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I wrote a comment a couple months back on /r/streamentry that I think could be helpful:

> I'm sorry this has been rough for you, and definitely sympathize since I've been trying to work through some trauma-related stuff for the past few months. You may want to read Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness to learn more about how meditation and trauma interact, or this post on the DhO discussing it. I've also found it really useful to work with a somatic experiencing therapist at the same time, as well as reading this book on somatic experiencing.
>
> This is an incomplete list of things that I've found helpful at various points. A lot of it is the standard advice for purifications and difficult emotional territory, but I found that for me it actually took quite a long time to accept that the advice was applicable and that I shouldn't just crank up the intensity of vipassanna to try to resolve it all today. So the following list is all stuff to try to intend to do when you can -- it's only natural for things to be raw and demand your attention right now.
>
> Backing off from trauma-linked body sensations, thoughts, and images. Not all the way -- but trying to turn down the volume. Culadasa talks about attention alternating between different sensations, and ideally for working through trauma most of the attention is placed on something pleasant or neutral, with attention occasionally flickering to something difficult. This is beyond just seeing that the the traumatic sensations are impermanent -- seeing that they don't have to be the biggest thing going on can be equally freeing.
>
> Social engagement. airbenderaang has already touched on metta and compassion practice, and those can be very helpful. One of the things with trauma is that at a neurological level, the freeze/fight/flight response actually disconnects the social engagement system. The reverse is also true -- so if you're in a traumatic state, socially reconnecting can diminish the intensity of the trauma and help integrate the trauma-related subminds. And it's useful to remember that social engagement isn't just happy/easy/compassionate feelings -- sometimes it's just being able to tell someone else why you feel bad, setting a social boundary, etc.
>
> Finding neutral body sensations. Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness talks some about this, and it's a focus in somatic experiencing therapy. Focusing on the breath or on certain parts of the body is not necessarily safe or trauma-free -- in fact it's common for those with a history of trauma for the breath and front of the body to be trauma-linked. So you can look around and see if the hands, the legs, the feet, or somewhere else feels safe, neutral, and unrelated to the trauma.
>
> Self-validation and positive self talk. To the degree that you can, try to start accepting the different emotions and thoughts that you have. One thing that can help sometimes is to try to experience an emotion in the body and then try to understand how it's compassionate or self-protective from a certain point of view. Over time this can help you build up the opposite of an inner critic. Tara Brach's RAIN method is good for this, and I've also found Harnessing the Energy of the Defilements from MCTB inspiring. Shargrol's Therapeutic Models for Meditators is also great in general.
>
> Re-engagement in ordinary life and regular tasks. It can be really grounding to just get back to work and friends that know nothing about your difficulties in meditation or with trauma, and to just re-immerse yourself with that. At the same time, it can also be very freeing to confide in a few people that you really trust. Exercise and task-focused manual labor are also helpful.
>
> Working with a meditation teacher. The feedback you can get from a teacher can help keep your meditation practice focused towards enhancing your emotional regulation, which provides a supportive base for eventually integrating the trauma rather than making it worse.
>
> Being extremely gentle with yourself, both in mediation and off-cushion. Start listening when part of you doesn't want to do something, and try to start acting from unanimous consensus rather than making yourself do stuff. If you're in internal conflict about what to do, try to figure out what both sides really want and then come up with a temporarily workable compromise.
>
> Humor. Some of the moments that have felt like a lot of progress towards integrating trauma have been when something about the situation was surprisingly much funnier than I expected, whether from dark humor about how it can't get worse or due to moments of insight feeling like I'm getting an undefinable joke.
>
> * Grief. Assuming that you're not getting sucked in too fast due to it, sometimes letting yourself really grieve and cry can be a relief from the constant pressure. This has gone best for me when it's limited in time and partially mixed in with a sense of hope, compassion, or humor. For instance, I've found reading The Sarantine Mosaic by Guy Gavriel Kaye seems to evoke a blended sense of tragedy and hope that despite everything I've got a meaningful role in the world.

For those of you who have the old edition, the newer edition of the book has a foreword that can be read on the Amazon page.

