriptive*, and there are a variety of different systems with different numbers of chakras, different associated colors, geometric symbols, etc. See Hareesh, 2016. [*The real story on the Chakras*](https://hareesh.org/blog/2016/2/5/the-real-story-on-the-chakras) I try to stick to a narrowly *phenomenological* frame in the presentation here, but many of these reports are couched in terms of this or that metaphysics, which I also try to depict accurately. To be clear, I don't necessarily hold a "sensation only" view of somatics, nor am I married to [materialism](/md/metaphysics/what-why-metaphysics.md), but I've gone a bit out of my way to describe the phenomenology here in a way which isn't in conflict with materialist-reductionism. ## Meaning and resonance {#practice-phenomenology-somatics--meaning-and-resonance} ::nogloss Somatic phenomena correlate strongly with other kinds of "states of mind," and their presence, contours, and progression seem to track much better the details of the underlying generators of psychological states than signals like "thoughts," *whatever those are*, lol. More broadly, reports from people who talk about somatic phenomenology at all, with a few important exceptions, place it at the center of apparent existential meaning. (To some extent this is some elaboration on my part, often people draw the boundaries differently, or reify certain aspects over others, but still this is a very common feature.) Reading or talking to people who leave somatics out of meaning, for me, it can feel like they've stretched and flattened the domain, and they're only able to analyze the silhouette. The exceptions are also telling actually: the main one salient to me would be reports from meditation masters of things like ["a peace beyond feeling or perception."](#practice-mysticism-awakening) Describing this explicitly both feels embarassingly simple, like pointing out that feet each have five toes, or that the sky is blue; it's also apparently necessary, often such basic features of phenomenology seem to be news to many people! (I'm also a bit embarrassed to say that a lot of this would have been news to me before I had engaged seriously with "spiritual practice.") We have some familiar expressions in English to describe these phenomena, eg.: - "heartwarming" - "gutwrenching" - "hair-raising" - (Yes, this one refers to a gross physiological response, but also a somatic one.) - "sickening," just generally - "cold blooded," also "hothead," maybe peripherally "red blooded" - perhaps "struck a chord" (of an ideology etc.) Note that some people take this kind of language to be poetic or purely metaphorical, whereas for others it's obviously referring to completely humdrum somatic phenomenology. Again I'm confused how to talk about any of this, partially just because it seems embarrassingly *simple*, but also is surprising or contentious to some people! Some more concrete reports, again mostly gestural and not comprehensive: - Distinct patterns of somatic activation correlating with, or often constituting, specific emotions - Eg. fear, affection, sexual arousal, fatigue, etc. having distinct patterns of somatic phenomenology, as well as there being quite a lot of variation within each of those. - Reports from random lay people of these phenomena tend to be coarse, low resolution, and use stereotyped emotion words. Reports of the finest/most skilled introspection, by my sense, tend to be extremely rich, detailed, and particular. Note the point here isn't about the *words* used to describe these phenomena, indeed, usually advanced practitioners don't really care to try to describe any of this stuff in words. - Variously, somatic phenomena seeming to "contain" emotions or psychological content, or that content seeming to "reside" in parts of the body. - Energies seeming to have been "trapped" or "locked" in some part of the body, and then being suddenly released or suddenly becoming accessible to attention - One common group of reports here describe clusters of sensation seeming to "know" things which are apparently news to the person experiencing them. Often these reports include these clusters being able to "speak" into the person's inner monologue, or arouse internal visual imagery, and "explain" or "communicate" aspects of the person's psychological landscape which were previously not introspectively available. - A person's apprehension of eg. a social situation, and the affordances of their role, being reflected somatically. - Often reported to be surprisingly high fidelity, so often the feelings are reported to vary and track a lot of detail in the person's perception of a situation. - Note this is distinct from eg. their body language per se, though it seems to have some feedback loop with body language. - Their internal experience and external expression seeming to flow back and forth, so eg. felt spaciousness vs. claustrophobia seeming to be reflected in visible behavior - (Unfortunately this is a *different* phenomenon which some hippies also call energy.) ### Resonance {#practice-phenomenology-somatics--resonance} ::gloss[*Resonance* refers to felt sensations arising in response to some perception, eg. shifting waves of feeling in response to music, or subtle irritation in response to a whining fan.] *Resonance* is usually used to refer to somatic phenomena which arise seemingly directly in response to some perception or input. Most often these are relatively distinct sensations, though not necessarily spatially localized. Some common features of reports which use this language: - Emotional responses to music - Felt psychological-archetypal "alignment" with a fictional character or political narrative - Felt (especially strongly felt) introspective truthiness - Used to describe the experience of "receiving" energy or emotions from another person - Distinct sensations in response to eg. individual piano notes struck, or a buzzing fly - "Hitting" or "reaching" some localized cluster, which may not have been available as a distinct sensation previously, arousing distinct emotions or more unusual sensations (Note it became fashionable to say "that resonates with me" as a slightly California way of expressing "I agree with that" or "that seems right", which mostly 🤮 lol. In any case this is usually narrowly not descriptive of a referent in the sense above.) Resonance, frustratingly, is used to refer to wide enough different phenomena, under different [ontologies](/md/metaphysics/what-why-metaphysics.md), that it's not even always clear what phenomenology a person is trying to describe when they use the term. [See also below](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--energy) re surprising/unusual metaphysics used in descriptions of energy. ### Attunement {#practice-phenomenology-somatics--attunement} ::gloss[*Attunement* refers to variously rich and fine *sensitivity* and *receptivity* to another person's emotional or psychological state.] *Attunement* most often is used to describe either a state or experience of fine sensitivity to another person's experience or state. Centrally this is described as being deeply connected or especially "in sync," though sometimes two people might be highly attuned while in conflict. Often the word is used comparatively, eg. to describe states of more or less attunement. Attunement generally involves rich *receptivity* to another person's emotional/psychological state. Attunement, both on the "giving" and "receiving" sides, is often described as coming with fairly distinct phenomenology, eg. changes in perception described maybe variously as "bright," "vivid," and "grounded." ## Embodiment {#practice-phenomenology-somatics--embodiment} ::gloss[*Embodiment* refers to integration between the physical body, attention, and somatic phenomena.] *Embodiment* usually refers to the domain in general, and relative qualities, of integration between the physical body, somatic phenomena, and attention/consciousness. Unfortunately again, frameworks which make reference to this concept are often inconsistent in their ontology and the causal theories under which they understand these phenomena; the frameworks themselves also of course vary, so 'embodiment' is one of the least definite terms in this section. While the term is used varyingly, most often when someone says "this person is more or less embodied" that means "they have more or less introspective access to somatic phenomenology." A few major clusters of reports here: - Feedback loops between posture, psychological state, and some kinds of resonance - Eg. specifically open/closed/proud/etc. postures being *elicited* by some corresponding emotions, and of those emotions being aroused or amplified by adopting those postures - Postures like the above (though in various and conflicting ways) freeing access to somatic phenomena - Particular meanings associated with particular postures, eg. penitential postures, bowing, boastfulness, aggression - (It's unclear how much this is culturally patterned, it seems likely that some of these are arbitrary cultural symbols, but eg. both aggressive and high status body language seem probably substantially native to our species.) - Practices using the body, and especially using the body in coordinated, full-bodied, and high-skill ways, contributing to more robust access to somatic phenomenology - Also regulation, sensitivity, and sometimes broad "wisdom" etc. - Salient examples here (at least in my circles) would be Tai chi, "Yoga", and various martial arts traditions.[^practice-phenomenology-somatics--tai-chi] - Note there seems to be some "coming apart at the tails" here, so eg. MMA fighters are highly embodied in some ways but also seemingly dissociated in others, and broadly speaking not very [integrated](#practice-healing). - Models of body practices vis-a-vis embodiment highlight variously: coordination and proprioception, fluency in the full range of motion, and access to and comfort in extreme portions of the ranges of motion. - Some reports also highlight body practices being "grounding," which usually means something like "bringing one into calm, alert clarity." - Experiences of somatic integration/body practices/somatic phenomena being central to "healing" broadly construed - See immediately below re [dissociation](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--dissociation) and [re releases](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--blockages-releases-and-somatization), also see later [re healing and somatic openings](#practice-healing--releases-and-openings). - This is *often* reported as being about sensational intensity, cf. Thummo, Wim Hof method, Ashtanga Yoga, sussokan, sauna/cold plunge etc. - Again there are common reports of body practices leading to somatic openings, leading to positive changes in perception/attention/mood etc. [^practice-phenomenology-somatics--tai-chi]: Yeah yeah Tai chi is historically a martial art but welp meh. There's a large group of claims that extremes of skill and development in embodiment lead to wisdom, spiritual achievement, or spiritual insight. Reports of highly developed embodiment often include fluent, rich, whole body somatic awareness, which some people claim to have passively at all times. Similarly there are common claims that especially *primitive* (perhaps, low-abstraction?) cultures are much more spiritually robust, which is tied to the claimed robustness of their embodiment. #### Locus of attention/self {#practice-phenomenology-somatics--locus-of-attentionself} There are a variety of reports of surprising changes in the locus of attention, or (separately, but overlapping) where "the self" is experienced spatially. On the far end, and familiar in popular culture, would be out-of-body experiences. My impression is that most people in western culture experience "themselves" as existing behind the eyes, somewhere near the middle of the skull, and attention as *pointing outward* from that location. Reports of changes of the locus of self describe experiencing that "they were" coming from, or located in, their chest, or belly, or IIRC sometimes their whole body at once. I've also seen hippies claim that there's major cultural variation here, with people in many "traditional" cultures in general experiencing the self closer to the core of the body. Usually in the same breath is some objection that westerners are dissociated, "in their heads," etc.—note that "in one's head" is not centrally used as a description of the locus of self/attention, and is often also metaphorical. (See some [more below](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--dissociation).) This is also where people use language like "staying in the body"; most often this means something like "persisting in attending to the experience of the gross physical body and energetic phenomena." Again the claim here is usually that attention is one of the main inputs to energetic metabolism and movement ([see below](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--blockages-releases-and-somatization)), and that habitual disinterest in or aversion to somatics is something like pathological. ##### "Heart-centered," etc. {#practice-phenomenology-somatics--heart-centered-etc} Relatedly here one encounters language of "heart-centered" practices, this is used to mean variously: literally attentionally centered around sensations in the center[^practice-phenomenology-somatics--center] of the chest; associated with emotions of compassion, tenderness, love, also sometimes grief, regardless of their spatial locus; *behaviors* associated with care and intimacy, agnostic of somatics; and sometimes ideologies which brand themselves in terms of the above. [^practice-phenomenology-somatics--center]: Indeed, the physiological heart is off-center, but energetic phenomena uh "culturally" associated with the heart are generally reported in the center of the chest. Cf. also "speaking from the heart," usually this refers to some feedback loop between attention, resonance, and various energetic centers ([see below](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--energy)), with thought and expression. #### "Bodymind" and "the system" {#practice-phenomenology-somatics--bodymind-and-the-system} ::gloss[The terms *the system* and *bodymind* are used to refer to all of "mind," "body," "feeling," and more, all interacting and influencing behavior and experience.] Peripherally here: many writers in this space are averse to the connotations of "mind" in modern western culture, in particular as distinctly *disembodied* (see section below), and so prefer using terms like "body-mind" (or *bodymind*, and some similar terms[^practice-phenomenology-somatics--heart-mind]), which evoke some cohesive causal network of valence, affect, perception, etc. Similarly also "the system"[^practice-phenomenology-somatics--plural] or "my system" are used to mean something like "the mind, body, and whatever else that doesn't quite catch ontologically, coextensive and interacting." Part of the implicit distinction here is that often decisions and perceptions are [experienced as](#practice-introspection--partswork-briefly) happening [outside of](#practice-healing--integration) the "self," or completely outside of awareness, perhaps, uh, "subconcious," etc. [^practice-phenomenology-somatics--plural]: Ok so unfortunately there's a subculture of people with DID etc. (AFAIK, the diagnosis which mostly displaced "multiple personality disorder"), who want to distigmatize their experience of multiple personalities with stable identities etc. I can't recall exactly their jargon, but sometimes they use language of "a system" to mean "a single person with DID," this is *not* the sense in which I'm using 'the system.' [^practice-phenomenology-somatics--heart-mind]: Also sometimes "heart-mind" as a translation of 心 (zh. *xīn*, jp. *shin*), very occasionally pl./skt. *citta*. Note these are all overlapping but not coterminous etc. ## Dissociation {#practice-phenomenology-somatics--dissociation} ::gloss[*Dissociation* refers broadly to states in which a person is unable to feel some or all sensations in the body, and unable to introspect on them.] *Dissociation* broadly refers to states and long-running configurations distinguished by the absence of somatic phenomenology, or of somatic phenomena being introspectively unavailable. Dissociation is often used almost as an antonym of embodiment, though in some uses eg. "dissociated" is meaningfully distinct from "disembodied." Like the rest of these concepts, 'dissociation' is used to refer to a variety of different actual phenomenological patterns, and under different causal theories. I would distinguish here between quite a few clusters of experiences reported, each overlapping: - "*Active* dissociation" - Poor introspective access to somatic phenomena in general - Poor skill with emotional language for describing one's emotions ("alexithymia") - Low resolution introspection, or not finding sensations distinct - Low salience of somatic phenomena attentionally - Depersonalization/derealization - Using entertainment to distract oneself (eg. I sometimes hear "I'll just watch youtube to dissociate") *Active* dissociation (my ad-hoc term, sorry) is most often what *I* mean when I say "dissociation" generically. Usually most reports and models which use the term 'dissociation' are implicitly drawing on an intuition about active dissociation, even if they're focusing on other clusters. Parts of the body from which a person is dissociated are often described phenomenologically as "blank," "invisible," or "plain," but also "grey" or "fuzzy." Sometimes dissociation is more attentionally or somatically active, eg. some region or object seeming "squirreley" in attention or being very difficult to focus on, a person becoming exhausted when attending to something, or abruptly finding themselves thinking about something unrelated or occupied with eg. sexual fantasy, food, etc. My sense is that dissociation tends to be chronic and continuous, but is also commonly reported as acute, eg. in response to a specific trigger, and acute dissociation can be either spatially/sensorally localized, or "global," as in, very little feeling is available anywhere. Often active dissociation is not quite categorical, so at a given location *some* sensations are available, or sensation in general is muted, rather than that all somatic phenomena are absent there. These sorts of reports obviously most often come from practitioners who also report having "broken through" or "unraveled" dissociation elsewhere, such that the phenomenal character of dissociation is salient to them. Sometimes there's reported subtle qualities to the relevant qualia that smell like one is dissociated, rather than a flawless blankness. The boundary where the blankness starts is also often salient, once one knows what to look for. There are countless reports of practitioners *becoming* sensitive to somatic phenomena where previously their body was blank besides coarse sensations of touch, hunger, or pain. Reports of, uh, "de-dissociation" or "re-embodiment" often include big releases ([see more later](#practice-healing--releases-and-openings)), and in particular often access to sensations with strong associated meaning, both negative, eg. anger at particular people, fear associated with specific memories or images (sometimes, distinct images but fantastical, or certainly not a real memory, etc.), and positive, eg. care and affection, sexual arousal, etc. Sometimes these reports describe gaining access suddenly to proprioception and interoception which was previously dysfunctional or absent for a person. Models of active dissociation generally present that a person, or "the mind," (or whatever) is "trying" to prevent the arising of some phenomena in consciousness, because they are "believed"[^practice-phenomenology-somatics--believed] by part of the mind to be intolerable, or unsafe, *or* even that the meaning or information associated with those phenomena would be dangerous if allowed to propagate across the rest of the mind. Indeed, many reports of re-embodiment involve a person suddenly finding a certain relationship unmanageable, or unmanageable without having to reveal a lot of information, newly stand up for themselves, renegotiate roles, etc. etc. Dissociation has some relationship with "repression," which as a concept usually assumes a particular psychological model of a *kind* of dissociation. I'm not a huge fan of the concept, I think it's too culturally laden, and I don't endorse the model it comes with. [See more later](/md/wayfinding/wayfinding-model.md) for my perspective on these and related patterns. [^practice-phenomenology-somatics--believed]: "Believed" is subtle here, and sometimes more or less ontologically problematic, and often not presented with that language. Anecdotally, active dissociation correlates moderately with dampened affect, body language, and expression, and both weaker and sparser access to positive emotion. (See [below](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--humbug) re claims from individuals who report having no salient somatic phenomena.) Separately, some people have variously weak or low resolution introspective access to these phenomena, find somatic phenomena indistinct or *low-salience* in their experience, *or* have difficulty communicating about their internal experience, especially putting words to specific emotions. Again, poor introspection is sometimes called "dissociation," and often an important feature of reports of personal journeys with healing etc. Active dissociation *and* poor introspection are strongly correlated with trauma (see [trauma smells](/md/culture-trauma-memetics/trauma-smells.md)), and in particular *confabulatory* introspection is a very indicative trauma smell. Anecdotally, though, it seems like some people have something like low salience to somatics, and poor introspection, but without most of the usual consequences of active dissociation, so I think these are meaningfully distinct. I'll add here that my impression is that eg. small children often have poor somatic introspection, in the sense that they can't necessarily *name* what emotion they're feeling, and that the sensations themselves might not be salient, but they are still loudly emotive, move their bodies readily and joyfully, etc. (And indeed, most authors who talk about dissociation *never* describe children in general as dissociated, etc.) Perhaps relatedly, there are some claims that dissociation (usually more in the sense of "low salience" or "poor introspection," but sometimes active dissociation) is caused by "intellectual" cultures/personalities/practices (sometimes described as being too much "[in their heads](/md/spiritual-truth/metaphysics-phenomenology-spirituality.md)"), and sometimes the entire cluster of both personality and culture, of "intellectual, abstract-oriented, low salience to somatics" is called "dissociated." I think this is pretty technically sloppy, and this sort of claim is usually overstated, but the correlation does seem weakly true in my anecdotes. Variation in somatic sensitivity sometimes looks, in my current sense, either distinctly like a distinct trauma smell (whether over- or under-sensitive), like natural *"genetic"* variation, or like some sort of "natural variation of development, symbology, and psychology." However, in many specific cases, whether a broad culture or an individual, I'm confused quite what I'm looking at—and while there are a lot of models that are confident about a specific way dissociation works and looks in general, I haven't seen any that didn't seem overreified or simplistic. Lastly, psychiatry sometimes uses the term 'dissociation' broadly for what's now more often called "depersonalization" and "derealization"—clusters of symptoms where a patient experiences themselves, or the world around them as "fake," "unreal," or "fictional." Depersonalization/derealization is an interesting phenomenon itself, and often *does* correlate with dissociation in any of the other senses, but is quite distinct. ## Energy {#practice-phenomenology-somatics--energy} ::gloss[*Energy* refers to a few different kinds of patterns of somatic sensation and perception, including emotions, *vibes*, and buzzy-tingly-magnetic waves (sometimes called *qi*). Sometimes these are understood as a pseudo-physical substance.] *Energy*[^practice-phenomenology-somatics--qi-meridians] is most often used to refer to three main clusters of phenomena, only loosely related: 1. Qi (and related) 2. Emotions, as well as subtle somatic phenomena otherwise - as distinct sensations - the underlying generators of those sensations, in such models - behavioral affordances and biases when sensations are present 3. Perceived qualities (often, "vibes") from a person, group, or space, which *have a substance* and reside or are present in those people etc. I often equivocate between all three senses under this term, though for me personally qi is the *central* referent of "energy," and the other two feel maybe like Western corruptions of the concept. There are a variety of reports in which the phenomenology of the energy body (moreso in sense 1 than 2, and seldom sense 3) is experienced as defying the physical body, and of the energy bodies of different people (or even eg. trees, the earth, etc.) interacting: - The energy body extending beyond the physical body, and practitioners being able to purposefully extend it further, perhaps as far as a meter - (This while still being felt as "contiguous" with the body, so this is separate from reports of "astral travel.") - "Penetrating" into another's energy body - Being able to "directly perceive" the contents of another person's energy body, at extreme levels of detail - Relatedly, some claims of people being able to perceive physiological states at extreme resolution, eg. being able to detect the state of the spleen from touching a person's hand - Some people having powerful energetic fields with specific flavors or tones - Being able to extend or toss around energy "balls" or "missiles" toward another person, which they can perceive and which affect them - Several separate strata of somatic phenomena, IIRC some systems having up to four *Qi*[^practice-phenomenology-somatics--qi-meridians] (pronounced like "chee") refers to a cluster of phenomena, to repeat, described as flowing, tingly, buoyant/heavy, or "magnetic." Qi, in the traditions that teach it, is often but not always explained to be something to the effect of a *substance*, which flows through the body, between people, and sometimes even plants or the earth. Qi is often explained to both be able to impart some kind of force, in the sense that it can lift, pull down, or push limbs, objects, or people. Some practices eg. of cultivation and sensitization to qi involve moving the limbs *only* by manipulating energy, or sustaining postures for long periods; reports here describe that the posture seems to be sustained "by energy alone," specifically with claims that such a posture would not be possible to maintain "by use of the muscles." In these systems, the free and healthy flow of energy within the body is regarded as vital for health, and often the cultivation of energy is regarded to confer social and spiritual power. In some systems, qi is associated with a specific subtle *anatomy* of "energy channels" or "meridians."[^practice-phenomenology-somatics--qi-meridians] [^practice-phenomenology-somatics--qi-meridians]: Regarding the translations of 氣 (*qì*) as "energy" and 經 (*jīng*) as "meridian," *Traditional Chinese Medicine* (Unschuld, Paul 2018) insists that both of these are due to projections and misunderstandings on the part of a particular western author (Soulié) in the early 20th century.

