Brian's practice notes

I have never really been able to map descriptions of "the witness" perfectly cleanly onto experiences I have had, which has been discouraging at times. A key hangup for me has been that it is sometimes described as "taking the subject as object", but on my understanding of subject/object, this is not really coherent: whatever is genuinely taken as an object cannot be the subject.

So to circumvent my particular hang-up I've made a conscious decision to not care about what I'm supposed to find, or whether I'm really doing 2nd gear practice or not, etc. Instead, I've taken up a more process-oriented approach: I will simply do the self-enquiry practice to the best of my understanding and ability and go with wherever it takes me.

That said, I do keep in mind a few pointers I find useful to help this along:

- the witness "has no dog in this fight" and "is upstream from being human" . I take this to be a reminder that any sense of concern, appreciation, aversion etc. for the current experience is another object of experience that belongs to the "small" self. So this is a useful tool for detecting if one is dwelling subtly as the mind/body self rather than as the witness. The subject of awareness is in some sense prior to or the source of the mind/body self.

- when doing vipassana I've sometimes noticed a "transitive" structure in consciousness. Sensations don't just sit there limply, but have a sense of "to-ness" or "for-ness", which act like implicit pointers towards the thing that they are "to" or "for". The thing pointed towards can be e.g. a goal (when doing a task) or a person (when communicating), but often it is just "I", the subject of experience. So sometimes I see if I can find the implicit "pointers" attached to each sensation, knowing that they are pointing towards the thing I'm looking for, the subject.

- the subject has a kind of unifying or holistic aspect to it. All contents of experience are known by the same subject. No sensations (e.g. mind/body) are privileged over others (e.g. visual/auditory); they're all equivalent in their property of being known by the subject.

I've been inspired by some of the recent discussion on Mike's practice thread to start one of my own. Some quick background for context: I think I probably first experienced A&P 10+ years ago, though only started doing contemplative practices about a year ago. I've been working with Kenneth since January and in that time I believe I've gone through 2 or more cycles of insight, the most recent being about a week ago. I started off mostly doing kasina practice / riding the jhanic arc kind of thing, and eventually shifted to focusing more on 4 foundations noting / bystander practice.

An important development in my practice has been to understand what it means to disembed from a sensation or perceive that it is "not-self". Briefly, my understanding goes like this: whatever is observed in experience can't be the thing that is observing it; mind and body are known via observed experiences; and so mind and body are objects of experience, not the subject. The primary focus of my practice in the last few weeks has been to apply this understanding to my moment to moment experience to really experience that mind and body are not the subject.

I read the other day in the book on Ramana Maharshi's teachings, "Be As You Are", that Ramana didn't endorse this sort of "not this, not this" practice because the sense of the one who is doing the negating cannot itself be effectively negated in this way. He believed that by enquiring into the nature or source of the self, one could cast off the sense of the mind/body egoic self without tacitly hanging on to it via the sense of doing. So recently I've been very interested in doing this 2nd gear self-enquiry practice as a natural extension of where my 1st gear vipassana had been taking me.

Fri 6/11/10 : self-enquiry ~4 hours

"Who am I?" doesn't seem to get a lot of traction for me, it's too abstract. I prefer more grounded questions like "who feels this pain?", "who is walking?", etc. Sometimes "who knows ALL this?" to draw attention to the unified and impartial nature of the subject. Sometimes wordlessly attending to the "pointers" belonging to each sensation.

When doubt arises: "who feels this doubt?" Distraction: "who is distracted?" Thought: "to whom does this thought arise?" So any potential distraction is short-circuited and used to fuel the practice, much like one can do with noting practice. In fact at times it feels very much like vipassana, with a heightened awareness of the contents of experience, but with a focus on who knows the contents rather than on the contents themselves.

I started off with ample doubts, hopes, etc about the practice but kept at it. "Who feels doubt?", "Who is hoping?", etc. Eventually got to a point where I felt thoroughly disembedded from mind/body. Mind/body was just another thing happening in the world. The world was not happening to mind/body, but world/mind/body was happening to "me", the subject. There was an attenuated sense of insideness/outsideness. Thoughts and emotions did not feel like they belonged to mind/body, rather mind/body felt like the means through which thoughts and emotions could manifest. There was sometimes a peculiar sense of complete effortlessness in performing actions, e.g. walking around felt like I wasn't doing the walking at all, and yet there was nothing awkward or out of place or unusual in the execution of the walking. At times the behaviors of mind/body seemed like nothing more than the natural unfolding of a causal process determined by past experiences.

