Omni's practice log

Wednesdays = Tai Chi class in stead of seated meditation. However, I try to do this with as much mindfulness as possible. When the teacher isn't talking I even add mental noting. But this week there seems to be a listless background feeling in me, resistance or even a sort of inability to practice in daily life. Lots of discontentment, negative thoughts, irritability ... especially when not much is going on and I have to interact with people.

1 hour sit/stand, 10x10 breath count concentration + insight practice (spoken labeling)

Concentration practice went okay. When doing insight practice I had to stand up because of sleepiness. There was distinct nausea, stabbing feelings, itches, just a couple of short body-shock-kriyas (nothing compared to 2011-03-05), impatience, discontentment, restlessness, despair, trouble keeping my eyes still and focused, sleepiness, yawning, flashback-imaging-thoughts (childhood vacations), and once the arms lifted themselves suddenly.

30 hour of seated practice just after work, insight practice (spoken labeling)
1 hour of seated practice after putting the kids to bed, 10x10 breath count concentration + insight practice (spoken labeling)

Both sessions were very comparable. The focus on the breath went well, but during insight practice attention was weird. Lots of yawning although I didn't feel particularly sleepy. The kriyas that I had gotten so used to seem to have left me. No rocking back and forth any more, just a tiny body shock and absolutely no head jerks today, which totally amazed me, because they were such a constant in my sits for the past ... months?

It happened quite a few times that the visuals of the outside world just disappeared and whatever imaging thought was happening then was clearer than the white door right in front of my opened eyes. I checked several times if I hadn't closed my eyelids unconsciously, but most of the time it was quite clear that I hadn't. One time I even had the impression that I looked straight through the closed door, this made me laugh a bit.
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This shutting down of the outside visual world got stronger and was eventually joined with the feeling that I wasn't really there with the voice speaking the labels and the experiences this voice was noting. It was as if something was happening "over there" where I couldn't really see it or understand what was being said. I really had to force myself to "connect" myself with what was happening. It wasn't like the usual wandering of the mind or sleepiness or hypnagogery, it was as if I wasn't there with the outside world. As if someone had closed the curtains and had thrown a bunch of dark blankets over me.

It was a big contrast when suddenly the room seemed to lit up brightly and my awareness was sharp for a couple of minutes (clarity both literally and figuratively). But soon this vanished again and it was the same disconnected vagueness all over.

I took Mumuwu's advice to heart and focused on the buzzing in my hands (nice word for it, thanks Mu!), but even this was hard to do.

Oh and before the outside world went vague on me, there was nausea, stabbing feelings and tension in my right arm, cool glowing feelings on my left thigh.

1 hour sit/stand, 10x10 breath count concentration + insight practice (spoken labeling)

Terrible concentration again today with the breath count. I had to restart counting again and again. I stood up to be able to finish it and switch to insight. I sat down for the noting practice but soon had to get up again because of the same problem: inability to focus properly. Finally standing in front of a big mirror and being confronted with my reflection got me alert for the rest of the practice, which was rather uneventful.

I noticed seeing (reflection), remembering thought (how I got that scar I hadn't noticed in years), imaging thought (the daily flashbacks to old vacations), pressure, tingling, warmth, buzzing (feet and hands), moving (some slight rocking back and forth: first time I experienced this while standing up), tension (back, legs), hearing, fantasizing thougt, planning thought, moving (eyes being hectic), nausea, itches, contentment ... the timer went off and I felt like I could keep standing there for a lot longer.

In daily life, energy levels are quite low.

1 hour sit, insight practice (spoken labeling), dark room, eyes open

Subtle but distinct light fluctuations, increasing tingling in hands and scalp, it began at the back of the head and the goosebumps-like feelings spread all over the scalp.
There was a sort of recurring rhythm: sharp attention, agitation, light nauseau, dull attention, tingling, anticipation ...

40 minutes afternoon sit, insight practice (spoken labeling), bright sunlit room, eyes open

Attention was good. Immediately the scalp started tingling again, there was also tension there, the visual field had a subtle flickering at the start of the meditation, for quite a while I saw tiny white lightdots appear and disappear "on" the white door in front of me, the hands were warm, buzzing, tingling, this got more intense until it felt more like pricking or stabbing ... out of the blue there were memories of SF-stories I read about 5 years ago (Jack Vance), there were some sparse head jerks and short bodyshocks.

Skype session with Kenneth: talk and 9 minute pingpong noting practice.
A nice exercise, but I was embarrased when I started having shaking kriyas

1 hour evening sit, insight practice (spoken labeling), dark room, eyes open

Attention was good, but a couple of times the mind really wandered up to the point that I stopped labeling out loud (this hasn't happened a lot before). At a given point attention was different, as if I experienced things from a tunnel. A lot of doubting thought, mapping thought, uncertainty, frustration ... Suddenly the tingling and tension of the scalp again. I noticed that I tended to raise my eyebrows a lot.

