r/streamentry • u/liljonnythegod • 2d ago
Practice Be gentle with yourself
Hope everyone is doing well. First a short update on where my practice is before I get into the gist of this post. Rigpa is stabilising and awareness is now unhooked from being within my head to now being no where with no location. It's not even that it unhooked and went from being within my head to nonlocal but instead was always nonlocal. It's also obvious that it is nontemporal as well.
I haven't made a post in a while and I tend to only do so when I arrive at something that leads to a significant change so I'm making a post about being gentle and an insight I arrived at this morning that has me in an ecstasy deeper and more worthy than any jhana I have accessed before.
Earlier I was walking in the park and I saw a child crossing a road and I had a flashback to when I was a child and had a traumatic experience with crossing a road with my mother. Suddenly a sense of warmth for myself as a child arose, in the same way metta has always arisen for any other child I see in day to day life. This hasn't happened before and so I was intrigued to go into it more. I thought perhaps I should see if I can main generating metta towards myself as a child but to go up in the years until I reach myself now and direct the metta towards myself now.
I reached a certain age it became obvious that there was a blockage like I couldn't give it to myself. I probed into why and it now makes sense why I have always gone from relationship to relationship seeking out love. When I was young, I never felt or received the love I should have, so I internalised that I would only be worthy of love once it was received from someone external.
This then resulted in not being able to give it to myself and is why I've always been so hard on myself. I thought that perhaps I should reconcile this by realising I am worthy of love regardless if someone is giving it to me right now or not but this didn't resolve the blockage.
So I probed into how I give love to others and it then it became obvious. Being gentle and being soft comes with giving love and this is how I have been towards others that I've felt love towards. So then I thought, have I ever given myself that same gentleness/softness and it's obvious I haven't. It took a single second from that insight, to be able to be gentle with myself and now it hasn't gone away and it doesn't require me to think about. The phrase you can't love someone until you love yourself really is true haha I always thought it was just a dumb cliche.
It feels like I'm now drunk in love, that is similar to when I've taken ecstasy or being in in deep romantic love but it's much stronger. The ending of tension in the body is great and for a while I thought that was all that would be needed. Once that's done and dusted, I'll have got what I wanted. But I was wrong, this love that comes without a condition, has been missing from my life and I never knew that it was missing because I didn't give it to myself.
As soon as I have became gentle and soft with myself, it is here and now will not go anywhere.
In a nutshell, be gentle towards yourself. Be soft with yourself. Growth is good and necessary but don't be hard on yourself. You don't need to be anything in order to be loved. I would hear statements like this before and think it was just philosophical jargon but it's not. Once you become gentle and soft towards yourself this love will overflow. It now feels like a great amount of metta that wants to flow outwards towards others.
đŤśđ˝
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u/ms_abominable 2d ago
I love this, thank you for sharing. It reminds me of parts work (also called Internal Family Systems) where you identify an inner child as well as any other versions of yourself that need healing. Sometimes there's also an inner teenager, parent, etc. Sending those versions of yourself love is such a game changer. It helps with awareness too when old coping mechanisms get triggered. Like, why is 12-year-old me showing up in a specific dynamic? Hmm, let me send her metta since I'm feeling insecure and bullied in that situation.
How you do self-care can also be tailored to what part of you is showing up. For example, my inner baby is very young and when she shows up I usually care for her in fundamental ways like eating or bathing. My inner child is a little older, maybe around 5, and needs to be "heard." For her, I'm more likely to seek a quiet environment and draw or paint.
I've found this approach helpful for regulating, very cool to see it applied in a Buddhist context!
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u/liljonnythegod 2d ago
Oh yeah I've heard of IFS before. I didn't find that it did much for me compared with just powering through the path but I might have to look into it again
Have you became familiar with the younger versions of yourself so that when they do show up, you are quickly aware of it?
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u/ms_abominable 2d ago
Yes, the familiarity came with repeated awareness. I love body scanning too, saw you mentioned it. Learned some techniques through Vipassana that help me tap into what version of me is "here" now somatically. Every so often a new version makes themselves known, that's always fun because it means a more subtle awareness. Other times I've healed a part in a way that soothes it into being less prominent because my needs are met.
This convo is so good, thank you for prompting it. What does your meditation practice look like? I find it cool that different roads can lead to the same insights and healing.
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u/liljonnythegod 2d ago
That is really interesting that you can pick up on different versions of you that are here through body scanning. I never came across anything like this but it makes sense how it can be done.
The future self stuff is interesting as well. Going to play around with that and see what happens but I do always hear of self improvement people on youtube who speak about doing things for your future self out of love for yourself.
