Solar ☉ Exile

“Sinister Forces” Ft. CJ @FireBloodBone, Fr. @Solar_Exile Ep. 99 On: Vajrayana, Tantra, Vajrakilaya, Mahakala, Mahakali, The Left Hand Path, Dzogchen, Bonpo, New American Dharma, Vajrayogini, Sir John A Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon), Pashubali, Lamdre, Kubera, Kumanthong +V22- ⛩️

What is advanced meditation? This question has driven me since early childhood. After many years of effort, including with Terje Sparby @terjesparby over the last six, we now propose a formal scientific definition. Why does this matter? Without clear concepts, we cannot reliably identify advanced meditation, compare studies, distinguish forms, test mechanisms, or determine effects. Without a definition we are massively hindered. I thus announce a culmination and landmark for our team, the preprint: “Defining Advanced Meditation: A Conceptual Foundation for a Comprehensive Contemplative Science beyond Mindfulness Meditation, Basic Meditation, and Other Non-Meditative Consciousness-Altering Practices.” In it, we propose that: Advanced meditation consists of states, stages, and endpoints that arise with the maturation and mastery of mental activity skills. And that advanced meditation: –Is change in skill and experience, not simply how long someone has practiced. Long-term meditation is not advanced meditation –Is a maturation of mental activity: Effortful to effortless. Interrupted to stable attention. Negative emotion dissolving, and bliss, peace, and expansive awareness arising naturally –Includes three dimensions of meditative skill are especially important: effortlessness, intentional control, and self-attenuation –Includes states (e.g., absorption), stages (e.g., insight), generative practices (e.g., developed loving-kindness or visualization), and endpoints (e.g., transformations and events such as cessations) –Mastery involves increasing reliability and control. This manifests as increasingly being able to access states or sequences of consciousness –Is distinct from psychedelics, breathwork, postural yoga, and other practices that alter consciousness without involving mastery of mental skills Advanced meditation has been described in Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Islamic, Jewish, and other traditions, that can all be studied through our ontologically/metaphysically neutral framework. “Advanced” is not intended as a status symbol or ranking. It is a pragmatic and scientific category for understanding what unfolds in meditation. Our definition is fundamentally a proposal, not a final answer. It is a conceptual scaffold that can be tested, criticized, refined, and revised. Establishing this new foundation makes new questions more tractable, including: –How does meditation transform body and mind? Can it support exceptional mental health and flourishing? What can it reveal about the nature of self, suffering, and consciousness? Our intention is that this definition enables a new scientific era in which meditation research investigates the full radical possibilities of human consciousness. My deepest gratitude to Terje Sparby, my principal collaborator and the lead author of this work, and to our team Brian Toomey @bjtoomey, Malcolm Wright @punk_utopian, and Jasmine Ben-Joseph. Preprint linked in the comments ⤵️ Please feel free to share this work if you find it meaningful May this work benefit many 🙏

@LadyBugDarling @WukongReborn Adolf Hitler, the painter who set up Eva Braun’s sister with his mischling bodyguard?

@se13kie don’t instigate rando insane tradwifes with barren homes 😘😎