Unschuld gives *qì* as "vapors" (p. 125), which tracks nicely with all the other senses of that word, [see Wiktionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%B0%A3#Chinese) (and the entry [in Japanese](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%B0%97#Japanese)).

I've found conflicting claims about the history of the translation of 'meridian,' so Unschuld gives *jīng* as "warp thread," (p. 31) and insists that "meridian" was due to a misinterpretation on Soulié's part, on the basis of Chinese models (I take this to mean medical mannequins) with *jīng* painted vertically (p. 125). OTOH, Wiktionary gives *jīng*, in addition to "warp" (and a number of unrelated senses), as part of compounds for [longitude](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%B6%93%E5%BA%A6#Chinese) and [longitude line](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%B6%93%E7%B7%9A#Chinese) in modern Chinese—I didn't figure out when those terms date to, or if those are some backtranslation to rhyme with *our* use of 'meridian' for qi channels... (Note that the reading 'qi' comes from Mandarin in particular, and my description here somewhat conflates a variety of models in different East Asian spiritual traditions. I know much less about eg. *prana* in South Asian yogic traditions, my impression is that the phenomenology matches substantially but incompletely, and the metaphysics is somewhat different.) Energy in the sense of *subtle somatics* (referring to sense 2 above, for lack of a better term), refers to some munged combination of what in *my* ontology are narrowly different types, usually implicitly presented under some metaphysics which accounts for their being joined. The ontology of energy in this sense usually combines the sensation per se with its perceived/modeled *substance*, and often with the attentional/motivational/perceptual correlates of both. Energies are generally regarded to either create a tilt in the mind toward certain behaviors, perceptions, etc., *or* to have such inclinations "themselves." This sort of model usually subsumes what's understood colloquially as a "mood," along with some subtler phenomena. It's usually claimed that the motivational inclinations that correlate with the presence of some energy still occur or have force, if subtly or """unconsciously,""" even when the energy is completely unavailable introspectively. Usually in these ontologies, the substance is taken as "self-sustaining"[^practice-phenomenology-somatics--pratitya], either as subsisting in the space of qualia and phenomenology, or as a substance on a parallel stratum to physical substance, broadly comparable to that claimed of qi. (This sort of makes a false distinction between two kinds of ontologies, in practice there's a bunch of variety to the metaphysics under which these phenomena are understood, variously precise, etc.) Eg., in the crudest versions of this, a phenomenon, approximately coterminous with the sensation, is regarded to "cause" effects in the physical body and on other people. [^practice-phenomenology-somatics--pratitya]: *Mumble mumble* "co-arising," I'm still not sure I understand this entire model, but in any case many hippies do take energy as something like a "self-sustaining substance." The particular sensations of subtle somatics are largely covered by my description under resonance [above](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--resonance). Broadly this category is more open, and often also includes the kind of phenomenology included under qi, as well as others. Subtle somatics are also reported to change in feeling-tone, to move, bloom, flutter, and decay. In many models, energies are regarded to something like *need to* move in order to properly decay. Often they claim that "healthy" energetic systems (that is, the energy bodies of people who are very "energetically healthy," etc.) are most of the time very fluid, supple, and receptive. See more re [blockages immediately below](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--blockages-releases-and-somatization). *Vibes* is probably the least precise concept here, but still relevant both in the loose popular jargon around energy, and as a feature of human perception and cognition. 'Vibe' is often used by people completely outside of spiritual discourses just to refer to the perceived affect or social posture of a person, piece of media, etc. In the more extensive sense, vibes are understood to be a *substance*, like that of energies in the "subtle somatics" sense of energy, which is sustained and resides in a person (or etc.), and which is perceptible off of them. Peripherally here: sometimes "frequency" (as in, "on a higher frequency" but also eg. of someone one appreciates or agrees with, "on the same frequency") gets used in some way that rhymes with some senses of energy here. To be honest, I've yet to see a consistent use of this term, for it to even be worth disentangling carefully. Anyway, 'frequency' is often used to describe an attuned connection with another person, or sometimes the spiritual-affective purity of a belief/person/practice, among other varied and metaphysically dubious senses. ### Blockages, releases, and somatization {#practice-phenomenology-somatics--blockages-releases-and-somatization} ::nogloss (From here on, I'll only be discussing senses 1 and 2 above.) ::gloss[A *blockage* is a site where energy is reported as stuck, knotted, tight, or hard.]{#practice-phenomenology-somatics--blockage} There's a wide range of reports of energy (qi or subtle somatics more generally) becoming "blocked," "stuck," or "knotted"; the site at which this occurs is most often called a "blockage." Blockages are often described as "tight" or "hard," but there also can often be localized dissociation at a blockage, with subtler sensations. Blockages are quite often claimed to cause overt physical muscle tension, and sometimes more surprising symptoms. There are many reports of chronic tension being released when some energetic blockage is cleared, and specifically of the phenomenology of some tension "unraveling" seeming to clearly align with corresponding releases of gross muscular tension. Both energies in general, and blockages especially, are regarded often to be visible in a person's body language, resting facial expression, posture, range of motion, etc. Stereotyped reports here might be eg. a habitual slouch being associated introspectively with protection of a knot of fear, such that standing upright might bring up the stuck energy, and that when the energy is resolved the posture automatically resolves itself. (See [more on this later](#practice-healing--energy-work-and-energy-healing).) In some of these models blockages are regarded as an extreme case of the pervasive pattern of energetic *resistance*. Resistance describes the felt "force" of one energy opposing another, or sometimes of the underlying field or substrate resisting the presence, flow, or movement of some energy. Resistance is often described as "dense" or "solid," and generally uncomfortable, whether subtly or profoundly. ::gloss[A *release* generally refers to an acute event where energy is able to move, often associated with tension or a blockage loosening.]{#practice-phenomenology-somatics--release} *Releases* are generally acute events where some clot of tension or blockage loosens, and the trapped energy is able to move. The term is also sometimes used more in reference to the sudden movement of energy, agnostic of a specific blockage. Note also, tension is sometimes described as "evaporating" or "burning off" over weeks to years, rather than in a distinct release. There's two ish clusters to reports of energy releases: - Soft, flowing, buzzy, or tingly, often with no distinct "feeling tone" - Broadly speaking the same phenomenology as that of qi, though IIRC there are sometimes differences; some teachers refer to both as just "energy." - Gushing, coursing, emotionally intense, often chaotic, sometimes very pleasant or very unpleasant - Some practitioners insist that chaotic and unpleasant releases are due to resistance remaining in the path of some energy. In the "buzzy" kind of release, there are many reports of the energy body, whether localized or across the whole body, slipping into a mode of spacious, gentle, flowy non-resistance. Sometimes these kinds of releases are described as "dissolving" some energy or sensation. What's maybe more surprising are countless reports of this kind of release happening with intense physical pain dissolving into buzzy energy, or even the perception of one's body, the surrounding space, etc. "breaking up" phenomenologically. (Sometimes this is reported to occur across multiple sense modalities, so even eg. vision and hearing "breaking up" or "dissolving." I have to admit I'm not personally familiar, and I have trouble imagining.) Reports of the "dense and valenced" kind of release vary in terms of how much energies are reported to flow smoothly. In some reports from so-called [meditation](#practice-meditation) "masters," their baseline energetic phenomenology is so spacious as to be unperturbed by acute fear, pain, etc. arising in the system, such that all energies are able to "effortlessly arise and fall away." This quality is often referred to as energetic *capacity*, under a model where greater "capacity" corresponds to the ability to experience a wider palette of more intense sensations without resistance, contraction, or blockage. More generally, many models present the dense-and-valenced type as being more or less fluid, smooth, and pleasant according to how much somatic resistance there is elsewhere in the system, *in the way* of the "natural" or "necessary" path of some energy. Again in the most extreme reports, it's claimed that the unpleasant character of most "unpleasant" phenomena is almost entirely a *consequence of resistance*, and that at high levels of some kinds of somatic/spiritual development, sensation per se can be arbitrarily perceived as neutral, invigorating, delicious, etc. Regardless of the limiting case, there are many reports of developing or accessing greater ease and flexibility with sensation, such that some phenomenon which was previously met with a good deal of resistance and discomfort is experienced mostly as flitting or ticklish. Somewhat *separately*, both kinds of energetic releases are associated with gross muscular movement. This variously appears as faint or very large waves or jolts of tension or contraction, often shivering or shaking, and sometimes thrashing. There's also some relationship between the motor expression of a release, and associated chronic muscular tension, often nearby, though also often recruiting many more networks of muscles or further bodyparts as it moves. Again, in the extremes of skill and energetic capacity, releases are generally meant not to cause gross muscular movement/contraction, or at least for it to be much subtler, and much less frequent. This quality of "resistance vs spaciousness" (keep in mind that there's more complexity underneath that dichotomy) is in general a salient feature of discussions of somatic phenomenology, and of somatic development. I've yet to find a satisfying explanation of exactly the nature of the interface between the physical body and blockages, especially why some kinds of blockages cause gross dysfunction and others not. IIRC, I've found some pieces of explanations that eg. muscular contraction and resistance also *constricts* the flow of energy, and that a person's "body-mind" will be "intuitively" or "automatically" trying to manipulate energy, but will usually just take advantage of the coarsest level it can find, in many cases muscular. #### Somatization {#practice-phenomenology-somatics--somatization} *Somatization* (and some variations) is a term used in psychiatry to refer to patterns of physical symptoms associated with psychiatric disorders, in particular in many cases with physical symptoms understood as being an *expression* of psychological distress.[^practice-phenomenology-somatics--somatization] [^practice-phenomenology-somatics--somatization]: See: American Psychiatric Association, 2013. *Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition*, pp. 309-313, also see [Scott Alexander](https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/are-woo-non-responders-defective) on this briefly.

