In the last chapter we described practice especially leading to 24/7 dedication. In our upbringings we develop attachments of ego, suffering and clinging through conditioning and conformity. We learnt that through mindfulness and focus such attachments can be released, and that through our dedication to practice we can follow our paths by releasing restrictions:-
To be fair, in chapter 2 we examined the arising of the restrictions and the process of releasing them - letting them go - with mindfulness and focus. The need for dedication came at the end, the process of conditioning and conformity is 24/7 releasing restrictions and not allowing new ones also needs to be 24/7. Practice has to be effective 24/7.
Also to be fair to seekers, what we have described so far does not appear to be that comprehensive - using mindfulness and focus to release restrictions and being dedicated 24/7. In this chapter we are going to look deeper into the restrictions, how they arise, and then consider consciousness in our practice. It also became necessary to discuss how practice developed for zandtao in order to see the importance of practice and dedication.
 Introducing the Model
To help understand restrictions and how we release them we have additional detail concerning human development; it is an infrastructure that can help us understand and improve our practice. In offering this more detailed description of human development, as usual zandtao does not ask you to believe it or accept it as truth; learn through your own experience what you believe. But you can use it as a tentative model in the following way. Partially accept the model as true, then in this partial truth does the model give you some understanding that can help with your practice? Develop your practice. As the restrictions go and your consciousness (space held for consciousness) develops, maybe insights will arise to add to your understanding. These insights will give you experience of the model but in the end if there are no insights don't accept the model as true - look for a different approach to building your practice with a different understanding.
Development Model
This development model is an infrastructure that can help us understand our practice. This adds to the human infrastructure, and is part of design that helps us understand Holy khandha and Sacred Wound as they arise in practice. For some seekers this model introduces new approaches, and might reqiuire a lot to take in. As already said zandtao does not want you to believe it, temporarily accept it, see if it produces results in your parctice, and possibly there will be insights that confirm. (The model has been added as Addon A for convenience, you could open a separate page for the model?)
Please read through the model:-
1) Prebirth:-
Plan of consciousness - Nature decides what your seed of consciousness is to learn, zandtao thinks of these seeds as part of the karmic plan. In this plan appropriate parents are chosen whose personalities apply the way the plan wants to teach.
2) Early life:-
From birth the seed of consciousness builds its host whose personality essentially lives life where the consciousness learns as the pre-birth plan. Around the seed this personality is aggregated with body, feelings, memory and perceptions, and mental processes - in some cultures known as khandhas (aggregates).
3) Adversity - conditioning and conformity
The learning of lessons is not easy, this learning arises in adversity as the personality interacts with parents and society. During this adversity there arises the survival process that protects the inner and creates the facade of self-esteem for the outer, the greater the adversity the stronger the clinging to this survival process.
4) Upbringing - conditioning and conformity
This survival process continues into adulthood as the seed is protected and the needs of the facade of self-esteem are met to survive in society - get a job etc. Fear and intimidation within society leads to increasing clinging to the shell both in terms of the outer facade and the inner protection. For inner protection a loving home is needed, without a loving environment to nurture the seed dukkha protects until there is sufficient strength to risk learning about love in our society.
5) Starting awareness
At some point in early adulthood can begin awareness of the seed, this Eckhart called firstgrace. For some people this awareness becomes a lifelong journey, for others it can be buried by the conditioning and conformity of upbringing as we don't live in a culture that recognises seed-consciousness - no mainstream CoA.
6) Developing Practice
After firstgrace awareness of the path (awareness of the developing seed) only becomes possible through the development of practice to break through the conditioning and conformity. This practice has 2 components:-
7) Releasing restrictions
With awareness of the path comes some understanding of conditioning and conformity, and the need to release the restrictions that arose as a consequence of the survival process. The more we learn of how this survival process affected us, the more we can release the restrictions.
8) Sacred Wound
When this development is discussed as a survival process and releasing restrictions, we do not feel the full impact of the importance of this process. But there is a whole package of development and consciousness that gives rise to this process. Through design we choose our parents in prebirth, but this choice is concerned with following the path. Therefore our parents who themselves underwent conditioning and conformity will unconsciously be party to the building of these restrictions. Understanding the roles of parents and how they contributed to the survival process becomes central to the release of restrictions as part of our lifelong journey, and some call it the Sacred Wound. zandtao sees this understanding (of Sacred Wound) as an aggregate that arises as the seed and its personality interacts with society, and has called it the Holy khandha because the survival process aggregates as egos around the same khandhas (of body, feelings, memories and perceptions and mental processes) that the seed uses to form personality. When releasing restrictions we release attachments that have formed around these khandhas; in life we all have this additional aggregation and releasing the restrictions enables us to follow our paths - hence zandtao's personal description of Sacred Wound as a Holy khandha.
9) Holding space for consciousness
Once we release the restrictions that built up in the survival process then we have started to empty contents of consciousness, but we are then vulnerable to further conditioning and conformity. So our practice requires a second component - holding that released space for consciousness. Especially early on the path, when we release restrictions there is a tendency for repeating the process of attachment similar to the survival process of conditioning and conformity. But we can resist that cycle through the primary component in our practice of holding space for consciousness. For zandtao this holding space developed into bringing in consciousness as directions - love, wisdom, sila and truth - and skills - mindfulness, focus and embodiment, but any description of consciousness is limiting.
10) From Awareness to Purpose
Through our practice we clear away the conditioning and conformity of upbringing, and from awareness and awakening we begin to understand purpose as consciously loving and evolving consciousness.
How we use the plan - accepting design
This is a big leap of faith in the path but zandtao advocates having faith in the path - at least while the path works for you; zandtao discussed faith in the path in Viveka-zandtao . Having faith worked for him but each seeker must find their own way. As zandtao said above, tentatively have faith and see if it works with your practice.
In Ch2 zandtao described restrictions arising during upbringing as personality reacted with the conditioning and conformity of upbringing. If we look at how our own restrictions arise it seems haphazard. Parents are supposed to love us yet look at the impact they have on the restrictions in our lives - look at how much they have restricted the following of path. Does that make sense?
It does if we accept the design aspect of this model, that we are meant to go through all the negativity we go through because that is how we evolve and learn to follow our paths. This is hard to accept but don't force yourself to believe it. Be tentative and see if it works; if it doesn't find another way.
How we use the model - upbringing
Many of the stages of the model fit in with what was described in ch2 - surprise  . But for zandtao those stages take on such a significant meaning when we consider they are part of design. The restrictions - attachment to egos, suffering and clinging - were meant to arise to teach. We were meant to have these attachments, and we were meant to learn from them. This brings a new meaning to the attachments - rather than the negative restrictive side to them they are now also an intended positive learning for following the path. Instead of being forced to release them because they restrict, now we release with relish because we were meant to experience them and let them go. We were meant to learn from them so we can follow our paths. This means that we can look at the emotions of childhood suffering with a new and positive vigour.