First Impressions

The first few paragraphs of the Introduction was all it took to reel me in. To explain, I need to provide a little backstory:

There are tons of research papers highlighting exactly what the benefits of meditation are, ranging from stress reduction to mood regulation and more, many of them mentioned on page xiv. In fact, that was my initial motivation for starting a practice several years back, but rather quickly I became confused by the often contradictory instructions online and all the Pali and Sanskrit words everywhere. I ended up doing basic samatha practice, but my motivation waned at times because I didn't have any clue about training the mind. After a while, I settled into a state of strong dullness and had no clue that it wasn't what I was looking for. I remember wondering why I felt spaced out all the time after my sessions.

One of the reasons I no longer frequent the meditation subreddit is because with hindsight I recognize there is a lot of bad advice there from people who don't know any better. I'll share a rather humorous example: I recently read a thread where a guy was clearly experiencing dullness/drowsiness, and the only thing making him aware of this was the fact that his own flatulence startled him to wakefulness. Well, the top few responses were just jokes and everyone who answered him seriously gave bad advice because they didn't know any better.

I just remember thinking that if I didn't have TMI I would've been stuck in dullness forever, probably. I wouldn't have gotten out of it with the help of that sub. So you can imagine my feelings of relief to find this book, and to have my gut feeling be validated.


Key Points

I think overall there are four key points in the Introduction:

• Through meditation it is possible to train your mind and to ultimately achieve awakening.
  
  
• There is (or, was) a strong need for a clear map of the process because with meditation's rise in popularity, fewer and fewer people are even aware of the potential for Awakening through meditation.
  
  
• Both samatha and vipassana are necessary for Awakening.
  
  
• "Brief episodes of samatha can occur long before you become an adept practitioner. Insight can happen at any time as well. This means a temporary convergence of samatha and vipassana is possible and can lead to Awakening at any stage."
  
  I find that last point in particular to be a tremendously powerful idea- one that I've used to great success during my sits. I have a problem with being impulsive. Thanks to meditation it's much less of an issue, but I'm not able to always maintain the long-term view. Being able to remind myself before every sit that if there is sufficient cooperation among the sub-minds Awakening can happen at any moment - that's a very important concept for me. It makes it much easier to cultivate a joyful attitude.
  
  

So as the author of that article: I do hold that I've had reduced procrastination, and that a major part of it seems like it can be traced to meditation and mindfulness practices. That said, at least so far meditation alone hasn't felt like it could fix everything, though it's possible that it would be even more transformative if I was further along the path (I'm around TMI's Stage Five at the moment).

According to procrastination researcher Piers Steel, your motivation for some task is affected positively by your expectancy (how much you believe in your ability to pull it off) and the task's value (how rewarding the task is to do, and what you expect to get out of it). On the other hand, your motivation is reduced by the delay (how distant in time the rewards for doing the task are) and your impulsiveness (which covers both your personal impulsiveness and situational factors that might distract you). [See also](http://lesswrong.com/lw/9wr/my_algorithm_for_beating_procrastination/I feel that meditation has helped me reduce procrastination by decreasing impulsiveness and making my subconscious more aware of what the true value of doing different tasks is.

But my suspicion is that for people who have big problems with procrastination (including some of my past selves), their main problem is with some kind of internal conflict, with different parts of their mind having various deep emotional needs and conflicting ways of achieving them; which may manifest as conflicting evaluations of expectancy and value. TMI says that eventually, meditation will lead to a unification of mind where different parts of your mind become united behind a single goal, and others on this forum may comment on that. But my experience as a Stage 5-meditator is that this seems to be a pretty long process, and I'm not there yet. When it comes to procrastination reduction, what's been more useful for me has been to apply techniques that address internal conflicts more directly.

I described this in my recent post on self-concepts; apparently a big part of what was going on was that I had an unstable self-esteem and kept feeling bad about myself, and a part of my mind wanted to prove myself by being productive and accumulating positive evidence about myself. At the same time, the exact nature of my insecurity was such that no amount of additional evidence that I accumulated was going to fix it; the problem was with some particularly negative memories and ideas that I had about myself, which had to be dealt with first.

