This is the process of mental analysis, sifting through the selves, sifting through your thoughts, practicing mindfulness, learning to control thought.

You can summon up power from past lives and bring them into this life. That can give you a boost into the next state of mind or further up.

Look at the big picture of the wheel of life. Above it, there is a Buddha. He is pointing, not towards the wheel, but away from it. He is indicating that there is something else - nirvana.

At every moment, you have the opportunity to crap out. The world will always tell you to play it safe and just be dead.

When you go into samadhi, either salvikalpa or nirvikalpa, what happens is you erase, you loosen, the aggregates. You simplify them.

If you are finding that you can stop thought longer and longer, I would say your life is bringing power into your being. You are gaining things out from that field behind the house.

If you are doing that which is within you, what that part of you that is beyond body would like you to do, then you would not experience stress because you would be very fulfilled.