The Path of Cultivation

18 Aug

Welcome, dear reader, to an exploration of Cultivation, a meta-framework for guiding development, empowering growth, realising one’s highest potential, and walking a genuinely effective spiritual path.

Through writing this article I sought to anchor and refine my understanding of cultivation, to dive into what its mechanisms are and to attempt to bring some clarity to how it is that one does it!

My hope is that this article and the ideas explored within it can be of benefit to you and your journey.

In this article we will explore:

Key mindset shifts over a 16 year journey seeking cultivation
A technical breakdown of my current understanding of the mechanics of cultivation
The subjective experience of cultivating, what it looks like and some of the things that can arise.
A framework for self-reflection and application of these ideas to life.

Now let us dive in!

Seeking the spiritual

My Journey of Spiritual seeking began at age 12, I was given the book, “The Way of the Peaceful Warrior’’ A classic spiritual-esque, new age self-help book with an inspiring story bringing together gymnastics, philosophy and meditation into a path of self mastery , I was an aspiring snowboarder at the time so the idea of elite performance empowered by mindfulness and inner work resonated nicely. Once, after reading this book, I remember thinking to myself ‘’wow, this meditation thing sounds cool!” and then sitting there in my bed and trying to ‘Meditate’…. and eventually finding myself in a state where my awareness had contracted into a tiny point in the centre of my head, everything was perfectly still, there was no thought, no experience of the outside of the body, I distinctly remember looking out at the vastness of the interior of my head and body, I remember a deep feeling of calm. Thinking back on this now, I find it amusing how easy and natural this was and how much more complicated it is now as an adult!

From this point on, I became increasingly interested in the ‘spiritual’. I read many books and began experimenting with concentration and meditative practices. I became fascinated with ideas and stories about psychic phenomena and supernatural abilities. One day, I was sharing this interest with a very dear family friend, and he suggested that I go and see a Chinese Qigong Master he and his partner had met. "He can send electricity out of his hands bro; it's wild.”… I was sold!

So, at about 16 years old, my older brother, my parents, and I all went and began studying with Master Zhao. It was excellent; we learned how to connect with our Qi, move it, and use it to strengthen our bodies. Zhao was/is a very kind, friendly, light hearted and generally lovely person to be around. He was also able to demonstrate various skills with his Qi that defied the conventional perspective of the laws of physics and what the human body is capable of; witnessing this as a teenager was extremely inspiring.

Through Zhao, I encountered the Idea of Cultivation. At the time, I understood it as the idea of using training in energy arts to reach One’s highest potential. Throw in meeting an excellent Kungfu teacher a year or two later, a love of reading the genre of fantasy, and a healthy dose of grandiose self-delusion and cultivation for me became very dragon ball Z esk, very much about becoming a superhuman, it was very fun….my friends and I had a great time!

Training with Zhao was amazing; my brother and I did all his courses and retreats, and we became healthier, stronger and more energised, but with my yearning for the superhuman came a desire for more! My understanding now is that what Zhao taught is not what he personally practised; his role and purpose was as a healer, and his skills and level of attainment came not through the healing practices he taught but through the Neigong process he had been through. I had heard Zhao use the term neigong a few times, so I went with that and started scouring the internet, and after some time, I found what I was looking for - “Neigong: Awaken your Bliss and Dormant Potential” “Hidden teachings now revealed” and I was sold 🤦‍♂️ and so I went and studied this system with its founder in the USA, and would repeatedly visit this teacher once or twice a year for the next 7 years, I became a teacher in this system, and thusly did I enter a life phase of maximum Woo woo.

Developing a practice based on feeling and experience

Many fun and interesting experiences were had over this time but to cut a long story short, I began having regular, relatively strong, energetic and ‘spiritual’ experiences. In the new community I became part of through this neigong system it seemed the thing to aim for was to have the strongest energetic, metaphysical and ‘spiritual’ experiences possible and to try to sustain these as one’s default ……
(something fishy about this mentality)

Despite having many interesting and exciting experiences, and while I was developing some positive character traits and qualities through this process, the conceptual framework or paradigm of development I was operating by was incorrect, unsustainable and potentially dangerous

The obsession with experiences turned my practice into a feedback loop of - build energy > have experience > use experience to strengthen ‘spiritual ego’ > Repeat.

