Stages on the Way to Cessation

i can see it often nowadays.
it's like a moment is a blank canvas that I shape and color with my desires, fears, excpectations, etc.

Time for an update.

No major changes of late but I notice more A&P-like events in a fairly regular cycle. These seem to cluster in the very early morning hours so I assume I'm cycling through the A&P at those times. The effects have been kind of weird lately, with a lot of very edgy, sharp, grainy, popping-in-and-out visuals and for the first time in my experience, audio. I "heard" a business associate say loudly and very clearly, "Chris, you there?" into only my right ear as I turned my head to the right early yesterday morning. The visual effects also seem to favor what I'm now calling "time slicing," which means I'll see a series of frozen images of reality in broad swatches that come one right after the other. It's like watching a deck of individual drawings that make a cartoon when you flip through them, but these are images of reality, not cards or cartoons.

Otherwise I'm becoming a jhana maven. Every sit is comprised of me deciding to let the jhanas do their thing with no interference so that I can really get used to that and map it out. .My practice, I have concluded, is right now best comprised of being concentrated as much as possible all day long while paying attention to right here, right now, and then exploring the jhanic arc while on the cushion.

And thanks once again to Kenneth for his very helpful explanations and ever so gentle nudges in the right direction.

Wow.
Was the audio effect an illusion you were you hearing something happening somewhere else?
Are you able to experience all this and still maintain normal life stuff? (job, marriage, kids,etc)
You ARE really lucky to have Kenneth's counsel.

"Are you able to experience all this and still maintain normal life stuff? "

Hi again, Mike. I'm reporting here on about one ten thousandth (or less) of what happens to me. It's not like I walk around all the time hearing voices and watching old movies in my head. It just SEEMS like my life is chock full of this stuff when you read about it here because that's all I'm telling you about. I made a promise to post here regularly about my dharma experience more or less as it happens. That's all I'm doing. My kids, co-workers and others see no difference in me at all. My wife does, just a little, and thus we've talked about it, but I'm lucky and she's very cool. Maybe Kenneth, David or another practitioner with more experience than I have can post their experience in this regard but I don't think I'm different or particularly "weirdness prone." Everyone who practices as much as I try to every day and who pays attention will no doubt have these kinds of experiences. It's normal for this path as far as I can tell. And believe me, I've gone for very long periods with absolutely nothing going on at all. Nothing ... at ... all. For month after month after month.

The voice was pure illusion. I know whose voice it was though, and why that was floating around in my head at the time. He's a competitor

Okay.
I had a pretty good sense of you as going through life pretty normally but I wondered if maybe some of the things like "time splicing" might come up at the wrong time and cause difficulties. I'm glad to hear the answer is no.

Hey Chris:

Have you read or heard about Julian Barbour, a British physicist who has developed a theory of time that sounds very like the time slices you mention? Check him out when you're through with the no doubt pile of books you're currently reading (I assume you have as large a pile as I do).

Mark

Thanks, Mark:

I was in meditation for a long, long time last night. Maybe six hours altogether. Here's the scoop:

1. I can tickle my mind. There's a "place" I can "touch" that creates a tickly sensation that will lead to a cessation if I "move" in the right way. I can do that over and over and over.

2. I watched the entire universe wrap itself around an odd-shaped object. This also somehow made me realize that cessations are not just interruptions in consciousness. They are demonstrations of the way the universe works. This seems to me now to be a very critical realization. But who knows? It could fade away by lunchtime.

3. I'm like a fish. A fish who is unrelentingly in love with objects. I'm so much in love with objects that I have not seen the water I swim in every day. The water is the way to awaken. The objects will just put me back to sleep. Time to see the water, right here, right now.

That's it.

Edit: typos!

Chris Marti just emailed me a brilliant description of what it feels like to induce cessations. This is very much in accord with my own experience, but I don't think I've ever described it this well:

"I seem to have found a funny little "place" in my head that is where there are cessations. I'm pretty sure I had twenty or thirty of them last night as I played around with this. Is this possible? Am I fooling myself? It's a "place" that I can "touch" and it's like a tension that I can create "there" and then if I roll my eyes up a certain way and "touch" my mind in just the right way... blip! Tension released. Sometimes there's a series of them in fast succession: blip, blip, blip blip. It's like my mind is being tickled." -cmarti

Thank you. Kenneth.

