Warrior's exam

Question 1

Renunciation

Answer 1

Letting go
The willingness to be who I actually am
Renouncing the deadens ways I create extra suffering 
Giving up lying to ourselves 
Renouncing confusion 
Shift from confusion to basic sanity

Question 2

Self Aggression

Answer 2

Pushing away and rejecting how things are
Rejecting oneself and one’s experience
Self rejection creates a sense of isolation, a feeing of not belonging,
It can lead to trying to people please, fear of being abandoned, acting out in negative ways

Question 3

Maitri

Answer 3

Loving-kindness
Wish for all beings to be happy
The antidote of self-aggression
Seeing clearly and letting things be how they are
Not rejecting experiences or ourselves
A warm and kind willingness to experience whatever arises in us
It’s not a pep talk or warm and fuzzy or a technique
It’s an experience or attitude
We cultivate Maitri through our meditation practice because we see we are good
Bringing our mind into our body and watching it
We can develop Maitri with focusing practices too
Things will come up for clients and if we reject that in ourselves, the client can feel that

Question 4

Basic badness

Answer 4

Not true but our culture is in a trance of unworthiness
We get messages that we aren’t enough and we need more and only when we have enough stuff are we good
Looks like hopelessness, Anxiety, rage, depression, anger
This is ego-clinging- even thinking I’m bad is ego-clinging because it’s making myself a solid self

Question 5

Ego

Answer 5

Mistaken notion of a Solid self
We’re somebody but we’re a changing somebody
Our Ego is fake news
We exhaust ourselves defending a “solid self” that doesn’t exist
Ego is made up of sensations, thoughts, and a sense of duality- sense perceptions that we use to create a self

Question 6

Spiritual Materialism

Answer 6

Using spiritual practice to strengthen the ego
Misusing our meditation practice to support a sense of solidity
Privileging “spiritual” thoughts to negative thoughts
Hanging on to what you “think” your experience should be
You have a good experience in meditation and you try to get that to happen again
Spiritual materialism is saying “this is who I should be”

Question 7

Parasympathetic Nervous System

Answer 7

It’s like a “parachute” and it going to calm us down like a parachute helping us land gently.

Question 8

Sympathetic Nervous System

Answer 8

It is the “gas” that is triggered and puts us in hyper arousal and we aren’t able to use the higher functions of our brain
The parasympathetic Nervous system is the “brakes”
During flight or fight trigger- our digestion stops, pupils dia late, mouth becomes dry, might even pee ourselves
Zone of resiliency- if the “brake” or “accelerator” gets stuck there are problems
Can also get stuck in freeze

Question 9

Secondary trauma

Answer 9

Traumatized by seeing others in a traumatic situation

Question 10

Tracking, resourcing and grounding

Answer 10

These help regulate the nervous system
Not helpful for “waking up” and can be spiritually bypassing if you use these during meditation can you want to move towards difficult things
But these are good when you’re working with your own traumas and clients traumas
The limbo system has a protective negative. It’s, grounding and tracking can balance out the negative bias

Question 11

3 poisons

Answer 11

Passion, avoidance, and aggression

Question 12

Mindful Suppression

Answer 12

Postponing an emotion so you can allow your nervous system to relax
Count to 10 while angry for example to calm down and not cause damage

Question 13

Applying an Antidote

Answer 13

Taking in the good when amidst a negative emotion
Doing a loving kindness meditation when angry for example
Antidote for jealousy is rejoicing in the joy of the person setting off your jealousy
Penetrating to the wisdom of the emotion
The wisdom that your energy can go towards something else

Question 14

Brilliant Sanity

Answer 14

Basic goodness, our buddhahood, realizing the nature of emptiness, observing the flowing stream that is experience and being present. Not grasping our experience or pushing it away

Question 15

Touch and Go

Answer 15

Touching or tasting our experience and then let it go

Let go of story, recognizing your story as story and then touch your experience and then let it go

Question 16

Letting go

Answer 16

Being willing for the next moment to realize

When you do that you’ve already let go of the previous moment

Question 17

4 foundations of mindfulness

Answer 17

1) Body
2) Feeling
3) Mind
4) mental context or dharma

Trungpa’s 4 foundations

1) body
2) mindfulness of livelihood and life
3) effort
4) mind

Question 18

Mindfulness of body

Answer 18

Psychosomatic body is the mind’s interpretation of the body filtered through habits and thoughts
We all have glimpses of direct experience of body - of non-duality, of no separation between having a body and experiencing it

Body Body is the Buddha Enlightened body
Get closer to this through meditation, body awareness

We’re mindful of a confused notion of our body - the extreme is “body dysmorphic Disorder”, you experience your body as being wrong and reject it

Question 19

Focusing, felt sense

Answer 19

Focusing is a way to recognize and be with a felt sense
Using the body to go deeply into an experience beyond words
Focusing as a way to pause
Felt sense
Unclear, hard to pin down, experience arising in body but more than just body
An experienced sense of a whole situation that can’t be formed in words
Formed “Now” not in “body memory”