Alongside this cycle, the deeper issues I had around social anxiety, what I experienced as an internal barrier and tension between myself and the world and others, seemed to be getting subtly slowly worse. With my close inner circle, this was not an issue, but beyond that, If I was in a context where I couldn't wear my spiritual ego, I often struggled; this was a problem, I had no idea at the time, but the paradigm I was operating by and my approach to practice was making my internal struggles worse.

Competence in creating strong experiences

Despite my gnawing, unaddressed internal issues, I became competent in generating strong experiences and effects in my body, mind and perception, and I thought myself to be very spiritual indeed……And the cycle continued – build energy>have experience>bolster ego.

Years later, there came the point in my practice when I started to engage in longer seated practice sessions. I went from 1-hour seated meditation being the most I would do to, alongside my other energetic and physical practice, regularly doing 2.5-hour seated sessions and with this, the ‘’experiences’’ went to a new level. They started to have a level of realness and connection to reality that they hadn’t had previously, with this came awe and a deeper sense of connection to something beyond what I previously touched on. I remember thinking, if this is as far as I go, and if I could just stabilise this to be more consistent and more accessible, I would not need anything more.

Insight into causation

So, I looked closely at what was happening and studied the causation chain of what was giving rise to the higher end of the phenomena I was experiencing, and three things became clear. What I was experiencing only arose when:

My body was open, stable, strong and relaxed
My breath was deeply sunk, slow and exquisitely calm
My mind and emotions were still and at peace

I saw that these 3 things were foundational qualities that I lacked. Aside from the Martial arts, acrobatics and general movement and strength training I did, most all my training had been in direct ‘energetic work’. I realised I had a lot of work to do to get the foundations to the level they needed to be for me to stabilise the new experiences. So, I went hunting for a teacher with whom I could develop the foundations I lacked.

This recognition of what I lacked and what needed developing, I think, was the first glimmer of getting out of the incorrect paradigm of my practice and cultivation being experience-driven. I was still aiming at the experience, but my awareness was now directed more towards the factors that gave rise to the experience rather than the experience itself.

Over the next several years, I searched around. I trained with 5 new teachers, but none of them had what I was looking for, and then finally, I found the teacher I study with now, Damo Mitchell. I had been aware of Damo for quite a while, but alas, he doesn’t market himself with saucy new-age language designed to appeal to experience-hunters, and I had lacked the maturity to see the quality in what he was doing and the pragmatism in his approach. Around this time, when I was exploring different teachers, I read one of Damo’s books, ‘White Moon on the Mountain Peak’, and the penny dropped, and I realised this was who I needed to study with.

So, I began scheming about how to travel to train with Damo. Then covid hit, and the world went into lockdown. In particular, the city of Melbourne, where I lived at the time, went into some of the most severe lockdowns of anywhere in the world, at one point hosting the longest lockdown in the world! Wooo! So, locked up in my apartment, there was no way of going to see the man, but serendipitously, a month or so before this, Damo had launched his online academy, and I was in and had lots of time to practice! - Link at the end of this article to Damo’s Online Academy for anyone who wants to check it out.

I think that despite previously (and definitely still) lacking maturity, I was now, in many ways, uniquely positioned to see key aspects of value in Damo's work that might not stand out as much to others. My work for the past four years at this point had been in the mental health sector, mostly working in learning and development, providing training to practitioners and some delivery of Mental health services alongside this. I was blessed with an incredible mentor who instilled in me an understanding of the principles and processes of adult education and the paradigms and approaches necessary to empower others to be genuinely autonomous in their journeys. Combine this with 12 years or so with various Qigong teachers ranging from authentic through to full on woo-woo. I had an interesting measuring stick with which to judge Damo's work, and I found the first person I had come across who I saw as both genuinely wanting to help others succeed in these arts and having the competence to make it happen. I distinctly remember doing the first few lessons on Damo’s online academy and being very impressed by the quality of the tuition, the clarity of the concepts and that he was providing a developmental framework that gave the students the ability to be autonomous in their journey. At this point, having spent the past 4 years immersed in the study of frameworks for learning, encountering this level of coherence and strategic teaching in the Qigong and the Internal arts world was quite impactful for me.