Note the DSM's categories and criteria here mostly make salient *distress* about illness, but eg. see the discussion about culture-bound disorders on 313 for some context. My impression is that psychiatry hasn't arrived at a consensus model for what's going on with these cases, and still considers the kind of description of "blocked energies" pretty dodgy. Briefly here, I'll say that the symptomatology of somatization seems to align *often*, but not always, pretty nicely with many reports of physical correlates of energy blockages, and again there are many reports from energy workers, meditation teachers, etc. of having been able to fix these sorts of problems by resolving "underlying" energetic problems. By my sense, blockages severe enough to cause this kind of somatization would usually reflect both fairly extreme trauma, and pretty intense dissociation. I mention this mostly because I've seen people explicitly confusing somatic phenomena, which are unfamiliar to them, with somatization, which they recognize as happening to them only when things get *really* bad emotionally. ## Humbug! {#practice-phenomenology-somatics--humbug} ::nogloss See also a much longer discussion in the section on [metaphysics re phenomenology](/md/spiritual-truth/metaphysics-phenomenology-spirituality.md). I sometimes encounter people who say something like, "I don't have this sort of phenomenology, therefore indeed it's not universal/innate, therefore your model is wrong somehow." First off, and this is kind of an unfair move discursively: the people who say this seem to have both pretty strong [trauma smells](/md/culture-trauma-memetics/trauma-smells.md), as well as having [other correlates](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--dissociation) of just poor introspection in other ways. So, while this is cursed to say, and indeed I mostly don't say it to those people directly, I largely want to say, "look, this tracks with the rest of my model, sorry"—I would be very surprised if I met someone who didn't have any trauma smells, but reported no somatic phenomenology. Unfortunately, this is also still a reasonable objection in principle, and I both don't have a smack-down argument for such people, and I have a very small probability on this being in the same sort of natural variation as aphantasia seems to be. So, no more claims here, but just recognizing "yup, that's an objection." (Again, see the section on [metaphysics re phenomenology](/md/spiritual-truth/metaphysics-phenomenology-spirituality.md) for discussion of more objections, like "what if these *experiences* are just artificial?") --- # Misc. Features of Spiritual Practices {#practice-practices} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/practice/practices — also at `/md/practice/practices.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `practice-practices--`.* The below isn't even remotely trying to be comprehensive, but this is I think an important angle on some common features both in spiritual traditions and in human experience in general. ### "Practices"? {#practice-practices--practices} *Practice*, or especially *practices* evoke discrete activities performed deliberately, with time set aside for them specifically. Obviously I'm including that, but I'm using the word in a broader sense here, that's fairly common among at least Western meditators. Often practice includes attitudes and qualities of mind that can diffuse into other activities or non-activity or just-hanging-around. Even when pretty distinct, practice can also occur spontaneously, eg. countless reports of falling into meditative states during ordinary activity, or into prayer or devotion. ## Imaginal practice {#practice-practices--imaginal-practice} ::gloss[*Imaginal* practice refers to exploration of clusters of meaning and feeling, usually associated with internal sensations of visual imagery, touch, movement, and sound.] *Imaginal* practice as a concept I get through Rob Burbea, though he didn't originate it. Firstly, yes, *imaginal*, not *imaginary*, though there's certainly some overlap. Imaginal practice concerns exploration of and relationship with *images*. Images in this sense are patterns of [resonance](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--resonance) in relationship with, usually, internal images, as well as internal sensations of touch, movement, sound, etc. Images might be deliberately evoked, or organic or spontaneous. For example, with respect to sexual and romantic fantasy, a person might experience images in a variety of ways: - Spontaneous, sometimes intrusive reverie, of a past lover or a current crush - These can often be phenomenally intense and rich, not narrowly restrictected to *visual* imagery but including rich internal touch sensation, etc. etc. - Often these are extended and engrossing - Sex dreams - *Deliberately* evoked fantasy, in the context of masturbation - Most often this is consciously "controlled," though often control is nebulous, and sometimes such fantasies are experiences as playing out "on their own." - Brief flits of internal imagery and feeling - Extended extemporaneous romantic storytelling in one's mind, eg. often stereotypically done by teenage girls in our culture Again, these are often quite rich phenomenally, and despite the unfortunate name they usually aren't even *mostly* about visual imagery. Broadly speaking I would say imaginal practices involve an exploration of the resonances that a person's relational/affective attitudes define, most saliently in the absence of "real" (physical, enacted) experiences that would align with them. Imaginal qualities are often diffused into a broader set of practices, and may not be elicited deliberately in isolation. Eg., in a broad sense storytelling is usually concerned with *images*, certainly rather than purely linguistic, storytelling is about evoking images and their resonances. Even fairly technical discussion can include a kind of imaginal backdrop, eg. I see old discussions of transhumanism, even when they get pretty far in the weeds, as an expression of yearning, excitement, and anxiety, and an *imaginal* negotiation of those feelings. Imaginal practices from world traditions and independent practitioners are often much weirder. One common cluster of reports is of images "taking on a life of their own," where they have access to wisdom that the person feels they don't possess, or even that they have access to specific knowledge that a person did not have access to themselves. Eg., there are countless reports of people calling upon the memory of a beloved relative, and finding that the image speaks back with creativity and spontaneity which is felt not to be "invented" or "orchestrated." Similarly with many traditional religious practices of communing with spirits or deities, the entities in question are commonly reported as experienced as independent, spontaneous, and real. Many traditional spiritual systems will construe these experiences [metaphysically](/md/metaphysics.md) as real in the sense that those entities are actually independent, have their own experiences, persist outside of your practice, etc. etc. Some modern hippies (as did, [as it happens](/md/appendix/whose-buddha-historiography.md), some 19th century German philosophers) similarly claim that one can tap directly into a cosmic wisdom through these and other practices. I'm pretty confident these are all false, and I'll [talk about this again](/md/spiritual-truth/metaphysics-phenomenology-spirituality.md) later. One more cluster I'll mention briefly is known as "deity yoga" (not anything about physical postures, that's afaict mostly a modern innovation within "yoga"). Some of what's known as deity yoga is not so dissimilar from forms of prayer that will be familiar to Westerners. The more interesting forms include eg. Yidam practice in Tibetan Buddhism, and I believe there's some similar stuff in Hindu Tantra and some kinds of modern Western esotericism. In Yidam practice, the practitioner visualizes themselves *as* a deity, usually with an involved collection of symbols, but importantly feeling and seeing as the deity would. The [ways of seeing](/md/metaphysics/ways-of-seeing.md) of these deities are supposed to be bizarre or alien (Tibetan Bodhisattvas are quite weird), but advanced Yidam practitioners are meant to take on these ways of seeing in their more ordinary experience. I think this points to what the broader space of imaginal practice can be. I'll also mention here, imaginal practice isn't necessarily positive or pleasant, and many traditional and modern imaginal practices are quite the opposite, eg. literally imagining capital-h-Hell, or reflecting on and empathizing with the suffering of factory farmed animals. ## Prayer {#practice-practices--prayer} ::nogloss I would regard almost all prayer as different kinds of imaginal practice. In particular most prayer as taught in eg. Western Christianity is a framework for working with a particular set of images in a deliberate way. This kind of prayer usually involves a pattern of usually performative external action alongside internal motions, including eg. internal speech, deliberately arousing specific emotions, or much subtler moves. The role and attitudes of prayer can often be self-gratifying or transactional. However, many traditions teach prayer as a practice of "meeting" and entering into relationship with an [energy](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--energy) (more relevantly, see [re resonances](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--resonance)) or image, and this is the kind of attitude often reported from the most serious practitioners in these sorts of traditions. Such images are often reported to take on a shape that a person *doesn't* want, whether to make demands of them or to show things they flinch away from. To be clear, sometimes people can have a kind of masochistic or at least self-punitive attitude towards prayer, and in this sense prayer can be an upside-down kind of self-gratification, where a person will fairly consciously control or puppet the image to tell them what think they should hear. As with imaginal practice more broadly, most traditions construe these experiences metaphysically as "literally real," or something close enough. Agnostic of the metaphysics, or at least even in *my* metaphysics, there's a distinction that's important to track here, with respect to a. the resolution and detail of the image, b. its richness, and c. its flexibility or dynamism. In particular, I most *trust* (in some sense) reports of prayer which seem spontaneous, alive, sensitive, etc. as opposed to "scripted," stereotyped, etc.—even if I don't believe in the metaphysics in which they're presented. Note that many reports which I "buy" are thin or nebulous when it comes to any *visual* aspect, but which are very rich and dynamic relationally/emotionally/etc. ## Devotion {#practice-practices--devotion} ::nogloss The term *devotional practice* is used to refer to a broad collection of practices and models across traditions, broadly speaking oriented towards surrender and devotion to a figure, symbol, etc. Devotion is usually a large aspect of prayer, but the two are only partially overlapping. The central stereotype of devotional practice is the performance of gestures, affect, and utterances associated with fealty, reverence, or submission. These can often combine performance of both the "attraction" (love, admiration, etc.) type of status as well as the "aversion" (fear, anxious submission, etc.) type. Besides straightforward deities, commonly this involves veneration of spirits, ancestors, saints, etc. There are also subtler objects of devotion: while "original Buddhism" almost certainly contained Buddha-worship as a fundamental feature, some later schools innovated on this pattern to include devotion *to the path* as more fundamental than Buddha-worship. There are reports eg. from Orthodox Christianity and some Hindu schools of a kind of "devotion without an object." Imaginal practice and prayer as convergent features of religious traditions is mostly unsurprising to me, but it's somewhat confusing the extent to which devotion in particular is a *very common* feature in especially "world religions," though probably not a universal feature of world human spirituality. ## The Sacred {#practice-practices--the-sacred} ::gloss[*Sacred* describes something as set apart and special in a positive sense, often touching upon the highest value.] Again there's a broad cluster here, which perhaps doesn't form a natural kind. *Sacred* as an adjective narrowly describes something as set apart and special in a positive sense. Obviously, more generally, sacredness is connotatively and imaginally rich ([see above](#practice-practices--imaginal-practice)) within a given culture; in particular in English, 'sacred' is in a semantic field with 'holy' and 'mystical,' and also often brings up connotations of "magic" or "supernatural." The concept of *the sacred* refers to the domain generally of that which is held sacred. Some contemporary writers use this term as a neutral, generic concept to refer to patterns in human culture, *or* as a sacralized object itself, eg. one sometimes hears lines to the effect of "they are depraved who reject the sacred." There are a number of cultural patterns of "setting-apart" which I'm more or less inclined to call "sacred" or "a practice of sacredness." Most centrally, in my usage, sacredness distinguishes that which touches upon the highest value, or the nature of value—though I'll note it's unclear to what extent this is a coincidence of modern Western culture or not. One point which I'll toss in here is that it seems like the usual perception and depiction of the sacred that I find... perhaps across cultures, to the extent I've dug, munges at least 3 aspects which I would want to distinguish, namely: a. the socio-spiritual quality of set-apartness, b. the value of the set-apart object in and of itself, and c. the, uh, "cultural-symbolic extra-spiritual shininess" that they perceive *with* it. ## Hyperstition {#practice-practices--hyperstition} ::gloss[*Hyperstition* is a deliberate attempt to modify one's own beliefs, emotions, and perceptions.] *Hyperstition* refers to deliberate attempts to modify one's own beliefs, emotions, and perceptions. ## Magic {#practice-practices--magic} --- # Meditation {#practice-meditation} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/practice/meditation — also at `/md/practice/meditation.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `practice-meditation--`.* What the fuck is "meditation"? Geeze, what a mess. One particular source of confusion is that within a given school, they'll refer to some of their practices *as "meditation"*, which is fine enough, but this often makes it sound like that's what meditation is *in general*. I've often heard people say "but I was taught that meditation is xyz" rather than "but I was taught to meditate by doing xyz." This is obviously also separate from schools often teaching that other practices are fake, wrong, or bad. In Latin *meditātiō* meant "thinking" or "reflection"[^practice-meditation--wiktionary], in St. Ignatius's usage (writing in Spanish in the 16th century) it referred to practices of explicit "mental" reflection, presumably involving verbal thought, etc. I'm not clear on when it was first used to translate *jhāna* (*dhyāna*), which while also complicated as a term itself, was in any case used in Indian languages to refer to rather different practices. [^practice-meditation--wiktionary]: [Wiktionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/meditatio#Latin) This should be obvious, but people often forget: we're often working with practices and concepts from other cultures, which importantly literally use words from different languages! Two cultures might cut the world up very differently, especially for culturally specific practices, etc. etc. Another major source of confusion here is that each of a. the actual experiences, b. the actual doing of some practice, and c. whatever the *intended* target is, are not the same as the instructions that are given to students. In particular people often conflate whatever the practice instructions are, especially for basic preliminary instructions, with "what meditation is." This is also besides the fact that people are seldom actually achieving what they've been told—which sometimes isn't possible, and sometimes isn't even meant to be possible! (To be clear, you can obviously go off on your own and do whatever you want, but maybe what you arrive at isn't really helpfully called meditation, and in any case narrowly you might not be doing "meditation" as far as the tradition you started in is concerned.) In practice, in Buddhist monastic traditions, a student would almost always be working closely with a teacher, and the instructions given from the teacher would change constantly depending on whatever was actually happening in their practice, in many traditions frequently completely throwing out or contradicting previous instructions. I know less about other traditions but this broad shape is common, where at minimum there isn't *one thing* called "meditation," (or whatever word, in whichever language) but there's a bunch of stuff, which may not have distinct names, and one's instructions and choices change in response to external and internal circumstances. Also, traditionally, at least in Buddhism, a student would likely have thousands of false starts, dead ends, etc. etc., before finding their feet, and even then they would probably overhaul their sense of what the thing *really is* several times over. Whatever they were taught as a novice, let alone what they *understood*, was likely quite different from what a "master" would be doing, even if they're still sitting quietly in a hall or in the forest. It's also interesting to note here that in the original Buddhist canon[^practice-meditation--canon], practices are described in surprisingly little detail, almost all explanations basically skipping from "a monk should sit at the foot of a tree" to "and then here's what happens in a particular deep meditative state" or "and here's a big list of themes you might reflect on." Also, the practices taught by extant schools in Asia either were heterodox when those schools were founded, or were reconstructed in the last ~150 years; I talk about this more [in an appendix](/md/appendix/whose-buddha-historiography.md). [^practice-meditation--canon]: In reference here of course to the Pali canon, but IIRC this is true of the corresponding parts of the Taisho Tripitaka (unfortunately "tripitaka" there includes another 2k years of books lol). Not sure about the versions the Tibetans have. There's a bunch of stuff in Christianity which we might call meditation—is that right? Does it really matter? Most of these practices have traditional names, and the ones *traditionally* called meditation we actually wouldn't likely call meditation in its modern usage. Others, eg. Hesychasm (sometimes translated as "the way of inner stillness,") are actually surprisingly close to traditional "meditative" practices from India and China, but to me it seems mostly irrelevant whether we call these meditation. Besides, a lot of modern usage of "meditation" in reference to Christianity seems to have basically taken the long way round, *by way of* Western pop versions of Eastern spirituality... which is fine, I suppose, but feels very "have your coastal progressive spirituality cake and eat it too." (And then of course, the same argument for Judaism, or Islam, or whatever.) I don't *really* care, and my friends and I don't even use the word 'meditation' that much, but still. My sense in general is that there's a bunch of practices, some are very similar and some very different, and it's usually more helpful either to call them by their traditional names *or* just generically as "spiritual practices," etc. *** For all of the subjects below, in a given context (as in, reading a given book or talking to a given teacher), I'd recommend distinguishing: a. which specific tradition we're talking about, b. what the instructions are, c. what the *ostensible* goal is, d. what other practitioners are actually doing with their mind/body, and e. what the reports are of "success" (often not the same as the goal). Generally, with each item below, it's good to assume that the word is used to mean a variety of different things by different people, and that almost none of them mean just one thing, in the broader jargon. To be clear, as well, my conception here is at least a bit nonstandard and opinionated. ## Mindfulness {#practice-meditation--mindfulness} With 'mindfulness', at minimum I'd want to distinguish: 1. Specific practices (or often more like aspects of practice) from traditional systems which are *translated* as 'mindfulness' 2. 'Mindfulness' in eg. Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) 3. 'Mindfulness' a la vague progressive health culture Briefly, these might be glossed (somewhat unfairly) as: 1. "Attentiveness, generically" 2. "[Body awareness](#practice-phenomenology-somatics) + equanimity, with a dash of dissociation" 3. "2., but watered down to be more amenable to suburban moms and bureaucracies"
Quite a bit more detail 1: 'Mindfulness' in this context derives from a translation of Pali *sati*, "recollection," from the late 19th century. In the canon, *sati* refers to something like a quality of attention to be developed, and as a major input to spiritual achievement and progress. The canon is much more concrete here than it often is, but still much less than modern teachers: broadly speaking *sati* is used to refer to a quality of attentiveness, likely with some quality of contiguity of memory in the recent past. IIRC 'mindfulness' (n., as opposed to 'mindful', adj.) was almost unattested in English at this point, with one or two examples from some Bible translations, but has obviously caught on like wildfire, though mostly since MBSR. I think this is a great translation, but I bring up the etymology to again stress that even if we know what a word means ordinarily *in English*, when it's used as a translation of a technical term, we should generally assume we *don't* know what it means. *Sati* probably also means something like "elicitation" or "reflection," eg. if we go by the *satipaṭṭhānas*[^practice-meditation--satipatthana], a lot of these don't make a ton of sense if *sati* just means, well, "mindfulness." [^practice-meditation--satipatthana]: [DN 22](https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/DN/DN22.html), trans. Thānissaro 2000. The introduction in the page linked in the same footnote[^practice-meditation--satipatthana] has a bit of context as well on the term having been reinterpreted in the West. 2: MBSR, as I understand, came about as an attempt by Jon Kabat-Zinn to make some subset of Buddhism that would be legible and inoffensive to mainstream American society in ~1980. "Mindfulness" in his usage doesn't map cleanly onto any traditional concepts, but broadly it's sort of a handful of satipatthanas, with an extra emphasis on equanimity, and not much of a path. Mostly probably helpful enough, but important to distinguish from *sati*, especially because a noticeable subset of eg. Americans now think that meditation == MBSR, which, oy. One thing I want to add here: "mindfulness meditation" as an expression would probably have made sense to the original compilers of the Buddhist canon, but is a strange construction if you're familiar with the canon. Besides, what's actually taught by that name would likely have seemed confused or maybe even mostly unrelated. IMO that's fine, you can just do new stuff, but if someone uses "mindfulness" in this way that means you're definitely not looking at an orthodox source, and likely you're looking at someone who isn't familiar with the orthodox primary sources at all. (I actually can't remember if the original MBSR materials used the term "mindfulness meditation", I think they didn't? I feel like that term is from a generation or two later and often means someting more like "just body scanning with a dollop of concentration.") 3: I'll just add that I've noticed that 'mindfulness' in the broader culture now often means "body awareness, maximally generically," or in many cases "any traditional spiritual practice, if sufficiently secularized and watered down" (eg. dance sometimes being referred to as a "mindfulness practice", or "mindfulness" in therapy curricula as a catch-all for spiritual practices taught to clients.)
Note however that mindfulness, as described above, *doesn't* sound at all like "concentration" practices: ## Concentration {#practice-meditation--concentration} ::gloss["Concentration" is the western catch-all for *samatha*, *jhāna*, and *samādhi*, referring to practices and states of acuity and absorption, as well as some altered states.] In the context of western post-traditional meditation culture, "concentration" is used as a translation variously for all of *samatha* (*śamatha*), *jhāna* (*dhyāna*), and *samādhi*, as well as a generic bucket for similar practices originating outside of Buddhism[^practice-meditation--jhana]. I won't go into much detail about each of these, but mostly this is to say the schema in the canon doesn't line up with most modern conceptualizations, though the canon also doesn't line up with the models used in later schools of Buddhism. [^practice-meditation--jhana]: Traditionally, actually, jhana is regarded to have predated the Buddha, and that he was taught it and later refined/integrated it into a larger curriculum. Broadly speaking, so-called "concentration" practices are aiming to a. cultivate mindfulness (~in the first sense above), b. achieve meditative states of (relatively) high acuity and absorbption, and sometimes c. achieve intense or unusual altered states. This is a huge rabbit hole, but I'll just mention that often people think that "mindfulness" (in any of the three senses) is basically equivalent to concentration; I think this is false both as a claim about the traditional models, and as a claim about how people's meditation practice usually develops. My sense is that they're less strongly correlated than people often think, and people can sometimes get fairly far in one while the other remains weak. Instructions and reports, from across many traditions, often involve (among many others): - Persistent, deliberate application of attention - Cultivation of specific energies, to try to achieve specific states of mind (somewhat, [see below](#practice-meditation--energy-practices)) - Cultivation and exaggeration of various emotions or feelings, but often quite varied, eg. intense urgency, calmness and deep relaxation, anxiety, or intense pleasure - By the same token, purposeful diminution of undesirable energies or states - Note that in some schools this can be very "cool" or aloof, whereas other schools are energetic and even passionate. Contemporary western meditators often tend towards coolness and drowsiness. - Repetitive movement, dance, drumming, or recitation of a short text or single syllable I'll note here that I have an unusual perspective on concentration, which I'll discuss at some length in the [next chapter](/md/wayfinding.md). Among westerners, especially those new to meditation, concentration evokes something narrowly "mental" (whatever that means), often specifically evoking a sensation of pseudo-*visual* attention, pointing as though *from the eyes* to a point in the body, even when eg. "attending to sensations in the body" with the eyes closed. I go into the complexity here [in more detail](/md/spiritual-truth/metaphysics-phenomenology-spirituality.md) later; just briefly, meditation is often not like this! I was once told by a Zen monk, that he had been taught that "meditation is something you do *with the body*." [See also below](#practice-meditation--meditative-body-practices) re dynamic, *moving* body practices, used as meditation. (To be clear, this distinction varies somewhat in different extant traditions, and while eg. many of the practices described in the Pali canon align with this, it's not actually cut up this way, etc.) ## More on altered states {#practice-meditation--more-on-altered-states} As a broken record, I'll say again: "altered state" doesn't mean all that much, the term is used in varied enough ways that it's hard to say something consistent about the whole group, and it probably doesn't quite track a natural kind. In any case, yes, there's some broad swath of """states of consciousness""" (same problem with that term as well) which are familiar and within some range of ordinary experience, and there's, well, quite a bunch outside of that. Very briefly, some common features: - Altered or extremely intense experience of emotion - Bizarre combinations of emotion - Seeming ability to *directly* experience others' emotions - Note that with many of these, and this one especially saliently, many people report some variation of this at baseline, and are shocked that other people don't experience the world this way, etc. etc. (I'll also just note that these people still sometimes report states where this kind of empathy is much more intense than usual for them.) - Altered perception of normal phenomena: - Time moving extremely slowly or quickly - The world seeming to move under oneself while walking (rather than that one is moving) - The world, or individual objects seeming unreal, thin, or completely foreign - Perceiving the world (especially *seeing*) from outside one's body - Visions, sometimes hallucinations, - In some? reports, visions are described as "real" in a different way from ordinary experience, in any case I have the sense that people experiencing visions aren't quite "mistaken" about what's real in their physical surroundings, in the way that people having "hallucinations" might be. - FWIW I've also had experiences on psychedelics where I had stable physical-seeming visual hallucinations which I knew in the moment to be not real and was lucid about etc. This is to say I'm not sure what separates "hallucination" vs "vision" but they do seem pretty different, anyway. ## Purposeful modification of perception {#practice-meditation--purposeful-modification-of-perception} ::nogloss *See also: [ways of seeing](/md/metaphysics/ways-of-seeing.md) and [hyperstition](#practice-practices--hyperstition)*. There's some cluster here, though this is my least standard category on this page. With substantial overlap with the other categories, these involve either trying to elicit, cultivate, or attenuate specific patterns of perception, usually oriented towards a fairly concrete intended state. For example: - Seeing some or all objects (broadly construed) as disgusting, unreliable, or valueless - Seeing some or all objects as holy, shining, or perfect - Cultivating positive regard, compassion, etc. - Attending to objects in such a way as to cause the perception of that distinct object to fade or break up - This is sometimes called *deconstruction*, some schools call this *vipassanā* (*vipaśyanā*). More broadly these are usually regarded (within these traditions) as trying to either realize the "true" perception (not quite how it's presented, but obviously confused [in my view](/md/metaphysics/eternalism-nihilism.md)), cultivate a more wholesome perception, or lay the ground for [insight](#practice-mysticism-awakening).
Vipassana, deconstruction, and "the way things are" Just as an initial note, *vipassana* also means at least three things, in this case I mean both Burmese vipassana (and -esque) deconstruction, but also sort of adjacent deconstructive techniques across Buddhism, maybe peripherally in other traditions entirely, though I'm much less familiar. Unfortunately this sense isn't really orthodox, but sort of has the most cachet among those that use that term.[^practice-meditation--vipassana] [^practice-meditation--vipassana]: Ok so in fact Goenka calls anapanasati "*vipassanā*" which is pretty straightforwardly wrong, but yes, now that's actually the thing most people have heard of, if they know the word 'vipassana' at all. Boohoo, Mahasi Sayadaw wasn't a lot more orthodox either but I'm less annoyed by calling that stuff vipassana. Deconstructive practices in particular are usually explained as arriving at a perception that's "more real," and often as "the *only* real perception"—I'm confident this is basically wrong in principle. One point here Burbea harps on often, to say that the perception of some phenomenon *as empty* (in that metaphysics, something like, phenomenally constructed, and contingent on mind as a causal input) is also empty. I'd make a separate point that views with less fabrication can't be said to be "more real," any moreso than than atoms are more real than horses. Maybe this is right *except* for nirvana in most models, but this is such an obtuse definition of real that it's not that meaningful, and probably misleading. Blah blah, if I were awakened maybe my stance would be different. (Except, oy vey, oy vey.)
(*See also about inquiry practices [below](#practice-meditation--misc-analysis-inquiry-etc), which often get lumped with vipassana, but don't belong here.*) ## "Meditative" body practices {#practice-meditation--meditative-body-practices} ::gloss[*Body practices* use the body as the site of meditation, from slow walking meditation to Tai chi and "yoga."] Many traditions make use of "body practices," broadly construed this could include everything from placid walking meditation to "martial arts", not *totally* far off from Hong Kong kung fu movie fantasy. Walking meditation, for example, is sometimes taught as very calm and slow, even so slow (perhaps one step every 5-10 seconds) as to be hypnotic and engrossing—easy to see as similar in quality to stereotyped seated meditation. Walking meditation is also sometimes taught as relatively casual, but still within a regimented meditative context; IIRC some traditions teach walking meditation as almost a march, complete with synced group chanting. Monasteries in many traditions structure physical activity and work as meditative, and sometimes work is exaggerated, prolonged, or totally constructed as an excuse for "meditative" movement. These can sometimes be arbitrarily slow and methodical, or physically intense and invigorating. More broadly are practices like Tai chi, Chi Gong, or Zhan Zhuang, which besides involving cultivation and sensitization to energy ([see below](#practice-meditation--energy-practices)), most directly consist of finely choreographed sequences of body positions and their transitions, or just statically sustaining difficult standing postures, in the case of Zhan Zhuang. These bleed into other body practices which I'm less inclined to call *meditation* per se, but which are contiguous with "meditative" practices phenomenologically, and both interesting and an important part of some traditional[^practice-meditation--yoga-traditional] systems of spiritual training. Central here is obviously Asana Yoga; there's a variety of more exotic practices in Tibetan traditions that I know a lot less about. Very commonly, many traditions include some simple forms of movement into their ceremonies, eg. prostrations, as well as using these sorts of movements as extended practices in their own right, eg. at one time in Zen it was not uncommon for a young monk optionally to perform 10,000 prostrations, perhaps over some weeks. [^practice-meditation--yoga-traditional]: I've found some conflicting evidence as to the historicity of Asana Yoga, and of the continuity of modern lineages of Haṭha Yoga (IIRC, from which extant schools of asana are largely supposed to derive) with historical traditions. My current sense is that modern asana systems are probably <150 years old, with a lot of innovation in the last 100, but that there *were* some intensive physical yogic practices in India historically *anyway*, and some at least in nominally the same lineages that modern asana schools are supposed to derive from.