1 hour evening sit, insight practice (spoken labeling), dark room, eyes open

Attention was good. A lot of doubting thought, mapping thought, insecurity, despair, confusion, agitation, tingling of the hands, pain/pressure/expansion/contraction around the ankle. A lot of impatience towards the end of the sit. Attention felt flexible to go from one object to another. A short period of pressure on the forehead, I focused there, gratitude when the timer sounded.

90 minutes of Tai Chi lessons, tried to do noting as much as possible when practicing the moves.
Feeling a bit sick, sore throat ...

1 hour evening sit, insight practice (spoken labeling), dark room, eyes open

Sick as a dog today. Laryngitis number 4 of this year. Slept a big part of the afternoon. Fever, soar throat ... I tried to be mindful as much as possible, which went remarkably well. Thoughts were quite calm, silent, but the dreams were weird. When I finally felt rested enough I thought I'd try formal meditation after all.

To my surprise the attention was quite good. The sit started out nice with contentment, restfulness, clarity ... until mapping thought took over, doubt, uncertainty, and towards the end of the sit an intense pain around my right sitting bone. I decided not to change the posture, but to examine this pain even when it became excruciating. I noticed that I visualized the area where the pain was located, I noted a lot of pressure, glowing, expansion, contraction ... I tried to detect 'pulsing' in the pain, but the increasing and diminishing of the pain wasn't regular, so I continued noting expansion and contraction. It felt like it wouldn't end. The timer just didn't go off, I thought the batteries might have died, planning thought and imaging thought about getting up occured all the time, talk thought and doubt about the purpose of this self-torture went on and on. Then the timer sounded and I was happy as a puppy.

Hope you get well soon!

Thanks meekan!

1 hour afternoon sit, insight practice (spoken labeling), light room, eyes open

Attention was dull for the first half of the sit, I was sleepy and painful because of the laryngitis. It got better as the meditation progressed but things remained uneventful, as it is often the case for the past week. No kriyas anymore, not even one. The tingling/buzzing/itching hands were the most interesting objects, together with the anticipation and pain of the throat, before and during swallowing. There were some tiny white lights moving in the visual field when I watched the blue sky through the window next to me. And lately I tend to notice the 'photo grain' quality of the visual outside world a lot. A plain white door isn't just plain white, but consists of patches of different greyscales. Being sick seems to pull my focus to my heartbeat a lot. When I'm doing formal practice this often gets masked by the noting out loud though. Not feeling like I'm making any progress lately. Except perhaps for the brightening of the dark blank behind my closed eyelids while lying in bed, something I haven't noticed since I was a kid in primary school.

1 hour evening sit, insight practice (spoken labeling), light room, open eyes

Attention was better than this afternoon, but not as sharp as the mediations at the start of this month. However this was another of those uneventful sits. Just some tingling/pricking/buzzing in the hands and being calm.

Towards the end of the sit I had enough of the mapping thought and tested if I wasn't just spacing out on some level by switching to counting the breath 10 times 10. This went well enough, so concentration was good enough I guess ...

I've been reading about the progress of insight lately (finally!) and trying to detect how this compares to my meditations, but I can't put my finger on it. A while ago I experienced clear light fluctuations during meditation (A&P?), sometimes I became exceptionally calm and everything felt effortless and good (equanimity?), there were lots of kriyas that got very intense towards the beginning of this month (?), I often felt nausea (mind&body? dukkha?) and I even had some tiny blackouts (fruitions?). But now I'm thinking this was all coincidence and it's not what people are reporting in their logs and I'm just a chronic yogi who's fooling himself.

I did a kind of personal mini-retreat today. I was still sick, home alone and decided to start with an hour of formal meditation, then switch to mindfulness while doing chores around the house and alternate like that until my wife and kids were back home. It was a nice experience that I'd like to repeat more often.

1 hour sit (11:30-12:30), 10x10 breath count concentration + insight practice (spoken), eyes open
Attention was good, clear and broad to start with and more subtle and inward as the sit progressed.

Quite soon I saw fluctuations in the visual field and I was drawn to the photo grain like quality of how things look when you stare at them. These grains took on a yellowish hue and started to form moving concentric circles that dissapeared in the middle of the visual field, a bit like riding backwards through a tunnel. Shortly after that I focused on a rhytmic pulsing pressure near my left sitting bone.

There was another split second flashback to a memory of a scene from a Jack Vance book (a recurring theme in my meditations nowadays): an imaging thought of a garden the way I pictured it when I read the book (Tales of the dying earth) years ago.

Other things that came and went regularly: coolness, twitching (left eyelid), crazy eyes, seeing photo like grain, attention alternating between outer and inner world ... this seemed to form a sort of pattern but I can't recall the order and have no clue if this is mappable to the progress of insight.

1 hour practice in motion (12:40-13:40), insight practice (spoken), eyes closed (joke! )
Mindfulness was quite good while cleaning, eating and even while reading a couple of medicine leaflets. I did wander a few short times when labeling mentally, but not even for a full minute. When eating I caught myself to "hastiness" a couple of times which felt like tension and tingling in the upper body. The rest of the notes mainly concerned the outside world: weight, coolness, warmth, tension, seeing, hearing, friction, pain (throat), swallowing ...

