Introducing myself
- Mario Nistri
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10 years 7 months ago #14654
by Mario Nistri
Introducing myself was created by Mario Nistri
Hi!
So, that's my introduction; first thing you need to know about me is that I'm lazy, so I'll paste what I wrote during the sign up process with something removed and somethings added...
So, I'm Italian, I'm 25 years old, I live in Viareggio, a city coast about 70 miles west from Florence.
I've been practicing for 2 years, meditating many hours daily (meditation is most of what I doin my life).
For a few months I've been followed on Skype by Bhante Yuttadhammo, a Canadian monk from the Mahasi tradition; under his guidance, I got SE, as defined in the Mahasi tradition.
I wanted to become a monk, but the first two times I asked they refused me, basically because at the time I was too messed up; by now I almost lost interest in the monastic life, since I consider the pragmatic folks to be a better bet for spiritual development so I decided to sign up for a 3 years course to become a yoga teacher; my ideal is to end up with little work, little money and lots of time to practice.
Lately I've been doing a lot of energy practices; I don't follow a specific tradition, but I got a sense of how tomanipulate&storing energies and removing blockages, so I go with that. Removing blockages and relaxing the body is the main goal, the ways I do that are many: strong Goenka-like concentration, metta practices, sexual energies, yoga asanas, breathing stuff, mantra, thinking in general, visualization and stuff like that.
My main meditative pain in the ass are very painful sensations arising at the joints, that end up creating shakings in the body; one of the main reasons I doenergetic stuff is that, the more things are allowed to flow inside me, the more these things become barable. With time things have improved, I still have them, but I'm confident that I'm on the right track for making them go away.
What I enjoy the most in meditation is probably hard momentary concentration on a small spot; not sure why, but I really love it; however, I can't do it a lot, since narrowing the focus prevents me from observing carefully those sensations, so I cannot do it so often.
One thing that seems to be a very common pattern is that, during the last months, attention tends to tune each couple of days into different kind of sensations and range of width-narroving, giving rise during the process to many different ways of experiencing. I got fascinated by the number of ways attention can be tuned, but the thing seems to be pretty much outside my control, in the sense that,if attention is inclined in a certain way, trying to force it in another way is quite an hard thing to do; probably, however, being able to switch rapidly from one way of experiencing to another is just another skill that can be acquired over time, but now I'm quite lazy on that regard, so at the moment I just humor what attention seems to be intended to do. Among the many ways attention can be tuned there are the jhanic states, upon wich I don't really have a particoular mastery,but sometimes it's obvious that attention wants to go there, so I allow it.
Other minor things about my practice:
-I seem to be able to percieve energies in other people's bodies, and to some degree influencing them, and energies coming from unanimated objects and flowing into unanimated objects
-recently, in a few occasins, my practice has got some spontaneous devotional bent; seems to be very interesting stuff, but that's something I'll probably get more into it in the future, I already have many things on my hands
-Sometimes strange kinds of syincronicites happen in my life, some of them pretty minor, some of them quite impressive; however I'm quite puzzled, 'cause I don't really know what to do with them, so I just keep living my life without considering them too much
Ok... so, that was probably much more than required;
It's nice to be here... bye!
So, that's my introduction; first thing you need to know about me is that I'm lazy, so I'll paste what I wrote during the sign up process with something removed and somethings added...
So, I'm Italian, I'm 25 years old, I live in Viareggio, a city coast about 70 miles west from Florence.
I've been practicing for 2 years, meditating many hours daily (meditation is most of what I doin my life).
For a few months I've been followed on Skype by Bhante Yuttadhammo, a Canadian monk from the Mahasi tradition; under his guidance, I got SE, as defined in the Mahasi tradition.
I wanted to become a monk, but the first two times I asked they refused me, basically because at the time I was too messed up; by now I almost lost interest in the monastic life, since I consider the pragmatic folks to be a better bet for spiritual development so I decided to sign up for a 3 years course to become a yoga teacher; my ideal is to end up with little work, little money and lots of time to practice.
Lately I've been doing a lot of energy practices; I don't follow a specific tradition, but I got a sense of how tomanipulate&storing energies and removing blockages, so I go with that. Removing blockages and relaxing the body is the main goal, the ways I do that are many: strong Goenka-like concentration, metta practices, sexual energies, yoga asanas, breathing stuff, mantra, thinking in general, visualization and stuff like that.
My main meditative pain in the ass are very painful sensations arising at the joints, that end up creating shakings in the body; one of the main reasons I doenergetic stuff is that, the more things are allowed to flow inside me, the more these things become barable. With time things have improved, I still have them, but I'm confident that I'm on the right track for making them go away.
What I enjoy the most in meditation is probably hard momentary concentration on a small spot; not sure why, but I really love it; however, I can't do it a lot, since narrowing the focus prevents me from observing carefully those sensations, so I cannot do it so often.
One thing that seems to be a very common pattern is that, during the last months, attention tends to tune each couple of days into different kind of sensations and range of width-narroving, giving rise during the process to many different ways of experiencing. I got fascinated by the number of ways attention can be tuned, but the thing seems to be pretty much outside my control, in the sense that,if attention is inclined in a certain way, trying to force it in another way is quite an hard thing to do; probably, however, being able to switch rapidly from one way of experiencing to another is just another skill that can be acquired over time, but now I'm quite lazy on that regard, so at the moment I just humor what attention seems to be intended to do. Among the many ways attention can be tuned there are the jhanic states, upon wich I don't really have a particoular mastery,but sometimes it's obvious that attention wants to go there, so I allow it.
Other minor things about my practice:
-I seem to be able to percieve energies in other people's bodies, and to some degree influencing them, and energies coming from unanimated objects and flowing into unanimated objects
-recently, in a few occasins, my practice has got some spontaneous devotional bent; seems to be very interesting stuff, but that's something I'll probably get more into it in the future, I already have many things on my hands
-Sometimes strange kinds of syincronicites happen in my life, some of them pretty minor, some of them quite impressive; however I'm quite puzzled, 'cause I don't really know what to do with them, so I just keep living my life without considering them too much
Ok... so, that was probably much more than required;
It's nice to be here... bye!
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10 years 7 months ago #14657
by Andy
Replied by Andy on topic Introducing myself
Welcome, Mario.
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10 years 7 months ago #14671
by every3rdthought
Replied by every3rdthought on topic Introducing myself
Hi Mario, nice to meet you! I lived in Italy for a year way back in 2002, in Bologna and Forli as an exchange student. I miss Italian fumetti. I've followed Yuttadhammo's internet presence for a while - I don't always agree with him but it's generally cool to have him around, and I admire the way he gives a lot in terms of that internet presence and teaching, etc.
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