jgroove's practice journal

I love those sits if I can stay awake. It's really weird to see that stuff.

Awesome!

I sometimes have those, but rarely manage to sit that long.
Strong practise!

Ditto. That was one of my favorite things about out loud noting when I 1st started doing it regularly just last month -- sometimes being able to note dreamy states!

60 min. noting aloud
very spacious, windows-rolled-up kind of sit this morning
planning to sit half-day retreat on Sunday...

Joel,

I want to send you a note of support in your practice. I find myself in similar territory and life circumstances, but I don't have the discipline to be as meticulous as you. May you awaken in this lifetime (and soon). Upekha.

Andrew

Thanks for the support, Andrew! It helps.
(If I could only keep the kettle boiling off the cushion. Still a big gap there, but I'm working on it.)

Sat a couple of hours on Saturday night, did a half-day retreat on Sunday and sat for probably an hour last night. Can't say there's anything new to report. Will keep on truckin' ...

"60 min. noting aloud
very tempted to skip the sit this morning--stayed up too late and got up too early
drifted off into dreamlike, hypnogogic territory very frequently during the sit
it was interesting how the mind would keep noting until the strangeness of what was coming out of my mouth would jar me awake. I'd hear notes like "semicolon" [?], "seeing--wet road with trees," "seeing--shiny brass objects." etc.
This was a clear example of the kind of sit that, were I not noting aloud, would have been a space-out fest for sure. noted both the sleepiness and the aversion to it. "

Yeah I've noticed this a couple of times as well. When spacing out I'd just speak some "talk thought" out loud. Very funny.
Great practise jgroove!

keeping at it with the noting aloud
60 min. at least each day this week.
did 60 min. x 3 today.
wish I was better at recognizing nyanas. during the long sit today, the quality of the sit went from difficult--sleepiness, dullness, wanting to be elsewhere--to very easy and spacious, with the rocking/kriyas becoming more pronounced and the 'windows rolled up' thing happening more. Noted a lot of subtle mind states, such as the immediate wanting and anticipation and aversion to same that would occur whenever the practice seemed to be gaining momentum. A lot of wanting, anticipation, frustration, speculation going on about SE.
Over and out...

Beautiful Joel. Keep it up.

*EDIT*: Also, the nanas will happen whether you can recognize them at the time or not.

Thanks, Nadav. I've got a "follow the instructions, come hell or high water" kind of attitude right now. Will keep on noting. Have a great weekend!

You've got a great groove (no pun intended) going Joel, all the ñana stuff will fall into place when you're not looking for it so just keep on keepin' on!!
The detail and accuracy of your reporting is really informative and helpful, you're gonna get this thing done.

Thanks, Tommy!

After a basically practiceless weekend/Monday, I did 60 min. of noting aloud each day for the rest of the week (today's Friday). A little more practice on Tuesday--one hour in the morning, plus group sit at night. Did probably 60 min. x 3 today, with a 20-minute body scan and some shamatha thrown in. Today the rocking morphed into a strange kind of rapid wiggling of the body, with the shoulders jerking to and fro. [?] The sit started with a lot of sleepiness/dullness, which went away toward the second half of the first hour and didn't really recur again during the day. Hit a few points where dropping the noting seemed natural. I still have a little trouble trusting myself not to drift too much when I do this. Of course, I'd eventually drift after a few moments of silence and stability, but would launch back into the noting aloud. Kind of like the wheel.
The noting aloud is an amazing practice. I had an enormous resistance to it early on and still sometimes find that it is a difficult practice that my lazy self would rather not engage in, but it is SO effective in generating concentration.
This rocking thing seems to be one reflection of that--it always happens when I get concentrated and it happens much more immediately and quickly when I'm noting aloud as opposed to, say, doing breath-at-the-nose shamatha.

