MuMuWu's Practice Journal

Dukkha nanas again!

Currently experiencing irritating vibrations, tension around the body that moves from one place to another, a very diffuse awareness and a sluggish mind. Overall sense of dissatisfaction and irritation.

There's an OKness with all of this though on some deep level. Not a lot of mental reaction. Just patiently waiting, for now, for it to pass away as well.

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intensity increasing. Upswelling of sadness (proto-tears).
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higher levels of irritation/uncomfortable sensations
queasiness / unpleasantness in the throat
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Nausea/gagging/urging/tears (as a result)
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brief moment of clarity but just got a whiff of fear and now more painful sensations --- Reobservation?
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ick more queasiness/nausea
tension in the head, shoulders, subtle tactile pulsing/tingling
owwwy!

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Intense bought of nausea / urging
seems like things are winding down
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IN YOUR FACE DOOKIE BANANAS!

"
IN YOUR FACE DOOKIE BANANAS!"

bit.ly/f3eTiZ

AWESOME!

Had a big off the cushion, unexpected fruition. These are always the most impressive ones for mr so far. Was driving when I experiences a noticeable discontinuity visually followed by extreme bliss and clear mind. Nice Christmas present.

Had been noting briefly several minutes earlier as I pumped gas into my car. Was noting the attention moving from one sense door to the other.

Curent practice is as follows.

First, begin noting seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, tasting, thinking
Notice how attention moves from one to the other automatically after some time.

Now, I bring each sense door up and hold awareness there, building a larger and larger more inclusive experience (all of them at once)

I try to maintain this large awareness, using the body sensations (feeling) as an anchor.

Doing this I am using the whole of experience as a kasina. I seem to get really concentrated doing this (eventually the visual field gets strange as my eyes do not tend to move around while holding the whole visual field as a single object).

Another thing that has a slightly different feel, is asking myself "am I allowing everything to be as it is." When doing this I have been paying attention to how if I let them all go, they all still function. And how without me the whole of experience is less distorted and more clear. In this case I am very aware of the tendency to manipulate the experience and the sense of restlessness that seems to be connected to my attention / sense of self.

It feels like a settling pond, where there is less and less of what I would conventionally point to as a sense of me, and yet there is a stillness and a clearness. There's also the sense doors operating unimpeded without division. I seem to notice a lot more subtle things, yet on some level I am not noticing them at the same time (if that makes sense).

Wow!
Great pieces of art featuring bananas and the zen of pumping gas.
Been away from reading your practice thread for too long.

Btw, Nik, is that the practice of metta bhanana?

Great description of your practice. I love the idea of using all experience as the object of meditation.
Your pond analogy reminds me of one I heard about meditation being like a glass of river water. When you first set it down it is full of all kinds of things swirling around. If you leave it, everything eventually settles and you're left with a glass of clear water. I often use this image for inspiration to practice.

Did some 1st jhana type practice via awareness of breath, really tuning into the pleasant sensation of the breath as it seemed to spread all around the body. This really seemed to brighten up my mood overall for a few days. Over the course of the weekend the practice detailed above seemed to lead into I guess what would best be described as PCE's or maybe 3rd gear. Where for several minutes there was no sense of division or directed attention. All of the senses and thinking were just there as they are.

It was quite nice.

A brief update - I am still alive!

I am experiencing lots and lots of cycles. Throughout the workday I'll go through several. My main practice is trying to stay present, especially with body sensations, but I'm also spending a lot of time trying to get out of the way (more so relax into the experience) such that there's a total thing happening that includes all of the sense doors in an unimpeded, center-less flow. Why is this so hard to do?

Emotionally, there's not much pain. I feel pretty content with things. I'm very lazy at the moment though, and I don't feel very inspired. I prefer it over the more painful active me, but I do feel quite numb a lot of the time. Reading and researching has lost a lot of it's allure.

I sort of feel like someone who's been on a merry-go-round for way too long. I just want to jump off this ride all together. It was fun at first, but now it's just sort of meh.

What seems most enjoyable is to simply be with what is actually happening and not trying to escape to another state or idea.

I really wish it wasn't winter right now.

"A brief update - I am still alive!"

I am glad you are! Keep cycling - do the tour de france!

Thanks Meekan!

I'm glad your still reading this thing. I've been enjoying our back and forth quite a bit over the past few months. Feel free to hit me up on skype for a chat (jaysonbyrne). Same goes for anyone else.

Just another note. On the way home today, I noticed something slightly different. Typically when I'm off on a train of thought and catch it (realize I've been of in la la land) it feels like I just woke up from a dream - as if being off in a thought was some sort of reduction or loss of awareness. Today a similar sort of thought pattern came and went and there was much more of a continuity to the experience. Even though thought arose played itself out and went away there was more of a spaciousness around it and it didn't have the feeling it used to.

It's sort of hard to describe. I'm not sure how that reads. There was a lot of pleasant feelings and rapture immediately after it happened as well.

