Sometimes I connect with posts. I don’t necessarily address the entire thing, it may just be a reaction to some part(s).

I am glad that you got a resolution to your asthma. Coincidentally, the day you posted I was driving my son from school, he expressed that having done a couple of months of diaphragmatic breathing he now can run fine and not feel bothered by his asthma.

I feel that levels of achievement on inSelf Yoga site are most often the teacher’s position. However, it is a fact that others have to deal with sensual withdrawal and its many pangs, emotions, feelings, other attachments, or a sense of uninvestigated instinctual attachments. 

What stands out to me, if I may say so, is that you have attained great levels of introspection and observation. The semantics can get in the way on top of the actual variations in techniques.

Regarding the quote here from the initial post:"I think this type of work is really important because such blockages bar one from disengaging from the psychic adjuncts.  It may be that inSelf yogis are tackling all of this with breath infusion, but I am sharing here because I have had considerable luck by zeroing in on it in meditation."

I’d say that iSY doesn’t only deal with the removal of blockages during breath infusion. Actually, that really takes place during meditation which also has different components and levels. And as one progresses, the idea of to maintain mindfulness throughout the day, therefore the higher advise of at least 2 full rounds of practice daily. 

What I see as crucial and that has been shared as the development of the ability of introspection or mindfulness leading to analysis of all things other than the self, that which is not doing, or whatever it is described to be. 

But such a meditative state can also be achieved in iSY. Stillness, steadiness, motionlessness are all fundamental in the process of meditation, it was once desscribed by Michael as quietude. However, in iSY this is more of the object of the naad sound, upon completing infustion of the subtle form, the container of said blockages. 

Furthermore, that state can be quickly and easily be attained on a consistent basis by doing kinetic manipulation, yoga with bhastrika first, and then involving meditation/introspection or absorption in naad.

That program which includes the breath of fire directly allows access to the blockages since they are stocked in the subtle body and psyche when not generated from the life force. Then meditation is where the work takes place. The very concentration (or attraction to naad) turns the attention towards those other things outside of the self or blockages.

Rishi doesn’t linger on certain aspects as what he shares most often is relating to his experience. Otherwise, most definitely, there are lots of preliminary achievements to take place. Therefore when one initially sits down to meditate, although Patanjali for good practice advises against consideration of all peripheral things and insists only on unidirectional attention, the psyche shows one the stuff it’s made of, and I’d also say they need to be addressed, dealt with and cleared through. Fortunately, the eight fold path system allows for flexibility, and being on different steps of the ladder at once, it’s a process. 

Regarding this paragraph: “Where is the Core Self in this type of experience? It really seems to be an invisible non-actor.  Is it a wimp? I would hardly say so.  It is more like the sublime contentment I described; that type of no-self. No-self does not seem to lack substance but what substance it does have is not at all like a conventional self.”

I find this to be a very poignant question. Based on your type of meditation practice around this realization or acquisition, and that being around the heart base, it is possible to your core self could relocate during such experiences given the sustained and steady focus of the attention and awareness in that region. Now, from there to leap to defining it as sublime contentment or a no-self may as you suggest necessitate more investigation indeed.

It has been labeled wimpy due to its incapacity to outdo the adjuncts on a wish. By nature, it is beyond the trials and tribulations the social self journeys through, so it cannot pull the shots. Being of a different nature to anything normally experienced, it may become more evident eventually in time, and that may not necessarily connect it or limit it to a state of pure consciousness. 

And, I have a reaction to this segment: 

Consider this:  If the coreSelf cuts off the power and disables it from powering the 5 senses and the mind, then there is containment of the so-called power source.  That is when the coreSelf has a chance of experiencing itself.

What is that like? Can one describe the experience? Without powering up and animating the mind, the sense of identity, the body and psyche, the whole samsaric display of a being/ psyche vanishes.

Would sparks still fly out of the power source which is fully  "self" contained?

I’d say that it may be verily difficult to hypothesize on that state. We have never at any point since inception/conception into manifestation experienced such condition of being just pure self. As it stands, core-self is totally removed from what we do and are about. 

So once reverted to its state of “pure being” only it would have by dint of process achieved self-containment of its energies hopefully, and not look to branching out again. Achieving that state is what Lord Buddha was able to easily do by determination. It is that total, radical and permanent letting go of all things other.