Sat 6/12/10: ~25 min concentration on the breath. About halfway through, some mild recurring waves of cool pleasant energy through the shoulders and head. Heavy painful pebble-like sensation at the top of the head. After the sit was over, another painful pebble sensation at the forehead.

Scattered self-enquiry through the day. Expectation of experience similar to yesterday seems to interfere with the purity of applying the technique. Once or twice people seem to sense that I am withdrawn.

Sun 6/13/10. Self-enquiry throughout the day as I go about everyday tasks. Going a little lighter this time, less all out effort at continuity. Can pretty easily access a perspective somewhat but not radically removed from normal full mind/body identification. Things generally feel light, pleasant, natural.

(con't)

I had a thought of myself always reading about this stuff, online and in books, listening to talks, always seeking and practicing. In the thought I concurrently had a sense of myself as mind/body process already fully part of and not separate from existence, from this vantage point obviously already exhibiting the thing I was looking for but could not sense. It felt kind of funny in a surreal way, like someone devoting hours each day to looking for their own nose.

The intensity of all this fluctuated over time, but on the whole it was somewhat plateau-ish rather than similar experiences I've had in the past that were more like fleeting peak experiences. Unfortunately my memory for the day feels considerably blurrier and poorer quality than it usually does.

I like the sound of this, Brian. You seem to be moving away from your thoughts about your experience, toward taking your experience at face value. Only good will result from this.

Kenneth

6/14/10: * ~50 min self-enquiry on a treadmill

Slow first 5 minutes, doubt, etc. "Who feels doubt?" etc. Eventually a sense of distance from mind/body. Occasionally whispy emotion-like bodily sensations present themselves as "I", but I ask "who knows this sensation?" and they no longer have a sense of me-ness.

The closest I can seem to get to a sense of pure "I" is having a sense of watching all experience from an abstract viewpoint, but I can't find any sensations associated with this abstract viewpoint (which is why I call it "abstract"). It is kind of like the viewpoint one has in a dream where one is not a character in the dream; even though one is not participating in the dream all the events still seem to occur to the viewpoint of the "I". So I don't know if this abstract viewpoint is what people mean by "dwelling as the I". But there is a noticeable shift when, starting from this state, I change to a first gear vipassana attitude towards experience, so something must be going on. Downshifting to first gear, I feel embedded as the mental process that is evaluating experience.

Fairly often I got caught up in thoughts about the current practice. This felt like a contraction of awareness into the body, and also sort of like a dimming of the lights. Once I lost the self-enquiry momentum entirely and it felt as though the lights had almost entirely gone out during the mind wandering episode. Another time there was good self-enquiry momentum and the lights did not dim as much. Even though I got caught up in a thought there was still a sectioned off piece of awareness that was not entirely roped in. All of these evaluations arise from the moment when mindfulness returns, at which point the contrast between the current mindfulness and the immediately preceding lack of mindfulness is obvious.

(con't 6/14)

* 20 min self-enquiry at lunch. For ~3 min neck was stiff and painful. 10 min later, ~5 min of periodic relieving waves of cool energy through the shoulders and head. Later in the day, caught up in annoyed and frustrated thoughts.

* 30 min self-enquiry before sleep. ~5 min intermittent waves of cool energy thru shoulders/head. Began to feel trance-like and spontaneously took a visual object as kasina. ~10 min of slow twisting visual distortions in the whole visual field, amplitude ~1-2 inches, ~3-5 seconds/cycle, neither pleasant nor unpleasant; visual objects appear strange.

6/15/10

* 30 min self-enquiry while walking. First 5 min, questions feel stale. I try to ask more genuinely and curiously. "Who is meditating?" "Who's asking?" Brief wave of energy thru upper back followed by disidentifying from mind/body. 70% of the session I feel identified but quite mindful. 25% of the time I feel disidentified, watching and receiving mind/body's feelings and actions. A few times I briefly experience everything as a huge, impersonal subject. When this happens it feels as if the knowing of each sensation occurs at that sensation's location in space, rather than it occurring in the local mind/body. There was a brief intuition that I can find no sensations corresponding to the abstract viewpoint of the subject because the subject is not made of sensations but is just the process of the knowing of sensations themselves.