In some ways, this was a challenging moment to recognise the quality in front of me, as part of that realisation was the acknowledgement that I was starting again, and all that spiritual ego that had been built up had to go, and I was now a beginner again. I had to go from “I have been studying and practising Qigong and Neigong for 12 years, I know all the things blah, blah, blah” to “I am a beginner”. There was a small part of me that didn’t like this, but faced with the quality of teaching in front of me, I knew what needed to happen, and a beginner I became.

A Perspective shift

Engaging with Damo's material and practicing and studying in this new way brought a shift in perspective and a move to a new paradigm and conceptual framework for thinking about practice, the path, Cultivation, and how to do it.

I learnt that each practice we do is a cause aimed at creating an effect, and the degree to which it will cause this effect is dependent on the conditions. Through our practice, we aim to cultivate the correct conditions and build them as qualities into our being.

I learnt that practice is not about generating experiences but rather about building conditions into the structure and function of who and what we are. Experiences will arise as a part of this process, but they are not the piece to be aimed at or worked for directly.

I began applying this new approach in earnest, and my practice started to work in a way it never had before; I began changing as a person. This happened in many ways but two that stand out are: the mystical experiences I had always sought in my practice began to transition into experiences of deep peace and contentment, and I underwent a thorough re-patterning of my emotions. Through all the years of practice I had done seeking experiences, I had trained my system to be ‘heightened’ all the time; I think my saving grace for this not causing more damage than it did was that I always maintained relatively intense physical training alongside the energetic practices I did. Now that I was practising for genuine cultivation and not just experiences, this all began to rectify, and my system began to regulate to a healthier baseline.

I remember several occasions when I was out in the city and suddenly found I had accidentally orchestrated a humorous and playful conversation between multiple strangers. After these experiences, I remember being very surprised; the ability to be one’s self and connect with others and life in this way had been something I had always admired in others but had always seemed beyond me. It seemed who I was as a person was starting to change, and the layers of tension and subtle anxiety I had always had between myself and others were dissolving. I was becoming a much more pleasant person to be. I continued with my practice, this new approach and slowly, gradually, things shifted more and more in this positive direction.

Fast forward four years to the present, halfway through 2024, and I am a year and a half into living in Bali, Indonesia, where I am Studying full-time with Damo Mitchel and a group of excellent people. I have always had the dream of training and studying in these arts under the direct tutelage of a highly skilled teacher and now this has very much come true. We are in Bali eight months of the year, Training 9-5, five days a week; we study martial arts, Taiji, Xing Yi, Qigong, Neigong, Alchemy, and Meditation. I feel profoundly blessed to be part of this, to have these amazing people as friends and to be studying with a highly competent, sincere teacher. Blessed be.

My understanding of the concept of cultivation has been on quite a journey these past 16 years or so. From the initial interest in spirituality and psychic phenomena to the path of the superhero, to maximum interdimensional metaphysical woo woo, to something a bit more grounded in what worked and now to what feels like a comprehensive and holistic understanding of the path of cultivation, its mechanics and how to make it work. I owe a huge part of my understanding to Damo Mitchell and the clarity and generosity with which he teaches. I know that my understanding of cultivation will continue to evolve and shift, but I think where it is at now is worth sharing, both as an exercise in refining my own understanding and in the hope that it could bring some benefit to those who are engaged in the processes of self-development and cultivation but who have not had the time or freedom for deeper study of the mechanics that make these endeavours effective and sustainable in the long term.

If you have read this far, thank you. I am honoured that you have taken the time to engage with this story and I must warn you that the next section gets a little dense and technical, potentially putting a squeeze on the brain. But hang in there, and may the juice be worth the squeeze!

Additionally, please bear in mind that the ‘words’ are not the ‘thing’ and that the purpose of the words that follow was to shape my mind into a vehicle that facilitates a functional and beneficial relationship with the forces of causation that drive growth, development, and transformation and it is my desire is to share this mind shaping with you, so here goes!

Cultivation: The meta-framework for self-development and the Spiritual Path.

The Technical

Please see the glossary at the end of this article for my definition of the terms I am using.

