zandtao wants to encourage seekers to focus on practice - even see such a focus as a need; this emphasis is closely followed by the lack of embodiment (see  - the pathtivist blog). However this zeersight is only concerned with practice - looking to improve that practice.
What we have with practice are these two components:-
Whilst we can develop some approaches to improve our ability to hold space for consciousness, as a seeker most of our conscious work is concerned with releasing the restrictions - freeing ourselves from restrictions. And the best source of what that conscious work is to be is to understand how the restrictions arise.
 Restrictions develop in upbringing
Mostly restrictions develop in our upbringings, and the more we understand this development the greater chance we have of doing the conscious work (practice) to free ourselves from the restrictions.
Survival Process
A survival process is spoken of but there is so much more to understand than just survival. In the past zandtao has spoken of egos arising creating self-esteem to enable success in society - coping with wage-slavery, family conformity etc. This self-esteem is a collection of egos arising in conditioning and conformity during upbringing - usually through parents with their own conditioning and conformity passing these egos on; our love for our parents naturally brings with it egos of conditioning and conformity. Mostly we as seekers are recommended to focus our practice by looking at these egoic restrictions, how we learnt them in upbringing, how they build the facade of self-esteem, how we cling to them and how they can be released - known as letting go.
Survival is more than facade
Whilst the inner journey is so important for our paths we tend not to consider the inner in childhood, because of the natural immaturity of childhood there is little consideration of any inner process. But there is a very important survival inner process that develops in upbringing:-
 the protection of consciousness - protection of seed-consciousness.
And in terms of our restrictions this protection is best understood as freedom from suffering. When we consider suffering as dukkha we consider the spectrum ranging from stress, anxiety, depression etc.; for children esp. young children there is much pain that can arise with love relationships with parents, and when that pain is traumatic seed-consciousness will be protected through fragmentation. But what if less traumatic protection is needed where less intense suffering can arise - such as dukkha. For young people without a deeply-traumatic childhood, processes of dukkha will protect seed-consciousness rather than fragmentation.
So from our survival process during upbringing we maintain an outer facade of self-esteem and inner protection of seed-consciousness. As our upbringings develop, survival points to egos or dukkhas that we can develop and hide behind; what is most successful in this hiding we cling to - the restriction of clinging to inner protection and outer facades.
Survival means Path is Hidden
During childhood it might well make sense to hide the vulnerable, but what happens when that hiding is brought into adulthood - the path is hidden. Clinging holds onto this protection hiding seed-consciousness in a society that increasingly has threatening mental issues. When dukkha-protection doesn't work then we have fragmentation, but if there is no fragmentation there are still attachments to dukkha's protection that we take into adulthood. Clinging to these dukkhas and egos creates suffering for the path as that path is not able to express itself.
No mainstream CoA
There is a very important corollary to this protective hiding, society has no mainstream CoA - culture of awareness; how can cultural awareness be developed if the conditioning is to hide it? We don't educate for seed-consciousness, we do protect our children - in some cases over-protect, but because enabling seed-consciousness is not a societal approach that seed-consciousness tends to remain hidden. How many parents and educators speak of the path? When the path tries to break through esp firstgrace we might not be aware of what it means, and perhaps we cling to hiding it. There is a need for mainstream CoA esp with so many seekers looking to cults for answers, this attraction to cults arising from a feeling of awareness from the seed-consciousness without a CoA - awareness with no obvious place to go. Our world suffers from having limited CoA - it means the world is attached to hiding from our consciousness, hiding from Nature's path. We hide from love because love is anathema to patriarchy. We hide from consciousness overall because of patriarchy - it is hard to be compassionate and live in harmony within patriarchy.
Without a mainstream CoA where do paths take people? As mentioned cults - or out east - or new age; alternative religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism for Christian Westerners - even theosophy. Then there is dabbling with Qabalah, Gurdjieff, and the worrying attraction to the Occult such as Crowley (from Hollywood?), and so much more. Little of this dabbling is about practice - doing the work, although all could be ways up the mountain with a practice. Such dabbling often occurs, and this can bring some awareness but without practice the door soon closes again even if dabbling had opened it.
Lacking a CoA and bypassing
A CoA would arise if our culture accepted awareness and awakening, but sadly the system-for-the-rich is more concerned with accumulation and exploiting people to help with that accumulation. Rather than the path of awareness and awakening being flagged as a possibility in our upbringings - through parents or education, such awarenesses are often mocked by a society concerned with measuring success through monetary wealth.