In terms of Steel's research, you might describe this as a part of my mind thinking that productivity would have a high value (since it would fix this gaping emotional hole in my mind), whereas another part kept sabotaging my efforts to be productive by assigning the plan of "feel better about yourself by being productive" a low expectancy (as it had correctly previously noticed that this wasn't useful for actually making myself feel better).

It's possible that sufficient practice with meditation could eventually have fixed this, by healing those emotional wounds through a different route; but the techniques that I used fixed the biggest problem much faster.

On the other hand, I do still stick with what I wrote in my original article as well: meditation and mindfulness has also continued to produce major gains in reducing procrastination. Notice that the article you were referring to was written several weeks after I had fixed my self-concept: mindfulness has made it much faster to really take advantage of all the changes that have been happening on their own after I fixed that emotional wound in my mind. And on the other hand as well, I believe that the improved introspective ability that comes from meditation, made it easier for me to be able to apply those techniques which did heal the emotional wound. Both meditation and the techniques for changing self-concepts, have worked better for me together than I expect either would have worked alone.

I described the self-concept tools I used a bit in my self-concept post, and they're described in much more detail in this book (yes I know, the cover doesn't exactly inspire confidence in its contents). You may also want to look at other techniques which aim at fixing internal conflicts directly, such as Gendlin's Focusing, aversion factoring, and Core Transformation. (Necessary caveat: while several of these techniques have been developed by e.g. psychotherapists, there hasn't been very much - and in several cases no -
rigorous scientific research on validating their usefulness. I'm suggesting them because they have been useful to me and other people that I know, but you should give such a recommendation the same skepticism as any other anecdotal evidence. I can't make any promises of whether they will work for you, or whether the cause of your procrastination even is what I think it might be.)

Good luck!

I don't want to add extra reading to your life, but here goes ;-)

You may find "The Four Foundations of Mindfulness" to be of help off the cushion. I found this is of great benefit for dealing with what you're speaking about as well.

Awareness of form, feeling, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness (the five aggregates model) -- powerful stuff.

This is the [book] (https://www.amazon.ca/Satipatthana-Direct-Realization-Bhikkhu-Analayo/dp/1899579540/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502836095&sr=8-1&keywords=the+direct+path+to+realization) I found of great help.

I agree with everything u/Dr_Shevek said. I think it would be best to find a good tai chi or qigong instructor to work with. I haven't been able to find many helpful how-to guides online, and energy work seems to be more of an art than a science in a lot of ways. I personally don't have much money to spare, so I've been using the free Zhan Zhuang videos Dr_Shevek mentioned. Before my first sit of the day, I'll do a few minutes of the warm-up exercise, 5-10 minutes of the posture, and a couple minutes of the cool-down exercise. I feel like it's helping so far!


As I mentioned in response to another comment, I've also been practicing ashtanga yoga for a while now. I don't see as much of a correlation between my yoga practice and these energetic phenomena, but I've also been practicing ashtanga since I was in stage 4, so maybe the energy stuff I'm dealing with now would be a lot worse if I hadn't haha. Ashtanga in particular seems to have a pretty steep learning curve wherein you're just trying not to pass out and/or fall over before you can actually "flow" through the poses with your breath, which is the main goal of the practice. I've gotten a lot better at this over the past couple of months, and have felt some energetic stuff happening during my practice and more relaxation/groundedness after my practice during this time. But I'm not sure if this is an effect of the yoga itself, or just my increased perception leading to me noticing what has been happening all along.


In terms of books, here is the book written by the gentleman who made the Zhan Zhuang videos. I've heard good things about it. I've also seen Energy Work recommended quite a few times.

> I quickly lose mindfulness when I use the internet or talk to people

Those activities are a bit more challenging because our inclination is to give them 100% of our conscious power. If you want to be more mindful during these activities than you simply need to slow down. Not a lot - just slow down a bit and it will allow you to be more aware of your thoughts/feelings.