Cultivation is the systematic use of practice, lifestyle, introspection and self-awareness, as well as the application of attention to these processes to create continuous growth and transformation to who and what we are and It is the process of building specific qualities into the structure and the function of our being. This is done through 3 aspects.

The direct active work of cultivation, the practice the cultivator does; the practices used are causes that lead to various effects. What effects the practices lead to and how efficiently they do this depends on the conditions present and the qualities inherent to the one practising. To use a practice for cultivation is to apply a cause to develop, create changes to and enhance the conditions and qualities inherent to the structure and function of one’s being.

The work of cultivation is also the continual refinement of one’s lifestyle factors and behaviour to ensure that they are conducive to and promote the development and stabilisation of the correct conditions and qualities.

The third essential part of this process is applying and developing one’s attention. This ranges from the direct study of developing the correct quality of attention during practice to maximise the effectiveness of the work, to the more passive application of self-awareness and introspection to the process of growth and development both while one is practicing and also in day to day life. The quality of one’s attention is the primary quality of concern for the cultivator. It has the greatest capacity to empower or negate the effectiveness of one’s practice (the application of causes). The application of self-awareness and introspection supports the attention to interface with what is unfolding through the cultivation process and serves as a mechanism by which we can assess and reflect on our efforts, enabling us to tailor what we do to be most effective for our development.

Through the three aspects of cultivation, conditions gradually become qualities intrinsic to the structure and function of our being. These qualities enhance the potential of our practice and actions and act as governing forces for how we function and grow. Thus, they create positive feedback cycles where the qualities empower what we do, and the empowered actions strengthen and further develop the qualities.

As this process runs, the elements, mechanisms and systems (body, breathe, energy, mind, etc) that make up our being are individually developed and refined, any deficit in them is repaired or compensated for, and the quality of how they interrelate is enhanced, leading to a higher level of efficiency and synergy across the systems. This is done by actively targeting the specific elements, mechanisms and systems with practices and developmental processes designed for their betterment and passively by living and behaving in a manner conducive to continued development.

The enhancement of synergy and the high levels of efficiency of body and mind lead to more potential accumulating in the system, creating another feedback cycle whereby the accumulated potential goes back into the system, further strengthening the structures and functions.

When the elements and systems have been adequately repaired, developed, refined, and integrated, the potential, rather than being used for these processes, starts to accumulate and condense; eventually, this reaches a critical level and the accumulated potential precipitates transformation.

This transformation is the activation of a deeper level of function, the awakening of another aspect of being as the accumulated potential pressurises, refines and bursts through into deeper systems and layers, bringing online new structures and functions of the cultivator’s being.

The stabilisation of the activation that has arisen from transformation is dependent on and needs to continue to be fed by the heightened functioning, surplus potential generating processes of the previous stage; without this, the awakening of a new structure and function may be glimpsed briefly as an experience, but it will not be stabilised and integrated as part of the default structure and function of the cultivator. With the activation of the new layer or aspect of being comes another feedback cycle whereby the new structures and functions activated increase the potency of the work of development, enhancing the capacity of the previous levels, and making practice more powerful.

…. Nearly broke my brain trying to write that last bit.

So, to summarise, the cultivator uses causes (practices) to create effects that build and develop qualities. These qualities then act as conditions upon causes, increasing the likelihood they will lead to the correct outcomes and decreasing the likelihood they will not. In this way, the Qualities act as governing forces on one's being, causing it to function in specific ways it did not previously. Alongside this work, the cultivator tailors their lifestyle to be maximally conducive to the above process as well as actively using life to continue promoting the development of the correct qualities, all the while deeply studying the attention and how it engages with and affects this process. This builds a dynamic system of growth and development that, through heightened efficiency of function, accumulates potential, which further enhances this process until the potential reaches critical levels of accumulation and precipitates the transformation of the structure and function of the cultivator.

Ultimately, this process leads to the shifting of the cultivator’s sense of “I amness”, the point of reference from which they experience reality and being, to move to and stabilise at higher and higher levels of their being.

The excellent teacher I study with often pragmatically summarises much of the above with three words: “Build more Qi”

Here is a graphic to demonstrate the Cause>Conditions/Qualities>Effects relationship.

