Valerie: So... this is what I like to call the Snow Shoveling Problem. This is an elaboration of what Ariadne was saying about not being able to conceptualize the path, or the wisdom of the suttas.
You have the experience (literally the wisdom) of having the cold deep set into your bones. Of coming inside and feeling a warm drink map out your insides. And of having the outer skin of your body be fully warmed up now, while the insides are still icy.
If you talk to someone who’s lived in Florida their whole life, and describe those experiences to them, they can be the smartest, most imaginative person in the world, but they’ll still only be able to construct a mental model of the experience. You can’t transmit the body knowledge of the experience, the learned wisdom of it. They would have to have that experience themselves, to understand it. Knowledge (left brain, concepts, ideas, mental models) is incomplete, when it isn’t paired with wisdom (right brain, body knowledge, felt experience, emotions). And an incomplete understanding of an experience... is incomplete.
The suttas, and path, and awakening are like that. Many people, including myself when I started out, try to conceptualize what awakening is like. But it’s not simply a mental model, it’s not a concept, and it can’t be conveyed by concepts. It can only be experienced. Having stream entry gives you a basic body knowledge/wisdom of awakening, without which you can’t see the entirety of where the suttas point.
Trying to understand where the maps (suttas, descriptions) lead before doing the actual work of sitting and experiencing it is one of the traps that gets people caught in the dark night. I was there for a fair bit. It’s kind of like a... permanent existential crisis, the entirety of the world goes bleak and gray, even the things you thought were important cease to matter, and you have nothing to cling to.
The way around that, is by already having a strong practice, focused on jhana work.
v1.0 - Last edit 15-March-2021
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