Well omni, the breaking up of experience (graininess, pulsing) tends to happen after the A&P, I know that much.

Coolness tends to be a symptom of dissolution for me. ...

1 hour sit (13:45-14:45), insight practice (spoken), eyes open
Attention was good. Again a noticable change of a clear broad focus towards a more subtle inward focus as I sat.

To my surprise the moving concentratic yellowish photo-grain-like circles were back quite soon. Then there was a distinct 'cold glowing' on the top of both thighs, a short episode of 'crazy eyes', itching, twitching (eyelid), ringing in right ear, hearing static, seeing photo grain, yawning, laughing, blips in the visual field (sometimes black, on a rare occasion white). I don't think those were fruitions though. I tried
intending some fruitions, but couldn't detect any. After that I saw a variation on the concentric circles, this time it were forms with pointy edges that entered the periphery of the visual field and disappeared in the middle while the next one entered ... and so on.

The sit was easy and nice, but towards the end there were lots of unpleasant mental states and thoughts: anger, uncertainty, inferiority, doubt, confusion, envy ... then the timer sounded.

1 hour practice in motion (14:55-15:55), insight practice (spoken)
Attention was good, sharp even. There was contentment and some planning thoughts about repeating this kind of miniretreat. For the rest the notes were mainly about the outer world.

1 hour sit (16:00-17:00), insight practice (spoken), eyes open
Attention was good. The sit was similar to the previous ones today, except that the concentric circles appeared later and changed into more clear visuals of stylized fishes (black on white) swimming in a spiral pattern. Finally there were some green and purple blobs as big as hands that seemed to dance around and against each other. For the first time today there was some clear kriya activity: a gentle rocking back and forth that lasted just a couple of minutes.
Once there was an intense TWEEEEET sound in my right ear that lasted about a minute.

Things that came back regularly during the whole sit: concentric visuals, coolness, itching, twitching, hearing static and ringing in the ears, visual blips, eyes changing focus (soft focus versus sharp, looking 'far' versus 'closer')

At a given point focus shifted to the scalp, it started when there was a spot on the right temple that felt as if someone lightly pressed against it with a finger. Soon the same spot on the right felt the same, at the height of the eyes.

After this sit, the eyes had some trouble focussing for about ten minutes.

1 hour sit, 10x10 breath count concentration + insight practice (spoken)
Attention was good. Things were calm, clear and "one at a time". Again, but shorter this time, there were the concentric circle visuals returning now and then throughout the sit.

Thoughts seemed to be very quiet or very few. A couple of Jack Vance books flashbacks again.

At a certain point it felt as if I got a lesson to see the difference between pre and post A&P practice (what follows could be total bollocks of course). I had an intense itch quite deep in my right ear that was very easy to focus on (almost impossible not too). I closed my eyes for a bit and saw hypnagogic images. A variation on the spiraling stylized fishes I saw before, this time with color. When I opened my eyes I saw an unmoving colored orb with lots of multi-colored photograin (a but like an overcompressed JPG image). The visual field blipped a couple of times, very short, most of the times everything blanked to black, once to white. I repeated this a couple of times (closing the eyes, seeing hypnagogery, opening the eyes, seeing the orb, experiencing visual blips ... )

When I stopped focussing on the itch, it diminished, the visuals didn't return and I could go on noticing 'normal' things again (warmth, coolness, imaging thought ...)

"Well omni, the breaking up of experience (graininess, pulsing) tends to happen after the A&P, I know that much.

Coolness tends to be a symptom of dissolution for me. ..."

Thanks for pointing this out Mu. As I'm writing these logs now, it seems as if it's just the past couple of days things started feeling really ******. And I can see it started to slowly creep into my practice this weekend.

1 hour sit , 1st jhana practice ("nose pinch") + insight practice (spoken, eyes open)

Kenneth taught me a technique today to explore 1st jhana. I closed my eyes, felt the entire body, listened to sounds in the distance, brought my attention to the face and 'looked' with my eyes at the tip of my nose, feeling the tension at the top of the eyes. I kept returning to this focus while looking for pleasant body sensations. This made me feel calm quite fast. After 5 minutes or so, the visual field brightened and I decided I'd switch to insight practice.

No concentric circles this time, although some other short fluctuations in the light now and then. Lots of unpleasant mental states and thoughts, recurring through the whole sit. Lost in thought far more than I've become used to during meditation. Almost a sort of aversion to doing practice. My thoughts seemed to want to focus on negativity and run in circles.

Then there was some clear rhythmic pulsing in the neck and it felt as if my head was nodding all the time (it probably was). Later on this moved to the bottom of the spine and spread from there until the whole spine was pulsing (120BPM?). My head seemed to want to tilt back all the time and make me look up while my back arched along.

Short but persistant uprisings of sadness, self-pity, inferiority, despair ... until everything calmed down a bit and the focus got broader again and the environment got noticed again. All this repeated itself a couple of times.

Not a pleasant sit, to put it mildly.