My practice has been quite varied since I've began quite a few years back. Started with shamatha and TMI then began noting and body scanning which got me SE and much beyond. A year ago I shifted towards Mahamudra but still do body scanning here and there. I think I have spent a lot of time dealing with awareness and now that's settling to how it should be, healing practices seem much more intuitive. I have came across people who refer to the path as a mind, heart, gut awakening process so perhaps I'm now falling into the heart part of the path.
Are you mainly doing IFS or do you follow a specific tradition?
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u/ms_abominable 2d ago
Ooh forgot to say that it isn't all in the past. You can have parts that are a future self. My girlfriend often says, "Thank yourself later" when she's doing something for "future her" like meal prepping. I like to think that's a version of yourself that you can also be in relationship with and send metta.
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u/1cl1qp1 2d ago
Excellent comment!
Being gentle/compassionate toward yourself is very important at a fundamental level.
Are you a Dzogchen practitioner?
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u/liljonnythegod 2d ago
Thanks. It really is.
My practice is somewhat disorganised as I've read and studied quite a few different traditions but I started out with mainly Theravada (shamatha, noting and body scanning) and then found myself more inclined to Mahamudra a few years into practice.
I tried Dzogchen before but it didn't bring any results and Mahamudra lead to progress so I stuck with that
It might be time for me to look into Dzogchen as perhaps I might find it more accessible now
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u/Impulse33 Burbea STF & jhanas, some Soulmaking 2d ago
It seems that they both point to the same thing, at least according to Vajrayana masters. I too found Mahamudra to jive better with the insight/samadhi approach more common here.
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u/liljonnythegod 1d ago
Yeah that's true, it's the same end result just two ways of doing it. I once read somewhere that mahamudra works with appearances and peeling away delusions until awareness is left at the end but dzogchen works with awareness itself from the beginning and resting as that clears away delusions
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u/1cl1qp1 2d ago
I've tried some Theravada, too. My main practice is Zen. What do you notice to be the difference between Mahamudra and Dzogchen?
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u/liljonnythegod 1d ago
I read somewhere before that mahamudra works with appearances so you're basically peeling away delusions in a step wise manner until empty awareness is left but then dzogchen works with awareness itself from the beginning and resting as that which will clear away delusions
Mahamudra to me felt more active and required analysis of experience which suited me better. It was like I was solving a problem to reach a goal where as dzogchen was recognising the goal and letting the problem solve itself.
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u/Impulse33 Burbea STF & jhanas, some Soulmaking 2d ago edited 2d ago
It's funny how progress in the path can show up as the thoughts swimming in our head starting to look more and more like Hallmark card lines.
There was an interesting yoga session I attended at a music festival once. While sitting cross-legged, the instructor had us caress and massage the bottom of our own feet and do it with the love and tenderness of an embodiment of unconditional love would. Then asked why we can't give ourselves that same type of care. I started bawling for a quite a bit after that question.
As the Buddha said, there is nobody on this earth more deserving of your love than yourself.
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u/liljonnythegod 1d ago
That last line about nobody on earth is more deserving of your love than yourself hits so strongly
It really is so easy for us to give out love but not give it ourselves
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u/III_Inwardtrance_III 2d ago
Seriously the sending love or metta to yourself is underrated. Every time at work I start getting angry or short with the situation I stop and send love directly to my heart. It seems like you can also pull more metta toward you with the heart, and send it toward yourself.
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u/liljonnythegod 2d ago
Honestly it's so underrated! Can't believed I overlooked it for so long
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u/NibannaGhost 12h ago
Do you think it wouldâve been possible to access this love earlier in your path? Your post really makes me want to practice self-metta. I have a tough time accessing it, any tips? I feel like it could lead to jhana and stream-entry if I knew how.
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u/liljonnythegod 3h ago
I think so yeah. Previously I couldnât generate metta towards myself because the blockage I mentioned in this post but I think I could have done this without even having started the path. I think some people do therapy and reach the same conclusion of being overly hard on themselves then when they learn to stop they experience the same thing
The key thing that worked for me wasnât trying to direct metta towards myself but to stop being hard on myself
It took imagining directing softness towards a small child, to my young self and then seeing if that softness is given to myself at the present moment
When I saw it wasnât, it then wasnât about directing softness but instead loosening up the hardness. When I tried to direct softness to myself it didnât work because it was like I was trying to replace the hardness with softness
This softness seems to actually the natural way I am and I imagine it is the same for other humans. Itâs like I donât think about being soft to children or animals, it just happens with no effort and gives me energy instead of taking it
Itâs quite difficult to put into words what loosening the hardness is like but it felt like giving myself a break if that makes sense
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u/XanthippesRevenge 2d ago
I always enjoy your posts.