* 30 min self-enquiry while walking. For the most part, feel disidentified from mind/body but in a natural, no big deal feeling way.

6/16/10

no formal sit, but am trying to integrate self-enquiry into everyday life. The most effective enquiry seems to be "to whom?" i.e. "these sensations are presented to whom?" This is also like asking, "where are these sensations pointing to?" I am beginning to get a knack for being able to drop the verbal questioning and just adopting the general underlying attitude of "to whom?" towards experience. Experience sometimes feels less substantial somehow when I do this, and the absence of substantiality sometimes feels like it's "filled in" by something else that is hard to describe.

Practicing this at night before sleep, I felt a painful sensation at the top of my head about the size of a dime for about 5 minutes.

6/17/10

In my "to whom?" attitude towards experience, the three characteristics seem more evident. All this is definitely not-self and in flux. As for dukkha, I've had what is, for me, a conceptual breakthrough on understanding this:

kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/thread/40...ning+of+%22dukkha%22

Interpreting "dukkha" as the tendency of sensations to induce attitudes of approach, avoidance, ignoring, changing and so on, I can also see dukkha clearly as the constant push and pull and tug of sensations on attention, thoughts, and emotion. Realizing this feels like it's opened a new vista in my practice. Being mindful of these pushing and pulling tendencies inherent in experience, one is less likely to get caught in them.

It is sort of like being on a boat in a vast ocean. The ocean is experience. It is not-self because it is observed, and its waves are constantly in flux. But the waters are also constantly knocking around your boat, pushing it here and there and everywhere. If you fail to notice how the ocean is pushing around your boat, you are missing a big part of the picture.

(con't 6/17)

* 2 hours self-enquiry / observing three characteristics

Switching between asking "to whom?" about worldly sensations and body/mind sensations, and observing the not-self, fluxing, pushing/pulling characteristics of experience. I also had a natural sense of curiosity about existence and the observer of all this. Early on, a brief flourish of subtle energy in the heart/stomach. Feel very natural and at ease. At times the observer of experience does not seem to be "in" experience, but is not "outside of" experience either because there is nowhere else to be. There is a lot of fluxing pushing and pulling, but it can't touch the one who observes it. Just floating atop the waters, not in their midst. This feels really nice and feels like it's exactly what I should be doing. Feel like I could do this for hours.

(con't 6/17)

Painful dime-sized pressure at the top of the head returns. Sometimes waves of energy move up through the shoulders and dwell at the top of the head. Tactile/energetic presence also emerges in a circle at the heart, about the diameter of a softball. For about ~5 min, I experience subtle energies flowing from the top of the head to the heart in a loop. The experience of "subtle energy" is faint and subtle and insubstantial like mental imagery. It is a combination of subtle visual imagery and subtle tactile sensations, but it seems to occur in external space rather than in the head. Visually the subtle energy is chalky white / purplish and translucent. There is a much stronger feeling of pressure at the top of the head as subtle energy seems to flow from it, and the region of pressure has expanded to about the diameter of a baseball, but it is no longer painful. After this energy loop stopped, for a minute or so subtle energy continued to flow in swirling symmetrical patterns above the head, extending left and right.

At this point the subtle energies stopped and I began to feel really good. Bliss, joy, peace, tranquility, happiness. Sometimes accompanied by waves of energy moving through the body. I continued to mix self-enquiry and observance of the three characteristics though occasionally I got caught up in the pleasantness of it. This lasted maybe 20-30 min or so. After that I felt spent and returned to a more usual state of experience, though since then there has remained a sense of dime-sized pressure at the top of the head that is sometimes painful and varies in intensity. Sometimes it seems mostly gone but if I move attention to the top of the head I can sense it again.

6/17/10

* ~1 hour self-enquiry before sleep. A heavy sense of pure existence itself, refined bliss and deep awe and fondness for it-- how crazy and excellent is it that we exist? Existence is it. Who observes existence? Disidentified from mind/body, the boundaries between mind/body and world are not firm, they melt into eachother continuously.