~~I can't recall the sources, but relevant keywords here as trailheads will be "ashtanga yoga" and "hatha yoga pradipika."~~ *see below:*

*Edit 2026-01-28*: I did some more reading on this recently and the above is broadly correct based on claims in Mark Singleton, 2010, *Yoga Body*; and Elliott Goldberg, 2016, *The Path of Modern Yoga*. The tl;dr here is that almost all extant schools of Modern Postural Yoga (MPY) go through one teacher in the early 20th century, Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, who adapted some existing indigenous exercise practices (which were never part of any yoga school) along with more traditional haṭha yoga practices, probably inspired substantially by some western currents in physical culture at the time, and maybe borrowing pieces wholesale.

There's more context, and there were people earlier both modernizing haṭha and doing versions of Sūrya Nāmaskar, though not yet being called yoga, but Krishnamacharya was probably the main point of synthesis; the more important point is that MPY has not *nothing* to do with historical haṭha but is a major break from it, and directly informed by western competitors, in the context of Indian nationalism.

I haven't been able to get an answer on what energy practices Krishnamacharya was teaching, and how closely these correspond to historical practices, or same for say Ashtanga Vinyasa (founded by one of Krishnamacharya's top students)—this seems like the more important question, as far as I'm concerned if there's a direct lineage re the energy stuff I'm down to just call this totally legitimate innovation within the tradition. In any case a lot of anglophone MPY doesn't teach energy stuff much at all anyway, so this is all muddied. (Also this seems to different from Foxen's claim, which I haven't read carefully yet.)

*Edit 2025-12-05*: I haven't read most of this book yet but I recently found Anya Foxen, 2020, *Inhaling Spirit*, which is a history of western yoga, and which claims confidently that most of the physical techniques, posture sets, etc. in modern yoga schools are derived from a series of related western traditions, and were variously either dressed up in ancient Indian garb later, or were folded into existing yogic traditions/techniques but from a western lineage. Asana is... complicated enough as a community and a concept that I won't try to break it down here, besides that I don't feel I understand it, actually. Briefly, in many modern schools (read: Western, or at least something like "adapted under the influence of Western modernization"), asana practice again consists of a choreographed sequence of postures and transitions, in many cases uncomfortable, intense, or even psychologically demanding, combined with energy techniques which are intended to purify the system. Some western asana schools are also much slower, gentler, and incline more towards relaxation and ease. Asana is centrally at least a kind of mindfulness practice, ostensibly practitioners are maintaining attention on the body as they move through each pose. Indeed, the less westernized schools usually insist that asana is meant to require fine attention and [embodiment](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--embodiment) to *work*. Besides just "mindfulness," many more intensive Yoga practitioners report some kinds of altered states, energy releases, etc., like those reported in more advanced levels of stereotypical seated meditation. Many schools also teach asana as being used in tandem with meditation, understanding the two to be mutually dependent in a system of practice. Even in the traditions most centrally organized around silent, seated practice, movement practices are still seen as contiguous with the rest of intensive spiritual practice, eg. IIRC there are reports of sudden awakening experiences occuring while performing prostrations[^practice-meditation--prostrations]. [^practice-meditation--prostrations]: I mean, also while performing all sorts of normal activities as well. ## Energy practices {#practice-meditation--energy-practices} ::gloss[*Energy practices* cultivate, manipulate, and develop sensitivity to *energy*, often in order to clear or purify the *energy body*.] *See also about [energetic phenomenology](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--energy) in general*. Energy practices involve sensitization to, and cultivation and manipulation of *energy*. Again please see the section linked above for a detailed description of the concept of energy. I mentioned above a number of such practices (Tai chi, Chi Gong, Zhan Zhuang, secondarily Asana Yoga), but more with respect to their gross physical aspects. Very broadly these practices are understood in their traditions to work partially by the energetic effects of the purely physical parts of the practice, but more importantly by purposefully, directly moving or clearing energy, purifying the energy body. Some are gentle, slow, and very progressive, whereas others are sensationally loud, uncomfortable, and intense. This is a large and diverse group, but for example some common specific practices involve circulating energy in specific patterns while moving through some energetically "robust" sequence of postures, and using the energy to move through the pattern of movements. Some energy practices also occur seated, or just the same lying down. Energy practices in stillness often have similar phenomenology to those practiced with movement, and some practices are taught first in movement and then transition at higher levels of skill to being primarily about the movement of energy, agnostic of physical movement. Again some seated energy practices are described as intense, invigorating, and sometimes very uncomfortable; *sometimes* these might be obviously perceptible to an outside observer, eg. clenched muscles, shuddering, etc., but often a practitioner will be perfectly still besides the cycle of breath, while they experience energy which is firey, roiling, or chaotic. ## Misc: analysis, inquiry, etc. {#practice-meditation--misc-analysis-inquiry-etc} ::nogloss This section is a bit of a grab-bag, though the practices and qualities I'll mention here each rhyme with one another somewhat. What I'm calling "analytical" practices mostly includes practices involving analysis of either the active phenomenal contents of experience, or of the causal structures generating specific patterns in experience. These often are oriented towards what's known as "deconstruction," which broadly involves some combination of a. cultivating perceptions of objects and processes as made of parts, b. separating those parts in perception, and c. inclining towards the phenomenal dissolution or decay of those parts of of sensations altogether. Adjacent here are also what's known in some western meditator circles specifically as "insight"[^practice-meditation--insight-vipassana] practice, from what I understand this means something like, "cultivating specific [ways of seeing](/md/metaphysics/ways-of-seeing.md), either to cultivate flexibility of the mind with respect to perception in general, or to lay the ground for spiritual insight." [^practice-meditation--insight-vipassana]: My understanding is that in this context "insight" is meant as *calque* of *vipassanā*. Other translations I've seen of *vipassanā* with respect to the canon are IIRC "discrimination" and maybe? "seeing through" and "penetrating analysis." See also the dropdown in the section [above](#practice-meditation--purposeful-modification-of-perception) for some more on vipassana. Less common, but surprising relative to some stereotypes of meditation, are also so-called "logical meditations" in eg. Tibetan Buddhism, which attempt to achieve insight, altered states, or specific qualities of perception by use of ostensibly rigorous *logical* analysis, eg. of an object's ultimate metaphysical un-reality, etc. *Inquiry* practices are adjacent as well, which most generally involve posing a question, and sometimes either struggling actively with the question, or letting it percolate through the mind. The most stereotyped instance would be koans in Zen, usually presented as paradoxical (or sometimes seemingly nonsensical) puzzles or questions. As I understand, koans are meant to be "solved" by achieving specific altered states, as in, each koan implicitly defines a state which is meant to be achieved by the practitioner, and from which the question or problem can be easily "answered". Inquiry practice in the "percolate through the mind" sense is often presented as using states of concentration, or altered states otherwise, to ask a question in a way which is uniquely existentially bright and vivid. Commonly also these practices are claimed to afford or give access to kinds of intuition and intelligence generally not available by ordinary reflection and thought. Broadly speaking, this cluster is oriented towards what's known as [insight](#practice-paths--insight-openings-and-awakening) (unfortunately a different sense from "insight practice" above)—a term which ranges from "sudden understanding, in approximately the colloquial sense" to "gnosis of spiritual truth." ## Briefly on transformation, insight, and gnosis {#practice-meditation--briefly-on-transformation-insight-and-gnosis} *See also the following sections on [healing](#practice-healing) and [insight and awakening](#practice-mysticism-awakening)*. "Meditation" (and whatever similar practices) in most traditional systems is understood as oriented towards spiritual *insight* and *transformation*. This is taught and practiced under a variety of models, but most often is meant to be achieved either by gradual cultivation of positive qualities, *or* the attainment of gnosis by means of altered states. In the case of gnosis, personal transformation is usually explained to occur because of some combination of a. newly seeing behaviors or objects as undesirable, faulty, or worthless; b. newfound peace, joy, and compassion; and c. most centrally a fundamental reorientation to value and goodness. Some traditions are basically whole-hog on "ultimate gnosis" as the only spiritual goal, but most include some combination of discipline, positive cultivation, and provisional insight as vital features of "[the spiritual path](#practice-paths)." Some contemporary western teachers often teach modern healing practices in combination with, or as part and parcel of meditation practice. From what I can tell this is almost entirely a modern innovation, which I [discuss later](#practice-healing-other-models--content-in-traditional-systems). ## Misc other considerations {#practice-meditation--misc-other-considerations} ### Meditation and posture {#practice-meditation--meditation-and-posture} Probably the singular defining stereotype of meditation is a person seated cross legged (🧘!), and people are often pretty confused about how "meditation" either traditionally or in general relates to posture. Most traditions whose practices we call "meditation" do use cross-legged postures seated on the floor, but many or most of them also use a variety of other postures, including reclining. In the most orthodox[^practice-meditation--canon] Buddhist canon[^practice-meditation--agamas], there are strictly speaking four "postures": sitting, standing, walking, or lying down. See also above re [movement practices](#practice-meditation--meditative-body-practices). [^practice-meditation--agamas]: I didn't go check but this is the kind of thing that parallels really nicely in the Chinese Agama collection, so I'd be surprised if it weren't orthodox at least with respect to that *canon*, if not the extant traditions, and I'd guess the Tibetan canon(s?) also. Many contemporary western meditators conflate meditation with some notion of a practice of austere discipline, and in particular see bearing, and hopefully *transcending*, the discomfort of sitting upright on the floor for long periods, especially for westerners habituated to chairs and couches, as a display of virtue. I'd say here something like, I'm not gonna yuck your yum, but mostly I'm 👎 on this, and I also think this is quite a bit confusing matters, spiritually speaking. ### Meditation vs. prayer {#practice-meditation--meditation-vs-prayer} So, first off, *who cares*. In any case, most relevantly, there's quite a bit of overlap in the phenomenology of at least some reports, both from intermediate practitioners as well as in the extremes. Eg., there are reports of awakening that sound very similar, from practitioners doing canonical "meditation" practices, to those from others in completely unrelated traditions who describe their main practices as being those of "prayer" etc. A lot of this is contingent on whatever specific definitions we use, which again, *who cares*, though yes I did define prayer [in a certain way](#practice-practices--prayer) before. There are eg. some modern schools which teach this or that and call it "prayer," eg. IIRC some protestants (and maybe some catholics?) teach what they call "centering prayer," which is pretty straightforwardly just meditation. All good, as far as I'm concerned, tbc. The more interesting point here is that based on all the reports I've seen, it sure just seems like the space of possible states-of-mind is just large, and the space of possible spiritual practices is large. And so naturally you end up with lots of overlap between coincidental groupings, etc. --- # Introspection (and some "Transformative Practice") {#practice-introspection} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/practice/introspection — also at `/md/practice/introspection.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `practice-introspection--`.* Compared to the previous section on [meditation](#practice-meditation), I'd say introspection is quite a bit more illegible, mysterious, inscrutable, and idiosyncratic. For this reason I'll start with a methodological and ontological discussion, which will also serve to broaden the aperture of what introspection does or ought to include, and will run into discussions of specific mental motions, "techniques," etc. Apparently, there is experience, agnostic of a "mind" (and I [really am skeptical](/md/spiritual-truth/metaphysics-phenomenology-spirituality.md) of a lot of the intution that "mind" draws in), what we experience changes over time, and there are patterns to the "contents." Some of this is variously attributed to the procession of an external world, and some is usually attributed to some persistent generators of experience "on this side" of experience, again agnostic of the metaphysics of self or mind that a person uses[^practice-introspection--unusual-self]. [^practice-introspection--unusual-self]: To be fair actually, maybe not fully agnostic, as some people report some even more unusual metaphysics or phenomenology of self-and-world, eg. in altered states or as a result of [awakening](#practice-mysticism-awakening). And so, presumably, there's something to the effect of "states of mind" and "contents of experience," and, really more confusingly, there's something about *consciousness* or *attention*, or something. In any case, people often have beliefs and models about their experience, and can *"inspect"* their mind, and will report on all of this. Already we're in deep shit here. What's this consciousness thing? Is it about reflection? Why is reflection the thing that distinguishes experience? (Indeed, it seems like I can have experience without reflection... or wait, but how would I know? etc.) Qualia? Do we really have any idea what qualia are? I'm not taking this angle as a pointless stoner-thoughts jerkoff, but because I think stories about introspection, and especially those about what sorts of introspection [produce reliable knowledge](/md/spiritual-truth/gnosis-confabulation.md) or not, are profoundly laden with assumptions about its causal structure. Again, I'll discuss more about the variety of systems of [metaphysics applied to phenomenology](/md/spiritual-truth/metaphysics-phenomenology-spirituality.md), and their problems, later. However, I want to able to say really tightly, "ok, there is certainly a domain here, as best as I can be agnostic about its shape or inputs." ## Various reports of introspection {#practice-introspection--various-reports-of-introspection} The central, stereotypical notion of introspection in modern western culture involves something about "turning inwards" (often evoking closed eyes, with a stream of "mental imagery"), sometimes highlighting [somatics](#practice-phenomenology-somatics) in attention, and most often discursive thought which "inspects" or especially "analyzes" experience and memory. Common reports otherwise, of introspection (and related) in secular western culture: - Contemplation on one's memories, and especially coming up with explanations for the generators of one's emotions and behaviors - Often this is under a specific set of psychological theories, also often under direction of a therapist. - Often also, this is more like "trying to adjust or reframe perception and emotion, in order not to be disturbed by something." - "Journaling," which I might gloss for many cases as something like "telling stories to oneself, in writing, in a personal and emotive way' - Contemplation of emotions, whether active or elicited in response to memory Often introspection is sort of inscrutable and idiosyncratic, such that people can't really describe what it is they're doing when they "introspect," or at least the broader culture doesn't really have a vocabulary for it, and so people's descriptions end up bespoke and illegible. Most often people's intuitions about cognition revolve around the common phenomenology of deliberate application of *effort* to a question, or at least almost always "thought" is associated with a sensation that one's self is "doing" the thinking, in each moment. I'll note here that there are also fairly common reports of these qualities of *effort* and *doing* ceasing at times, or even ceasing altogether as part of [awakening](#practice-mysticism-awakening), usually along with claims that this phenomenology itself is also constructed or "fabricated" by the mind, and doesn't really track the underlying causal structure of thought and insight. This is a helpful place to start from to broaden the scope of "introspection." In particular, there's a fairly wide breadth of reports of experiences at least *adjacent* to, and pretty relevant to, introspection, which *don't* involve direct application of attention. First as an intuition pump: most people are familiar with the experience of working on a problem, whether a math problem, creative project, or interpersonal issue, really *working* on it consciously, not coming to a solution, and then having the answer come to them suddenly during some other activity, or especially upon waking. So the claim here is, "something something, the """mind""" is able to perform computation on subjects *outside of conscious attention*." There's fairly common reports here of various spiritual, meditative, or introspective practices producing some kind of, uh, *output*, without application of attention to the subject, and often immediately preceded by something unrelated, or by eg. meditation on the breath. Often also, these reports describe phenomena which result in internal changes, and which are available to attention, but are undirected and spontaneous. - Very commonly, [spiritual insight](#practice-paths--insight-openings-and-awakening) occurring suddenly, spontaneously, and again without application of attention to the contents of the insight. - Sometimes meditation teachers will describe eg. [concentration practices](#practice-meditation--concentration) as "laying the ground for insight to occur spontaneously." - "Dreamwork," ie. practices of both interpretation of dreams but more saliently here psychological *transformation* which occurs during dreams - [Energetic openings](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--energy) which settle and reconfigure the "body-mind," leading off powerful changes in behavior and perception, very often specifically described as not under conscious control or intervention - Sometimes these are even reported to *require* non-control to proceed. - These can be [sometimes sudden and sometimes very gradual](#practice-paths--gradualism-and-suddenism). Furthermore, often these are regarded as being unavailable to or separate from the "part of the mind" which uses verbal thought, meanwhile these reports usually describe a rich flow of intuition and *"knowing"* within the "body-mind". Introspection has a complicated relationship with movement, play, augmentation, self-modification, etc. Many practices aren't necessarily presented as "introspective" by that name, and include some messy combination of something like *modification*, and *observation* or *investigation*. We might want to restrict 'introspection' to "just observation," but boy golly, if ever there was a domain where observation muddied the objects being observed, this would be it. Below is some evocative palette of other common features of introspection and introspective practices: - Prompting and asking questions - Often "answering" these questions (so something like, "just answering as one would if asked directly"), but also often "waiting for an answer to come," very often reported as coming in feeling and images, rather than words - Reframing, deliberately telling stories, and eliciting or cultivating specific perceptions - (This is one of the central clusters within "transformative practice, but adjacent to introspection.") - Exploring personal [resonances](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--resonance) - Eg. of aesthetics, but also often [imaginal](#practice-practices--imaginal-practice), archetypal, maybe something like "relational-affective," etc. Stereotypically, many kinds of artistic practice are deeply introspective in this sense. - This will probably annoy someone here, but eg. dance is for many people intensely introspective, moving through patterns of somatic resonances etc. - [Prayer](#practice-practices--prayer) and communing with spirits, depending on how we conceive of them - So even for those who construe prayer as literally-communcating-with-a-literal-being, there's often a substantial quality of exploring relational-affective postures with various figures. For those who construe prayer in a ~materialist frame, which I mostly do, then even moreso this belongs here. - Exploration of just about everything described in the previous section on [somatic phenomenology](#practice-phenomenology-somatics) #### Partswork, briefly {#practice-introspection--partswork-briefly} ::gloss[*Partswork* refers to practices that work with *parts*, persistent subpersonalities with distinct or conflicting motivations.] *Partswork*, also *parts work*, refers to a cluster of practices oriented around working with *parts*, generally understood as something like "persistent subpersonalities with distinct or conflicting motivations." Partswork by that name originated with Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, IIRC in the late 80's, but those concepts, and similar practices, have branched much further. The IFS model has a fairly tight schema of parts with relatively stereotyped relationships. IIRC later systems sometimes describe different or more granular schemas, but often do away with most of the details of the IFS model, describing more organic or nebulous dynamics of relationships between parts. Some derivative systems also describe parts as permeable and ephemeral, where IFS mostly sees them as relatively stably persistent, though capable of evolving. Reports from practitioners here centrally feature discovering structurally reinforcing patterns of internal emotional reaction between different parts. Stereotyped patterns here might be eg. one part which feels fearful, lazy, or alone, and another part which reacts to that, and berates "the person" (again, with varying phenomenology reported) or that part. Another stereotyped pattern reported would be eg. parts which hold clusters of emotion or sensation at bay, or which hold a certain social posture in order to "protect" other parts, or the person altogether. Most of the partswork reports describe that these patterns present initially introspectively opaquely, or often with no clear introspective access to (what they later regard as) the underlying dynamics, but only in terms of gross effects in behavior or motivation. While I think partswork is a very generative frame, and I myself, and lots of people I know, have gotten a lot of value out of it, it's very unclear to me to what extent it tightly tracks the """underlying structure of the mind,""" as opposed to the reported phenomenology being *constructed* to align with the framework, when someone practices under it. Along the same lines, it's also not clear if it's an invariant in human psychology in general, or an artifact of modern western culture.[^practice-introspection--weird-invariant] I'll discuss this more re [metaphysics and phenomenology](/md/spiritual-truth/metaphysics-phenomenology-spirituality.md) and "[introspective epistemology](/md/spiritual-truth/gnosis-confabulation.md)." [^practice-introspection--weird-invariant]: Note that some hippy healer types claim that these kinds of models *are* particular to western culture, and that historical, uh, "traditional" cultures would largely never have had these kinds of problems. ## Introspection, thought, self-models, and "the unconscious" {#practice-introspection--introspection-thought-self-models-and-the-unconscious} ::nogloss Many of those examples are moreso of *transformative practices*, or at least the fruits of such practices, but they're very informative for making inferences about the structure of the mind, even if they're not quite centrally "introspection" per se. Along with this, it's helpful then to distinguish between, say, "internal exploration" and something like "propositional verbal modeling." So, often the image we have of introspection is of a process of primarily deliberative verbal reflection and contemplation, which ostensibly directly (?) produces knowledge about oneself—I want to widen a lot from this. A person, in general, has experiences throughout their life, and their ongoing internal and external reactions in life are a kind of elicitation of the structure and contents of the "mind." Variously, *existential impressions* are left by different experiences, and the content of these impressions are elicited in different contexts. What's only somewhat unusal about these kinds of weirder introspective practices is more just that they're deliberately internally elicited. Often, introspective practices will use language as a "handle" or "hook" into the mind, agnostic of, or playful with, the *truthfulness* of some utterance. Salient here would again be Gendlin's Focusing, which is a practice in which a person uses verbal prompts and verbal investigation to introspect, checked *against* their [resonances](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--resonance). A friend of mine also describes what he calls "existential trolling," which uses deliberately provocative or contentious prompts, to check for internal resistance or objection. Insofar as someone is concerned with producing accurate and truthful models, they can actually do that modeling in parallel, or even separately, from their main introspective practices, which can be much wackier[^practice-introspection--magick]. In general though, introspection (or *whatever*) is very often oriented towards change and catharsis, *or* a kind of "existential knowing," really agnostic of almost any epistemic claims about the structure of the mind. (There's still problems there, which [I'll discuss later](/md/spiritual-truth/wrong-practice.md).) In fact, robust introspective practices in the circles I run in very commonly will take many tacks at an individual question or issue, and triangulate what's going from the variety of conflicting or at least multifacted internal responses. So, these practices often have a flow of back and forth between the nominal "answers" which some technique elicits (whether explicitly in words, or otherwise), and one's sense of the underlying generators. [^practice-introspection--magick]: So the extreme here being the large cluster often called "magick," which I'd gloss, maybe unfairly, as something like "incantations using arbitrary systems of symbols, for resonance, personal transformation, and enacting agency" I'm harping on this point about introspection besides verbal "investigation" also to highlight what I think is confused in a variety of conceptions of "the unconscious," and how those relate to something like "introspective accessibility." So, saliently, often one person might have some emotional dynamic which they are aware of only in terms of its effects, but which they regard as "unconscious," where another person (or the same person, after some time) might say "no no, I recognize the same process in myself, and I have vivid introspective access, it's just not necessarily verbal." (And, for that matter, it's not always clear what "verbal introspective access" might have meant, anyway.) Often in particular this is substantially about developing fine internal sensitivity; again for more on this see the whole page on [somatic phenomenology](#practice-phenomenology-somatics) for descriptions of a lot of the relevant kind of sensitivity. Very relevant here also will be reports of [awakening](#practice-mysticism-awakening), which while not quite central to "introspection," are still clearly about insight into the structure of one's experience, though usually claimed as of experience in general. Part of the question I'm weaving in and out of here, which I'll [discuss more later](/md/spiritual-truth/gnosis-confabulation.md), is about what kinds of introspection produce useful or reliable knowledge. Often cultures, personalities, or systems of metaphysics that prefer verbal contemplation over other kinds of introspection, hold views approximately to the effect of "correct knowledge comes from careful modeling, hypothesizing, and experimentation, and 'direct knowing' is suspect." *It's a bit hard to address this broad group of objections, and any specific argument I make would likely sound like a strawman to anyone individually. Anyway, if you are at least sympathetic to the above depiction, maybe take this as gesticulating, and try to infer what my version of this argument would be for your specific case.* Firstly, I'd say this creates a bizarre separation with oneself. The unfair depiction, which I think really is accurate to some people, is shaped like "*I* am the part of the mind which performs the investigation, whereas the *rest* of my mind is the part I do investigation upon, and which is separate from *me*." More importantly, though, I'd say that introspection needs a kind of raw *contact*, and that verbal contemplation, especially upon memory, is really more like "theorizing," rather than properly *investigating* the domain. Again see [more discussion of this later](/md/spiritual-truth/gnosis-confabulation.md).
More on this point I think that some people take introspection to be bunk, because *most "introspection" they ever observe* is basically *confabulation*. So while in principle I might buy something like, "verbal contemplation, hypothesizing, and experimentation" as a model for understanding the mind (at least at some level), in practice the "sit and think about it" kinds of "introspection" often come very quickly to some kind of explanation... and then just stop there. The introspection-skeptical I think are often tracking this dynamic, and conclude, "nah bro, that's bs."
One last point here: introspection again sterotypically is something basically private, quiet, and which usually happens in stillness. Perhaps this isn't *centrally* "introspection", but broadly speaking I'd say that *enacting* one's values, or self-image, or whatever, is just the same contiguous with just "touching into them." So the examples I gave above re say dance are decent ones here, but more generally *embodying* one's values in the world is often both an expression of *and* part of an investigation into one's values. There are many reports of people being engages in a process of transformation and self-exploration over many years, some of which happens privately and quiety, and some of which happens very much in public, and yet with many revisions and turnings-over. (And also, not to reify "values" here, but this point is inclusive of identity, [mystical-transcendant wisdom](#practice-mysticism-awakening), wacky [somatic content](#practice-phenomenology-somatics), and everything else.) --- # Content, Healing, and Integration {#practice-healing} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/practice/healing — also at `/md/practice/healing.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `practice-healing--`.* :::note[*Epistemic status: opinionated, non-consensus, but mostly descriptive*] I present here a somewhat opinionated cross-section of reports and models in this space. I'll describe a critique of these perspectives in [the next section](#practice-healing-criticizing-trauma), after that I'll contrast them with [other perspectives](#practice-healing-other-models). I'll also discuss models that I [endorse more strongly](/md/wayfinding.md) later. ::: *See also: [Trauma](/md/culture-trauma-memetics/trauma.md), [The Structure of Trauma](/md/culture-trauma-memetics/structure-trauma.md), [Trauma Smells](/md/culture-trauma-memetics/trauma-smells.md), and [Culture, Taboo, and Trauma](/md/culture-trauma-memetics/culture.md).* I defined trauma earlier as something like "pathological changes in psychology as a result of adverse experiences." In this section I'll talk about broadly something to the effect of the *ceasing* of dysphoria and dysfunction, and centrally of the *removal* or *resolution* of their generators. This of course already relies on some assumptions about a. the identification of some pattern as undesirable and usually pathological, and b. its etiology. There's nuance with each of these which I leave implicit here, I discuss some of this more later re "[introspective epistemology](/md/spiritual-truth/gnosis-confabulation.md)." ## Psychological content {#practice-healing--psychological-content} ::gloss[*Psychological content* refers to psychological, somatic, and existential residue left by adverse experience.] Most models here use some notion of *generators* (never by that name), namely usually of some disruption or intrusion which is regarded as causally upstream of some psychological changes. I'll refer to the generators involved in sustaining traumatic changes, at least in my own conception, as *psychological content*, sometimes *material*, and especially just *content*. So, "content" here presumes a model, though thankfully it's wildly less laden than 'trauma.' The stereotyped story goes like this: - Alice has a traumatic experience, eg. has an abusive relationship. - She is disturbed in general for some time, and continues to feel fearful towards men indefinitely. - She "processes" these experiences, this is stereotypically cathartic and emotive, especially including revisiting specific memories and feelings associated with her disturbance. - Her previous disturbance has ended, and she is able to hold a more "mature" relationship to herself, male peers, and potential future partners. In this kind of story, Alice's ongoing disturbance is *due to* some content which needs to be "processed," and the disturbance ceases once that content is "worked through." The reports of the phenomenology associated with this kind of story align nicely with this notion of content. In particular, these reports often describe that some feeling, or bolus of [feeling-and-belief](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--meaning-and-resonance), was lurking underneath the surface level traumatic responses, which can eventually be relatively cleanly excised, resolving the entire traumatic pattern. (See more below re [metabolism](#practice-healing--metabolism) and [releases](#practice-healing--releases-and-openings).) To be clear, reports of this kind of "underlying clump of content" often don't mean that a person is continuously in distress, or that there's continuously available loud sensations in that clump. Often some cluster of feeling might only be available when elicited or triggered, or might be available to introspection usually only as a [blockage](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--blockage). In any case, in these reports and models, there is a generator which *persists*, agnostic of the specific phenomenology, or how sensationally active the somatic correlates of the generator are. Note that often the surface level presentation of some psychological content might be [fairly subtle](/md/culture-trauma-memetics/trauma-smells.md), and that the metabolism of content, while *often* intensely emotive, can also be progressive and relatively gentle. This is not the only kind of story one encounters being called "healing," and many stories about trauma and healing will take features a la carte from various models in the broader culture. I'll discuss various different models in use and in the discourse throughout this section, and ones I'm [less sympathetic to](#practice-healing-other-models) separately. Note also that these sorts of "models" are much more like intuition pumps for practitioners (and often for eg. therapists) rather than nice predictive causal models in the sense we would use ordinarily in "science." ## Metabolism {#practice-healing--metabolism} ::gloss[Psychological/somatic *metabolism* refers to the processes by which experience arises and ceases, and specifically of residue being cleared or "processed."] Most of these models refer implicitly or explicitly to a notion of psychological or emotional *metabolism*, also commonly eg. "processing emotions." Indeed, let's say, one has a varied palette of emotions or moods, and correlated clusters of perception and behavior. And, distinctly, emotions pass! Emotions and "psychological states" clearly have something to do with external circumstances, but also with our relationship to them. In any case, most often, emotions arise in response to some circumstance, and then decay or are replaced, variously organically, smoothly, abruptly or chaotically. This sort of process is stereotypically glaring when observing children, who can be inconsolable one minute, and peaceful or excited literally the next minute. Adults still have this basic pattern of arising-and-decay, and it's very difficult to imagine what a person would be like if they were missing either half of that cycle. Besides someone being *aroused* more readily or more intensely, some people often *hold on* to emotions for longer than others. As well, some emotions are more intense or sustained, and decay with greater difficulty. Many modern western theories of trauma and healing make claims along the lines that trauma is due to *interruption* in the natural process of emotional metabolism. The claim here often goes like: "when things are going well, disturbance, regardless of how intense, passes through the system with enough time. What distinguishes trauma is that for whatever reason this process fails or stops, and the disturbance forms a cyst of dysphoria which festers and inflames the rest of the [body-mind](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--bodymind-and-the-system)." Often in these sorts of models, emotional metabolism is believed to require some appropriate social-emotional context; stereotypically this is described from the perspective of a child, and so the corresponding "healthy" context is connection with a warm and compassionate caregiver. (See also briefly re some [empirical critiques](/md/culture-trauma-memetics/culture.md#weird-developmental-psychology-otherwise) of this sort of perspective.) Also common here then are claims that this context can be reenacted (in some sense) with a therapist performing some narrow subset of the role of a caregiver, or of a person being able to "reparent themselves," simulating this kind of social-[energetic](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--energy) quality "internally." Similarly there are reports from eg. fairly traditional religious adherents of getting this quality[^practice-healing--orthwein] from eg. worship of Mary[^practice-healing--lazarus], or Guan Yin. [^practice-healing--orthwein]: See also from [Jake Orthwein on Twitter](https://x.com/JakeOrthwein/status/1636599327257948164):
My first experience of doing IPF directly gave rise to the intuition that attachment-related injuries are in fact basic injuries of existential meaning, experienced (in theistic terms) as alienation from god
(I had some similar experiences spontaneously, while working with the [image](#practice-practices--imaginal-practice) of a Bodhisattva.) [^practice-healing--lazarus]: There's an amazing series on Youtube of interviews with a Coptic Christian monk, originally from Tasmania and now a hermit in the Sinai desert, [Fr. Lazarus ElAnthony](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5mgNHV-EAk&list=PLFF0AE2889CB3EA46&index=21). He has some nice reports of his practices of Mariolatry, though he's perhaps not *fully* traditional as he wasn't raised in the church, but I've found similar reports from more traditional Orthodox Christian sources.