Hence in our upbringings we hide the inner - the seed-consciousness - feeling vulnerable to the way society considers our sensitivities. This societal animosity also leads to spiritual bypassing because it can be difficult to fully enjoy the fruits of spiritual development through expressing awareness in our society. Hence can arise spiritual bypassing where people on the path choose solitude to experience these fruits. Yet path-duty requires embodiment - now more than any time in zandtao's lifetime. Spiritual leaders of the world need to stop hiding in bypassing, and through embodiment become active with their consciousness - the world is in sore need of the love and compassion of consciousness that arises when the path is followed. Solitude is a place for learning not a way of life; hopefully those learning in solitude can return to embodiment not hiding in bypassing. Perhaps advocating a CoA??
Shell of Restrictions
Instead of awareness and awakening we have the ongoing processes of conditioning and conformity in society. Through upbringings young people become wage-slaves, but perhaps awareness from seed-consciousness tries to push through. What happens if as the seed pushes through some awareness doesn't hold to our self-esteem - our survival egos; perhaps our narcissism has a negative impact and we question it? Because we don't "hold space" for consciousness, we might well release the ego that narcissist behaviour exposes but survival will quickly close the space again because of the continued need for self-esteem and inner protection. For progress to be made we need practice, and we need to develop mindfulness to hold space for consciousness.
So throughout our lives, self-esteem and protection - the 3 restrictions of ego, dukkha and clinging - maintain a shell, and so our seed-consciousness does not follow its path. If there is no practice we fall back on the same survival processes we learned in our upbringings, and spend our lives coping in and around the protective shells - never going beyond. Following our paths is what nature intended and can bring great joy, at the same time failure to follow our paths allows the worst harm of the existing societal infrastructure - the system-for-the-rich.
Live full lives
Through upbringing we grow into our own kind of reinforced shell - developing a face for the outer and protecting the inner; that is what conditioning and conformity does. We are protected from the outside by our reinforced shell but on the inside there is a vulnerable maturing seed, and that seed can only mature through living life.
Look at nature, can you not see that living life is the way it is? There are many paths up the mountain to truth, through our upbringing we are given our paths to guide us through life, a path to release the restrictions of our upbringing and hopefully mature. But we are meant to live our full lives by following this path.
Coping - Understanding the Shell
Trying to understand what happens in upbringing is integral; it is important to try and understand the shell that comes from our upbringing because that can give us life lessons. We have instincts to survive, and if in our upbringing survival builds self-esteem then this enables us to find work and cope with society. This is the outer purpose of upbringing, but there is also the inner purpose of protecting the vulnerable seed. As we approach adulthood we have built an established reinforced shell that protects the inner and enables the outer. Sadly this shell brings with it restrictions that inhibit our following the path - restricts the maturing of our seed of consciousness; we have managed to survive and cope, but we are not following our paths expressing who we are.
It is not unreasonable to understand our upbringing as conditioning and conformity where the conditioning and conformity essentially create the shell or facade that we use to start coping with life in new adulthood, the facade that enables us to find work - perhaps find romantic love and even begin our own families. We might think of this coping as life on or around the superficial shell, and for many people they cope with life on or around this superfice throughout their daily lives.
In this way of living, seed-consciousness initially protected during upbringing has been restricted from living life as there has only been a coping life around the upbringing of conditioning and conformity. What has begun as a sensible survival process leads to restriction - leads to an absence of living a much more fulfilling life; living life as nature intended.
Well-being, self-esteem and coping
Well-being has become confused with spirituality - by spirituality zandtao means following the path to spiritual consciousness. The confusion has been caused because the wellness industry uses spiritual techniques but not to develop consciousness.
This has happened as a hijack. Typically businesses such as Google recognised that well-being could be used to support self-esteem strengthening the facade so that we can cope better with the world of work and increase productivity. It is certainly the case that these spiritual techniques help us to cope better in our jobs - and for many people maybe that is enough. But it is not living life to the full - following our paths. Used in this way the spiritual tools of wellness are clinging, they help us cling to the attachments of facade and protection; in upbringing we have already used clinging to reinforce egos and strengthen the facade - wellness follows this similar process.