How we use the model - Sacred Wound
As described in Ch2, the building of restrictions has 2 primary causes in the survival process - protecting the seed and building a facade. Often the first step in practice for many people is the recognition of egos that build this facade - realising that these egos restrict the following of the path; so for our practice we go back to their formation to see how to recognise them. From the seed we aggregate khandhas as personality, and we learn which aspects of our aggregate/personality are successful in the interaction with society and which aspects need reinforcing; we do this through attaching to these aspects until we recognise good social interaction and then we cling to these attachments. Please note this is a survival process, and as such it is not the true path because it is not seed-consciousness expressing itself.
As mentioned there is also the second function of the shell - protecting the seed. Until the seed begins to mature it is vulnerable to suffering and other conditions such as anxiety, stress and so on - as far as zandtao knows the only collective word to describe all these conditions is the Pali word dukkha. When we understand what best protects the seed we attach to those conditions to develop the protection, and when we have determined what does protect we then cling to those attachments. So we have two restrictions arising - the outer facade of ego and the inner protection against dukkha, added to this we have the third restriction of reinforcement or clinging to egos and dukkha.
So we look back and see if we can understand how the three restrictions arose from the survival process. We also see if we can connect this survival to our upbringing - how our parents, education and interaction with society created these restrictions so we can release them. This shell created by our upbringing showing itself through the 3 restrictions is essentially what is created as our Sacred Wound that we heal in our adult life as maturing on the path; the shell with its restrictions arises as an aggregate when the khandhas meet society - developed during upbringing. This is how we use the Sacred Wound.
How we use the model - Holding Space
So far in the model we have tentatively recognised the importance of design, seen how upbringing develops restrictions, and that through our upbringing we develop a Sacred Wound. It is necessary here to bring in the two themes of practice:-
From the model we know to release restrictions using consciousness skills of mindfulness and focus as described in Ch2. But with the release of restrictions we could be vulnerable to allowing in new restrictions from the ongoing process of conditioning and conformity. This is why we need the 2nd theme of practice - holding space. For zandtao this was a visualisation of "bringing in" directions of consciousness - love, wisdom, sila, truth and creativity. All of these directions of consciousness are lacking in the societal infrastructure of system-of-accumulation - particularly the patriarchal aspect. Would it be uncommon in a patriarchal home for love not to be expressed?
Learning consciousness
There is another function from the release of restrictions in the survival process of our upbringing. Through understanding how we have developed this shell we learn what design intended us to learn during our stages of shell development. By releasing these aspects of shell development or egoic aggregations to the holy khandha that we need to release, this enables us to achieve a sufficient level of atammayata leading to autonomy (Ch4) and conscious awakening to purpose (Ch5). What our seed aggregates as personality but does not need to be helped by the survival process is "OK", what we need to learn about are the aspects of our aggregation that survival finds as weak and in need of protection and reinforcement. These are the restrictions to be released.
zandtao does not ask you to believe in these stages of development, such an infrastructure you need to determine for yourself in your development through practice. What matters is only your practice, that is all that we can affect. But the stages of development in the model might help us see why there is a survival process that creates our Sacred Wound, and why this Sacred Wound is essentially what we need to learn about. If we tentatively accept the model and find that understanding the Sacred Wound helps our practice then we can consider the "tentative status" of the model; zandtao always found meditation and mindfulness useful for such considerations or contemplations.
Holy khandha, Sacred Wound
zandtao is unsure exactly where this development model comes from, it just came from studies such as gabiK, Teal Swan and Nicola Amadora. When zandtao began looking at seed consciousness he found the term alaya vinnana, saw that yogacara Buddhism had 8 consciousnesses (zandtao wants to note here that he has not studied yogacara - just seen the fit as helpful to his practice). These 8 included the usual 5 sense-consciousnesses of ear, eye, touch, smell and taste together with a mind-sense that creates the personality through the khandhas. In the yogacara school they also consider two further consciousnesses to help in understanding aggregation, and when all 8 consciousnesses are considered it helps zandtao complete an understanding of vinnana/consciousness in the khandhas - and moore importantly helps zandtao develop his practice. For zandtao's practice he considers that describing the function of the other 2 consciousnesses is helpful. Using the term seed-consciousness helps us understand that the personality grows around the seed - using the 6 senses to grow the personality around the seed. Isn't this growing of personality using the senses and khandhas what happens with the usual model of 6 consciousnesses, isn't it understood?
In yogacara the last or 8th consciousness is also called ego-consciousness but zandtao wants to assign so much more understanding to the purpose of this consciousness. He would call it the Sacred Wound-consciousness or the Holy khandha-consciousness. As the aggregates contact society (such as the patriarchy in the system-of-accumulation) in upbringing, there arises a survival process which develops an inner and outer shell fortified by clinging - parents and patriarchy; for zandtao this shell is the aggregate of the 8th consciousness or the Holy khandha or the Sacred Wound. Protecting the inner seed, enforcing the outer facade is part of development with tanha clinging to both - releasing the shell is what we learn from and that learning arises from this 8th consciousness. Removing these restrictions is the first part of practice, holding released space for directions and skills of consciousness is the second.
Ego-evolve consciousness
Specifically his exploration of the 8th consciousness is not a pouring out from yogacara speculation; it is his own autonomy exploring. zandtao's coined phrase for this 8th consciousness is ego-evolve consciousness and this is a development from yogacara where he noted some call it ego-consciousness. zandtao began seeing the Holy khandha as arising from this ego-evolve consciousness.
Let's explore this coined term. What was begun with was that Sacred Wound was Holy khandha, why is this? Because what arises in the Holy khandha is released leading to following the path - the purpose of consciously loving and evolving consciousness - a holy purpose. This is zandtao's convoluted ego-evolve consciousness - the evolution that starts with the egos of the Holy khandha, releases them and when sufficient have been released there is autonomy leading to purpose. With purpose there is then consciously loving and EVOLVing consciousness. So this 8th consciousness has this specific purpose of evolving - create the egos that need to be released, once released there is autonomy that can evolve:-
Ego-evolve consciousness.