(Unfortunately the playlist is a bit messed up, so this link starts at "season 1", but the sequence is sort of out of order.) A common claimed causal history for these interruptions is parental absence, or weak or absent parental [attunement](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--attunement), but interruptions to emotional metabolism are meant to be possible under a variety of other circumstances. Commonly reported here are: - Cases where emotional expression is restricted or punished in a household or broader culture - Cases of social rejection more broadly, especially when not "offset" by an open and welcoming social context for that person elsewhere - Cases where a trauma is unspeakable or is refused by a person's family or local community, eg. very often in cases of rape - Acute trauma otherwise, especially under chaotic circumstances where there is no stable safety to be found for some time Furthermore, a very popular claim in some pop-therapy circles, as well as among western meditators and broadly "spiritual" types, is that modern western culture is ~uniquely bad with respect to affording metabolism. First off, this smells more like an instance of the "Garden of Eden," (see [an appendix](/md/appendix/garden-of-eden.md)) rather than a plausible empirical claim about the distribution of emotional health and robustness in historical or "traditional" cultures. Still, this touches on a central theme of this whole book, about the relationship between culture, "health," and spirituality. I'll [discuss later](/md/spiritual-truth/truth.md#culture-and-spiritual-truth) some specific aspects of this question. Some common reports of the phenomenology of emotional metabolism: - Nebulously felt relief - [Energy](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--energy) (in sense #2 linked) moving - Sometimes reported as moving through specific or predictable contours of sensation - Sometimes, releases or movement of qi (see link above) - "Catharsis" - This is the term I'm using for the standard stereotyped loudly emotive, often vulnerable, kind of metabolism. - Sometimes reported as moving through a specific *sequence* of emotions or views, at least when metabolizing whatever specific emotion etc. - Nebulously felt or perceived *reorientation* of meaning and social-energetic posture ([see below](#practice-healing--releases-and-openings)) - Often this is present as a feature, but by itself I wouldn't quite call this metabolism. - Specific images or memories being elicited, and arousing strong emotions associated with them - Bigger or more intense releases ([see below](#practice-healing--releases-and-openings)) "Catharsis" stereotypically is not just about vulnerable and loud emoting, but usually distinctly about emoting which results in relief and satsifaction. Sometimes "healing" gets used to mean this sort of catharsis *without* reference to any model of the ceasing of generators of dysphoria, or else with a very weak sense of such a model. Broadly I think this is basically not an appropriate use of the word 'healing.' Often in this context people will talk about "processing emotions," I'll say this is used to mean at least half a dozen different things, some of which I wouldn't call metabolism at all, and usually used without any clarity as to the phenomenology it's supposed to refer to. In any case, *often* it means some combination of the above. Also, often "processing emotions" means something more focused or deliberate, rather than passive or ambient. It's also not clear to me what the relationship is between catharsis in this sense and metabolism more broadly. I've occasionally encountered claims that metabolism *requires* loud catharsis, though my sense is that this isn't even clearly true for small children, let alone for adults—though this might be directionally true, or helpful [as a prescription](/md/spiritual-truth/metaphysics-phenomenology-spirituality.md#practice-instructions-fake-models-and-views) relative to the ordinary *performance* of adult emotional regulation. ## Releases and openings {#practice-healing--releases-and-openings} ::nogloss *See also [Somatic Phenomenology](#practice-phenomenology-somatics), especially the sections on [dissocation](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--dissociation) and [blockages and releases](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--blockages-releases-and-somatization).* ::gloss[An *opening* is a shift in behavior and felt affordances, where some way of seeing or being becomes available.]{#practice-healing--opening} *Release* and *opening* have somewhat overlapping usage; the former broadly speaking refers to somatic releases, whereas the latter can refer to the same but more centrally refers to shifts in behavior and felt affordances or optionality in behavior, life choices, etc. I won't mostly repeat descriptions of the phenomenology of somatic releases, see sections linked above. For "openings", reports that use this language often revolve around energetic, "psychological," and behavioral shifts downstream of a variety of kinds of "healing" (often also not using a "healing" frame, however.) Most often this involves specific [ways of seeing](/md/metaphysics/ways-of-seeing.md) and ways of being becoming available where they were previously flat, thin, aversive, or absent. Common features of reports of openings include, again overlapping with the reports of releases: - Discovering and disrupting somatic patterns, sometimes described as eg. "contraction" or "collapse," which block off the normal or desirable flow and expression of some energy, eg. confidence and verve, sexual desire, vulnerability, etc. - Some domain of meaning or swath of emotions which had been made *under*-salient or overly thin (something like, "phenomenally [dereified](/md/metaphysics/reification.md#dereification-in-general)"), newly becoming richly available - Changes in the weighting or salience of various domains or affordances in one's life and experience; very often softening some previously hyper-salient domain, eg. specific work relationships, expectations of achievement, or burdensome responsibility to family - Local or global relaxation of chronic somatic tension, both gross muscular tension and subtle energetic tension - Changes in affect and manner perceptible to ordinary friends and family, often described as eg. gentler, richer, more confident, or *brighter* Behavioral changes associated with openings, in reports which use that language, are generally not associated with some discrete "decision" or verbal reflection, but are often indirect, unexpected, and progressive. While some of the most popularly advertised healing systems often claim clean and simple stories of metabolism and openings, many reports from practitioners who I take seriously are *much* more complicated, indirect, messy, and unpredictable. I'll discuss this [in much more detail](/md/wayfinding.md) later. Often both openings and releases come with a step down in dissociation, whether local or global; sometimes changes in dissociation can either precipitate openings or conversely can be caused by them. Changes in dissociation can be pleasant or painful, ranging from soft, gentle, lovely (if often still sad), to chaotic and violent, eg. reports fairly often describe screeching, blood curdling pain, or wracking sobs. Openings are also sometimes chaotic *and* pleasurable, and many other surprising variations. Releases and openings are often reported to be disruptive to a person's relationships and general functioning, at least for periods of time. Where some pattern of restriction and dissociation was load-bearing, perhaps because it eg. held some intense negative emotions at bay, or because it allowed a person to remain amenable to people in their existing relationships, removing it can add chaos to that person's life or lead to the collapse of some relationships. (This is a more common report than one would expect just based on the, uh, "marketing materials" for spiritual and transformative practice. I discuss this [in more detail later](/md/wayfinding/wayfinding-disruptions-nonmonotonicities.md#nonmonotonicities).) Even when not expected to be disruptive to this extent, many models which make reference to "openings" prescribe that a person has to capitalize on an opening, and something like *actualize* it in their relationships and agency in the world. Actualization can be more or less functional and healthy, but even healthy cases can still be disruptive, and healthy cases are broadly contiguous with those of major disruptive openings. At least sometimes reported here are things getting very intense, and often very weird. Among these: - Revealing, at least to oneself, long-held snarls of motivation, or tucked away obsessions with some taboo - Bizarre and horrifying imagery of violence or body horror, eg. of violence done to oneself or others - What's sometimes called "shamanic sickness"—prolonged pseudo-physical illnesses caused or at least *opened up* by healing practices, rather than resolved by them - "Critters," energies or extra-personal psychologies found implanted or lodged in one's [body-mind system](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--bodymind-and-the-system) - (Adjacent, also "entities," AFAICT this refers to what are reported as "external minds" found in a person's body-mind) See more on [this cluster specifically](/md/wayfinding/the-depths-of-insanity.md) later. While this domain seems like it must be "native" for humans, this whole broad *flavor* of report (openings in general, and maybe weird stuff especially) feels pretty modern, in my mind dating maybe to the 80's. Still I think it's right in broad strokes, and not a coincidental innovation of whatever recent culture. While conceived of very differently, IIRC I've found many of these contours reported, at least here and there, in traditional and historical sources cutting across traditions. ### Energy work and "energy healing" {#practice-healing--energy-work-and-energy-healing} ::gloss[*Energy work* refers to practices, "internally" or "externally" on another person, of variously unwinding, adjustment, cultivation, transmission, or manipulation of *energy*.] *Again, see also on [energy](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--energy).* Reports of releases are *stereotypically* intense, and indeed the easiest experiences to tell stories about are the intense ones, but many releases and movements of energy are subtle or even quite faint. Much of the work leading up to and surrounding big releases is described as more like subtle and intricate. As well, some people report that their practice is basically progressive and gentle with no major hiccups, or at least *mostly* so. See more later on [gradualism and suddenism](#practice-paths--gradualism-and-suddenism). This sort of "intricate" healing practice is distinctive of what's most often known as *energy work*; also adjacent here is *energy healing*. Energy work generally includes practices, both "internal" (by one person on, or *in* themselves), and "external" (by a healing practitioner on a client or, ugh, *patient* or whatever), working with phenomena under both qi and subtle somatics (see link above for energy). External energy healing practices most often involve touch, sometimes massage, sometimes with application of a good deal of force, but most often with just very gentle and light touch. These are generally reported to be mostly about movement and interaction of energy in the healer's body-mind with the client's, and indeed some schools teach healing practices which involve no touch at all, and may be practiced anywhere from a distance of a few inches from the client's body, to across a continent.[^practice-healing--reiki] [^practice-healing--reiki]: Just have to toss in here, the "across a continent" ones really do boggle the mind, and I'm basically just like nah bro about these claims. Also to clarify, this isn't even like "can be done over the phone," sometimes the claim is literally like, "I can tune in to their energy body from any distance and do work on them from where I am." Internal practices are usually explained to work on similar principles, and often with similar or tightly aligned reports. Many schools teach some combination of both, usually with a healing practitioner being required to be adept in internal practices in order to practice *on* clients. Most centrally, at least to my mind, both internal and external energy healing practices feature qualities phenomenologically of spacious attention and "coaxing." The former means something like "co-attention," or eg. there's commonly claims that the attention and energetic *space* of a healer affords a client's [system](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--bodymind-and-the-system) to soften or move as needed.[^practice-healing--business] The latter means something like gently inclining the system to unravel or release—even when applying a fair amount of physical force via massage, my sense is there's generally here a quality of gentleness or "careful energetic attunement," eg. as opposed to "energetic contradiction" etc. [^practice-healing--business]: Sometimes I describe this as "letting the system do its business." There are some claims here that the energetic system of a healing practitioner can convey some information to a client about what energetic/somatic affordances exist, or a way of being with energy already arisen, *or* to impart a specific energy which is absent or unavailable for the client. Any of these will sometimes get called "transmission," or "a transmission," which unfortunately means a few other things in other contexts as well. Unfortunately, "energy work" also refers to healing practices with something of the opposite quality, namely purposefully, forcefully moving energy, or adding some energy to the system in an effort to budge the configuration this way or that. See also here briefly re [energy practices](#practice-meditation--energy-practices), in that context moreso with respect to "meditation." The extreme end of this I would describe as trying to *blast* the system with energy, reports of these sorts of practices (eg. many kinds of "breathwork") describe being overwhelmed with energy, pushing out or rapidly clearing most other sensations or emotions present. Adjacent to this category are also practices to the effect of purposefully putting the system under "energetic stress," so adding some energy that's intense or difficult to be with, or in physical postures which are energetically challenging, and working with those. There's a wide range here, most of which I'm not that familiar with. ### Releases and verbalization, "nominal content" {#practice-healing--releases-and-verbalization-nominal-content} *See also on [introspection and verbalization](#practice-introspection--introspection-thought-self-models-and-the-unconscious).* Releases and openings often have a complicated relationship with nominal content, and especially verbal expression. Again, the stereotyped Hollywood image of cathartic healing involves some very straightforward correspondence between felt emotion, emotional expression, "underlying generators" (usually implicit), verbal introspection, and verbal *expression*. In practice, in the reports *I* take seriously, every linkage in this network can be distorted, opaque, inverted, or completely obfuscated, including to the person introspecting. By my sense, often verbal expression is confabulated, larped, or improv'd in the moment, and some expression might be [resonant](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--resonance) partially, but still felt strongly. More generally, very very commonly in the therapy literature, and in reports from modern solo "healing" practitioners, the presenting symptoms and reports can have fairly little to do with the content of the underlying generators, as evaluated much further along in some healing journey. Correspondingly, the same is true for someone's apprehension of some disturbed or dysfunctional pattern, as well as both their private stories about it *and* their expressions about it, regardless of how emotive or strongly felt. Separately, there's also often a feedback loop between openings and expressions: in many reports, openings will lead to shifts in self-understanding, which might precipitate some big verbal expression, and conversely there are surprising or momentous verbal expressions which precipitate big releases. (All of this is agnostic of the "accuracy" or truth value of any particular verbal expression.) ## Integration {#practice-healing--integration} ::gloss[*Integration* refers to processes which result in psychological robustness, maturity, and non-compartmentalization.] *Integration* refers to processes oriented towards, and relative outcomes of, something like psychological robustness, maturity, and non-compartmentalization. I feel actually a bit unclear about this concept and more sparsely read here, but it's still pretty fundamental, and I have some useful to say. Most often I see this term used to refer to what I might very loosely want to distinguish as four features: 1. Somatic integration 2. Mature relationship with traumatic experiences 3. Mature and robust relationship with taboo subjects 4. Lack of inner conflict Related to all of these, 'to integrate' often gets used to mean, very generally, "to allow psychological/emotional learnings to percolate," or "to synthesize new perspectives and orientations from something one has learned." More centrally, integration is used in the context of reports of discovering and reworking "dys-integration" (my term), or "dyscoordination" (oy, sorry) across the body-mind. Reports here often describe unraveling the compartmentalization or even shunning of [parts](#practice-introspection--partswork-briefly), swaths of the body, [domains of meaning](/md/culture-trauma-memetics/trauma-smells.md#smells-in-particular-not-exhaustive), etc. The claim usually made by practitioners making these reports is that harmonious, functional behavior, social relating, and existential grounding all rely on communication and coordination throughout and across parts of the mind. Often the claim is that proper integration causes parts and emotional patterns to re-cohere, contributing to a fluent, "whole" experience of self and being. #### Somatic integration {#practice-healing--somatic-integration} *Somatic integration* broadly is used to mean a. somatic healing, mostly the same as the kinds of practices and experiences described above in [releases and openings](#practice-healing--releases-and-openings), and b. re-[embodiment](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--embodiment), most often in the context of a., with a priority on integrating somatic phenomena with the rest of attention and experience. Sometimes this means a variety of different kinds of [body practices](#practice-meditation--meditative-body-practices), which might be explicit "bodywork" or energy work, or might mean explicit attentional + physical embodiment practices, eg. Tai chi etc. More broadly the notion here is usually about developing the relationship between attention, emotion, and somatics to be more "whole," more cooperative, fluent, etc. #### Mature relationship with traumatic experiences {#practice-healing--mature-relationship-with-traumatic-experiences} This often means largely something like "healed," but with a specific priority on again something like robustness and maturity, often a gloss here might be "robustly and thoroughly healed." The claim here is often something like, "there exists incomplete healing which still has distinctive trauma smells, as distinct from a completed healing process (which we call 'integrated.')" Usually the trauma smells here would be a very exaggerated sensitivity to the possibility of harm in some domain, or a disgust or rejection of that domain in general, or a tendency to have one's hackles raised with respect to that domain or with respect to one's relationship with it. In contrast, an "integrated" relationship with some trauma is often depicted as "grounded" or "clean," even if there's a much deeper sensitivity and care for that specific kind of harm. This is sort of presumptive of the answers to some spiritual questions, and often these claims are overstated as far as I'm concerned, but I think this is directionally right. #### Robust relationship with taboo {#practice-healing--robust-relationship-with-taboo} ::nogloss *(Again see some [context on taboo](/md/culture-trauma-memetics/culture.md#taboo-and-superstition) in general.)* The take here is usually something like, taboos in general create a kind of internal flinch or censorship, and that while relatively functional, especially for a society as a whole, this is still in a way "incomplete" or "brittle." Eg., taboos against feces often both track real concerns re disease risk, but also construct a reified cordoned-off domain of the world, at least for many people in many cultures. So then the claim is that this is psychologically distortive, and that even if one still practices hygiene re eg. disease transmission from feces, the structure of taboo around it "needs to" be integrated, in this sense. And then, the claim here is broader, so feces is easier to explain because the taboo is relatively weaker and simpler, but I've seen many claims from practitioners about similar harmful knots psychologically/​spiritually/​somatically with respect to eg. a variety of kinds of taboos against sexuality, politicized taboos, etc. More "dys-integrated" here would include reports, which are common from at least some kinds of practitioners, of exaggerated, contorted, or inverted relationships with taboos. The central example here (if contentious) would be at least some kinds of kink/BDSM, which I'll [discuss later](/md/wayfinding/the-depths-of-insanity.md). This kind of integration is also often connected to other kinds of internalized censorship (regardless of my using the word 'taboo' for this subsection.) Eg., many cultures strongly censure both gross physical violence but also overt aggressive verbal expression, and there are many reports of people needing to unravel and "integrate" trauma-smelly patterns around controlling impulses to anger and violence. This type of practice, very broadly, is often known as "shadow work." #### Lack of inner conflict {#practice-healing--lack-of-inner-conflict} There are many reports of practitioners coming to serious contemplative practice due to intense internal conflicts, or discovering these in the course of their practice. Reports here look like: - Being one's own slavedriver, especially to strenuous internal objection - Persistently punishing oneself for some undesired behavior - Struggling with some undesired behavior and constantly falling off the wagon - Feeling trapped in a relationship and wanting to express discomforts or objections, but always holding back - (This could be understood as more of an internalization of the punishments of an abuser or abusive dynamic, but is still relevant here.) And then integration in this sense means the relative absence of this quality. Note while they're sort of contiguous, this kind of pattern is meaningfully separate from ordinary negotiation of competing goals and desires. Snarls involving internal conflict can get seemingly arbitrarily weird, see [some context on partswork](#practice-introspection--partswork-briefly), and more later on [weird patterns](/md/wayfinding/the-depths-of-insanity.md) discovered in practice. --- # Criticizing Somatics-and-Trauma Models {#practice-healing-criticizing-trauma} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/practice/healing/criticizing-trauma — also at `/md/practice/healing/criticizing-trauma.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `practice-healing-criticizing-trauma--`.* --- # Other Models of Healing {#practice-healing-other-models} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/practice/healing/other-models — also at `/md/practice/healing/other-models.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `practice-healing-other-models--`.* ## Secular western therapy {#practice-healing-other-models--secular-western-therapy} ## Content in traditional systems {#practice-healing-other-models--content-in-traditional-systems} ::nogloss ## Misc. {#practice-healing-other-models--misc} ### "Positive" healing {#practice-healing-other-models--positive-healing} ### Somatics *only* {#practice-healing-other-models--somatics-only} --- # Mysticism and Awakening {#practice-mysticism-awakening} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/practice/mysticism-awakening — also at `/md/practice/mysticism-awakening.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `practice-mysticism-awakening--`.* I'll use the term *mysticism* to refer primarily to traditions and practices of transcendence and gnosis, and secondarily to contact with the supernatural. There isn't quite a consistent definition in the broader discourse, so this definition is very slightly opinionated.
More on the term *mystic* The term 'mystic' comes from the Ancient Greek *mystikós*, probably from *mýstēs*[^practice-mysticism-awakening--oed-mystic], originally referring to an intiate in ancient "mystery religions," which were secret (at least in the sense that their practices were secret) cults in Ancient Greece and Rome. *Mýstēs* itself is from a word meaning "shut," and further both "hidden" and "secret." The term was used by Pseudo-Dionysius, an early church father writing in the 6th century, in describing a theology and practice of union with God, drawing on an earlier Greek pagan mystical tradition.[^practice-mysticism-awakening--dionysius] [^practice-mysticism-awakening--oed-mystic]: [OED](https://www.oed.com/dictionary/mystic_n?tab=etymology) [^practice-mysticism-awakening--dionysius]: It's maybe contentious whether Pseudo-Dionysius was drawing his whole theology from Neo-Platonism or if it was an innovation within Christianity, and maybe even whether 'mystical' came directly from either the mysteries or Neo-Platonism at all. See Louis Bouyer 1963. *The Spirituality of the New Testament and the Fathers*, pp. 406-407 In practice, both in academic work and in modern mystical writing, 'mystical' is used in varied enough ways that it doesn't communicate a lot narrowly, out of context. This is obviously letting alone the colloquial usage which doesn't mean a lot more than "magical" and "spooky." In general it tends to mean something like "union with God," or "gnosis of ultimate reality beyond ordinary apprehension", but this bleeds into what's more often known as "occultism" which usually revolves around ritual magic and interpretation of symbols. "Mysticism" is also often used to refer generically to the practices and experiences of altered states or even just unusual perception, achieved by religious or spiritual practice, or psychedelics.
Unfortunately, "mysticism" gets invoked variously explicitly by name, or by vibes, in a variety of contexts, to describe a variety of experiences with messy or dubious relationships to one another. Agnostic of the use of the term 'mystical,' especially by someone making a given report, what characterizes experiences in this cluster is, in my view, basically the interpretation of some experience as disclosing otherwise hidden knowledge about reality, [the sacred](#practice-practices--the-sacred), or the nature of value. In particular, I've encountered lots of reports of similar experiences of eg. being profoundly moved by beauty or connection, which some people experience as mundane, and others as *transcendent*, or as *more real than normal reality*. These latter reports tend to bring in qualities common of eg. ecstatic religious experience, and tend to cluster with reports of mystical experiences otherwise, agnostic of the specific inciting experience. More broadly, there are a variety of reports where a person has an experience which is profoundly [resonant](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--resonance), which they will [reify](/md/metaphysics/reification.md) and [sacralize](#practice-practices--the-sacred), and which in turn they will interpret as a kind of *gnosis*. ## Gnosis {#practice-mysticism-awakening--gnosis} ::gloss[*Gnosis* is used to refer to the experience of attaining "direct knowledge" of spiritual truths which are hidden or of fundamental existential import.] *Gnosis* refers to experiences of attaining "direct knowledge" of hidden spiritual truths, most centrally those of fundamental existential import. Some smattering of reports here: - "Union with the divine" - Direct apprehension of the causal structure of phenomena and experience - "Sacred geometry"[^practice-mysticism-awakening--sacred-geometry] - (Something like, perceiving existentially fundamental and divine truths in certain geometric diagrams) - Non-duality - Modern reports here describe this as experiencing the phenomenal field as contiguous and undifferentiated, so that there is no separation between "me" and "that," but traditional sources I believe construed this differently. - "Infinite love" - Apprehension of one's "self" as thin or fabricated, or the self disappearing temporarily or permanently [^practice-mysticism-awakening--sacred-geometry]: Oh man sacred geometry, still can't tell if based or cringe. (Note of course that I'm trying to construct a category for experiences reported across a wide variety of traditions, most of which don't originate in the West, and certainly don't use the term 'gnosis.' That said, there are western monks in eastern lineages who gladly translate traditional texts and formulas using 'gnosis,' so it's hardly an innovation or overreach on my part.) A distinction which some authors make here surrounds the phenomenal quality of these experiences, in particular with respect to how *fabricated* the experience is. "Fabrication" in this context refers to relative qualities of something like *phenomenal construction*. The way this would be explained by some Buddhist authors is that ordinary experience involves many strata of perception, interpretation, and reaction, and that even beneath many layers of fabrication, the experience of eg. visual sensation whatsoever still contains or is convolved with a substantial degree of *intention*. Note that this sort of model of fabrication as presented is distinctly Buddhist, but that distinctions not unlike this are still present in the work of many authors who don't make reference to "fabrication" explicitly whatsoever. So, to elaborate, the feature here that's often understood to distinguish true gnosis is something like being "phenomenally rarified," namely, that gnosis is only of something directly present (sometimes "immanent") in reality and experience, rather than something theorized which someone has elaborate thoughts about, regardless of how convincing. There are a variety of reports which are sometimes touted as gnosis, or of some similar degree of mystical profundity, which I largely don't take seriously because they smell too much like "I had some really cool thoughts in some altered state, and it felt gobsmacking and sacred." Certainly those experiences are marvelous, having had some myself, but I'm prioritizing gnosis as among other things having a specific phenomenal quality, because I think that's probably a decent signal for its quality as evidence about the true structure of experience and value. I'll discuss considerations re [mystical and introspective epistemology](/md/spiritual-truth/gnosis-confabulation.md) later. There's a wider swath of altered states and peak experiences also reported as a kind of gnosis. By my sense, these tend to be more contiguous with both ordinary religious practice and "secular" peak experiences, and distinguished mostly by intensity *or* by the story which a person tells about the experience afterwards. *Very* often, reports of gnosis claim that the gnosis itself is "ineffable," where they explain further they'll usually say that the experience is completely nonverbal but moreso often that it cannot be understood *in words*, or even can't be *understood* at all, because it exists in a realm of experience outside of thought or human apprehension. I'll toss in here that I think this is partially because of a lack of shared language, but also that partially what they're tracking is probably that they can't communicate the phenomenology of the experience to someone who hasn't had the experience themselves. Based on my sparse reading of primary sources in a few schools of Buddhism, *even in Zen* it seems like they totally can build up language around this stuff, but that the descriptions are inscrutable to a person without the gnosis. One kind of failure mode which you'll hear about from traditional masters, maybe most distinctly in Zen, is something like "*imagining* oneself into false gnosis." So the claim here is that some naive practitioners will read about what some mystical experience is supposed to be like, imagine what that experience would be like, and then end up fabricating an experience with that shape, which doesn't correspond at all to the original referent. A friend of mine[^practice-mysticism-awakening--friend-of-mine] claims that upon achieving two specific attainments in the Theravada "four-path" model[^practice-mysticism-awakening--four-path], both times he returned to the standard formula for that attainment in the canonical texts, and where the depiction previously seemed poetic and sort of meaningless, it then seemed like a clear and precise depiction of the experience he had just had. [^practice-mysticism-awakening--four-path]: See some more detail [in an appendix](/md/appendix/specific-claims.md). [^practice-mysticism-awakening--friend-of-mine]: And it's interesting that I haven't heard this depiction from traditional sources, but it strikes me as probably right. To be clear, I'm slicing things up here in a somewhat opinionated way, with respect to my sense of what traditions and what *kinds of experiences* are "reliable" or "trustworthy," but still largely aligned with claims made by traditional masters and described in various traditions' mystical texts. Still, there are reports that are relatively similar to the ones I hold up as reliable but don't quite qualify, and contiguous with reports that I think are basically horseshit and hardly more meaningful than reverie. ## Spirits, visions, and communion {#practice-mysticism-awakening--spirits-visions-and-communion} There are vanishingly few traditional mystical and contemplative lineages from which we don't have reports of meeting with spirits, angels, ghosts, demons, etc. Even in modern western lineages with very secular branding, among those which actually teach awakening (see [below](#practice-mysticism-awakening--awakening)), there are still reports shared about such phenomena, here and there in hushed tones and oblique references. Sometimes contact with spirits is reported as mostly [energetic](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--energy), sometimes they appear as a stable visible figure who speaks clearly, sometimes they speak *through* a person, sometimes they're visible only in glimpses, or sometimes their presence is inferred indirectly. Relevant here of course would be pervasive reports of encounters with God (*gods*, as well), in prayer and otherwise. These reports are often less clear about the phenomenology, or even keep quiet about the details of the phenomenology. In any case, sometimes these encounters are reported as clear visions with a moving and speaking figure, sometimes a quiet *knowing* in response to some question, or sometimes distinctly heard speech from no visible physical source, among other kinds of reports. Specifically reports where God communicates mostly by speech sometimes describe the quality of the voice as liminal between "internal audiation" and the quality of a normal physical voice heard in person. Third here, and of course overlapping with the first two, are what I'll loosely refer to as *visions*. Sometimes I might want to distinguish visions as something like "vivid and intense visual scenes, usually understood not to be causally entangled with one's presence and physical body," as opposed to eg. hallucinations, reverie, astral projection, dreams, or visualizations—but in practice there's flow between most of these, and I'll use the word 'vision' to refer to all of them. Each of these three tend to be highly stereotyped within a culture and tradition, but often also with idiosyncratic and bespoke spins, or fairly novel. It's not clear to me if more generally there's convergence across human cultures, or if apparent convergence is due to cultural contact, or that when you dig into the details, specific practices and institutions are much less similar. Eg. my impression is that with "shamans" (a modern term, regardless of the etymology) the broad outline of "spiritually attuned healer who can contact the supernatural world" is convergent across cultures, but the details of the metaphysics or the form or behavior of spirits doesn't seem to be.[^practice-mysticism-awakening--heaven] [^practice-mysticism-awakening--heaven]: N=2, "supernatural overworld" == "good/righteous place," which is interesting (so Abrahamic and Chinese, but I'm not sure if there's more). "Underworld" == "bad place" I'm actually not sure repeats outside of the West, and it seems like wasn't present in Judaism before contact with European culture?