Question 20

Mindfulness of life or feeling

Answer 20

Pleasant, unpleasant or neutral
Paying attention to the texture of your experience
The opposite of bypassing
Paying attention to what’s going on in your mind- urge to let go of grasping and let go of clinging
We bring our mindfulness to our tendency to grasp and cling
Noticing the grasping

Question 21

Mindfulness of effort

Answer 21

Bring ourselves to the moment where we realize we are no longer distracted
Bringing mindfulness to the moment you are spontaneously present
Just suddenly back from the moment of distraction
The micromoment when you’re just here
You know you are “here” but you aren’t languaging it - bringing language to it
Being like an elephant walking around very aware - you should try but don’t try and try and try
Paying attention to effort that doesn’t take any effort

Question 22

The Abstract watcher

Answer 22

A function of the mind, mindfulness itself, bare awareness, bare attention

Question 23

Too tight and too loose

Answer 23

Too tight- thinking you should never get distracted
Extra tension

Too loose- having mind wandering all over and not bringing it back to the breath ever

Need to find the balance with resting in space and being with what arises
Balance between containment and openness
Precision as well as space
Noticing each moment of “now”, can never escape “now”

Question 24

3 marks of existence

Answer 24

Egolessness, impermanence, suffering

Question 25

Great Eastern Sun

Answer 25

Our own inherent human dignity, our capacity to be unlocked and joyful,
Sun of the great east where the sun arises- things are always arising
Sense of freshness and awakening
We’re always waking up again and again and again which is why the east is great
Our inherent goodness

Question 26

Setting sun

Answer 26

All of our attempts to turn away from our nature as the great Eastern sun
The great Eastern sun doesn’t feel safe to the ego
We see the great Eastern sun but it’s too bright so we turn away from the intensity
Leads to mindlessness
Tv splitting attention biting nails

Question 27

Cocoon

Answer 27

Putting our energy into setting sun we get stuck in our cocoon
Completely swaddled in bandages where there’s no fresh air or joy or intensity, it can be painful, not the intensity of suprise, joy and silliness
Staying with what is safe
Avoiding things you can’t control
Cocoons bc too small too smelly too lonely even with others there
If you poke a hole you begin to feel the fresh breeze of delight

Question 28

Cocoon maintenance

Answer 28

We try to get the world to become predictable and fixed

Trying to make things permanence that aren’t and trying to be happy all the time

Question 29

1st mark of existence Impermanence

Answer 29

Bodies changing, who we think we are changing

Question 30

2nd mark of existence

Egolessness

Answer 30

No such thing as a permanent separate solid self

Question 31

3rd make of existence

Suffering

Answer 31

True suffering or pain
Fade suffering is reaction to the pain, it’s optional,
The struggle not to experience the pain
Suffering is optional, pain is not

Question 32

The 3 lords of Materialism

Answer 32

1) Lord of Form, who rules the world of physical materialism;
2) Lord of Speech, who rules the realm of psychological materialism;
3) Lord of Mind, who is the ruler of the world of spiritual materialism.

All Three Lords serve their emperor, ego, who is always busy in the background keeping his nonexistent empire fortified with the ammunition supplied by the Lords.

Question 33

Spiritual Bypassing

Answer 33

Using spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid dealing with our painful feelings, unresolved wounds and developmental needs

Question 34

GAP

Answer 34

Ground
Aware
Presence

Question 35

Internalized oppression

Answer 35

Taking your oppressed identities and internalizing them or aspects as bad. Thinking I’m stupid bc people have said that.

Question 36

Ego-clinging

Answer 36

According to the Buddha, we’re clinging to a myth. It is just a thought that says “I,” repeated so often that it creates an illusory self, like a hologram that we take to be solid. With every thought, every emotion, this “self” appears to be more and more real, when it’s actually just a fabrication of the mind. It’s an ancient habit, so ingrained in us that this very clinging becomes part of our identity, too. If we let go of this thought of “me,” we might feel that something familiar was missing—as though a close friend or a chronic pain had suddenly disappeared
When it’s not clinging to ego, our mind isn’t stressed out, worried, or trying to prove anything.

Question 37

Trauma Resiliency Model

Answer 37

Titration- working with small increments of arousal

Pendulation- alternating between traumatic and resource sensations

Question 38

Right Livelihood

Answer 38

Making money by working for food and rent. It’s not a cruel thing but natural

Question 39

2 ways to get rid of an emotion

Answer 39

Repress/ suppress but the risk is that

Question 40

3 skills for regulating the nervous system

Answer 40

GROUNDING - using the body to become grounded on the earth, using gravity to settle

TRACKING - bringing awareness to what’s going on in the body:feelings, sensations, etc

RESOURCING - internal, external, and imagined - things that help bring comfort and ease

Question 41

3 ways to work with an emotion

Answer 41

REJECTING - mindfully placing attention on something else
ANTIDOTE - using something like maitre, rejoicing in joy for others
EXPERIENCING - recognizing brilliant sanity on an experiential level

Question 42

Shamatha - Vipashyana

Answer 42

Open eye meditation