Nothing really new to report, although I'm getting more and more adept at bouncing in and out of jhanas during meetings Practice is very different now and it's really quite fun and exciting to have all this mental territory to explore, and to be able to do that at any time is icing on the cake. I find myself waking up into jhanas and going to sleep in jhanas. Jhanas just want to happen. They seem to be like the "strange attractors" that chaos mathematicians talk about - the mind just gravitates into jhana if left to its own devices. As for the cessation thing - there is a very interesting lightning-like phenomena that can accompany them. The light, if that's even what it is, appears to come from "behind" my field of vision so that I see only the reflection of the light on the "front" side of my field of vision. It's sort of like watching the flashes of light from lightning that's behind a cloud bank. This effect is hard to decsribe in words but it's amazing to "see."

Once upon a time I was afraid of the letting go that is required when you head into a jhana. From what some folks told me back then this is a common fear that many people have. Common or not, it wasn't easy to for me overcome until recently. I think this represented a fear of losing "me" in some way. Anyway, if you have that fear you're not alone, but please know that it's unfounded and that you can, and will, get over it.

"... if you have that fear you're not alone, but please know that it's unfounded and that you can, and will, get over it.

"

Another thing I needed to hear. Thank you.

Andrew

Nothing new. Just practicing, though "practice" is now more or less part of what goes on all the time. Please don't take that as a statement to the effect that I don't think formal sitting practice isn't necessary. It is. I still do it every day, but it's an adjunct to every day activity in the mind, observing, processing, discovering, experimenting.

Was awakened at 3:00 AM this morning. Got up, pet one cat and the dog, peed. Lay back down in bed and got sucked up into a jhana. I don't really know how this works for anyone else but this really is like getting "sucked up" into jhana. If I throw the switch (decide to start the vacuum) the motor starts of the powerful vacuum suction grabs and zoom!, off we go!

Anyway, this is a new one. I think I posted a while back about the lightning-like lights in the back of mind? Lots of that going on at first this morning. Then a really, really different electrical/static-y kind of feeling that faded in and out with the breath (everything fades in and out with the breath). This went on for quite some time and finally I was able to widen the field of attention, er, let's say the field of attention was widened for me. Really, really, really wide. Felt all body sensations, then all of everything else in the field of experience. Saw this happen, saw that there is that, then there is what is not that. There's experience, and then there's not experience. Is/is not. Clearly seeing that experience is of one thing, only one thing, what is not is not experience. I'm not making a lot of sense but that's as close as I can come right now to what this was. The feeling is not language based. It's just there. It's not meant to be expressed in words I guess, but I'm trying my best.

Cont'd....

So this particular new room, new perch, new lens, new perspective, new jhana, just kept going for a while. I played with it and learned how to "harden" it. The best way to describe that process is that I found a notch, a ring, a handle, that I could "grab" with the breath to hang on to it or bring it on. If you can't find that handle you can't hang with the jhana. They each seem to have their own handle, so to speak, so you have to sort of learn "where" that is for each one so you can go "in" if you want. Otherwise you will just stand in the foyer, or maybe even drop back into another jhana.

So I got up when the alarm went off at 5:30 AM and came to work.

Anyway, I've *finally* been plugged in to the present moment. I thought I knew the present moment. I was wrong.

That's it for now. I'll report back later as things either develop, go back the way they were or.... well, whatever happens is what just happens.

"
So this particular new room, new perch, new lens, new perspective, new jhana, just kept going for a while. I played with it and learned how to "harden" it. The best way to describe that process is that I found a notch, a ring, a handle, that I could "grab" with the breath to hang on to it or bring it on. If you can't find that handle you can't hang with the jhana. They each seem to have their own handle, so to speak, so you have to sort of learn "where" that is for each one so you can go "in" if you want. Otherwise you will just stand in the foyer, or maybe even drop back into another jhana.

So I got up when the alarm went off at 5:30 AM and came to work.

Anyway, I've *finally* been plugged in to the present moment. I thought I knew the present moment. I was wrong.

That's it for now. I'll report back later as things either develop, go back the way they were or.... well, whatever happens is what just happens.

"

Do you have any idea what the the taxonomy of this particular jhana is? Just curious.

I have to say, this very much seems like anagami stuff, or at least 3rd path from what I've read and heard. I don't feel qualified to say with any certainty though. Can anyone else comment?

Can you tell us more about being finally plugged into the present moment?

David

I'll try to describe it, David. When I say "plugged into the present moment" I mean I'm way, way, way more firmly embedded in it. My connection to it is no longer very conceptual and more intuitive, more "feeling" and more... I dunno, the words aren't coming that adequately describe this. It's in my bones. I don't seem to have the kind of anticipation/recollection mind noise that I had, even yesterday. I'm utterly and completely buried in the now and it is utterly and completely buried in me. We are the same. One thing with no real separation. At the same time there is a kind of aura about things that hints at the blue, electric kind of sense from the jhana I was in early this morning.