The Subjective and experiential

Now that we have covered the technical model let us explore what this looks like from the subjective experience of one cultivating:

I have a system of practices I use that aim to develop specific qualities in my body, heart, and mind. As I do these practices each day, I apply introspection and self-awareness to the process of change they precipitate, constantly refine the quality of my attention in my practice and strive to embody as many of the correct qualities in my practice as possible. I treat my practice not as a vehicle for experience but as a craft of training conditions into my system.
Alongside this, I seek to live and behave in a way that continues to develop and enhance the elements of my being and promote the ongoing development, integration, and stabilisation of the qualities I am cultivating in my practice. This looks like:
- Cultivating a healthy lifestyle with correct nutrition and movement that supports the body to be at its best.
- Engaging in ongoing learning and study so that my mind is positively stimulated and constantly developing.
- Abiding by a moral and ethical framework.
- Actively embodying the qualities I am cultivating through my practice in day-to-day life. For example, alongside my formal practice of gratitude, I take moments throughout my day to activate this quality and, at times, when appropriate, actively sustain it as I go about my day.
- Continually applying introspection and self-awareness to my behaviour and experience.

We are all individuals and so what this looks like will have a level of uniqueness to each person. However, I believe the theme should be that the enhanced function generated through practice and cultivation not only feeds into making one’s practice more effective but is also fed into life to improve what one is able to do, create and contribute to the world. This is done by treating life as a vehicle for the further development of qualities that are conducive to the process of cultivation and the enhancement of one's practice. On a practical level, I think this looks like the cultivator always learning, challenging themselves, developing their character, seeking new knowledge and skills, seeking to uplift those around them and be of benefit to their community.

As this process runs, cultivation happens, and the elements, mechanisms and systems of body and mind are refined and developed. This creates many changes, some that are arising for me that I think it is ok to speak on are:

Cultivation fuelling life; as cultivation happens a kind of structural integrity of self begins to arise, and there is a build-up of more potential and energy in the system, this happens from the system running more efficiently and having less physical, psychological, and energetic leaks, it happens from the direct cultivation of energy, and also from the stabilisation of qualities that unify and harmonise the various systems in the body and aspects of self. This increased efficiency and energy enhances practice, but it also enhances everything else in life. The best way I can describe my experience of this is something akin to a constant light flow state in which body and mind function better, and there is a greater level of vividness and richness to experience. Over the past few years, this has begun arising more and more, and currently, if I am doing the amount of practice I should be and doing what is necessary for vitality, this state is becoming more and more the default. However, if vitality starts to wane; too many late nights, too much caffeine and not enough practice, this state starts to fade away again. The flow state esk baseline state seems to fuel whatever I am doing, leading to enhanced performance in everything from intellectual activities to physical tasks. There also seems to be an enhancement to the process of learning and development of new skills. Whatever we do, our systems adapt to do more efficiently, but cultivation seems to make this process even stronger. Because of this, I think it is essential that anyone cultivating should also be engaged in activities that they genuinely want to get better at.

The stabilisation of qualities. A recent example from my own life – at the time of writing this, I am enjoying a crisp, cold winter in the Southern Highlands of Australia; for such an experience to be truly idyllic, one needs an abundance of firewood. I have been chopping up firewood with an axe since I was a teenager. I have always loved the process, but I do remember how much force I used to need to use and that, at times, the effectiveness of my axe blows was inconsistent; this, of course, had no bearing on my masculinity. In the past, I felt strong when chopping; I would swing the axe with power and speed, striving for the perfect rhythm of activation, momentum and timing, bringing the head of the axe down with force on my opponent…the wood, results often varied. Fast forward to having done 18 months of intensive full-time martial arts training in Bali in which efficiency of movement has been a primary quality being cultivated, chopping wood has become very different. Instead of using power and intensity, now all I do is stand at the correct distance adopt an appropriate stance and smoothly swing the axe at the wood, and there is a satisfying pop as the wood explodes in half. Crisp, smooth, simple. It feels rather strange; I am not intentionally doing anything differently; it is just far easier and takes much less effort than it used to; if anything, It feels like I am being very lazy and not putting in as much effort as I should. The logs are no longer resistant foes but are now obliging collaborators that seem to just want to pop in half. I see this as an experience of qualities becoming inherent. The quality of efficiency of movement is now, to some degree, inherent in the system and does not require action or intention to come online; it is just there in the background, implicit in the body’s function. As a result, things just feel easier. Less energy is being lost in inefficient or unnecessary movement, and the energy that is used is concentrated and unified through the efficiency in the system, resulting in getting more for putting in less, creating the experience of it being easier. They say at the beginning of the path, chop wood, carry water, and at the end of the path, chop wood and carry water, but the bit that is perhaps forgotten is that on the way, we should get much better at it!