> mindful of what: current activity, my body, thoughts, vision, sounds, space, all at once, one by one…? My mind tends to complicate things and create “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts”.

Many great masters have said you should be mindful of everything. There is the cliche advice of focusing on the scent of soap while washing the dishes. I think this is horrible advice personally. The reason people peddle being mindful in this extrospective way is either unstated or to be more generally calm. But the point of mindfulness is not calm - it is insight. You pay attention to washing the dishes to realize the experience is arising and passing away perpetually. This kind of mindfulness I do not suggest until you begin having insights while sitting. So for now don't focus on extrospective mindfulness. I anticipate many people disagreeing with me on this point (the dreaded "traditionalist" as I call them), but I just do not see a realistic benefit.

At your stage you should only be mindful of thoughts and emotions. Mindfulness does not mean you are meditating all the time. Mindfulness simply means you are aware of what you are feeling. If negative emotions arise, know you are in that negative state and sublimate it. I had a mentor that always stated: "Get better, not bitter". It was his way of saying to know what you are feeling and use it instead of buying into them and believing their reality.

> What do you recommend?

None of them. I recommend Letting Go. IMO Hawkins is the best teacher of self-awareness, second to none. I hypothesize someone could reach stream entry doing nothing but their sitting practice using TMI and using Letting Go (as described in the book I linked) as their auxiliary "vipassana" practice throughout the day. Why do I say this? Because all the true Insights I have ever gotten (yes, including Insight into no-self) occurred through either sitting TMI practice or using letting go in the way Hawkins describes.


> How much mindfulness in daily life is expected from me at this point (I am around stage 4)? Is it more like “be mindful few times a day, while eating, brushing teeth etc, and everything is fine” or “aim at being mindful in every single moment”?

There are no expectations, there is only cause and effect. The more mindful you are the faster things will go.

> Is all of this not so necessary and all I need is developing virtue and naming distractions? Is naming distractions going like this - for example: I speak with someone, and every time I have some unrelated thought I label it?

Yeah - but don't use labeling while engaged in an activity. When you are talking to someone then just ignore the thought and keep doing what you were doing. Only use labeling when you are not doing anything and find your mind wandering. I think Letting Go is far superior to labeling - read that book and do that instead, I only suggest labeling because most people are unwilling to read another book.

> Sorry for too many questions :)

Nah, it's all good dude.

>However, the real question is: "Even if I knew the answer to that question, would it affect my decision making while I am alive?". As far as I am concerned: "No it would not". Therefore, the whole dilemma is irrelevant, for me. Or as in the link you posted: "This questions belongs to the category to: best put aside."

Yep, I think so. Thank you for the reminder on Sapolsky, he is brilliant. I watched something like 10 episodes of that series a few years ago. His Behave has been sitting untouched on my bookshelf for quite some time so maybe it's time to give it a look?

As Culadasa's approach in TMI jives well with you, you might also find that Joanna Macy's Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory: The Dharma of Natural Systems of interest. He has recommended it emphatically a number of times.

Yes. Watch from 1 hour and 17 min in:

r/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhtU5ei6YaM&t=247s

In terms of learning to work with energy the number one most important thing IMO is to learn to really ground/root your energy. That can be done very deeply through standing meditation postures from qigong (called Zhan Zhuang). You can also directly learn to sink your energy.

A few good books for learning to do standing meditation and to ground

https://www.amazon.com/Way-Energy-Mastering-Internal-Strength/dp/0671736450/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536310978&sr=8-1&keywords=way+of+energy

https://www.amazon.com/Opening-Energy-Gates-Your-Body/dp/1583941460/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1536311094&sr=1-1&keywords=opening+the+energy+gates+of+your+body