Wellness does not ask the deeper questions, enquiries that could possibly affect our conditioning and conformity. Through physical healing our improved health helps cope with the facade and helps maintain protection. When doubts arise as to whether what we do in our wage-slavery is justified, we can focus our minds on duties arising from conformity such as looking after family - consequently handling the workplace better through conformity. First and foremost the path will not ask you to neglect your responsibilities such as caring for family. But it might well create conflicts where family might ask for careerism and other signs of materialism yet the path is interested only in truth. This is a sad consequence of the power of conditioning and conformity in upbringing misdirecting the seeker into the mainstream of wage-slavery. For such seekers there will need to be compromise whilst duties are performed, and yet perhaps they can develop some direction on the path - and therefore some spiritual joy.
This is why there are two components of practice. Wellness looks at the restrictions and can increase the clinging - reinforcing the survival process if conditioning and conformity are weakening. However on the spiritual path when consciousness replaces the released restrictions the clinging is let go, and the path starts to express itself. Following the path does not have the same emphasis on material wealth so the seeker has this societal dilemma out of duty - this dilemma cannot be ignored it needs resolving. But a seeker can change the focus and begin to follow their path whilst maintaining family duties fulfilling workplace duties. A seeker can use their increased awareness to cope with daily life whilst maintaining focus on the path, but such awareness will not have material wealth as a motivation - yet family might have such motivation.
Remember the purpose of the spiritual tools is to help seed-consciousness live. Well-being is a societal movement hiding from the expression of seed-consciousness - wellness industry; so we have to be mindful as to how those tools are used.
Shell as Indicators
Examining the way the superfice has been constructed can provide indicators to guide us through the restrictions that have created the survival shell - and examine the restrictions that can continue to create that shell such as through wellness. In our upbringings conditioning and conformity are usually imparted through parents, mostly we learn from our parents through love and seeking approval. But we must understand that it is usually the case that most parents became parents through instinct as well. Whilst as children we turn to parents as knowledgeable teachers, as teenagers we grow towards adulthood and begin to consciously or unconsciously see that parents also are conditioned and have accepted conformity to a greater or lesser extent. Most parents have not gone beyond coping with life on or around this shell - living the facade and no inner journey, and they impart this way of living to children as the best way they know how to live life and cope with it - ignorant of the true path but with compassion for their children.
This unconscious way of upbringing is essentially what becomes our indicators to guide our way through life, if we are fortunate this guide leads to the path and we can recognise how much this helps through understanding that it is the Sacred Wound or Holy khandha - explained below.
If we live our lives through coping then we accept that our upbringings contributed to that coping process; there is no awareness of the path and no awareness that our upbringings have restricted access to the path. We do not understand any Sacred Wound because with the coping no wound is seen. But if we become aware that there is more to life than coping, then we start to see that our upbringing was restrictive. As we become more aware of these restrictions we start to see our upbringings as the cause and we might feel wounded because our growth was restricted. With greater awareness we begin to understand that we chose our parents, we chose the way we were restricted, and understand that to follow our paths we needed our parents and upbringing to be the way they were - the Sacred Wound (more detail below).
Deconstructing the Shell Attachments
How the superfice is formed and how we become restricted is very important in deconstructing the shell and living a fulfilled life following the path. Essentially the superfice is attachment; we form attachments to develop the outer facade and we form attachments to protect the inner. We cling to these attachments to survive and then cope with life, but these attachments are not who we are; if we can then realise that these attachments are a temporary shell we can release the attachments and live our lives through consciousness - the path. None of this is easy but it is the best way to live as can be attested by so many who have found the path.
We live our lives on the path when we release the restrictions by engaging with the Sacred Wound, but there is always the choice to hide. We can hide in conformity through materialism and wage-slavery hiding in these shallows focused on living the way of conformity our conditioning took us to - living on or around the superfice. Throughout those lives the buried path will try to emerge, Sacred Wounds will possibly be triggered, but through repressive self-discipline we can hide in protected conformity fulfilling a duty of conformity that few will question. Such a life-traveller will be lauded for coping.
Is this a life lived?
Connecting Shell and Practice
Our practice - what we can do - concerns the restrictions. Are we indeed limited to these restrictions? Do we need to release anything else? Let's start first with what we have as restrictions. We have a shell established during our upbringing. This shell is survival as it is hard out there. We need a strong facade to meet life head on yet we need to protect the growing seed of consciousness inside. This shell has an inner and outer - an outer facade that meets with society and inner protection for the seed. As our upbringing progresses we cling to this shell strengthening where required for survival.