Autonomy - Practice focuses on consciousness and society
Now what is essential for practice is to bring focus to the Sacred Wound - the attachments of Holy khandha. When we initially describe the Sacred Wound we think about the survival process that develops the facade that we use to cope with societal infrastructure - at the present moment in time the system-of-accumulation. Here we have what zandtao perceives as a Buddhist "weakness" - limited consideration of societal infrastructure in personal development. But the Sacred Wound very much has a societal context. The Sacred Wound primarily arises through conditioning and conforming by parents and their conditioning and conforming is through their upbringing and society - as well as generations etc.
It is not unreasonable to have a consciousness notion for this survival process. But seeing it as survival is limiting - the limiting suggestion that it just happened to help people survive. But there is so much more to this aspect of consciousness, when we have released sufficient of these restrictions then autonomy happens. Autonomy is so much more than the survival of coping; when sufficient of the Sacred Wound is released and when sufficient consciousness is integrated by holding space there is this autonomy which brings purpose - the joys of consciously loving and evolving consciousness. And if we introduce design into the process, then we can say that what arises as survival is what we are meant to learn from - what we heal from. And when the learning and healing has happened, we have autonomy.
More than a survival process
When we bring in design then we can say that this ego-evolve consciousness meant the survival process to happen in a certain way so that when we learn and heal, release the restrictions and integrate the directions and skills of consciousness to follow our paths; design brings autonomy. So by survival and design, around this 8th consciousness aggregates egos of the other 4 khandhas - egos on top of the personality, and path becomes releasing these additional egos (on top of the personality that is not released as it is aggregated from seed-consciousness) of these khandhas. It is a Holy khandha, in that letting go of this part of aggregation leads to the holy processes of transcendence and atammayata - we learn not to be conditioned and conformed. Please note here that zandtao is adding a societal element to atammayata - Buddhadasa described it as non-concoctability but zandtao also includes non-conformability; the state of atammayata is not just free from conditioning but free from conforming.
Practice focuses on upbringing
So we have our 8th consciousness building up the inner protection and outer facade not only by survival but also by design, and through this understanding we can see that releasing leads to autonomy - atammayata that is free from conditioning and conforming (mostly). Once we see this survival and design, then the focus of the path before the threshold becomes awareness of the conditioning and conforming of upbringing. What are the factors that led to the restrictions? How were the attachments formed? Then we use inner child work such as "Reconciliation: Healing the Inner Child" by Thich Nhat Hanh, where we explore how the child was sacredly-wounded, how the Holy khandha formed in childhood and upbringing, and then release that forming process.
The parental aspects that lead to healing
What we then have is a much clearer understanding of where to look for releasing the restrictions - we look at our upbringing. What were the factors of our upbringing? What were the aspects of our parents that contributed to the conditioning and conformity? Then we ask what do we remember of our parents? We don't really remember the aspects of our parents that fit in harmoniously with the personality aggregation of seed-consciousness - that has no learning, we remember the aspect of our parents who aggregated the Holy khandha - same people different function. When we reach autonomy there are still vestiges of the Sacred Wound still to be dealt with but our parental focus widens and we see a more complete view of parents and their role in our learning. Parents are not just the parents conditioning and conforming us to the Holy khandha, they are the parents who through the holy khandha help us reach autonomy and follow our paths - by design.
Trigger-consciousness
One might also describe this 8th consciousness as trigger-consciousness because in the learning process we have triggers. On the survival side triggers protect our vulnerabilities, what we are not capable of coping with in society we build egos and cling to them as protection or defence mechanisms. Men lacking compassion are vulnerable to the development of compassion so when they meet people who are caring and compassionate these men put up barriers - or even worse can become violent. They are triggered by compassion. For such a man to become complete they must embrace compassion - hopefully they can.
This is the nature of triggers, they arise from this
consciousness protecting vulnerabilities (survival) whilst at the same time providing the way forward on the path - release the trigger (restriction), hold space for consciousness, and move towards autonomy.
For zandtao there were the emotional triggers of being a loving and compassionate man arising from his middle-class upbringing. His upbringing was typically and atypically middle-class so he was emotionally repressed. Repressed emotions were triggers, and he learnt from them - learning to be a loving and compassionate person - or trying to be. This was a triggering issue throughout his life as discussed in Real Love.
Get personal with triggers
Above zandtao speaks of triggers that arise as societal triggers - above he intentionally did not describe them as personal. However triggers are intensely personal, and for complete integration those deep personal triggers must be addressed. We have mindfulness to grapple with these triggers, embrace them and release them - and a good tool of this mindfulness is journalling. Throughout his path zandtao has used journalling and recommends seeker story for you to investigate and release your restrictive triggers (with an appropriate person to guide).
When it comes to childhood we must look at healing the inner child, and Thay's book Reconciliation: Healing the Inner Child offers many techniques for that healing. The two best books of Nicola Unleashing Love and Teal How to Love Yourself offer journalling that lead to unleashing love in the process of which triggers are released. All of this is about practice.
Healing for Life
As far as zandtao is concerned these 2 chapters on practice give sufficient guidance as to the practice leading to autonomy - with appropriate support see kalyana mitta below. By design we develop self-esteem and seed protection as survival - with possible shadow fragmentation. These lead to restrictions that we release using mindfulness and focus, and we can then integrate the directions of consciousness that take us to following our paths. In terms of our development model we describe this building of restrictions, their release and the ensuing need of holding space to integrate consciousness as the Holy khandha - your guide for healing for life - giving you your practice for healing for life.
zandtao would understand that this guidance for healing for life does not feel sufficient. As seekers we recognise that there are many paths up the mountain - many different practices that zandtao suggests has the same themes:-
A Wayward Practice
For the rest of this chapter zandtao will describe parts of his life that illustrate this description of practice - parts that he feels has led to his autonomy. To reach autonomy zandtao's path was wayward, but he hopes to demonstrate that within that waywardness his development fits the practice described in these two chapters. As such a seeker could take the guidance as sufficient and work with a kalyana mitta towards atammayata and autonomy.
His background was not special. His family were middle-class, and they lived in a middle-class suburb of Manchester where bill was educated in a grammar school. This gives a strong indication as to the types of conditioning and conformity issues bill grew up with; whilst he repeatedly journals about relevant personal family history such detail is personal and private except perhaps in an advising situation of kalyana mitta. Conditioned as middle-class and conformed to a grammar school education is sufficient to see what sort of Sacred Wound would arise.
First Signs of Sacred Wound
As a late teen/young adult bill was intensely shy, and as a consequence of his Sacred Wound he fell into an alcohol addiction. In terms of the usual conditioned upbringing he lacked self-esteem, and although he conformed educationally achieving qualifications he never personally invested in the success of that education process. After getting qualifications his wage-slavery took him into computing connected to his stats degree, but he failed miserably as he lacked interest or discipline.