Noting aloud this morning...

seeing, blackness/pixels; pressure, third-eye, closer to crown; quivering/vibrations--head; wanting increase; irritation, unpleasant; hearing--birds, pleasant; tasting, unpleasant; pressure, aching, burning (contact point with cushion)--unpleasant; warmth, softness (shirt on shoulders, back)--pleasant; lips touching lips--neutral; hearing (sound of voice), feeling (vibrations in chest, throat made by voice)--neutral; intending to listen (for the 'ships in the harbor'), listening: spaciousness, silence, calm, stillness, openness, peacefulness, sense of nothingness [?]; planning thoughts, remembering thoughts, reporting thoughts, visual thoughts; irritation, annoyance, contentment, wanting, aversion, looking/investigating; rocking, swaying--neutral; seeing (mild flashing, brightness)--neutral

coolness (AC on skin)--pleasant; sweating, cold--unpleasant; tingling/vibrations (hands)--neutral; falling asleep, aching--unpleasant (legs); aching (back)--unpleasant.

Did a session with Kenneth earlier this week. Learned the 'listening to the ships in the harbor' noting technique. Did this last night at the weekly sitting group. Bubbly vibrations in various parts of the body, sense of absorption. Having incorporated this a bit into the noting practice, I seem to be getting to a place where action of any kind is seen to be futile--the efforts of the ball of tension that is 'me' to try to get away from itself. Opening up to this sense of nothingness that is beyond that ball of tension and sensation seems to be something that has been missing from my noting practice--the silence, peace, calm, etc. Will keep at it!

Can you share a little bit about the 'ships in the harbor' noting?

someday...when i'm looking back with compassion on all sentient beings and their suffering from my omniscient buddha perspective...i will be asked, "how did you do it?" i may well answer, jgroove showed me how to be a determined yogi. i've just read your thread. your progress is both obvious and inspiring. give me a bit of your sticktoitiveness!

Hi Nadav.
The way Kenneth put it, if you're in the middle of Manhattan, you're not trying to listen to the ships in NYC's waters. You're trying to listen to the ships across the Atlantic in Copenhagen. You keep turning your mind toward the act of listening for a sound that has nothing to do with sound. The note is just "listening, listening," and the listening itself was described by Kenneth as being analogous to the primary object. The mind grows more and more receptive and open as a result of this emphasis on inclining the mind toward the wordless, I guess you could say. Kenneth did some ancillary noting of mind states and spaciousness/silence that were coming up for him. So it's almost like this Mahamudra noting fits naturally into the subtle part of The Wheel. I hope I'm not mischaracterizing the technique. Don't know if you've heard Kenneth's "Ships in the Harbor" talk, but there's a link to somewhere on the new site.

Hi CE. Thanks for the kind words! Best of luck with your practice!

"Don't know if you've heard Kenneth's "Ships in the Harbor" talk, but there's a link to somewhere on the new site."

Thanks, I had bookmarked the new site and I noticed it wasn't showing up anymore (url changed - the "new" was dropped). So I looked a little harder, and I have 3 new podcasts to listen to.
kennethfolkdharma.com/category/podcast/

BTW, I seem to be naturally inclining more and more towards this type of practice myself, although sometimes I wonder if it is just a version of laziness on my part.

Also, regarding the mahamudra noting:

When we were doing this on Monday, Kenneth instructed me to note more positive things if they were present and not to note negative things such as tension and pain. Instead I would note listening, spaciousness, pleasantness, etc. This helped to create more positive states and to go deeper.

"Also, regarding the mahamudra noting:

When we were doing this on Monday, Kenneth instructed me to note more positive things if they were present and not to note negative things such as tension and pain. Instead I would note listening, spaciousness, pleasantness, etc. This helped to create more positive states and to go deeper."

Yeah, I somehow picked up on that in doing the ping-pong noting with Kenneth. You use listening itself as the anchor and focus any notes on the verb of listening and/or the positive mind states, spaciousness, silence, openness, receptivity, etc., going on.