Introspection and self-awareness empowered by the potential built up in the system leads to a greater capacity to perceive and release the somatic patterns and thought constructs one is holding onto and identifying with. An example of how I personally experience this goes something like this- I feel stressed, then the introspection and self-awareness process shows me the feeling of stress and its associated mental constructs as a pattern that is in my body and mind and that this pattern is a separate thing from me (me = the central point of reference from which I am experiencing everything). My experience of how this happens varies, but in general, the ‘stress’ usually feels like a concentrated mass of somatic sensation made up of various little tightnesses and pressures. When the ‘stress’ is perceived in this way, it becomes depersonalised. I am no longer looking through the pattern and unconsciously identifying with it, having it flavour experience; instead, I start to look at it. The stress loses its emotional and mental quality and becomes just a somatic sensation. A space opens, and it feels like the stress is no longer touching ‘me’. This can be quite a relieving experience, the relief of a pain I had gotten used to. Often, with this release, I find two things arise: one is an insight into the incorrect perspective and attitude I had been operating from, and the other is the arising of a richer experience of the outer world. It is hard to describe, but for me, this often manifests as a connection to the vibe of this moment in time and space. The smell and temperature of the air, the colours in the environment, and whatever is happening in the environment all trigger an emotional and feeling response that is usually highly unique. It is a very pleasant and fulfilling experience….. Hahaha! As I sit here writing about this, I inadvertently triggered it; looking out the window, I see branches and leaves high at the top of a gum tree dancing in the wind; this causes a feeling of inspiration/the feeling of the warmth of the sun/a bright freshness of nature subtlety imbued with the smell of eucalyptus/the promise of new opportunities, then a magpie flies through my line of sight, and there is a spark of joyous love… super weird….. and exceedingly pleasant. As we do the work of cultivation and release our habitual patterning, gradually, our range of feeling and emotion opens up, the layers of our being that are typically locked in a specific shape (our habitual mental and emotional patterning) open up, rather than holding one pattern and projecting it onto the world, these aspects of our being gain the freedom to resonate with the world, and the experience of the world becomes far richer.
As cultivation continues, month by month and year by year. This process of introspection and self-awareness creating insight into somatic patterns and thought constructs and releasing them becomes more and more automatic. As a side note, I definitely notice that how well this functions is very dependent on my level of vitality; the higher the vitality, the more all of the above happens; the lower, the more I get locked down in my habitual emotive and mental patterns.

There are many more aspects to what arises on the journey of cultivation, both general aspects that will be experienced by everyone who goes through this process, as we are all humans and share the same form and function, as well as there being unique aspects that arise from the blooming of each person’s unique traits and what aspects of life and self they invest the empowering force of their cultivation in. I believe maximisation of the positive aspects of self is a key part of the cultivation process, I think the cultivator, alongside their practice, should strive to be the very best they can be at whatever they do, whether that be parenting, business, art, community building, Martial arts etc. In this way, cultivation will fuel additional processes of growth and development and be of greater benefit to others and the world.

Applying this Framework of Cultivation to your life and development

Now let us summarise the idea of cultivation we have explored so far so that it can be used as a conceptual framework for mapping and enhancing our path of growth, development and transformation.

The 3 aspects to the process of cultivation are:

The Practice.

This is the regular work of applying the cultivation methods. The daily practice of the techniques of the cultivation system you use. The purpose of the practice is twofold:
- To develop greater skill at the techniques/method
- To create outcomes/effects in the structure and function of your being, building Qualities into who and what you are
Practice typically constitutes developmental activities for one’s body, mind and energy.

*A side note here is that even if you do not practice a formal cultivation system such as Taiji Quan, Neigong, or Meditation, applying this framework to any development activity will be of great benefit. Cultivation is a craft, and in many ways, what tools are used is secondary to how they are used.