When bill was 23 he went through a powerful and wonderful upheaval that planted him in the path for life - zandtao chooses the word planted because it was more than 30 years before bill actually grew into following his path; this was a powerful firstgrace. For bill this upheaval meant a rejection of conditioning and conformity, and he felt a new person.
This upheaval gave him two choices - compassion and creative writing. He chose compassion leading eventually to a vocation in schoolteaching, whilst he was still planted on the path occasionally connecting with his creative writing. And walking - walking in nature. Connections but no practice. With the repression of his upbringing his personality and experience was immature even though upheaval had planted him on the path. Upheaval briefly got in the way of the alcohol, but after upheaval whilst the path was always present in the background there was no practice to bring it to expression. bill went through what he calls a 2nd childhood in which he built self-esteem around teaching, his limited connection to the path throughout this 2nd childhood discussed in Treatise.
Upheaval broke through conditioning and conformity
Upheaval was an amazing intro to path and practice - or bill should say path as there was zero dedication to practice. But whilst there was no practice the upheaval gave him deep jhana meditation experiences connected with creativity, and these stayed with him for life but not as a practice initially.
Upheaval was a fortuitous response to his upbringing, as Sacred Wound is part of practice it is necessary to be clear about how this was his Sacred Wound. What the system-of-accumulation requires from upbringing is some level of conformity, and bill came from a family whose way of life did not question that conformity. But there was limited material success, sadly not as consequence of a decision to be successful elsewhere; it was simply a conformist upbringing with a conditioned dissatisfied father and a conditioned repressed mother. This typical conformity turned bill into a deeply repressed immature child - with absolutely nothing remarkable in his childhood life. Basically education and football!!
So his upheaval came from such unremarkable conformity in which neither bill nor his parents were in any way fulfilled. bill grew up with very limited self-esteem, and zandtao’s seed-consciousness survived through dukkha providing numbness.
This upheaval process started with his being sacked - deservedly as he had no interest and was not in any way competent. He ran to his parents in the Manchester suburb but other than survival and sobering up there was nothing there - no sign of the wonders of his path to come. He returned to London with a good attitude to work-discipline, and got another awful job in Hounslow moving into the Chiswick loft - his most memorable holy place. It was holy because path triggers and consciousness met together through blissful writing and limited jhana meditation. This was his path beginning its practice as a writer, and wai zandtao never looked back.
Whilst he had some routine in the Loft he cannot describe it as practice, his path was simply triggering the release of conditioning through writing. After spending a disciplined but unsuccessful day at work he would return to his holy loft. Sitting down he would just wait for presence as the Muse that duly arrived and he just wrote.
This was path surfacing and triggering - there was blissful presence there, but he was very lucky because he also had the reinforcement of good people. He reconnected with a wise woman who had previously seen something in bill - to this day he does not know how, but she took this reconditioning bill to an Arts Centre. bill just felt completely at home with these people as together they lapped up bill and his path triggers. Soon after the blissful writing started bill ended his torture of work-discipline (to the surprise of the workplace) and started working as a houseparent - beginning his work of compassion. At that time his path upheaval had shown him writing and compassion, but he was not the kind of writer to have angst or make a living.
There was a last phase in upheaval as he was given the use of a cottage in Belgium - a second holy place. zandtao is so grateful for this cottage but bill treated his benefactors badly - sorry. For a couple of months he just wrote, it was early z-quests - a technique of writing he used in books later. Reading anything he could get hold of he just wrote and wrote and wrote - writing that has long since been lost along with a great deal of conditioning and conformity from upbringing the writing released.
After a couple of months he returned to London to earn money, began again in child care - a time he enjoyed but a time he drank again. Then there was the forlorn writer’s delusion, he was going to travel the world, gain experience through working and travelling, and come back a Hemingway or Henry Miller. 60 miles from Calais in Normandy, his wad went - either lost or stolen, but instead of finding work he ran back to the UK, and started a PGCE to be a teacher - no more the angst writer.
And in many ways that was the end of his spiritual life for 30 years. His blissful writing and meditation was not based in practice, the meditation disappeared and the writing became sporadic. His path had successfully triggered an end to a great deal of conditioning but there was no practice - he was not ready. At this stage it was all about knowledge - knowledge gained from z-quest writing, knowledge from dabbling. As a new person, bill went looking outside himself for the path; but this looking was not the path as there was no practice. What he looked for outside could be considered looking for theories, bill began dabbling in alternate theories all of which could be considered paths up the mountain if a practice was applied. bill understandably being 23 was still immersed in educational indoctrination so at that age he sought answers in ditthis - idealisms, theories, etc; this was an intellectual ego and not the path. For some this outer search took them East; after more than 30 years bill ended up East in life and he went there with theories - and with some Buddhism that became a practice later.
Addiction and Romantic Love
Teaching and addiction started to reinforce each other. Whilst he had enjoyed his times in child care, he realised beneath the joy and drunken haze that he wanted the formative process of education. He hoped - he knew a vain hope - there would be some spiritual component to education but that was never possible. He enjoyed the deep stress of his first job for 8 years, but he later found out his fondness for that time was not reciprocated because of his drunkenness. Teaching was a vocation for bill but it had nothing for his spiritual side, and he slipped into a lifestyle of drink and vocation - as he slowly learned what his work demanded. Because of his spiritual path he resisted aspects of the job and it took him many years to simply accept that all he could be was a good exams teacher.
Drink and practice cannot happen together - at least for zandtao they cannot. For one year he was dry and studied theosophy. He met some good people but he had not excised the numbness of his upbringing so the drink came back. With theosophy he had experienced the benefits of practice as he began to do yoga and meditation but he wasn’t ready. His immaturity meant that he still had much to learn of daily life, and he still sought romantic love.
Spiritually his life developed only during the vacations when there was no vocation. But these were not times of practice, he was seeking knowledge through books, his year of theosophy indicated practice but his lack of readiness meant a return to knowledge - not even wisdom. Eventually he thought he found romantic love but this so disrupted his life and was so unfulfilling that he ended his search for romantic love in pain - and eventually in financial hardship. His pain took him to political activity and much learning about daily life but eventually the hardship kicked in and he started work in Africa.
bill maintained contact with the path during these vacations through creativity and nature but that contact was erratic and therefore not a practice for development. There was no way he could forget the creative bliss that came during upheaval, but addiction and vocation prevented access to it. It is important to understand that vocation, however worthwhile within daily life, has dedication; for zandtao it happened that there could not be dedication to practice and teaching at the same time. In the early years of teaching the path was still triggering him leading to the theosophy year but it was difficult for the path to assert itself with the receding numbness that clung to addiction. Eventually contact with the path was minimal maintained through creativity and nature when there was no vocation during vacation.