And for working with energy in general:

https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Promise-Qi-Creating-Extraordinary/dp/0809295288/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_3?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0809295288&pd_rd_r=f2a13599-b27c-11e8-ad5d-f9d1f1abea37&pd_rd_w=jSsme&pd_rd_wg=PHn62&pf_rd_i=desktop-dp-sims&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=6725dbd6-9917-451d-beba-16af7874e407&pf_rd_r=4E6D4PWEM54GBZ9TJKQP&pf_rd_s=desktop-dp-sims&pf_rd_t=40701&psc=1&refRID=4E6D4PWEM54GBZ9TJKQP&dpID=51wRmSyNaFL&preST=_SX218_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=detail

https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Light-Tao-Foundational-Practices-ebook/dp/B004J4WM6S/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1536311129&sr=1-1&keywords=healing+light+of+the+tao

https://www.amazon.com/Way-Qigong-Science-Chinese-Healing/dp/0345421094/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1536311155&sr=1-1&keywords=way+of+qigong

While getting out of a dark place involves changing your thoughts, emotions and behaviors over time, thus being a complex process, I'll just leave this right here, as I think it is a valuable tool in fighting melancholia and depression.


How Running and Meditation Change the Brains of the Depressed


How Running Rebuilds Your Brain To Be Less Anxious


Running and meditation


By the way, walking is good, but it's really different from running when it comes to positive effects, which are much more pronounced in running. Also, if you are used to drinking, drugs, fapping, social media or sleeping poorly, perhaps you should drop that. It'll help your mood.


Check out this book as well. It's well written and very practical.


https://www.amazon.com.br/Upward-Spiral-Neuroscience-Reverse-Depression/dp/1626251207


Edit: for clarity.

I'd add Bhante Gunaratana's 8 Mindful Steps to Happiness to this recommendation.

Not quite as concise, but one of the best "plain English" outlines of the Eightfold Path I've had the pleasure of reading. I regularly revisit it.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0861711769/

Thanks for the comment. For what it's worth, I heard that there are two versions of the ebook: the one that came out shortly after the original 2015 publication, and a newer edition that came out on January 2017, without many changes to the content, but with much improved format for the ebook.

The fact that a new version of the ebook was released is already a telltale sign that many technical publication improvements have been made. That's the usual reason they re-release ebooks not too long after the original, and without many content differences.

Nice job! And thanks for sharing.

Is this the book you're reading? Is it good for a modern audience? https://www.amazon.com/Noble-Eightfold-Path-Way-Suffering/dp/192870607X/

I have repeated rocking during meditation. Pretty much every monk I talked to told me to ignore it and just focus on the meditation. No one seemed concerned that it was dangerous. One monk told me that if I set a strong intention to not move, that could stop it, but he didn't say that I needed to stop it.

I have done some Qi Gong and it might be helping, not sure yet. The Qi Gong can be very spastic, like an exaggerated rocking of what happens in meditation, but maybe it will calm things down eventually. I like the simplicity of Qi Gong. If you're interested, this is a good book https://www.amazon.com/Way-Energy-Mastering-Internal-Strength/dp/0671736450 .

The metta style in the TMI appendix wasn't resonating with me. If that happens definitely search for other ways of practicing metta - the one in this book has been helpful for me:

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/aw/d/1909314552/

More info related to the author and book mentioned above:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/2oid0e/bhikkhu_analayo_on_alternative_metta_methods/

Hope you're well :)

That's great. Feel free to post here for questions. Also if your first language is German, I think this is the German language edition if it's any help:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N6DSM8I/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_ep_dp_A5y3yb0WG3CWY

Context: This comment is technically a reply to an excellent reply by /u/abhayakara, but geared more towards OP u/idigsquirrels. It just seems that a comment I wrote on another thread is highly relevant for this comment-thread. So I copy paste it below (it was reply to u/hlinha):

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After 4 days: Thanks. I can see how it could appear that I am interested in that whole "self" debate. But I really am not :). For me, the most useful model to view "self" is emergence - self happens (vs self is). The experience of being a "self" emerges from mind-body firing in suitable patterns in the moment. Sometimes I experience self "normally". Sometimes I experience self as "everything I experience". Sometimes I do not experience self at all. Maybe there are more ways of experiencing self. In all cases, self happens in the moment as an emergent property happening over some lower level complexity.