I had to contend with a lot of child versions of me, and eventually once I got through infancy, I had past lives to address. But the methodology is always the same. See the series of sensations that were experienced as overwhelming and, with the greater level of context, see the perspective of what is actually happening more clearly to free the previous version of yourself.
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u/liljonnythegod 1d ago
Thanks!
That's really interesting. I'm curious about the past lives stuff. How did you recognise that there were past lives to address? Were there memories that came up?
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u/XanthippesRevenge 1d ago
I actually didnât know or even think they were meaningful initially, felt like they were part of the illusion or whatever. But they would come up from time to time in meditation.
I eventually remembered all the way back to my birth trying to resolve conditioning and reactivity. And I noticed that the moment I was born, I actually was not a blank slate - I had perceptions and filters going already coming out of the womb! So remembering birth did not resolve some of my conditioning. Ugh!
I puzzled about this for a while. Eventually in meditation I got really deep and was guided to press some pressure points on my body. Suddenly I had the clearest memory Iâve ever had of a life that wasnât this one, witnessing a horrible tragedy and the ensuing perceptions and identifications that came from it that have haunted me ever since. I knew in my heart that this explained the unresolved deep pain Iâve been living with. My mindset is totally different now. Sometimes working within the illusion is what is needed. If I keep my mind toward truth it will be ok.
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u/hypercosm_dot_net 2d ago
What is directing the love? Or what is loving?
I have a hard time reconciling the concept of emptiness with love.
Related to the concept of no-self, I keep reading everything is love/awareness/consciousness. But don't understand how that squares with emptiness.
If "everything is empty", why is there love?
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u/liljonnythegod 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yeah I used to think the same but this way of thinking is actually clinging to nothingness without realising and not fully comprehending emptiness
Just because there is no self here or no thing anywhere and life is with zero separation, doesn't mean there aren't things. It's just that these apparent things are empty of inherent existence. They exist interdependently not independently. When we focus too hard on seeing the emptiness of things and ourselves, we can fall into the thinking there are no things at all and then we can bypass compassion by thinking there is nothing so then there is nothing that can give love and nothing that can receive love
"Everything is empty" is a partial truth which relates to phenomena and the relative world and it's specifically about phenomena being empty of self, i.e empty of inherent existence
But there is something, which isn't a thing, which isn't empty of self but is instead empty of other. This means it does inherently exist since it's uncaused and non-arising. It's empty of other, because it is all there is. There is nothing outside of it and so there isn't inside of it either. It's not a thing. A singularity is not a thing because where there is a thing there is always "not the thing" which is required to define the thing, which means there are two things. It's for this reason the term non-dual is used.
It is cognizant/luminous, emptiness (since not a thing) but it is also energy and all appearances (including us) don't arise as separate from it. This appearance that is me can be gentle and soft towards this appearance that is me and likewise this appearance that is me can be gentle and soft towards all other appearances.
There came a point in my practice where I experientially knew that I am a non-arising appearance, inseparable from reality, with senses that can sense and experience reality. I cannot step outside of reality so there is no need for me to try to know it. What else is there to do then? Just here sensing, breathing, eating, sleeping, playing. Nothing to do and nowhere to go. Was there ever anything that was required of me? Yes I needed to clean up the delusions and gain wisdom but really there was never anything required of me to do. In that way, I was always free from the very beginning.
What is unconditional love besides love that gives and requires nothing in return? Conditional love is not really love it's a transaction so all love is only ever unconditional or it isn't love.
Here I am for no reason with nothing to do and no requirement of me to do anything in return for life. Such love I feel!
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u/hypercosm_dot_net 2d ago
Beautiful. Thank you so much!
This is something I couldn't wrap my mind around, but I have a better understanding now.
This should open things up for me so I can have better practice.
Your original post really resonated with me, so I wanted to know how I could also accomplish this. Thanks again. <3
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u/liljonnythegod 1d ago
Thank you. No worries at all. Glad I could be of help with your practice.
I was the same for a while as well, I think the emptiness stuff can be taken far in one way but then make us a bit detached from life instead of non-attached
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u/duffstoic Love-drunk mystic 2d ago
Whoohoo! Sounds like awesome progress. Thank you for sharing. đ â¤ď¸
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u/liljonnythegod 1d ago
Thanks Duffstoic! A while back I remember seeing the tag under your name "love drunk mystic" and wondering what it would be like but I now I fully get it haha
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u/duffstoic Love-drunk mystic 1d ago
Hahaha, yea, it comes and goes for me after an experience I had on 02-25-2025, but it is powerful stuff. đ
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