Choosing creativity was limited and did not occur during every annual vacation. He particularly recalls the writing of Kirramura at the end of his 2nd job. Armeagh’s walking down from mountains at the beginning of Kirramura was an image he held from a walking holiday in the Macgillicuddy Reeks of Ireland. But the writing of Kirramura he now recalls as presence even though at the time he just saw it as Muse. There was a routine - he would write late at night. It would start with his lying still flat on his back on the bed. Then he would feel the presence coming and he felt himself pushed back into the bed. Around him the room would fill with presence, what he called the guys at the time; it appeared as if there was a small vibration present in the air of the room - the guys vibrating? Once immersed in this it slowed and his mind went to the point he had left off in the story, the computer was ready and the next phase of Kirramura was written; the book was written in a Summer vacation - the Summer of 92 before he planned to leave for Botswana at the beginning of 93. The Muse has been clear as presence since - although the latter stages of his zifi writing had presence but few guys.
It was not surprising that Kirramura was first triggered whilst he was walking in the Macgillicuddy Reeks as walking in nature had become his goto contact as path maintenance. It was usually but not always Summer vacations. Vocation with or without addiction physically drained him, and it would take time before he got the energy to go walking. He can recall a form of walking meditation. He would leave where he was staying walking along some path away from built-up areas. As he walked his mind would still be stewing, churning this or that often to do with the school in his head. As this became more and more frustrating he would come back to where he was, focussing on the beauty, and then determined to concentrate on walking. This type of walking meditation had actually come from a Carlos Castaneda book - Journey to Ixtlan; with all the doubts and adverse publicity concerning Castaneda zandtao does not know enough to recommend him as a whole. But there were a number of times that book helped him; and another coincidence - he found it in a 2nd-hand book sale in Botswana maybe 20 years after first reading it. It was bog-standard walking meditation, focus on where you put your feet - one step at a time. But once he focussed on the walking his mind seemed to switch to nature mode forgetting all the churning of his vocational daily life.
Tai Chi also helped him during the years of vocation and addiction. Upheaval and the Arts people had turned bill alternative - despite being addicted to drink and teacher-vocated. This would have been a good contribution to a practice but he was far too erratic with it. He first started Tai Chi in the theosophy year round the back of Euston but to learn the form you needed dedication, and when the drink started again that went. He took it up again after his romantic love ended and he had stopped drinking, but even then he did not have enough discipline to be dedicated. But his body remembered sufficient form that on occasions esp in nature he would do what form he knew. It helped him to know about energy when the time came.
For nearly 30 years there was a search for knowledge, writing and nature with sporadic Tai Chi but never the discipline and dedication to practice despite having had tasters - glimpses. At this stage upheaval at 23 had broken down much of the conditioning and conformity of upbringing, this did not return and gave him a basis in path but he was not ready for practice. Once he started teaching he developed new egos that clung to compassion and the vocation of schoolteaching with its wage-slavery, but it was neither path nor practice - just experience. This began to change with his mid-life review in Africa.
Mid-Life Review
Out of the detritus of romantic love and addiction - and from a 5-year significant period of grassroots activism - came travel. From the moment he stepped on the tarmac of Gaborone airport watching the heat-haze rising, he felt a freedom; he had escaped UK repression. Whilst conscious of repression in upbringing, despite his political awareness of the repression, he had not internalised how much UK repression had affected him - the conditioning and conformity of UK's system-of-accumulation; he never looked back and began to later enjoy the UK as a holiday destination - or rather contract breaks. This freedom resonates when bill thinks of the restrictions arising from the system-of-accumulation.
His vocation had all but disappeared, replaced by grassroots activism - rather than any sign yet of dedication to practice. Once in Africa the vocation started to return but not with the dedication of the new teacher. Instead there was a vacuum replaced by a distance-learning M Ed. The nature of this M Ed was significant in that it was geared towards experienced teachers evaluating notable aspects of their teaching life - with his dissertation zandtao is not so sure he would take the same stance now. Prior to his grassroots activism he turned to editing the Young Journal. This brought him into contact with community activists esp. African exiles, and from that point on he realised that alienation by extremism had led to a misjudgement concerning the focus of his activism. These issues are discussed more fully in pathtivism esp. the Manual.
It is worth noting where his activism came from but because of his limited awareness this activism was not pathtivist - grassroots activism is best arisen from embodiment through practice rather than any purely theoretical or conditioned emotional position. bill appeared to gain no benefit career-wise from his M Ed, but personally he opened up a great deal because of the internal evaluation.
This inner evaluation had turned into a broader mid-life review. Erratic meditation started to happen again, his path was able to start triggering again, and within 2 months he was in Wat Phra Keau converting to Buddhism. What is shown on “Bill Zanetti’s home Page” developed from this review - and now seems so long ago.
As happened often at that time the path was guiding from deep, and bill was not too conscious of his progress with the path. He was still dominated by the world of work. For pension reasons he had left Africa - comfortable salary but no money for pension, and had gone to teach in private schools - awful places - to build up a private pension. The Oman school was typically awful, and he began to think of private schools in Thailand but that never worked. All he recalls of becoming a Buddhist was as part of this job-hunting holiday he visited Wat Phra Keau (Temple of Emerald Buddha), and after sitting in this holy place with many Thai visitors and tourists for half an hour he decided he wa a Buddhist. Becoming Buddhist was very significant for zandtao’s practice, and characterised that practice long into retirement - up until crossing the threshold of autonomy. For zandtao being Buddhist meant meditating rather than reading, and regular meditation was the beginning of his dedication to practice.
Harnham and the Start of Practice
Somehow within bill’s mind becoming a Buddhist at Wat Phra Keau meant meditating, but it also meant something else that was significant. He knew little about Buddhism - although he had been on the periphery of Buddhism since upheaval, but Buddhism was huge. It was Wat Phra Keau where this “conversion” took place so he decided to become Theravadan Buddhism. This decision was very important from a knowledge perspective; he had been an intellectual dabbler since upheaval. He was not widely read but had dipped into many different spiritual fonts in the previous 25 years. Something told bill to focus so Wat Phra Keau meant Theravada Buddhism. So this conversion meant 2 things - start to practice and be Theravada.
So came Harnham - and Harnham was very important for zandtao’s early practice. He has a very strong recollection of the details of his actual first visit, but he does not recall what led up to it. Contract breaks in the UK had become quite a thing in bill’s life - mainly because they helped him reconnect with his mother. One of the regular parts of his UK breaks was a trip to Scotland to see teacher friends. On the return back to the Manchester suburb he went to Harnham. Going to a Buddhist monastery had become an important thing but for some reason he just rolled up and told them he could only stay a night. Although this was disrespectful the guest monk said it was OK, zandtao is so grateful but has no idea why he was so rude and why they accepted his rudeness.