Also... there's no snow on the ground and it's a clear night. I think I'm going to go for a walk.

"Experienced sleep paralysis last night.

This was a first for me.

Intense sense of fear, inability to move (or make vocal sounds). Felt like I could mouth words, but no ability to get them out (or scream). Some ability to move fingers. Seemed to be able to get out of it by shaking my foot until I could get it going pretty strong.

This happened a good number of times (4 or 5). I would see myself fall asleep and then at some point become aware I was lying in bed but unable to move. Feels like an intense weight all over the body.

After I was able to move again I shrugged it off and went back to sleep.

Very cool. "

When I was into lucid dreaming (years ago) I experienced some sleep paralysis now and then. What helped me was to get out of it, was breathing in very deep and fast. Of course you could practice noting when sleep paralysed in stead. Quite a challenge methinks.

There was certainly an element of mindfulness there. The fear was seen as just that and the state was diagnosed as sleep paralysis fairly quickly. This is part of why I had it a few times in a row. I'd go back to sleep fairly soon after wiggling my hands and feet until I came out of it.

Terror was present, but it didn't grip me on a deep level. Kinda like knowledge of fear nana.

Great!

You are

Yes, I've only experienced it one time since.

Been having a real easy time letting go lately. Just dropping everything. While doing this in equanimity last night I would get these very complex, multidimensional, massive latticy/geometrical, sort of organic looking visuals followed by fruitions. I also heard a couple of loud bangs or clangs.

Last night I had some very vivid dreams with big story lines, very long, in depth and interesting dreams. In one I was driving up a road in my home town, took a non-existent turn onto a road and starting going up a massive hill. I got very high up, and knew something was wrong. I started to feel I was falling. I opened my eyes and experienced an extremely real fall from the ceiling in my room down to my bed.

I've been having these weird dreams where I wake up in my room from a dream.

Very Inceptiony.

"Been having a real easy time letting go lately. Just dropping everything. While doing this in equanimity last night I would get these very complex, multidimensional, massive latticy/geometrical, sort of organic looking visuals followed by fruitions. I also heard a couple of loud bangs or clangs.

Last night I had some very vivid dreams with big story lines, very long, in depth and interesting dreams. In one I was driving up a road in my home town, took a non-existent turn onto a road and starting going up a massive hill. I got very high up, and knew something was wrong. I started to feel I was falling. I opened my eyes and experienced an extremely real fall from the ceiling in my room down to my bed.

I've been having these weird dreams where I wake up in my room from a dream.

Very Inceptiony."

Jealous! ! ! ! ! !

**presses play on Hemi-Sync**

Sounds like fun. I've had a night filled with spontaneous lucid dreams recently. Years ago I used to put a lot of effort in trying to become lucid in dreams, without great results. Since I'm meditating daily, they just happen on their own on and off, especially when I keep noting while lying in bed.

Yeah, it seems I am having lucid dreams which are causing OBE's. I'm not sure, but based on the description below, that seems to be the case. I have had two similar experiences. In one I got up went out to my bathroom, turned on the light and then got tunnel vision and felt heavy/pleasant sensations in the body. It felt like fainting. I then woke up in bed. I had a similar case to this but I actually went back to my room before waking up in bed. It's strange because it's coming so shortly on the heels of some sleep paralysis experiences I've had within the last month or so.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-body_experience

All three of the waking up experiences have occurred since I've been playing around with hemi-sync.

Interesting and fun, but according to Charlos Tart's "The end of materialism" not very practical those OBE's. I didn't know you were into hemi-sync lately. But then again, I tend to miss out about 90% of what goes on at KFD.

Yeah a few of us have been looking into it. Seemingly the series of recordings we've been looking at seem to be good at putting you into deep equanimity (termed focus 10 in the recording) as well as 5th and 6th jhana (seems to be what happens when following the instructions for focus 12 on the series). Listening to it before sleep has resulted in some of this weird sleeping weirdness.

Yeah, just a cool experience at night, not something I'm trying to develop as any sort of main practice or anything. More of a pleasant side effect.

LOL - very interesting stuff in this article

www.lucidity.com/NL32.OBEandLD.html

I gotta say, suffering so much less these days. I had some pretty bad dukkha nanas last night and for a better part of today. Physically really bad. Really feeling the intense discomfort, lack of focus, physical side of emotions, disgust, etc. At the same time, "I" was ok. It was like not being able to go outside on a rainy day or something like that. There wasn't a lot that could be done other than wait it out, and I was ok. This is quite nice.

There's been a real big drop off in how I relate to suffering ever since just before Christmas.

"Three possibilities," Jayson, but I have to admit it makes my day to hear a testimony like that; suffering is being reduced over the long haul. My observation is that it's reasonable to expect the trend to continue given your ongoing commitment to staying present all day long and letting these knots loosen bit by bit. Keep on keepin' on!

Kenneth

Man, it really sounds great.
Wishing you ever less suffering!