"The Warriors Meditation", TEM, and spherical awareness.

 

"The Warriors Meditation", TEM, and spherical awareness - meditation approach from Richard L. Haight.

A few weeks back I had been reviewing a book "The Warrior's Meditation" by Richard L. Haight. I purchased this on audible several years earlier, went through it, and then recently had a bit of spare time and decided to review the meditation and approach again.

I recalled that the approach related to the 5 senses and there was a favouring of open awareness using each of the sense doors, that then led to an open awareness of spacial positioning. That was about all I could remember. I didn't follow it up much after that time.

This time however, I was struck by the number of 'little gems' that the book/work contained.. topics such as alpha/beta wave brain states, attaining alpha states in seconds, the benefits of relaxed open awareness versus always being in a focused state (which is often promoted by many meditation systems), and many other little topics that proved to be highly valuable on the path.

I also enjoyed the comparisons between today's standard living mode versus the living mode that hunter/gatherers and anicent people would have lived in. This involved a much more relaxed focus with the 5 senses and an open awareness of what's happening (for survival), rather than always being zoomed into a very small point of focus, as we find ourselves often today-- with phones, reading content, projects, computers, driving vehicles, etc. -- and which all  have a small, but accumulative tension effect on our quality of living.

The meditation itself (The Warrior's Meditation), does have a lot of carry-over benefits, such as being able to access relaxed open awareness while going about one's daily activities, and also the ease at which it can be integrated into other approaches or just general daily situations.

It's nice to make an exploration of the 5 sense doors in this regard, and the last step of exploring spherical awareness or awareness of one's spatial location is really an interesting experience. Just using the practice of becoming aware of one's peripheral and total visual field, for instance, and noticing when one shifts into an alpha brain state, is worth having as a tool in the toolbox. Likewise, becoming aware of one's body and then the space around one's body, rather than just focusing on parts (as is usually done in vipassana approaches) is well worth the exploration time.

Richard L. Haight has a good number of videos on YouTube, and I feel that he's generally offering something new in the field with this meditation and his open awareness style meditations. I've not read any of his other books, although he's published a few more than just TWM.

Can it lead to liberation on it's own?

I'm not sure exactly. There's a lot of cross over between this open awareness style meditation and other approaches, such as Early Buddhist approaches to context based mindfulness and insight. Also there's obvious links between this and some of the Tibetan practices that use an open awareness style of contemplation such as Dzogchen and Mahamudra. Some teachers doing a similar thing would be Loch Kelly (Effortless Mindfulness), Shinzen Young (with his Do Nothing technique or SHF Global), Dean Sluyter (Dzogchen), and other teachings in the awareness teaching (Advaita) traditions that favour an open global awareness instead of a concentration approach. Note though that these approaches usually use the foundation of either Buddhism, Yoga, Shamanism, or Vedanta as a base. So, I'm a little doubtful that just picking up one technique or secular approach to things is going to lead to awakening without some of the other important framework parts such as having a stable, solid, ethical life in general, and including some sort of concentration practice on side -- which would serve to help understand the exact difference between open awareness and concentrated attention.

Overally, Richard's work is definately worth a look, and worth considering due to it's simple approach, and compilation of many related topics into an easy to understand frame of reference. Richard himself seems like a nice guy, and has a deep background in martial arts, healing, and cultural studies. 

Offical website:

https://richardlhaight.com/

Actualism or Actual Freedom - deep dive 1 - notes approach links issues discussions

 

Actualism or Actual Freedom - deep dive 1 - notes

I've decided to take a bit of a deep dive into a niche set of teachings and approaches called "Actualism" or "Actual Freedom". This originated around 12 years back, again from Australia (which is unusual in terms of being anywhere on the spiritual map). Originally, the approach was posted by a "Richard", and later included some other names "Peter", "Veneeto", and over the last decade has grown slightly to include others who claim to be 'free' and 'actualised' (but avoid common terms such as enlightenment, due to wanting to stand out as something different, a new teaching, or 'third alternative' to the current spiritual offerings out there).