Path and consciousness gave the greatest affirmation that Harnham was right for bill. He can remember being unable to sleep and the guys came - the same guys (presence) who came when he was writing Kirramura. There could have been no greater way of telling bill that Harnham was a place for him. As he was leaving the guest monk asked about his short visit. bill thanked him effusively, said that it had been a great experience and that he wanted to return again properly, and explained the guys - to no avail for this guest monk. Apart from his mother Harnham became the best thing for his last few UK years. After this he made proper time for retreats on his contract break and the probate year, and they helped bill develop my practice at the time with Insight meditation - for some reason bill transcribed their booklet on insight meditation here. Until Nigeria insight meditation from Harnham was his daily practice - he transcribed a copy of theor insight meditation pamphelt online.
To be honest zandtao does not recall great things of this early practice. He can remember it being almost daily - almost because he had bad work days when he didn’t meditate. But this practice had no great meaning for bill - apart from work-therapy (or work conditioning?) - it definitely helped with his well-being. In retrospect his path was using his mind through meditation to sort out his life and prepare for early retirement. All of this practice started to crystallise during his probate year. After 4 years of his teaching in awful schools - one of which he was sacked from and another where he was sacked and then reinstated, his mother died when he was in China. He returned for what he calls his probate year intending to look after his father, but sadly his father never got over the death of bill’s mother and he too died. Back in the UK he got closer to Harnham but by then he was completely alienated from the UK and its system-of-accumulation. After the probate was finished and the house sold he fled the country - never to return. After 3 months travelling Asia consolidating his life-sorting he started work in Nigeria at another awful school. At this place meditation didn’t work for work-therapy - as during meditation he always felt he should resign from the school; he stopped meditating but continued to work there, did well in terms of savings, and was able to flee Lagos and retire in Thailand. On a number of trips to Thailand, he gradually decided he had enough finance to retire early there, and had rented a house to retire in on one of those trips.
It would be nice to say that he retired early - 54, so he could devote time to his practice but he was far from being dedicated to his practice at this stage. Strangely enough it was a notion of distance that dominated this decision. Even though the schools were awful, bill still had some vocation. When he went on holiday there was a limited centring process towards his path, but it became harder and harder to return to the world of work. After his 3 months in Asia after probate year he had been considering getting away from the awful schools, and then his final school in Lagos was perhaps the worst; the distance between his centring and going back to work at that school was just huge. In other words he didn’t want to go back, and over that final placement he realised he had sufficient money to retire so he did. His dedication at this stage was little more than a desire to consolidate his centring - and get out of those awful schools; he was not ready to be dedicated to practice.
Unconscious Sacred Wound
After retirement his studies went further into Buddhism in which he developed a formal MwB practice that he has included as addon C - discussed below.
Since crossing the threshold of autonomy it has been noticeable how meditation has been dominated by the 3 freedoms - removing the 3 restrictions. With development in autonomy came the understanding of and making conscious the Sacred Wound. As with this chapter zandtao will be reinforcing the description of development of autonomy in Ch4 with how it helped with his own practice.
Crossing the threshold of autonomy occurred when he was working on Viveka-Zandtao, and his practice was formal MwB practice.
Realignment in early retirement
At this point zandtao is going to flag his website. It records writing since his early retirement - it could be argued that all of this writing bore some connection to his path. Creativity became Wai Zandtao - zifi - that includes novels before and after retirement. Matriellez is the smallest platform where he developed his education vision whilst eschewing education from his system - realigning. Bloggon is a listing of all his blogs - blogging was a significant practice but also so much more. And last but not least is his spiritual platform, zandtao, of which zeer-consciousness is the latest part - as of writing. It took 15 years after retirement for zandtao to cross the threshold of autonomy, and for the time since he is still writing. But what we need to make sense of is how did he become sufficiently dedicated to his practice and how did he learn sufficiently from his Sacred Wound to actually cross the threshold.
Lagos-wobble aside when he retired his practice was that of insight meditation - learned at Harnham, but that was essentially well-being in the workplace - not completely. He retired at a time when he felt distanced so clearly there needed to be a realignment. But what was going on with any realignment? Significantly in retirement his financial plan hopefully had sufficient to escape any further wage-slavery - there was always the obvious capitulation if it didn't work out.
Realignment involved "emptying the contents of consciousness", a Krishnamurti phrase that stuck but whose meaning was distant at the time of hearing - when he was in his early 30s at Brockwood Park. This began by belching out Matriellez, a focus in his early retirement. But the most important realignment at that time was detoxifying - his physical health. Amusing anecdote? Retired just under a year he was about to visit Bangkok, and on the bus he had the most miserable journey - migraines and general yeuk. This carried on through the night, and he happened upon a Natural Health clinic in Ari - long since gone as has the doctor (from his life). He struggled in and the guy said diet, you need to detox. Since retiring most work stress had gone, and he did not feel bad with his food. It all pointed to macrobiotics (mb) even though the doctor said cheewajit - a simpler known Thai version.
It was as if the doc had rubber-stamped internal feelings so in his early retirement he tried to learn how to follow mb in a country he didn't know, in a language he didn't know, with foods he didn't know. He felt remarkably better for this and blogged his progress - goto Bloggon and find Ginsukapaapdee. This detoxifying was part of his realignment, and connected to his practice as later explained.
There was also other writing that was realignment, specifically the Treatise that later developed into the zandtaomed trilogy. Wai Zandtao also chipped in with the occasional book.
An Insight practice
Meanwhile on the specific Buddhist practice front he was continuing with Vipassana - his Insight Meditation, there became a development process from this Insight meditation. There would be meditation and what would arise would be an insight. From the insight he would bash out the bones of the insight as a blog, that is also mostly recorded at Bloggon. But his Buddhism developed through Vipassana in another significant way - his inner guide, during the insight meditation he would decide what to study next; his meditation gave him the blogs and an inner guide. He remembered the first thing that arose in meditation was sila and siladhamma - a bit significant as it was leaving the world of work and is a direction of consciousness.
Thailand always wants English teachers although they would not renew his visa if bill wrote seriously about English teaching here . It began with free private tuition for neighbours but developed into volunteer limited part-time teaching in primary schools where he discovered the different joy of teaching kindergarten. With the mb detoxing there then came walking and swimming, and he became a volunteer teacher who would then sit under a tree on the beach and also swim.