But this shell is neither our consciousness nor is it our personality, it is a survival process used to survive the hardships interacting with society - it is hard out there. Yet this survival process as the Sacred Wound is more than surviving it becomes our teacher.
When it comes to our paths we often have difficulty understanding how to release the 3 restrictions but there is much to learn from our survival process. We will find that throughout our lives the egos and dukkhas of our upbringing repeat themselves. Our ego responds to repeat situations in the same way - the way we learned to survive during upbringing. So the more we understand how our protective shell and self-esteem formed, the more we can use the same methods to release restrictions that follow similar patterns in life. There is no coincidence in this repetition process - it is by design, a design that includes the Sacred Wound or Holy khandha.
And if there are no restrictions what remains? Seed-consciousness living life as intended, release the shell and live life as nature intended; with purpose - consciously loving and evolving consciousness.
Development Model
To help understand some of what this Holy khandha means we have a description of human development; it is an infrastructure that can help us understand our practice.
In offering this description of design, 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.
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.
Atammayata
Atammayata is a Pali word that has no good translation - a state of non-concoctability was Buddhadasa's translation that he was uncomfortable with; but it is so important to understand the meaning of this state. We have reached this state if we have released all restrictions and don't allow new restrictions in. From that position we are not affected by conditioning or society's pressures to conform, and there just remains the practice of holding space for the skills and directions of consciousness - skills as mindfulness, focus and embodiment and directions as love, wisdom, sila and truth.
Through our practice we can feel the release of restrictions - and the need to hold space:-
How we use the holy khandha
As described above, 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 holy khandha.
Learning consciousness
But there is another function of this survival process - through understanding how we have developed this shell we learn what design intended us to learn during our stages of shell development. It is these aspects of shell development or aggregation to the holy khandha that we need to release, and this releasing enables us to achieve atammayata leading to autonomy and conscious awakening. What our seed aggregates as personality and that 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 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.
But if we focus on developing the two components of practice - understanding restrictions, releasing these restrictions and holding space for consciousness, then we can go from awareness to awakening to purpose.
Holy khandha, Sacred Wound
When zandtao began looking at seed consciousness he found alaya vinnana, and that could be the 7th consciousness that was also part of yogacara school of Buddhism. It is the usual 5 sense-consciousnesses of ear, eye, touch, smell and taste together with a mind-sense that create 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. 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 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 as already described the Holy khandha. As the aggregates contact society (the patriarchy that has the system-for-the-rich), as already described as a survival process there develops an inner and outer shell fortified by clinging that arises out of all upbringing - parents and patriarchy; for zandtao this 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
zandtao wants to note here that he has not studied yogacara - just seen the fit as helpful to his practice. 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 the 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 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. 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 present the system-for-the-rich. Here we have what zandtao perceives as a Buddhist "weakness" - limited consideration of patriarchy. 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 - suggesting 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 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 and release the restrictions 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 the egos (on top of the personality) of these khandhas. It is a Holy khandha, in that letting go of this part of aggregation leads to 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 have reconciliation - the healing of the inner child, 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.
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. 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.
In this zeersight zandtao has explored consciousness, and in that exploring of consciousness has improved understanding of his own practice. It has not been ditthi but theory governed by improving practice.
So practice. Look at your upbringing and see what there is to heal and learn.
Healing for Life
This holy khandha is your guide for healing for life.
Perhaps bill's journey can give you guidance as to what zandtao means by the holy khandha as healing for life. 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. For bill this upheaval meant a rejection of conditioning and conformity, and he felt a new person. As a new person, bill went looking outside himself for the path. This was not the path as there was no practice, and 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 ego and not the path. For some this outer search took them East, bill ended up East in life and he went there with theories but Buddhism only took hold later in life - after more than 30 years.