I feel like the six realms in Buddhism sort of fits this mold but sort of doesn't, it's actually not clear if the deva realms are in the sky, and the hell realms are hot but it's also not totally clear if they're underground? No idea about various Hinduisms etc. Some traditions view it as a spiritual gift or attainment to gain access to the supernatural world, whereas others seem to view it as by default available to all classes. This is variously reified, so some traditions are all-in on contact with spirits, often with those specially spiritually initiated (eg. African-derived syncretic religions in the Caribbean and Brazil, probably some South American shamanic traditions), while others view it as interesting but peripheral (Buddhism) or usually evil (Christianity, somewhat Judaism and Islam). Some western hippies also make a big deal about contact with both spirits and ancestors, these tend to be more often of the "pure energetic presence" type. Secondarily here are also some kinds of "soul journeying" (cf. also western neo-shamanism), these are stereotypically extended visions induced by trance or drugs. These obviously interface with and feed back into the rest of the culture, as well as ordinary "superstitions" (such as this is a meaningful distinction). It's unclear to me to what extent western culture has lost access to the supernatural, or to altered states, compared to premodern cultures in Europe, or to "traditional" cultures cross-anthropologically. More specifically, I probably want to distinguish between something like a. more pervasive or vivid superstition, in the sense of "beliefs about the supernatural, in an otherwise humdrum life," vs. b. more pervasive experience of actual "contact" with the supernatural and altered states, etc. I often though find claims of the latter, that life in some documented cultures was teeming with enchantment, most people spoke to spirits, etc. In any case, in the modern West, altered states and the supernatural mostly only fall in the cracks of hearsay and "belief," rather than day-to-day experience. I'm also unclear about this re contact with God in prayer, part of my uncertainty here is that I haven't heard of (though haven't really looked for) evidence about how vivid and alive lay prayer really was in say the 17th century, let alone the 7th; today it seem to be on average mostly perfunctory and rote, even for the relatively devout, and where it is alive it's moreso deeply [resonant](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--resonance) rather than enchanted and mystically salient. ## Awakening {#practice-mysticism-awakening--awakening} ::gloss[In the West, *awakening* refers variously to large persistent changes in a person's existential apprehension of the world.] *Awakening* is a calque of the word *bodhi* from Pali/Sanksrit, literally "the event of waking from sleep." 'Awakening' is used in a variety of discourses to refer to experiences of large changes in one's spiritual and existential apprehension of the world, as well as the persistent changes downstream of these experiences. In the context of the various Buddhist canons and traditions, *bodhi* is understood to refer to the final goal of spiritual practice (usually, but not always, "freedom from suffering"), or proximal degrees or stages towards that goal, in a variety of specific models. The term "awakening," in the context of Buddhism, among other traditions, is used because upon awakening, it's as though a person has "woken up," where previously they were asleep. In the context of, let's say, "western post-traditional contemplative spirituality," especially in English, this term is pretty overloaded, and used in reference to a bunch of different experiences under very different models which only overlap or rhyme. Related to this overloading, there's a substantial diversity of claims made by different traditions about what kinds of spiritual achievement are possible, and what the goal of intensive spiritual practice should be. (Related here also is obviously the word 'enlightenment,'[^practice-mysticism-awakening--enlightenment] which many contemporary teachers avoid because it brings in some inappropriate intuitions, but which is also often used to refer to many of the same experiences in these traditions.) [^practice-mysticism-awakening--enlightenment]: [OED](https://www.oed.com/dictionary/enlightenment_n?tab=meaning_and_use#5441399) gives 'enlightenment' in the sense of "being brought into greater knowledge," and then of "higher spiritual knowledge" starting in the 17th century; first attestation for separately "age of enlightenment" and "Buddhist awakening" at almost the same time (1825 vs 1836). One more difficulty here: at this point it become really cumbersome to mark explicitly each of a. reports from practitioners (and maybe to separate say, those that I believe vs. those I think are real but exaggerated or overinterpreted vs. those I think are hogwash), b. both myths and concrete claims presented by traditions, and c. practice *instructions*, including where the instructions come bundled with a view. (I talk about [the last kind later](/md/spiritual-truth/metaphysics-phenomenology-spirituality.md#practice-instructions-fake-models-and-views).) Unfortunately I'm going to mix these together, so the descriptions below should be taken somewhat more lightly than usual. I'm also at best a peripheral fan of these traditions rather than attained in any lineage or even an amateur scholar of any tradition, and I'm piecing things together haphazardly, but I believe the gestalt here is correct. Some evocative sweep of claims and reports of awakening across traditions: - Permanent freedom from all kinds of suffering and dissatisfaction - Apprehension of one's phenomenology as entirely fabricated - (Sometimes this really is presented as "fake and un-real," but usually the metaphysics here is more subtle or else much wackier.) - *Apprehension* of the world as flawless and divine - Many variations on this, eg. "as an emanation of the godhead" - A variety of flavors of theistic awakenings, eg. residing in love and communion with God - "Realization of one's true self" - *Energetic* "awakenings" - Freedom from all kinds of illness, or even immortality - Spacious, plastic vividness amid unreality Obviously there's quite a bit of overlap here with gnosis, and often gnosis is understood as the actual direct achievement of awakening, or of an intermediate stage. Broadly speaking awakenings are distinguished as a. comprising some fundmental shift in one's existential posture; b. being *unmistakeable*, that is, being basically discrete, irrevocable, and certain; and c. being robust and generally not degrading or rolling back. The main outlier in this list, which I included partly just for completeness under the term "awakening," is "energetic awakenings." Some traditions, many of them variously called "yogic,"[^practice-mysticism-awakening--yogic] conceive of the goal of practice specifically in terms of large changes in [energetic phenomenology](#practice-phenomenology-somatics--energy), with *downstream* changes in perception and behavior. (Note also that most "yogic" traditions, insofar as they contain a concept of awakening, mostly have a more stereotypical south-asian-dharmic-religion meditation-and-transcendence schtick.) [^practice-mysticism-awakening--yogic]: Sorry, I still actually feel confused about what this term means and its history, I might come back and add more later. The short version here is "yog***ic***" often now means something like "physical and energetic cultivation," even outside of the context of recently south-asian lineages, *despite* the fact that originally *yoga* strictly meant something like "spiritual practice" somewhat generically, or at least a swath of lineages with many different kinds of practices and views, as far as I understand. I've tried to dig into this a few times and gotten stuck in the weeds, and I'm confused how modern this usage is, but haven't gotten to an answer. Sometimes eg. orthodox Buddhist awakening reports describe major energetic shifts as well, though not with a *ton* of overlap with reports from the energy-first yogic schools. Some lineages and schools, which don't situate awakening as centrally energetic, still view the *training* regime leading up to awakening as centrally somatic, and sometimes make heavy use of [energy cultivation practices](#practice-meditation--energy-practices).[^practice-mysticism-awakening--rinzai] Also, some Hindu contemplative lineages include intense mystical-somatic initiations, either narrowly as part of initiation into an order, or as a distinct stage toward awakening. [^practice-mysticism-awakening--rinzai]: I've intermittently encountered reports of awakening in Rinzai Zen in particular which seem to conflate intermediate awakenings with big energetic [openings](#practice-healing--opening). I'm kind of confused what's going on there, and I'm not clear enough either about the models they're using or the details of the phenomenology to really have an opinion. Some western hippies will also use language like "erotic awakening,"[^practice-mysticism-awakening--neo-tantra] some of this is explicitly couched in mystical and especially spiritual-emancipatory language. I'm not enough clear on the details of the practices but from what I can tell this *probably* doesn't belong under "awakening," though I assume it's profoundly transformative for some people, etc. etc. [^practice-mysticism-awakening--neo-tantra]: Ok so I have to mention Western Neo-Tantra here at least briefly.

