Thread! Today's conversation was about maps (such as Progress of Insight) and stream entry. We talked about how maps can be great diagnostic tools, but how they can also cause a lot of stress for people when they become goals. On the other hand, they can show that there's more 1/

2/ There's more to practice than just sitting and becoming a little bit calmer. Practice can be totally transformative (without trying to spin fairy tales). So how to resolve this? We discussed a few ways.

3/ I mentioned that when I first met my zen teacher Jeff Shore in Kyoto, he asked me, 'why are you here?' and then elaborated that he was asking me to investigate WHY I have been drawn to practice for my entire adult life. And to sit with that enquiry. What is that impulse?

4/ He planted the seed of understanding that it's very helpful to consider attraction to the Dharma and practice as something that happens to us, that is unfolding in our life. Something in us recognizes that awakening is possible, and we somehow end up on the cushion again.

5/ This is a useful perspective not just to think about your entire practice and life, but also to feel into moment to moment. Practice is happening to you, you are being practriced. (Who is the you? practice is being practiced. wow so zen)

6/ It relates to @danielmingram's treasure of a video about vipassana, the shift that can happen where the vipassana is just happening in experience, without a knower/doer creating that duality first. https://vimeo.com/250616410 . This video is pure, pure gold.

7/ Next to the 'practice is happening to you' point of view to dismantle striving related to maps and goals, there another, powerful approach: to just investigate the sensations/experiences/tensions that thinking about goals in meditation brings up.

8/ @amitoe25 for instance mentioned that the talk about Stream Entry gave her similar feelings as the pressure she feels about her PhD project. Those kinds of feelings are super useful things to engage with in practice! So maps make you nervous/strivy/feel incomplete? Dive in!

9/ Our group member Konstantin really dove into this desire associated with maps as a focus for practice, and it has benefited him greatly.

10/ From personal experience, I would say (not an original thought of course) that it's also a really great way to engage with desires to go 'back to' wonderful meditation mind states. That desire is a great meditation focus.

11/ Our group member Eli from @DharmaClctive who prompted the conversation about maps concluded that 'unattached optimism' is a valuable way to engage with practice. He posted this Matrix clip afterward, so relevant:

12/ And Eli also gave us this quote: from Mary Oliver:
"You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves."

13/ @eveningoflight reflected on this that from a sort of sub-personalities perspective, some sub-personalities might feel striving, while others don't.

14/ Finally, all of this relates to jhana practice as well, allowing ourselves to experience all the good stuff that comes from that can help resolve the kind of neurotic 'puzzle solving' mindset and create the unattached optimism Eli mentioned before.