How about belief of having a self / soul / consciousness that exists even after my mind-body dies? Emergence model explains how the experience of believing such a thing happens (it just emerges from a suitable firing pattern). If we limit the experience of anything emerging strictly from this particular biomass, it implies that there is no "life after death". However, we do not know what are the exact rules of any experience emerging. Therefore, we can not rule out the possibility of some form of "self" happening even after death.

However, the real question is: "Even if I knew the answer to that question, would it affect my decision making while I am alive?". As far as I am concerned: "No it would not". Therefore, the whole dilemma is irrelevant, for me. Or as in the link you posted: "This questions belongs to the category: best put aside."

Analogous view that possible existence of God(s) is irrelevant: Apatheism.

Actually, I find it quite fun/beautiful to view that emergence is "the" operating principle of the whole universe(s) on all levels of complexity. Therefore, it might as well be god :D

PS. On Stanford course Human Behavioral Biology, Robert Sapolsky made students practice emergence by simulating cellular automata. According to his experience, some students find it transformative. They are "just at peace". Youtube links:

21. Chaos and Reductionism

22. Emergence and Complexity

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Later, /u/hlinha added:

>As Culadasa's approach in TMI jives well with you, you might also find that Joanna Macy's Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory: The Dharma of Natural Systems of interest. He has recommended it emphatically a number of times.

This kind of mind-induced somatosensory pain when meditating is often associated with trauma. I've worked with similar issues myself, though what you're describing sounds markedly more pronounced than what I've worked with.

If you know yourself to be a trauma survivor, then I would suggest finding a teacher that has some kind of background in trauma-sensitive mindfulness, and ideally some kind of professional mental health background.

One book (that I have not read myself), but gets mentioned a lot in this context is Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness by David Treleavan.
Another one (that I've partially read) is The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel Van der Kolk. That last one is very informative but also difficult as many of the case studies that are described are pretty harrowing to listen to - just a warning.

I meet with a teacher twice per month, and much of what we do, besides meditation, and discussing practice, is essentially talk therapy. She also prescribes me a number of non-meditation exercises that are pretty standard in working with grief and trauma. I've found it very helpful and beneficial to my practice.

Incorporating some metta, or what Shinzen Young calls Nurture Positive would likely also be beneficial. If you can cultivate some practices that plain just make you feel good, that you can depend on as a resource, it can provide a sense of security that lets you navigate more painful sensations and associated memories/emotions/thoughts with a much needed felt sense of grounding.

I recommend Compassion and Emptiness in Early Buddhist Meditation by Analayo.

It is a quite fascinating book, and gives a very different perspective on how to practice the Bramaviharas. The standard method of sending compassion to several people, first yourself, then a close friend or mentor, then an acquaintance, etc... This was not how the early Buddhists did it, according to Analayo's analysis of the suttas.

Same here. Started smoking during a spiritual crisis over a decade ago, and it's been hell trying to kick this addiction. I've quit numerous times, sometimes for 6+ months at a go. Then the trigger of anxiety flares up and I'm smoking again. I've recently had some success, however. My meditation practice has definitely helped me see craving more clearly, and given me skills to deconstruct the craving (e.g., mental image, mental talk, inner tightness/tension). Judson Brewer's book The Craving Mind also helped. https://www.amazon.com/Craving-Mind-Cigarettes-Smartphones-Hooked/dp/0300234368/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+craving+mind&qid=1571317406&sr=8-1 He also has an app called "Craving to Quit" that involves a mindfulness based approach to smoking cessation. It costs money, but it seems to have a high success rate.

What helped most was seeing the suffering that my addiction was causing my wife and having her plead with me to stop. That was huge. It's been going well, but the craving still rears its head some days.

The struggle is real. Best wishes to you.

For those of you questioning TMI in light of recent events, I would encourage you to take a broader perspective about the practice.

In my personal experience of 11 years of practice of the Eightfold Path, my results are that I am calmer, less stressed, happier, less knee-jerk reactive, and more at peace. Most of the time, I feel entirely at peace. I believe that my immediate family, although not practitioners, have benefited from my improvement over the past decade. It has been worth the effort!