My understanding is that Western "Tantra" dates to the late 19th century in San Francisco (!!!) from a like spiritual-conman-magick-enjoyer type named [Pierre Bernard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Bernard_(yogi)); Hareesh believes he basically made up ~all of the details of his sexual magick practices, see Christopher D. Wallis, 2013. *Tantra Illuminated*, p. 440 (page number in the pdf, I read this in print but don't have it on dead trees.) I also read *somewhere*, but I can't find the source, that Bernard's informant probably wasn't actually initiated in sexual tantric rites, so the rest must have been Bernard's guesswork or invention.

Note that Chapman [is very insistent](https://buddhism-for-vampires.com/tantra-sex-romance-novels) that (at least *Buddhist*) Tantra *totally* involves sex, and this can't be bowdlerized without just lying about the contents of the canon.

I'm not clear (and I think Hareesh isn't either) on where the lineage of modern Neo-Tantra communities starts, including if they actually start with Bernard, but in any case my impression is their practices have nothing to do with traditional Tantric lineages.

*That said!* this doesn't really matter, I'm fine with people inventing new practices, but I think it's very important to a. distinguish lineage clearly, and just say explicitly "I figured it out myself" when that's the case, and b. not exaggerate about what's on offer or advertize something as more profound than it is, in particular re using "awakening" language where it oughtn't apply.

One last piece, sometimes "tantra" is now used to mean... mindfulness? Or maybe "mindfulness wrt sex" but often just mindfulness, which, oh my god that's astonishingly fucking whack. Awakening, across traditions, generally includes or causes major changes in perception, affect, and behavior. Most often it's claimed that awakening confers outstanding virtue, in particular the claim usually being that either access to transcendent joy/love/etc., or freedom from the burdens of ordinary human *experience*, allow one to give and work intensely, and adapt easily to exceedingly difficult circumstances. Many traditions also specifically refer to or frame awakening as *liberation*. (This claim is not unsubstantiated but is at best very mixed, which I [discuss later](/md/spiritual-truth/lopsided-masters.md). Separately, it's not clear how much of this is just due to ordinary extreme tails in piety and discipline, *before* awakening, and indeed anyway many hagiographies describe masters as already in the tails before their awakenings.) Many traditions also maintain that upon awakening, or at least auxiliarily to it, one gains various supernatural powers. It's interesting to me that the set of powers is *relatively* consistent across traditions, though very likely this is just convergence for "what sorts of magical powers sound cool to humans in general." Commonly these are clairvoyance, clairaudience (hearing at a distance), bilocation, walking through walls, various healing powers, and some kinds of telepathy. Similarly, variously awakening or progress towards it is often regarded to result in the spontaneous arising of visions, and to confer the ability to communicate with spirits, etc. Some traditions also maintain that *complete* awakening confers omniscience. More broadly, weaker claims of transformational effects from a variety of traditions often include (generally in accordance with the theology and soteriology of the tradition) unwavering faith, unusual degrees of compassion and care for others, and either imperturbable positive affect, or the absence of negative affect. The "no negative affect" schools broadly claim variations of a. that the structure and fundamental relationship to phenomenology has changed, such that no dysphoria arises, b. that as a direct consequence of a., the [generators](#practice-healing) of dysphoria wither and cease, and c. that healing occurs more organically as part of practice generally ([see next section](#practice-paths)). One particular variant of interest here are schools which claim that the *generators* of negative affect and unwholesome motivation don't necessarily cease, but that because of a. above, they are not dysphoric and therefore do not affect motivation or cognition. This point is somewhat of a crux for questions about how spiritually upright and [integrated](#practice-healing--integration) masters are, and which again I'll [discuss later](/md/spiritual-truth/lopsided-masters.md). In many traditions, awakening is understood as (or, in some cases at least, *I see it as*) a change in relationship to [views](/md/metaphysics/ways-of-seeing.md), both in the abstract and at a fundamental phenomenological level. However, among these traditions there's quite a lot of variation, with different schools, even within Buddhism, sometimes holding opposite views, and *sometimes* reporting ~opposite phenomenology from awakening. In some cases this looks something like achieving a *specific* view (a very common shape, especially for fringe schools, or innovators outside of a lineage), whereas others explain awakening as being about freedom *from* views. The latter often still implicitly or explicitly contain a packet of specific views, however. Some examples from prominent schools: - Viewing the world as fundamentally depraved, or without value - Viewing the world as fundamentally perfect and beautiful - Viewing the world as fundamentally neither-pure-nor-impure - Again, viewing all phenomena as contiguous, and often inter-permeating - (Many variations on this, but views like this are often called *non-dual* in English.) - Again, viewing the self as phenomenally constructed - Experiencing one's choices as impersonal, or out-of-one's-control - Again, viewing all phenomena as unreal or something like "phenomenologically contingent" - (Sometimes *all phenomena* in the sense of "all features of experience," and sometimes in the sense of "all things," taken ontologically) - Experiencing the world "unmediated" by views, or somewhat separately "without fixed views" - Mostly separately, also, "directly experiencing the unfabricated" - Experiencing oneself as the same as or contiguous with God - Viewing each phenomenon as mutually containing all other phenomena[^practice-mysticism-awakening--hua-yan] [^practice-mysticism-awakening--hua-yan]: Idk I am most like, 🤯😕🤷 about hua-yan, I basically assume I don't understand it at all but gotta include it here lol. *See more in the [next section](#practice-paths) about the phenomenology of awakening, and paths and stages of spiritual development in different traditions.* There are many recurring motifs, or at least *rhyming* claims, across traditions—these are interesting both when attested across different established traditions (say, reports from Judaism or Christianity aligning with those from Buddhism) but also from independent practitioners outside of any lineage. Some of these seem to me very clearly like at least closely related experiences, but others I'm confused how to categorize. Note that some of these traditions don't construe these experiences as quite "awakening," and may have no comparable concept, but seem them as ("just") deep mystical experiences. Interestingly also, some traditions present some state as the completion of the spiritual path, which aligns (from what I can tell, and IIRC) very very closely with states which other traditions see as valuable, but only *proximal* attainments.[^practice-mysticism-awakening--ein-sof] [^practice-mysticism-awakening--ein-sof]: Well, one example I have in mind would be the Ein Sof in I think what's called the sequence of "emanations" in at least some (??? gosh I wish I had more context) version of Kabbalah, looks, also based on the rest of the sequence, like it's probably just jhana 8. (Someone call me out on this one, I'll edit this footnote.)