Eventually I got caught up in deep doubting and worrying thoughts and feelings about my job and career. Could alleviate by asking "who feels doubt?" etc. but only to a point, the underlying issues still need to be addressed...

had a hard time falling asleep. Once had a sense I was clearly and vividly seeing the room around me, but then the image disappeared and I realized my eyes were closed. Opening the eyes, it looked almost the same as it had a moment ago. Quality of sleep itself was strange, felt sort of continuous with waking. Only got about 2 hours sleep but do not feel overly tired the next day.

6/18/10

Big old bucket of dukkha. Doubt, worry, aversion, resignation. Sticky stuff but I don't put a lot of emphasis on disembedding, rather try to focus on the corresponding life issues which need addressing. Do a mish-mosh of self-enquiry and vipassana during the day when I have some free moments but focus is poor.

Great reports..., I look forward to reading more...

Shows to me how 1st gear compliments 2nd gear.
AND how my understanding of 2nd gear outstrips my experience of it!

thanks for posting!

Glad you're getting something out of it spargi.

I don't know if any of this is "really" 2nd gear. I may be accessing what Kenneth calls the bystander rather than what he calls the witness, which is the target of 2nd gear. But if so, my self-enquiry bystander seems more thoroughly disembedded than my vipassana bystander, so it's all good.

Perhaps some food for diagnostic thought...

Its a "useful tool for detecting if one is dwelling subtly as the mind/body self rather than as the witness" in some aspects.

This is a technique suggested by Osho which led me to some '2nd gear' type peak experiences (not dissimilar to your post 9). Its essentially about being able to move the 'locus of awareness' around. For example between the hara, heart & head. Stickiness in this movement indicates a "dwelling subtly as the mind/body".

The 'locus of awareness' I understand as at least part of what is 'normally' bound in the mind/body self. In other words, to what other sensations are relative to in some way, i.e. how one spontaneously answers questions such as: are your feet below you? Is your right arm to your right?

In short, if one is able to dwell in the hara one would feel the head above and if one were able to dwell above the head, the head would feel as if below etc

Perhaps the dukka boat metaphor could be extended to the mind/body self sits in the boat....can it move from one end of the boat to the other?

sparQi!!

Thanks sparQi. I'll keep it in mind if I'm ever in the mood for diagnosis during self-enquiry, although it seems to presuppose that there is a local locus of awareness. In the states that I would call the witness if I didn't know any better, there isn't much of a locus of awareness to begin with, being either distributed through space or not seeming to have any particular location at all.

6/19/10

* 30 min self-enquiry / three characteristics. practice feels flat, feels like there is some unmet expectation for something to happen. Overall attitude kind of graspy and results-oriented rather than genuine, process-oriented enquiry and observation. When practice is good, enquiry feels authentic and curious and fresh; now "to whom?" feels stale and mechanical and habitual. Ennui. Hard to stick with a technique for more than a few minutes. Mind/body feels like a big plug in a drain that can't be removed, getting in the way of things, an obstacle. There is some energy in the heart area that seems related to the graspiness, ennui, stuckness, etc. It has a sense of "I"-ness that sometimes presents as an answer to self-enquiry but the sense of "I"-ness won't go away when I ask who knows that sensation. For a minute or two with eyes closed there is an abstract sense of body-ness that seems coextensive with all sense of space.

* 30 min vipassana. Took the attitude of regarding mind/body sensations on equal footing with all others, and to just observe them come and go. This went a lot smoother. Sense of just watching whatever happens, can stay with everything in real time pretty easily with the exception of sometimes only noticing a thought a second after it arises. With closed eyes get pretty deep tranquility in body and mind. Faint pressure at the top of the head again. Focusing on it, it intensifies a little bit and some faint vibrating sensations move up the head starting from the neck. Mental image of a subtle energy 'bowl' curving out from the neck around the head.

hi Brianm2...at the hazard of hijacking your thread briefly,... I have to say just reading your reports leaves me in a state of excitement! If I understand your reports correctly, you have solid vipassana and are living in 2nd gear territory which I believe Ive peaked/glimpsed approximately, whilst being backed up with only rudimentary vipassana at best (which Im beginning to address).

Soooo during your adventures if you examine the following aspects Id be very interested in reading about your perspective...