Lifestyle

Living in a manner that promotes the continued development of qualities.
Seeing life as a place for learning and growth and actively working at the development of one’s character and one’s skills. A part of this that is important to me is having work or projects that require one to grow and develop and that act as a vehicle for one to apply one’s cultivation into something that gives to others and the world.
Abiding by an ethical and moral framework
Environmental factors
- Living in a manner that promotes external conditions that are supportive of the process of cultivation.
- Eliminating factors from one’s life that are detrimental or opposed to the process of cultivation

Attention + Introspection and Self-awareness

Studying and seeking to apply the correct quality of attention in your practice.
Applying constant introspection and self-awareness to the cultivation process in both practice and life

Below is a writing exercise that can be used to begin applying this framework for self-reflection and planning; there is a link at the end of this article to download this table if you wish to use it as a writing exercise.

Closing Thoughts

Practice can be many different things, but ultimately, it should be something that develops the elements of your being (body, mind, heart, energy etc) . 16 years in, I believe that the correct conceptual framework and the correct application of introspection and self-awareness is of greater importance than any particular practice.
“The way that can be told is not the eternal way; The name that can be named is not the eternal name.” Everything I have written in this piece is ultimately not true, it is an attempt to shape words and ideas to point at something that is true, and my attempt to point at what I have experienced as a more effective way to approach the path of cultivation.
This map is not intended to be a final exposition on what cultivation is, it is intended to be a journey of ideas that point at and draw shapes around the mechanics of how cultivation functions. The value of such a map is not in its ability to lock things down but in its capacity to lead our minds into new territories of being and point our unconscious and subconscious at dimensions of who and what we are that we want to develop a greater connection with. I hope that in a year or two my understanding of cultivation has grown from this, and I hope that you do not take my words as any form of gospel but instead use them as scaffolding to craft your own understanding.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, I hope that the exploration of these ideas is of benefit to you. I wish you success on your path.
Jackson

Resources

Damo Mitchells online Academy: www.Damomitchell.com

Self Reflection writing exercise: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ng52h1mpoFSH1X4j6zmg9YqQ_P9kIpfvnwZdOH96g-w/edit?usp=sharing

Alchemy on the Island podcast: Dan and Giro, two friends also training here in Bali, hosted me on their podcast; we discussed many of the ideas I explored in this article, have listened!
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0mTK5ch9mz4r12MqBUHuhQ?si=dce987b3aeb241e8

Glossary

Attention

The quality of awareness when it is free from bias and preferences, uncoloured by emotional movement and undistorted by mental action
Attention is very much on a spectrum a low level perhaps being a quality of awareness that is able to perceive phenomenon of mind and internal experience without being caught up in it and a high level being pure spacious awareness devoid of any form or distortion.

Conditions

The factors affecting our internal and external environment: an external condition could be the social environment we exist in, and an internal condition could be the quality of health.

Practice/Cause

Practice is the activities, exercises and methods used to train and develop the body, mind, and various aspects of our being. An example of a practice could be meditation, breathing exercises, movement exercises etc.
The key determining factor that takes an activity from just being and activity to being a practice is that it is being used intentionally for cultivation.

Introspection and self-awareness

The process of being aware of what is arising in our inner world
The capacity to perceive the internal movements of mind, emotion, feeling and the various systems that give rise to our experience of being.

Self

The form that is created from the sum of our physical (body), emotional (Heart), and mental (mind) experience, functioning as the subjective point of reference and filter through which the information of reality is seen, processed, and acted upon.

Qualities

Qualities are the traits, attributes, and characteristics that exist at all the different levels and layers of our being; we can have qualities on the physical level (e.g. Strength), mental (e.g. Concentration), energetic (e.g. abundance of energy), etc. Qualities can exist as a developed trait of a certain element of our being (e.g. an elastic body); they can arise from certain elements of our being harmonising in the correct relationship to each other (e.g. Integrity). They can also arise from other qualities being combined and correctly harmonised (e.g. Discipline + Integrity = Purpose), and qualities can also arise as a causative byproduct of other qualities being sufficiently developed and stabilised. (e.g. efficient, smooth movement leading to more physical power)

Jackson Collings