A friend of mine also thinks that a bunch of traditions have third path, but don't have fourth, where fourth path is relatively unique to at least some schools of Buddhism. ### Briefly on awakening and metaphysics {#practice-mysticism-awakening--briefly-on-awakening-and-metaphysics} Referring to the list of views above, note that these are mostly from different schools of Buddhism. Already it's interesting to notice that there's this much diversity within the at least nominal structure of awakening across different schools. My impression here is that historically there's been combinatorially many weird variations of both [metaphysics](/md/metaphysics.md) and mystical views, which of course go hand-in-hand. In certain ways, if you squint, perhaps the actual underlying theology is the same and these schools just vary in the superficial metaphysics through which that liberation is accessed. If this is true, then the core that remains seems pretty sparse. (Some people I think overstate how much there really is in common across traditions, cf. "the perennial philosophy.") I'll discuss some re diverging traditions more [in an appendix](/md/appendix/whose-buddha-historiography.md). In general, awakening will be construed under some metaphysics, and in general almost all awakenings are shaped with respect to, or perhaps *of*, the metaphysics under which a person was practicing. (This point is opinionated on my part but I stand by it.) The most central example here for me is gnosis of dependent origination in various schools of Buddhism: the meditator is meant to perceive the underlying causal structure of the arising of phenomena, understand it and its faults, and thereby attain liberation. Saliently, these reports, at least in the Pali canon, but somewhat also in modern reports, *also* come with knowledge/visions of past lives, sometimes of oneself and of others.[^practice-mysticism-awakening--past-lives] [^practice-mysticism-awakening--past-lives]: Apparently this is debated by some modern western scholars, specifically re how *original* these actually were in the canon. Trailheads here are Jurewicz, and separately Gombrich, and critiques of them. (I haven't mostly read any of this carefully, but I'm aware peripherally of the debate.)

In any case, the canon does say this (as I understand it), and these lineages do produce these reports, so my point is still well made even if we found out that "in fact" """original Buddhism""" didn't contain past lives at all, or that they were never meant metaphysically. My impression is that similar reports, with respect to the alignment of some apparent gnosis with the metaphysics that a practitioner was *taught*, are basically the norm in traditional religious mystical lineages. So (vibereads, and not very well read), same is true for a variety of monastic/contemplative Hindu lineages, same for Orthodox Christianity, and same for Teresa of Avilon I *think* (but *not* for Saint John of the Cross, who was her student). Not sure about Kabbalists here though I've never heard of (well, when would I have?) some wisened rebbe having some serious ass deconstructive gnosis and then being like "whoah, fuck the orthodox metaphysics actually."[^practice-mysticism-awakening--prophets] [^practice-mysticism-awakening--prophets]: I feel like most run-off prophets and innovators I've read about don't totally buck the metaphysics, just twiddle some knobs and name themselves messiah. The only two examples I have here (again, shallowly read) of people working within an orthodox contemplative tradition and then dropping the metaphysics upon some gnosis are Saint John of the Cross in the 16th century and Bhikkhu Buddhadasa in the 20th. Plausibly Gnosticism is an instance of this, though IIRC the historicity of the primary sources is contested?

Also note here, I have the vague sense that some traditions, even if they have a strong metaphysics implicitly, have it less reified and are more open to the devout messing around here. Orthodox Christianity, despite what I said in the source of this footnote, IIRC does *seem* to be an example of this in the extremes of intensive monastic practice. (This is *somewhat* of an opinionated take on my part, but I'll stand by it. I continue to be confused by people saying that the metaphysics either doesn't matter much or that different awakenings are basically the same, this just seems plainly false on the basis of the actual reports from masters identified as such within the various traditions, as well as the theologies presented as definite by traditional teachers. Note also, this is *at least* partly about transmitting a view *along with* a set of practice instructions, which I [discuss later](/md/spiritual-truth/metaphysics-phenomenology-spirituality.md#practice-instructions-fake-models-and-views), as part of the whole chapter trying to make sense of [varying mystical theologies](/md/spiritual-truth.md).) One last point here: some traditions have "awakening" type stuff, and treat it as holy and perhaps supreme as practices and attainments, but *meanwhile* have a separate soteriology which doesn't require mystical practice to satisfy or achieve. This is in contrast with the East Asian and South Asian mystical mold, where the soteriology is usually the same as the satisfaction of the contemplative path. --- # Paths and "The Path" {#practice-paths} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/practice/paths — also at `/md/practice/paths.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `practice-paths--`.* *See also on [meditation](#practice-meditation) and [awakening](#practice-mysticism-awakening).* Quite a few contemplative lineages make reference consistently to concepts like *the spiritual path*, literally using the word for 'road' or 'path' in the source languages. In some modern western usage[^practice-paths--dao], this is expressed variously as just "the path" or also "one's path," "*my* path," etc., also "the x *way*," and other variations. [^practice-paths--dao]: With antecedents in, of course, Daoism, but also by way of Chinese Buddhism. Even where it's not reified as a metonym for "spiritual practice," still quite a few lineages use metaphors of roads, often with a destination, to represent the development and trajectory of a spiritual practitioner. Some traditions also tend to reify *the* spiritual path as a sacralized object of its own. Among other variations, paths are often understood as some combination of a. a relatively discrete sequence of developments or attainments, and b. a diffuse collection of virtues and practices which are developed. The latter tends to be the perspective of non-awakening lineages, but sometimes of awakening lineages as well. In the former "discrete sequence" category, these understand the major milestones in advanced mystical practice in terms of crystalline insights or stages, usually with each being a direct dependency of the next. (Though IIRC some have a slim tree structure, rather than just a sequence.) Others, from what it seems to me, rely on an implicit model of the dependencies for spiritual development, but are softer, mushier, or more *ineffable* in their presentation; nonetheless, many reports from this category rhyme with the former. Others are yet less systematic and may not track dependencies much at all. These often understand spiritual development as a basically progressive augmentation of devotion, piety, and spiritual purity, but in some rarer cases they just refuse the notion of a path of practice which can be controlled or predicted at all. (Again in these last cases I suspect that a teacher or advanced practitioner is sensitive to the causal factors of awakening in such a lineage, even if they refuse any predictable model.) In general, all of these still rely on practices of cultivation and discipline, and even the most "discrete sequence"-type schools generally teach a long path of the development of faith, virtue, and usually concentration or energy, leading up to spiritual insight. Many lineages will specifically stress the development of both faith and ethics as a hard dependency for advanced spiritual development. Even traditional mystical lineages which aren't quite oriented towards awakening seem to have equivalent requirements, so eg. a member of a broader religious community would have to be visibly very serious about piety before being initiated into a mystical order. Sometimes these requirements look more like "moral uprightness," but allow for a relatively ordinary lay life, whereas many schools, even for lay practitioners, insist on fairly intense practices of renunciation, and see these as basically fundamental to spiritual progress. Some schools, of course, see awakening as only possible to achieve as a monastic, or their tradition's equivalent role.[^practice-paths--monastic] [^practice-paths--monastic]: Many many traditions have the pattern of "a special role for spiritual devotees/adepts, with a variety of restrictions which everyone else is not subject to," in reference to monastic traditions, in English, "everyone else" is usually "laypeople." This distinction has been constructed in basically arbitrary ways in different cultures, eg. there's quite a lot of overlap between the structure of "monk" and that of "shaman" in many cultures, so I'm including that here as well.

(Some traditions, eg. Orthodox Christianity and IIRC Catholicism also, also have priestly ordination separate from monastic ordination, for example.) Saliently, "western post-traditional contemplative spirituality"[^practice-paths--bad-name] largely does without the development of either. Nonetheless at least some of us seem to get by without them, and there's certainly quite a few such practitioners who seem to get to advanced stages of insight according to some traditional models. [^practice-paths--bad-name]: Boy do I wish I had a shorter name for this cluster. I'll note here that there's some discourse about scandals in eg. contemporary eastern lineages transplanted into the west—it seems likely to me that this can be attributed substantially to just some background rate of sexual abuse and abuse of power in many contexts, and especially in religious ones. Still, it's sometimes claimed this is a result of lopsidedness in western spiritual culture, or just western culture more broadly. I'll also note here that IIRC in the Pali canon, there's reference to the possibility of "wrong insight" or "wrong awakening" *specifically* due to inadequate development of virtue. So again, most traditional paths, explicitly or implicitly, contain a combination of a. stages of cultivation, b. a discrete sequence of insights, and often c. relatively discrete stages of energetic or spiritual development. With each of these, but moreso b. and especially c., it's understood that the transitioning events are largely out of the control of a practitioner or their teacher, with some complicated process process of learning and insight which may crystallize suddenly. See [below](#practice-paths--insight-openings-and-awakening) re insight, and [after that](#practice-paths--gradualism-and-suddenism) about these abrupt shifts. Sometimes stages or transitions can be profoundly disturbing or painful, one sometimes encounters language like "dying the great death," or depictions of certain stages of awakening as ripping out one's entire existential grounding. Note that disturbances are also often reported over long stretches, or intermittently, over a single "stage," etc. Saliently here also, in *some* cases profound disturbance due to exogenous circumstances can be a boon to spiritual development, eg. some reports of people achieving awakening while imprisoned or being tortured. Some schools (and really these are the ones I take most seriously) are clear about two related points: 1. that there exist many false starts and provisional or incomplete awakenings, and the path is long and windy; 2. that temporary, fragile views are not true awakening. Re 1.: in these schools it's taught that overwhelmingly, a student's initial apprehension of a practice, teaching, theme, or inquiry will be wrong or confused, and that in fact most of the work of meditation consists of being bewildered or exasperated by the teacher's instructions, or the difficulties in their application in practice. Many schools which don't have this quality strongly, still understand practice not to be a smooth trajectory upward, but that it often has intense swings up and down, including having to go back and relearn basics, etc. (In many cases this isn't explicitly taught, but is ambiently known in the practice culture.) (In a much gentler form, the practice system which I'll discuss in the [next chapter](/md/wayfinding.md) is sort of windy-bewilderment maximalist, which is interesting to compare here.) Re 2.: Most traditional schools which teach awakening are pretty insistent that awakening is among other things distinguished by being *irrevocable*, as in, that it is a truth which cannot be unseen, and does not roll back. In these traditions, a relatively immature student might try to reify a temporary or fragile state which looks *kind of* like awakening, but teachers are careful to track if it's the genuine article, in part by this criterion. That said, some lineages allow for lower awakenings that are described as "glimpses", though these are usually regarded to result in a kind of irrevocable spiritual *inclination* from then on. Some traditions also discuss *wrong* awakening, usually less in the sense of "fragile," but more often in the sense of "incomplete" or "a dead end," though also sometimes as "an apparent [gnosis](#practice-mysticism-awakening--gnosis), under a metaphysics which the tradition rejects." In particular, there's meant to be a variety of kinds of apparent insight, which are not the final goal of practice in that tradition, and which do not lead to it. ## Training regimes {#practice-paths--training-regimes} There's some difficulty here in trying to make generalizations across diverse traditions, or trying to evoke what all a given tradition involves in so little space. Besides that, I personally have mainly practiced in one specific community, and my sense of the details of other traditions are often scrounged from anecdotes or inferred from reports and traditional texts. So, this section is looser and more opinionated, I'm trying here to get at my *sense* of the meat-and-potatoes of contemplative practice, and how that relates to awakening. Most mystical lineages place either monastic or reclusive[^practice-paths--eremitic] practice as central in the spiritual path. Even those lineages open to laypeople (or those in cultures with no such concept) very often use periods of intensive practice, and often seclusion. Distinctly, all of these rely on a practice *container*,[^practice-paths--container] meaning a context and shape of living which constructs and supports a pattern of spiritual practice. Most often practice is understood as overwhelmingly shaped by the container, and sometimes the container is seen as part and parcel of practice. [^practice-paths--container]: I believe, a very modern term. [^practice-paths--eremitic]: The fancy Greek term here is *eremitic*, which is a nice trailhead into Orthodox Christian monasticism. There's some features which show up surprisingly often[^practice-paths--robes] in traditional kinds of practice containers, both long term monastic and short term: - Celibacy, or at least temporary abstention from sex and masturbation - Chanting and repeated recitation of texts - Sleep deprivation, and especially rising very early - Extended periods without speaking - Demanding relationships with an abbot or teacher - Various restrictions on behavior, most often restricting access to ordinary entertainments, but sometimes extensive and somewhat arbitrary systems of rules, regimented schedules, etc. [^practice-paths--robes]: This is neither here nor there, but I continue to be confused if the "poverty, chastity, robes" thing is a real convergent evolution, vs. just one or two original innovations that became really popular. I'm almost certain that the South Asian version of this is independent from the Christian one, but I can't tell of neo-taoists were already doing this when Buddhism got to East Asia, and it seems like "poverty and robes" happened in Islam in a few places, and Islam is sort of consciously never-monastic, which... something? Again I feel overindexed on """world religions""" here, mostly just noting that I'm confused.

(But also, something about convergent evolution for shamanism having some stuff in common with the cross-cultural pattern of monasticism, but the latter being more like, "a community, institution, and a monastic discipline." ... again, confused here.) Again, even lay lineages very often use *periods* of intensive spiritual practice, as well as using many of these sorts of features while maintaining normal responsibilities to one's household, etc. Some modern western practitioners try to shoehorn practice into a normal lay life with an hour of meditation in the morning, anecdotally this seems to very seldom get very far on its own, and is very commonly augmented with periods of "retreats,"[^practice-paths--retreat] whether alone or organized with a community. ("Retreat" unfortunately evokes something like "spa day," in western meditator circles this always means "moderate length period of intensive discipline and practice.") That said, the most accomplished western teachers usually have had substantial periods, often cumulatively years, of monastic or pseudo-monastic practice. [^practice-paths--retreat]: I encountered a claim somewhere that this pattern was specifically an innovation IIRC in Burmese vipassana, as an attempt to construct some form of lay practice which would be legible to Protestant colonial authorities. (I thought this was from Chapman [here](https://vividness.live/theravada-reinvents-meditation) but it appears not. I'm still pretty sure I read this, I just can't find the source. In any case in the Pali canon there's no reference to anything like short practice periods, so eg. there's the vassa but that's three months, and was never meant for laypeople, etc.)

I tried to look into this once and I couldn't figure out if *sesshin* in Japanese Zen is modern as well. I feel like I've never seen reference to it in indigenous sources before the 20th century.

(Japanese Buddhism in general seems to have been heavily burdened and distorted by some attempt of the Japanese state to cowtow to the West during the Meiji Restoration in the late 19th century. The monasteries, which at that point were the largest landholders in the country due to a millenium of grants from patrons, were stripped of their properties, Buddhism was banned for 20 years, and when it was unbanned, IIRC, monastic orders were ~required? to reorganize so that monks would marry and become temple priests after a period of training, rather than keeping vows of celibacy.) This is substantially just about the time investment and focus needed to get results, but in traditional contexts it's often conceived of as removing oneself from unwholesome or spiritually disruptive parts of the broader world. Beyond just reclusion and renunciation, asceticism is a distinctly common feature of mystical lineages, in varying intensity. Less extreme examples include long fasts or secondarily sleep deprivation. Among more severe kinds of asceticism, very common features are putting the body in intense discomfort, we of course have the phrase "wearing a hair shirt" in English in reference to such a practice by Christian monastics historically, but purposefully causing pain and discomfort for spiritual purposes is attested in traditions all over the world. Of specific interest here is a distinct fetish on the part of a variety of eastern mystical lineages for transcending pain associated with sitting still for long periods, anywhere from an hour up to 24 hours straight, in the extremes.[^practice-paths--amputation] [^practice-paths--amputation]: I wasn't sure if I wanted this in the main body of the text, not that it matters much: there's some Hindu lineages that have traditions of elect devotees undergoing amputation without anesthesia, or other acts of extreme pain for the sake of discipline and devotion. Many traditional lineages, though not all, use regimented schedules, often with the entire waking day scheduled hour by hour. Many traditions with looser or no schedules still teach that monks should be diligent, resolute, and specifically *continuous* in their practice throughout the day.[^practice-paths--through-day] [^practice-paths--through-day]: So obviously I'm thinking of a bunch of Buddhist schools here, but I also have in mind Hesychasm in Orthodox Christianity, and I have a vague sense of mystics in western Christianity having this sort of schtick also. In practice many traditions soften these kinds of expectations over centuries, or it seems they're mostly aspirational, or achieved by only the most devout. Reports from western lay teachers who claim attainments (usually construed in the schemas of Eastern traditions, though note not just Buddhism) often include periods in their lives of very intense and disciplined practice, along with periods of laxity. Note that "disciplined" often doesn't include all of the strictures of full monastic discipline, which also actually varies a fair bit, but nonetheless. Occasionally, some teachers describe mostly being lax and spacious in their practice, and this affording transformative effects. ## Insight, openings, and awakening {#practice-paths--insight-openings-and-awakening} ::gloss[*Insight* is a discrete shift in perception or relationship to experience, often experienced as newly *understanding* or *seeing* reality.] In Buddhism especially, awakening is very often precipitated by what's known in modern terminology as *insight*. More broadly, there's a wide swath of reports from mystical and contemplative schools of distinct shifts in experience and behavior, both abrupt and progressive. ([See below](#practice-paths--gradualism-and-suddenism) re the last point.) Many of these are conceived of as [awakenings](#practice-mysticism-awakening--awakening), or as intermediate stages towards awakening, but many are also seen as important developments but separate from awakening, or are in lineages which do not teach awakening or have no comparable concept. Insight, by that name, is most often characterized by discrete shifts in perception or relationship to experience. Often these are experienced as newly *understanding* or *seeing* some feature or structure of reality or experience, hence the name.[^practice-paths--vipassana] [^practice-paths--vipassana]: Note the term is used in a mostly separate sense in the context of "insight meditation," see the footnote on vipassana [in this section](#practice-meditation). [sometimes insight is progressive, or at least the effects claimed by reports which use the term insight are sometimes also reported as blooming slowly over months or years.] [again, see more below] ## Specific practices {#practice-paths--specific-practices} *See also all of the practices I discussed in the sections on [meditation](#practice-meditation) and [features of spiritual practices](#practice-practices), as well as, maybe secondarily, the contours described in the sections on [metabolism](#practice-healing--metabolism) and [releases and openings](#practice-healing--releases-and-openings).* [so again, practices of discipline, cultivation, and devotion] ## Gradualism and suddenism {#practice-paths--gradualism-and-suddenism} ::gloss[*Gradualism* and *suddenism* are opposing perspectives re the achievement of awakening, namely whether it occurs progressively or discretely.] ## Misc {#practice-paths--misc} --- # Transformative Practice {#practice-transformative-practice} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/practice/transformative-practice — also at `/md/practice/transformative-practice.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `practice-transformative-practice--`.* *Transformative practice* is sometimes used as a modern generic term for all of the practices described so far in [this chapter](#practice). It's also useful for describing a greater breadth of practices, techniques, and [views](/md/metaphysics/ways-of-seeing.md) used in the context of everything from compulsory education, to addiction treatment, adult development, faith healing, etc. etc. I want to highlight two points here: 1. The pervasiveness of transformative practice, and its deeply intertwined relationship with extant cultures and institutions 2. The complexity, depth, and richness of the domain, in contrast with the relative paucity both in the models and the phenomenology reported in the context of almost all secular transformative practice ## Everybody's into transformative practice {#practice-transformative-practice--everybodys-into-transformative-practice}