1. How is 'focusing' possible without a locus of awareness...what underlies zooming out to the whole, and zooming in to a specific bodily sensation, say? What constitutes the fuzzy boundary between what is focused upon and all else that isnt focused upon?
2. How does intent work and its feedback 'mechanism'? If one sets an intent before meditating for the meditation, and then observes 'reminders of intent' arising as one drifts off intent...whats going on there (and wherefrom!)? Is there a frame of intent which is constantly within awareness?
3. If one vipassana-ises the sense of "I"-ness quality, what is the difference between this and other sensations? Does 'progress' necessarily presuppose the "I"ness quality going away?

Please keep posting!!

sparqi

hi sqarqi,

"If I understand your reports correctly, you have solid vipassana and are living in 2nd gear territory"

- I think we should be careful about how we label things. If we're not, there's a good chance we'll think we're talking about the same thing when in fact we're not. That's basically the worst mistake we can make when communicating so we ought to be careful to avoid it. I can't say I have a comfortable understanding of what Kenneth means by 2nd gear and the witness, so I'm not comfortable labeling what I've been going through as 2nd gear. I am happy to call it self-enquiry because that's defining it in terms of the actual practice, not the results of the practice, which may differ depending on the person and the circumstance.

"1. How is 'focusing' possible without a locus of awareness"

- I assume by 'locus of awareness' you mean something like 'the perceived location of the subject'. For me this is not the same thing as the center of attention. Attention is about which contents of experience are emphasized. The 'locus of awareness' is about where the knowing of contents of experience seems to take place.

"2. How does intent work and its feedback 'mechanism'?"

- Well one could probably write a book on that. And the level your question is pitched at seems best suited for a comprehensive scientific answer, not one based on one person's introspection.

Based on what I know of the science, though, I would say though that things like thought, belief, intention, expectation and so on play a huge role in determining the nature of moment to moment experience, and yes, these things are always at play. Even when you're not explicitly remembering what your intention (or expectation, etc) is, it is still silently influencing things behind the scenes.

"3. If one vipassana-ises the sense of "I"-ness quality, what is the difference between this and other sensations? Does 'progress' necessarily presuppose the "I"ness quality going away?"

- When I talk about an "I"-ness quality, I refer to a quality of a sensation such that the sensation seems to have a sense of belonging to or constituting "me", i.e. my normal sense of self. Noting such qualities, or observing that they exhibit the three characteristics, is no different from how one would note any other sensation. Kenneth's sense of "I"-ness seems to be something other than what I use the phrase to refer to, although I'm not sure I understand his use of the phrase very well, so I can't comment on that.

My current best notion of progress on the path is that it is very tightly related to a shift in the way identity is expressed in the structure of moment to moment experience, rather than an elimination of any sense of identity whatsoever. The default structure is that one identifies with mind and body. From what I understand, the target structure is that one identifies with "awareness" or "the absolute", i.e. with the most basic and abstract thing that makes the knowing of sensations possible, rather than identifying with any particular set of sensations per se. But I reserve the right to amend that statement. It's just an educated guess based on many things I have read.

6/20/10

* ~1-2 hr vipassana with some self-enquiry. A light sense of distancing from mind/body, "watching the movie" of experience. Doing self-enquiry, a wave of energy thru the body when it seemed to catch on, things appear lighter and brighter, the mere fact of experience itself is not so taken for granted. Once again encounter subtle swirling tactile sensations around the heart having a feeling of "I"-ness. I notice this particularly when looking for dukkha, it seems like a grabbing/contracting force of "me"-ness residing at the heart.

* ~1 hr vipassana. Mostly trying to stay with the not-self characteristic. Staying with the sense that every sensation, even mind/body, has the quality of being observed or watched. Lightly painful pressure at top of the head returns for about 30 min. This time joined by some pressure at the forehead. Several times they connect in a line across the scalp. By the end of the session I feel kind of hollowed out inside, not much in the way of thoughts or feelings or motivations, just lying around neither pleasantly nor unpleasantly.

A couple of times in the past I've had poor memory for periods of doing not-self / self-enquiry practice, and this seems to be another instance. It was abnormally hard for me to dredge up the details of these practice sessions just now.

thanks for addressing the points explicitly...certainly interesting reading...I saw you posted over on the ActualFreedom stuff on DhO...all very relevant methinks!

I look forward to reading your further posts...ganbatte!