I have only picked up TMI recently and it has already helped me with some meditation blocks that I wanted to work through. TMI seems to be a good meditation manual and particularly useful to those (like me) who do not have regular access to a good meditation teacher.

However, in traditional Buddhist terms and IMHO, TMI is incomplete in terms of Buddhist awakening. TMI covers 2 factors from the 8 in the Eightfold Path. Practicing one or two of these without the support of the other factors COULD be a path to nowhere for some people; others may find that TMI alone works well for them.

My recommendation to anyone questioning TMI is to continue to practice its meditation techniques but also consider incorporating the rest of the Eightfold Path into your practice and see for yourself whether it is worth the effort. Some sources for the Eightfold Path.

• Bhikkhu Bodhi: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/waytoend.html
  
• Eightfold path ‘class’ taught by Gil Fronsdal on AudioDharma: https://www.audiodharma.org/series/1/talk/3840/
  
• Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0861711769
  
  This is offered only in the spirit of being helpful and I in no way mean to criticize TMI.

\> It seems the perfect time for deep consideration.

Yes, you are correct. Some buddhist teachers like Leigh Brasington make the argument that that is "Right Concentration" from the eight fold path i.e. stable concentration leads to jhanas (flow like states) and which are then conducive for insight meditation practices e.g. insight into annicca, dukkha and anatta (What is the self?).

TMI alludes to a similar process in the middle to later stages through jhana and still point/witness practices.

https://www.amazon.com/Right-Concentration-Practical-Guide-Jhanas/dp/1611802695

Here's a quote from the book that compeltely transformed my experience of the process of TMI and allowed meditation to become much more enjoyable and progress to really happen.

"“To succeed, we need to approach the practice in a relaxed manner, free from judgement and expectations. Although we may start out this way, we can quickly slip into a critical, striving attitude when faced with problems such as mind wandering, sleepiness, and impatience. This attitude becomes the greatest impediment to our progress. When words like 'struggle' or 'difficult' come to mind, or if you feel like you're 'trying really hard, but not making any progress', you'll know it's time to examine your attitude.
Meditation is a series of simple tasks, easy to perform, that only need to be repeated until they bear fruit. So where is the sense of difficulty and exertion coming from? We usually describe a task as difficult because we're dissatisfied with our performance, which means we've started judging. Your expectations haven't been met, and maybe your starting to doubt whether you'll ever succeed, which can sap your motivation. You're not actually struggling with meditating, you're struggling with unrealistic expectations and an idealized image of what you think 'should' be happening... You can blame the teacher, the method, or concoct a story about how meditation isn't right for you. The real issue isn't that meditation takes too much effort, or that something is innately wrong with you, it's your judgement and expectations."

I hope this helps you too. I really think you need to let go. There's also a highly recommended book on that subject; perhaps it may be of use to you. Letting Go by David Hawkins : https://www.amazon.ca/Letting-David-Hawkins-M-D-Ph-D/dp/1401945015/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=letting+go&qid=1564334160&s=gateway&sr=8-1

Off topic from TMI, but I've been doing some of the exercises from "Core Transformation" and it might be helpful:

Core Transformation: Reaching the Wellspring Within https://www.amazon.com/dp/0911226338/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_jkLsDb81MDJ3G

Great answer, the second paragraph especially! Just one thing to add about how you do metta:

Usually we give metta to ourselves, and then to others. We send it to those we are close to, then those we are neutral to, then those we have difficulties with, and then finally all people, and the universe.

Bear in mind that sending metta to different types of people can bring things up from the past that need to be purified, and therefore might end up affecting your situation. This occurs to me particularly when sending it to people I have difficulties with, so as you can probably imagine, they are sometimes pretty intense. You get better at dealing with this though.

A good idea is to avoid sending it to those you have difficulties with for now. Maybe even only send it to yourself.

Oh - and one more thing - Letting Go by David R Hawkins will be good for your current situation. It is basically an entire book on purification!