This was part of realignment; consciousness had been emptied of the workplace, he was meditating - with-insight-blogging - and an occasional book Trilogy, Wai Zandtao and Matriellez. This lifestyle was between well-being and the spiritual path although he saw it as a spiritual path.
Formal MwB Practice
Along the way his inner guide had taken him to Ajaan Buddhadasa, and this is where he developed a better practice. He liked Buddhadasa talks - died 1993. Here is an irreverent description of his talking-style. He would make a point, repeat that point perhaps with elucidation, repeat again, and bill will be lulled into a gentle understanding, then suddenly he would jump into great depth. Once bill perceived this depth he was "captured". For bill the most important book was Anapanasati Bhavana translated as Mindfulness with Breathing, and it developed into his MwB practice.
Buddhadasa taught that in meditation there were 4 stages to go through - tetrads - kaya, vedana, citta and dhamma - body, emotions, mind and integration - connected to the Theravardan sutta MN10 - 4 Foundations of Mindfulness. Zandtao felt good when he saw this because of the Treatise's 3 tenets:-
Zandtao never really got into the suttas, and followed Buddhadasa rather than Buddhism, he thought of himself as a Buddhadasa Buddhist - something he would be sure Buddhadasa would not like.
This formal MwB practice began his day - 45 mins meditation, insight, blog or writing, teaching or not, beach, swim, home, healthy food, watch tv. More or less a decade passed this way. It was nice, in a way he misses it but it was not dedication; dedication came in through a backdoor - and even then it was only sufficient dedication. The change began 5 years in. He had a clear health intention - mb for life. According to mb 7 years means a complete detox, a cellular change, but after 5 years he developed hormone issues that was a precursor of a congenital heart condition. His healing was through acupuncture, and a healer arrived in his county town. He was still in beach bum lifestyle but small changes made dents, and over the remaining years of beach bum things got worse with his health. A wetsuit became obligatory most of the year but he still continued with the beach and mostly mb - it was the best he had ever been. But the congenital heart continued with its incursions until he had to stop the teaching and swimming. He stayed more in his rural home walking through the plantations each day until that was too much as well. In this way his body told him to be more dedicated to his practice because his body would not allow him to be a beach bum.
With his enforced dedication to practice the only difference appeared more writing, only the meditation changed occasionally becoming what he called bhavana. Occasional days there would be two or three meditation sessions separated by a break of 20 minutes or even a sleep. These were pleasantly powerful.
What was happening in meditation?
This is a very important question, and the answer is very difficult. The meditation was a tool for his practice, and his practice was what led to following the path of consciousness from awareness to purpose. Let me be clear meditation was a tool, and during meditation many things happened over the years. Essentially what happened in practice was the two themes:-
But in meditation this didn't seem to be happening, he followed and developed MwB. Meditation appeared more concerned with states of mind - was kaya, vedana and citta calm? Over time working on and developing the state of the 4th tetrad became more important. What started as the 4 tetrads of kaya, vedana, citta, and dhamma eventually became the practice of AddonC .
What developed the meditation was my inner guide. This guide rose early in my meditation practice giving me insights and guiding me to what to study next, and what was studied changed the meditation states bill worked on during meditation. Occasionally bill would encounter ego during the day, and mindfulness and focus would engage with the ego to release it. At one stage bill investigated how egos arose, and there developed a focus on the khandhas. With Buddhadasa study khandhas had become important in understanding anatta - no self, answering the question is there anything other than khandhas? Then he saw the need to minimally give attention to khandhas as part of the holding space for consciousness. This then included seeing egos arising from each of the khandhas, and bill released individual egos from the khandhas.
But there was very little conscious releasing of restrictions, the releasing of restrictions came from realignment to the path during meditation. Essentially this was the states bill just mentioned. Through developing calm body, vedana and citta, bill was releasing attachments to dukkha. Through the meditation bill realigned body, vedana and citta to the path thus releasing attachments. Initially his meditation remembered the path he had been gifted at upheaval, and once that was cemented he developed the path of consciousness that came from understanding his studies.
In Buddhadasa's MwB Buddhadasa had his own process of holding space for consciousness; he described these in relationship:-
It became part of bill's practice to hold space for the 4 dhamma comrades of sati - mindfulness, panna - wisdom, samadhi - concentration, and sampajanna - wisdom-in-action. These 4 dhamma comrades remained a constant during his formal practice but significantly changed with the love-wisdom balance that came with autonomy.
Unconsciously experiencing the Sacred Wound
Handling the Sacred Wound happened unconsciously with his MwB practice; bill was not aware of the Sacred Wound as the Sacred Wound but he was aware of many egos that had arisen during upbringing - and some during daily life after upheaval. bill experienced the Sacred Wound as memories - occasionally shadow - that arose, and they arose from the inner guide. Not only was the inner guide unconsciously guiding his studies it was also guiding his interaction with the Sacred Wound.
Because there was no understanding of how positive the Sacred Wound was, bill just experienced egos associated with the Sacred Wound as suffering. However these egos simply arose as conditioning and conformity. As you could imagine conditioning and conformity were keys in upheaval, and upheaval was a huge release of this conditioning and conformity - of the Sacred Wound. But it was not finished - something that can always be said of the Sacred Wound. After the initial pathfinding of upheaval, bill began his 2nd childhood initially seeking romantic love. This brought with it great pain that he internalised, and he developed a process of releasing internalised pain that he named Nyanga after the place he first experienced it.
Nyanga - part of his practice
bill has used the Nyanga process to release pain several times so it is worth discussing as part of his practice. In his search for romantic love bill had fallen in romantic love, become deeply enmeshed and suffered - discussed in Real Love (post-threshold). He eventually walked out on the pain but didn't leave it behind, he internalised that pain and took it with him. 7 years later that pain began to want to come out, bill could feel it. At the time he was on holiday from his Botswana teaching job in the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe - Nyanga was known in that area. He knew something would happen that night. He was in a bare bungalow, and late at night he lay down knowing he was not going to sleep. He began to look inside himself for Peyton - the woman he had loved - loved, and he found pain and Peyton deep in his digestive system. Focussing on the pain released it and he began to experience the pain; it hurt but it was a good release. He continued to release all of the Peyton pain until he felt there was none left. And then briefly a pain came up from his parents and childhood, the childhood pain was just there but it was not the day for that pain - it was not the day for the Sacred Wound. After several hours, bill was drained and he got some sleep. The next day he walked around Nyanga drained but freed - it was great. Whilst he has usefully done Nyanga since, there has been no impact like that first time. It is worth noting that zandtao now perceives that the arising of pain around his Sacred Wound arose from an inner guide associated with that wound.