What this description shows is a natural maturation process, a young adult on the path or otherwise looks outer after upbringing. This outer focus naturally is concerned with experience, learning and embodiment in life but it ignores a significant aspect of the holy khandha - it is the holy khandha we need to heal and that comes from looking inner and understanding the conditioning and conforming of our upbringing. There is experience to be gained, there is life to be enjoyed, there is compassion to be applied, there is the natural embodiment of the path. But there is nothing out there that has to be learnt before we can follow our path. Our path requires only two things:- a practice and the holy khandha. There are the 2 components of practice:-
We become free from restrictions when we understand the clinging to attachments of ego and dukkha that led to the self-esteem of facade and inner protection of vulnerabilities that was the conditioning and conformity of our upbringing. Becoming free from restriction was the learning and releasing of the holy khandha; that is the "theory we need", the holy khandha is healing for life. If we have a practice that tries to free us from restriction and yet hold space for consciousness, then the only study that is needed is the study that helps us understand our holy khandhas. Out in life is experience and embodiment that compassion works within but there are no "new wisdoms for personal development". Throughout bill's outer journey there were always snippets of insight where teachings or conversation connected with his own journey, but these could have been found if bill had started practice and learnt about his restrictions through understanding his holy khandha. But that wasn't to be. What was to be was his life, what his learning for personal development (so far) is understanding his holy khandha so that he can release the restrictions yielding space for consciousness. Following this came the autonomy giving the consciousness that brings love and evolution through his own learning and practice. For bill he was always seeking this understanding of his holy khandha. That understanding was always with him but his upbringing and reaction to that upbringing would never allow him to look inside sufficiently, that practice only came much later in life for bill; this was by design for him.
When we look at spirituality eg spirituality on utube, we have a proliferation of theories being offered, how can zandtao criticise this when he has presented theoretical developmental stages in this zeersight - he often discusses theories.
What is he trying to say? Through our practice we can reach autonomy - atammayata - the threshold of being mostly free from conditioning and conformity, and can then be more liberated on our paths with the conscious purpose of loving and evolving consciousness.
But he is trying to say so much more than this. Through conditioning and conformity in upbringing we build up our inner and outer restrictions; this is a process of survival. But not only is it a survival process, releasing the shell is also working through the ego-evolve consciousness that was intention and design. By design we work through an egoic evolution of consciousness, yet this is the same as releasing the inner protection and outer facade of our upbringing. Through our practice we examine what arose as our outer facade and inner protection, and continue to release these restrictions throughout our adult lives. At some threshold point our practice has released sufficient that we develop autonomy and the purpose of consciously loving and evolving consciousness.
Restating practice
Let zandtao reiterate and stress the importance of this practice, and the focus on the Holy Khandha or Sacred Wound. At the arrival of firstgrace a new seeker might well be confused; this might well be the first awareness of any path experience. Where does this awareness take the seeker? And out there, there are so many different ways up the mountain - so many different theories. And younger seekers look to theories as being most important because they have just left education. But it is the disciplined work of practice that matters the most. Unfortunately no practice makes sense unless it is backed by theory, and that opens the gate to ditthi proliferations - just so many ideas and theories. And all of these theories confuse as they take away from the focus on practice.
At 23 zandtao had a powerful firstgrace he calls upheaval. This upheaval was wonderful because it was so powerful that in his life he could never lose touch with the path. But for 30 years there was no practice so he was not following the path. Instead he was attracted to many theories which in retrospect were never wrong but were just simply different ways up the mountain. But you cannot go up the mountain without a practice, and he never connected theory to practice until well into his retirement with MwB. Now he has honed his practice into the 2 components that his autonomy just sees as a development of MwB but followers of Buddhadasa might not see that so he makes no such formal claim.
What matters is the practice. By design our upbringing gives us the restrictions to release. We can look back through Reconciliation: Healing the Inner Child by Thich Nhat Hanh, and we can see the formation of the facade and the protection of the seed that leads to the shell - the attachments to ego, dukkha and clinging. We can look at these restrictions, heal the inner child by releasing them, and develop the conscious purpose of loving and evolving consciousness. This healing cannot occur without a practice no matter how many ditthis or theories we study; without a practice there is no way up the mountain.
So with this zeersight please focus on the practice and hopefully the additional theories of seed and ego-evolve consciousnesses help you see the way restrictions arise by design, and that healing upbringing is the core of your practice for releasing restrictions. We have the focus for our practice - the Holy khandha, that aspect of consciousness that has aggregated restrictions in the outer facade and inner protection. We look at our upbringing and release the attachments that created this Holy khandha - this Sacred Wound, we see how these attachments impact our adult lives, release them, watch them return and release them again, until we have atammayata that means that this 8th consciousness cannot aggregate any more - and we have autonomy. We have learnt and healed.
So we could have our 2 components ofpractice as:-
Holding space for consciousness
Not attaching to the consciousness of the Sacred Wound - release Holy khandha.
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