And some good books to start with:

https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Promise-Qi-Creating-Extraordinary/dp/0809295288

https://www.amazon.com/Way-Qigong-Science-Chinese-Healing/dp/0345421094/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1525452385&sr=1-1&keywords=ken+cohen

https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Light-Tao-Foundational-Practices-ebook/dp/B004J4WM6S/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1525452407&sr=1-6&keywords=mantak+chia

The Body Keeps The Score is a fantastic book. Also, check out Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness.

The thoughts are just the manifestation of something deeper, I think realizing that thoughts have causes does not per se exclude free will. The whole topic of free will vs determinism has a specific framing to it that heavily relies on the western understanding of causality and the logic of A causes B. Eastern philosophy knows different logics and mutual causality where A and B cause each other. I just started reading about Mutual causality and maybe this can provide a rational stab at the paradox of free will vs determinism. I can't say more yet, sorry.

I just know many Buddhist scholars make the assertion that there is a middle way between the two extremes. But I suspect it as experiences we may have in meditation that can resolve this. Until then I try to avoid falling into extremes and try to dwell in the "don't know mind'

As you know, there are quite a lot of types of meditation, so I would start by searching a good teacher, who says right words from your POV and have some proven results, namely, students who have achieved the results you want to achieve - and use the method he uses. Check the book https://www.amazon.com/Right-Concentration-Practical-Guide-Jhanas/dp/1611802695, which is available on b-ok.cc too.

Where did you get the information about the copyright restrictions and what is this about? Both the German and American Amazon web pages list the guide as available in January 2018.

Edit: more relevant information

Links to the two people mentioned early on in the first video for their research:

Jeffrey Martin's website

Here is an amazon link to Robert Boyle's book.

/u/TMIMeditation you might find this book helpful as a companion reference: https://www.amazon.ca/Trauma-Sensitive-Mindfulness-Practices-Safe-Healing/dp/0393709787

A Meditator’s Practice Guide to The Mind Illuminated https://www.amazon.com/dp/099084773X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_zWF7BbPY2H7YF

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N6DSM8I/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_ep_dp_A5y3yb0WG3CWY

Regardless of whether someone else answers the question, here is the book in German, in case you didn't know about it yet.

what abhayakara said of course, but check your mindset too: https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-Dweck/dp/0345472322/ref=sr_1_3?crid=2G8KIJF84G68S&keywords=mindset+carol+s.+dweck&qid=1567345157&s=gateway&sprefix=mindset%2Caps%2C130&sr=8-3

https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/0671736450

https://www.fakespot.com/product/the-way-of-energy-mastering-the-chinese-art-of-internal-strength-with-chi-kung-exercise-a-gaia-original

Big ones for me...

The Upward Spiral

Loving What Is: Four Questions that Can Change Your Life

The Untethered Soul

The War of Art

I've had an accumulation of doubts, and after having a steady daily meditation routine of 45 minutes, I'm not meditating hardly at all. I know that strong doubt is my problem, not so much doubt in the method of TMI or Culadasa, because I don't actually doubt either at all, but more worried that I'm not ready for all of this, that as a mother of small children I need to have different priorities :( Feeling a bit sad and lost, but I have actually taken some action to address some trauma that I know needs attention via therapy, and before doing TMI it didn't occur to me to address this as my life was functional and happy anyway, but now I know I have to address all of this sooner than later if I want to take my meditation path seriously... I'm planning to read from the dharma treasure recommended reading list and center on shorter meditation sessions, and especially do metta and walking meditation. And see how things go and how I feel I suppose...I feel sad about my practice, but I feel very good and happy about my life in general... Its a bit strange, but before having my children when I started to delve into Buddhism, I was sort of ready to jump head in to everything, but now I have very strong attachments to my children and their welfare, and I worry if I come to pieces as I walk my meditation path,if they will be affected...I did ask Culadasa about this via the patreon questions, but sadly the question didn't get answered as only those questions of who attended got answered (again couldn't attend that day as there was a change of time and I would have had to get a baby sitter). The path is going to have ups and down I suppose... I'm also reading a book called Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness as it addresses one of my doubts and worries.

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