[Tetsuo]

Thanks for sharing, HugoZyl. Your story is an interesting and eventful one. I hope the resources here help you continue making progress.

As for myself, I’ve noticed recently that the gap between having a sensory experience and experiencing a triggered response has increased in duration. Along with this, the strength of the triggered response itself seems to have weakened.

As a result, the mind is beginning to observe for itself the arbitrariness of attachment, in the sense that it clearly depends on conditions rather than being something intrinsic.

I’ve also started to notice how the act of assigning meaning subtly shapes how things appear. There are moments where it becomes clear that the mind is actively making things seem a particular way.

For example, when I look out of my living room window at the apartments opposite me, I can sometimes see the mind quietly engaging with that visual experience, moulding it into something agreeable. This process is quite subtle (at least for me at present), but it’s something I didn’t notice nearly as clearly before.

[Tetsuo]

I had intended to post the following comment earlier, but think that it may still be relevant to the discussion:

I just wanted to provide my two cents because Lal’s remarks about trying to understand where people stand resonated with me. Way before I found Pure Dhamma, I had some pretty unusual experiences with psychedelics (which, just to be clear, I am not recommending at all). Those experiences pushed me into an obsessive search for answers, but nothing I found was satisfying until I encountered Pure Dhamma.

Even then, it was only when Lal began explaining distorted saññā — how perception and value are mentally constructed rather than inherent in objects — that the pieces truly clicked for me. I realized that what I had experienced earlier was just a brief glimpse of how the mind projects qualities onto things, which they don’t actually possess in the way they appear to.

For instance, during one of those experiences, I tried playing a video game with friends. Normally, the game had obvious entertainment value. But suddenly, it was as if someone had flipped a switch and all that “fun” was gone. We still understood exactly how to play. The rules, the goals, what was happening on the screen — all of that was perfectly clear. What vanished was the sense that it was enjoyable. We stopped playing because once that enjoyment disappeared, it felt completely pointless. That was the shock: realizing that the meaning wasn’t in the game at all — it was entirely in the mind.

Another key realization for me was that once something like this is seen directly, it’s not about restraining the senses through willpower. It’s not about forcing oneself to avoid entertainment or attraction. Rather, when it becomes clear that perceived “value” isn’t inherent in the object, a natural shift occurs. There’s nothing to fight against; the pull simply weakens on its own.

I also want to stress that satipaṭṭhāna bhūmi and psychedelic states are not the same thing. However, those experiences did seem to provide a kind of temporary “distance”, which allowed me to notice this mechanism directly. Pure Dhamma is what later gave me the correct framework to understand what was actually going on.

And now, in everyday life, there are these intuitive flashes — for example, seeing someone and noticing that what once appeared inherently attractive is really just another mental projection. It’s not nearly as dramatic as that earlier experience, but it’s a subtle understanding that feels deeper than purely intellectual comprehension.

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