Hi Sam, welcome to the inquiry. It's a big one - what happens when we go into the stillness?

You said...

The "attention instead of intention " approach gave me that extra split second to stop responding and seeing the old game. The same routine that brings me into selfjudgement, emotional unbalance and the unavoidable freeze. It's a spiral, the weight we tie to emotions is pulling us down.

A key thing to enquire about and work through would be expectation. I'm sure just about everyone will have heard from someone the amazing benefits of deep stillness. And then heard everything that arises from it. So you sit and work to go deep. But then nothing. All you get is nothing! Sometimes some people will have extraordinary visions of light or deep knowings. Sometimes each will have incredible peak experiences, and sharing personally, I indeed have had those. But mostly when I sit there is an ordinaryness to it. What I've learned to do, is not judge the ordinaryness, which takes a while to break through, especially if there's some kind of expectation.

What I've come to know, is as you deepen through the layers and approach the source experientially, it gets quieter and quieter, less and less to experience. This is okay, it's fine. It gets ever more formless in the higher dimensions. But then you start to notice subtle perceptions which don't seem to be much at all. In fact nothing could be further from the truth. I've realised they're the source of authentic flow. Getting to this point is tricky, because the mind and emotions are so loud and distracting. That's why some kind of carrying meditation is important - at Openhand we use the breath, others might use a mantra - although personally I'm wary of those because the risk is they become quite programming.

Two things start to happen as you get deep into the presence and start picking up the subtle perceptions... (1) the flow starts to open up through you much more in your daily life. Signs and synchronicity come stronger; perceptions about how reality is truly unfolding and its multidimensional nature - so it feeds into your daily awakened life (2) a state of bliss can easily unfold from that place. Although I hasten to add, it must be a natural arising from there rather than efforting for it - it's not there all the time, and doesn't need to be.

So I would say a key thing to confront and overcome is expectation. The expectation that you'll get something by sitting in stillness. Let go of the idea that you will have, or should have, a peak experience.

Open