This "anchored" feeling is NOT the same feeling I used to have - that was more of a "security" type of feeling generated by my butt in the chair, my feet on the ground, the expectation that what was true then would be true now will be true tomorrow. THIS feeling is created by connectedness and ONLY the connectedness. It's not dependent on surroundings, events, objects, subject. The feeling is about the reliability of the *connection,* not the reliability of the stuff. Make sense? As I drove to the office I played a little game (do not do this! My bad!) to investigate: 1. look at the road and the other cars, 2. close my eyes and feel whatever I feel for just a few seconds, then 3. open my eyes again.

That little exercise made it very clear that it doesn't matter what's there when I open my eyes after leaving them closed for a few seconds. I have no expectation about that as of this morning. That may come as close to putting the nub of this into words as I can get. Now, this stuff comes and goes sometimes. There's no way to know what it is without letting some time pass and seeing what happens.

I don't know about the taxonomy part. Sorry.

"So this particular new room, new perch, new lens, new perspective, new jhana, just kept going for a while. I played with it and learned how to "harden" it. The best way to describe that process is that I found a notch, a ring, a handle, that I could "grab" with the breath to hang on to it or bring it on. If you can't find that handle you can't hang with the jhana. They each seem to have their own handle, so to speak, so you have to sort of learn "where" that is for each one so you can go "in" if you want. Otherwise you will just stand in the foyer, or maybe even drop back into another jhana." -cmarti

I love your descriptions, Chris! This is top-notch explication of an experience that is notoriously hard to describe.

Kenneth

Haha! Hi, Kenneth. While I may never actually get very far I can describe the living daylights out of just that!

I'm still hanging out with this deeply satisfying, just-being-right-here-like-a-mountain kind of thing. I'm going to go have dinner with some great friends and really enjoy that. After that, sleep. After that, who knows?

Still very plugged into the present this morning. This feels really stable, really good. Makes me feel connected to things. Now, though I have been using the words "connection" and "plugged in" that's not quite right. It's as though the connection is no longer needed. The mediation that was present before isn't there now, so.... again, loss for the right terms. So.... let's try this: all that is, right now, is immediate and available and is not interfered with by mind noise. What is there is direct and very, very clean. This applies to surroundings as well as to emotions and thoughts. It's all of one piece.

Had a new type of cessation last night. Bigger. More "impactful." It was signalled by a ring, a donut, a torus shaped thing outlined by the lightning I've been babbling about here for a few weeks.

Sorry for all the posts lately but I did make a promise to update this thread with events in my practice as they occur. I've discovered an interesting thing that happens if I focus my attention tightly on the area between my eyes. A kind of "sinking into blackness" thing begins to encroach on me, and it will just keep geting blacker and deeper and blacker and deeper if I keep pushing at it, until pretty much everything just blacks out. This process feels like the reverse of the onset of a jhana, so it's less like being sucked "up" into the thing and more like being pushed "down" into the thing. The pushing is, of course, willful and it has to be aimed right smack dab at the middle of my forehead. Right between the eyes! It's as if there is an infinity in there.

At first I was sort of frightened by this and I've purposely left it alone. But as I get more accustomed to concentration states it gets easier to experiment with them and that fear quality has slowly faded. I think I need to play with this one some more and see if I can make it happen in a smoother, easier manner. And I need to push it all the way a few times, too. This one seems to be a bit more difficult to do, especially at first, but like other concentration states it also seems to get easier and smoother with practice.

I continue to be amazed at the difference easier access to concentration makes and the powerful nature of the path to just kind of pull one along. It seems at times that actual formal sitting isn't even necessary, but I suppose that's what I'm doing as most of these experiences come at night while I'm just laying in bed. I've taken lately to not reading or talking to my wife (sorry, wife) but just laying back and letting it rip. This is decidedly not what I expected practice to be like, but here it is.

Hi Chris,

What happens if you stop pushing on it before you go all the way into it and black out?

Kenneth

HI, Kenneth. If I stop pushing down into it it stops and I come back"out" and can either start over or do something else. It's not an inevitable process until past a certain critical point. That's more or less what I was getting at when I said "willful." I have to keep going or it bounces back. Sort of like a rubber band.

"
Sorry for all the posts lately but I did make a promise to update this thread with events in my practice as they occur."

Hey Chris,
No reason to apologize! Your updates are interesting and informative, basically like an online journal of your evolving progress. I think a lot of people find your reports to be beneficial. Wonderful for us to have the opportunity to "watch" the unfolding of your experiences. Hopefully, it's also helpful to you, too! I'm sure it's sometimes a challenge to articulate these experiences in an intelligible "verbal expression." Our language (particularly the English language) is insufficient when it comes to describing things of this context. You're descriptions are really good!

- Tina