If I had to sum up this teaching or approach, taking into account there's hundreds of lines of text on the source website attempting to explain what it is and isn't, then I would say it is pretty much:

- The consistent (or permanent when the habit self-ing/self-reference has ceased after a long while) state of present moment awareness with hightened clarity of external sensory perception and focus. This naturally leads to what AF is attempting to do, which is enjoy oneself and sense experience in the present moment (becaue the nervous system is calm, focused, clear and chilled). Of course, this isn't anything new, despite AF claiming it's a new thing, and this approach has been around for thousands of years via certain schools in yoga, Buddhism, Zen, etc. I won't say ALL schools, but certain niche schools that took this approach to clarity and awakening. IMO there are better ways of approaching this instead of using an enquiry only, and forsaking other aids such as a regular meditation practice, having some stability and ethics in life etc.. and this is why there seems to be a relatively few people who have stuck it out with AF and gained the promised end result.

I originally encountered this teaching and site (also) about a decade ago, but due to the lack of coherent content on the site, and a lack of structured approach, decided to leave it. There was some commentary on DharmaOverground and in a few other places such as Soh's ATR blog site, but commentary and understanding seemed to be limited to the main actualfreedom.com.au site.

Since then, an excellent, coherent and simplified site has popped up explaining Actualism in simple, easy to understand terms. This can be found at https://www.simpleactualism.com/intro and I would highly recommend this over the original 'Gold Standard' website http://actualfreedom.com.au/ in terms of beginning to study the approach. However, the original website does have a massive amount of background information and Q&A, which makes it worth browsing over time. 

----

As an initial reading or overview today, after having fully gone through the SimpleActualism site, some points I'll note here:

• The aims seem to be similar to certain approaches in early Buddhism, being insight into anatta, and the loss of a 'self'/'I'/'being' or referential entity or individual. This is for the overall aim of being "happy and harmless", and living a sort of 'natural', 'common' state of existence without psychological suffering. Key differences between other common spiritual paths include the treatment of sensuality (encouraged in AF, not encouraged in Early Buddhism for instance), a lack of philosophy (supposedly, although there's quite a lot of philosophical conjecture on the AFT site), and of course a much simpler structure and approach with AF, excluding all rules, conduct, cultivation of concentration, insight, maps, etc.--- NOTE however, there is some talk about cultivating a harmless, happy state of being and investigation into feelings, emotions and negative states with the intent of move out of these and back to the natural, actual state of affairs. 
• This also resembles some nondual approaches, particularly certain contemporary nondual teachings such as Tony Parsons and Jim Newman, where there is just  experience or life happening in a fresh way right now, minus any person or individual present.
• There are however, some ideas present when one probes deeper into the AF approach, and some of these ideas remind me of Barry Long's approach to the human being and body, a removal of all spiritual concepts, theories, and spirituality in general, coupled with the idea of the present moment or NOW being all there is (cf Eckhart Tolle, Barry Long), which is a sort of gateway into experiencing this moment as being a living body. 
• The process for this, or practice if it can be considered one, is to use an enquiry to return one's awareness to the present moment and experience 'being alive' via the senses and apparent (actual) world, minus any reference to an internal entity. In terms of likening this practice to other practices, it would be what Shinzen Young calls "See-Hear-Feel Out" or favouring the attention on external phenomena appearing at the 5 sense doors- excluding internal images, sounds and feeling sensations, and a noticing of how this brings about a cooling of the mind and feelings and generalised happiness and wellbeing. Internal feeling sensations and emotions are used differently and in an investigative way to dig up what's happening in one's experience that triggered a loss of the 'happy, harmless' state, with the aim to bring up these emotional causes or triggers into conscious awareness and drop them in favour of returning to a moment by moment experience of being alive (and happy and harmless).
• The enquiry itself is "How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?". There is also some enquiry and investigation into moments when one is not feeling 'good', or ruminating on thoughts and feelings outside of the present moment, which are the cause of negative emotions in general.
• A main goal of the Actual Freedom approach is to be "happy and harmless". Triggers that detract one's experience from this are investigated as to when and how these arose, with the idea being to return to one's experience at this moment as a living body-mind, happily and harmlessly.
• Fundamental to the AF approach is also the notion of a PCE or Pure Consciousness Experience, which is basically a hightened sensory experience (since it seems described mostly as a temporary, but attainable state), whereby one experiences the perfection of sensory phenomena (the actual world) and one's natural being, minus any referential self/I/me. These "PCE" episodes are encouraged and used in the approach as well, though there's discussion about how and when to use these episodes with the aim of permanent 'actual freedom'.