Ever since upheaval bill knew that there was a need to express love coming from middle-class repression …. and more; he knew that had to be part of his practice. Yet Sacred Wound and love were not part of MwB. This came to a head in his Centring Summer that happened soon after he stopped voluntary teaching and stopped being a beach bum - in other words when he was more dedicated. This blogpost was a summary of the deep centring that bill went through whilst journalling - it included part of Teal Swan's completion process; as kalyana mitta he will discuss relevant personal details but the following quote makes clear enough of the interaction with his Sacred Wound:-
"What this completion process taught me is that we have childhood baggage. Previously I had rejected that baggage as not being part of me. This is selective, it is not complete. Educationally I have realised that this process of fragmentation happens to all of us, and therefore education should be addressing it. In fact current education practice helps the fragmentation. The root meaning of education is to lead out, when I was at Teacher Training I used the word self-realisation to describe this. Self-realisation could be seen as a complete self without baggage ready to begin life, begin the process of maturing as a complete adult. Instead education is dominated by the corporate paradigm and turns mother and father into wage-slaves to make ends meet, so that instead of bringing up children who are complete young selves we bring up traumatised children who fragment their trauma by dedicating themselves to fragments of their selves which enable a good living for themselves."
Following the Centring Summer there were egoic releases of the Sacred Wound but it was mainly following MwB practice and the writing of Viveka-zandtao that finally took bill across the threshold of autonomy - what autonomy means and what his practice became with autonomy is discussed in Ch4.
Ready to Transcend
There needed to be three states of mind-consciousness to come together for zandtao to actually cross the threshold:-
 Ready to Transcend
Having faith in the path
Understanding Transcendence
It could also be seen as two aspects of understanding and practice of transcendence. And the understanding came from the study that was Viveka-zandtao.
Through his practice bill was ready to transcend. Through his practice bill had created sufficient atammayata to transcend, the readiness was the sufficient atammayata - a sufficient state of unconcoctability ; enough practice had been done. There is an obvious question for seekers - when is enough?, and sadly zandtao can offer no answers to that. He could not answer the day before his low-key crossing of the threshold that he knew he was ready; in fact at the time of crossing he didn't know what was happening. The crossing happened and then he learnt what it was - as discussed in Ch4.
Summary of Practice
After crossing the threshold he continued to practice but that practice changed as will be discussed in Ch4. But for zeer-consciousness it is important for zandtao to reflect on what his practice was at the time that made him ready to transcend.
Clearly what was most significant was his formal MwB practice with the refinements that his own studies brought. Every day he got up and sat on his stool for 45 minutes following MwB practice. Yes you are right, it was not "every day" - 6 out of 7 is an honest reflection and was sufficiently dedicated; he did not practice when ill. If you goto a monastery it is every day, but here's an important rub - who created bill's discipline? It was only his dedication to practice.
But what was also ready was his Sacred Wound. His practice had created alignment with the path, and he had evolved to release sufficient attachments of conditioning and conformity - a sufficient state of atammayata. This alignment with the path was not just his formal MwB practice, it was also the various releases of Nyanga processes that had occurred coming up to his Centring Summer. It is worth specifically mentioning an alignment that occurred during the Centring Summer, and that was a chakra alignment - working with Teal Swan videos; this chakra alignment was discussed in "Chakras by the bootstraps" in Ch9 of the Manual. Chakra alignement was in line with all the alignments that had happened since retirement, amongst which are:-
The eschewing of wage-slavery through Matriellez
The discussion of path in his upbringing and life in the Treatise
The alignment processes such as Nyanga and Centring Summer
The daily alignment of his formal MwB practice
All of this practice made bill release the restrictions that had been created through his ego-evolve-consciousness (see ), and bill was ready to transcend. In terms of the two themes:-
Was his consciousness ready?
Journey of Viveka-zandtao
In Viveka-zandtao bill was journalling based on z-quests of different books, and within the two sections of Investigating Faith and Following the Path he was considering lokuttara - transcendence. Basically when he had built up sufficient faith in the path he was ready. When this consciousness is combined with the consciousness of the Dhamma Comrades of MwB then there was sufficient consciousness; he was also consciousness-ready. Again the obvious question has no answer, the only way you know you are ready is when the threshold is crossed.
Kalyana Mitta
At this point we can begin looking at the autonomy that arose once the threshold had been crossed, but first zandtao wants to raise some issues concerning practice.
The first issue is that of guidance. This is zandtao's interpretation of what the Buddha described as Kalyana Mitta - a friend who advises on the spiritual path. For zandtao this is not a guru, for zandtao gurus require devotion etc and that is not a way up the mountain zandtao chooses. For zandtao his guidance built up as an "inner guide", and his advisers were books - perhaps he could have gone up the mountain quicker with a guide.
The 2nd issue that zandtao is concerned about is the use of spiritual tools - primarily meditation. Perhaps zandtao's most famous book guide is Teal Swan yet because she will work with anyone there have been problems along the way. What critics, people who support the societal infrastructure and verbalise against those who know the societal infrastructure is far more than flawed, cannot admit is that this system-of-accumulation can cause mental problems. What parents cannot admit is that they are part of a Sacred Wound even though they claim they are loving - even loving parents can create Sacred Wounds. Most spiritual teachers will not raise the development model as a reality because of what this means for parents and society, and this is a flaw. If a seeker does not realise they have these potential mental problems and they sit down and face themselves in meditation, what happens?
Recently Goenka received such critical attention concerning the intensity of their meditation methods, and to be honest in zandtao's view they did not come out shining - discussed here. As far as he is aware many thousands have benefitted greatly from Goenka meditation training but there have been one or two cases. Such training is voluntary - not-for-profit, but the one or two cases??? Willoughby opened a centre for those who have had issues with meditation. For zandtao meditation has been nothing but a blessing, he has had many wonderful experiences with meditation but meditation is a tool that is part of a practice that is part of a programme that is a person's path. For some people initially following their path on their own meditation might not be advisable. Just to note zandtao started 1-to-1 meditation advising for a while but it was not in person. zandtao knows that these seekers gained at some level because they said so, but he stopped. His advice - be Nicola Amadora PhD . She backed up her meditation teaching with a Ph D in something psychological and systemically hands-on, for full details you need to contact her. Whilst zandtao only experienced the positive with seekers and his advice he could never be sure. And in this world there are many mental problems, Sacred Wounds, fragmentation and shadows can be so damaging.
Any seeker wanting to try zeer-consciousness please try to find a kalyana mitta.
Back to the wonders of the path and the autonomy of Ch4.
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Development Model 