As I go through the approach over the next week or two, and edit this blog post as needed.

Main themes or points in the AF approach:

• Time - This moment here and now is the only time there actually is.. past and future are imaginary. Experiencing happens now and this needs to be repeatedly understood and experienced
• The self, "I", "me" is the root cause of all misery and problems with the human condition, and is an instinctual, animal self built up over time and evolution. This is the part that is 'immolated' or removed to enable simple, natural living as the actual
• The means to do this are- the enquiry 'How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?", or similar. Investigation and uncovering triggers that have removed one's state from being happy, harmless and then a return to that state. Abidance in the present moment and foregoing past/future concerns. Sensory experience and refinement leading to PCEs and unmediated experiencing of phenomena (without a mediating 'I' or inner self).
• "Virtual freedom" is a partial arrival point where 99% in this process where the problematic "I" has been eliminated. Over time, the remaining 1% is eliminated, culminating in actual freedom
• Repetition of the above and having the above as an overarching goal for one's life situation until change takes place and is embedded as an ongoing experience\

Daniel Ingram has summarised the practice very well here and some relevant conclusions:

https://www.integrateddaniel.info/my-experiments-in-actualism/

Some discussion material is available on the internet, and the bulk of it was done around 2010-2015 when this method seemed to be capturing the attention of a few people in spiritual circles:

Discussions

 

ATR

Attempts to map Actualism with ATR maps, Buddhist maps etc.

 

https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2009/09/actual-freedom-third-alternative.html

 

https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/search/label/Actual%20Freedom

 

original article by Soh re: Buddhism and actualism

 

https://app.box.com/s/sbyi64jrms

 

 

REDIT discussion from 9 years back on differences with AF and Buddhism, Dzogchen

  

https://www.reddit.com/r/Dzogchen/comments/3n75ik/actual_freedom_philosophy_and_method_seems/

 

 Actualism practice discussions on DhO

https://dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/2401384

 

Related: "Actualism Made Easy" ebook by Justine (pdf)

https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/2969859

https://www.scribd.com/document/89160012/Justine-s-Memoirs-on-Actual-Freedom-Part-I

https://www.calameo.com/books/001100941868620b67859

 

Apple juice mindfulness

A few days ago I was boarding a plane from Singapore to Penang island, and noticed that my seat was next to a Theravada (Buddhist) monk in his 40's. He was wearing the traditional brown robe and was already seated.

Although interested in making a connection, I withheld conversation for most of the trip. At the end of the trip I discovered he was a Burmese monk (in the Mahasi tradition) headed for a meditation centre in Penang.

During the trip we were served a snack/drink, and we both chose apple juice as a beverage. Theravada monks due to their vows, do not eat solid food after midday, hence he only took a cup of apple juice. Myself not being particularly fond of airplane food also took the same.

I took about five minutes or so to finish the drink with some minor noting of its taste and color. However, I received a direct, silent teaching in mindfulness from the monk in becoming aware that he took around 20 minutes to finish the small cup. Each sip was savoured completely, mindfully, and slowly, no doubt attending to the sense perceptions such as taste etc., while drinking.

The event left a lasting impression on my consciousness and memory. No big deal, but it does show that mindfulness in action (when done with a high degree of awareness and intent) can and does impact those around us and in ways not always recognized.