Omni's practice log

This sounds great! If the mapping is not helpful, then **** it!

"Hi David,

No particular comment. In my experience, different approaches work for different people at different times. As you know, I respect Kenneth's work. He seems to be one of the minority of mindfulness teachers who, like myself, are bullish on enlightenment.

(If you wish, you can post my above comment.)

All the best,
Shinzen"

Hi David,

I agree with Nadav and Shinzen. You have to follow your gut and do what makes sense for you, understanding that this is a dynamic process and things change; what worked yesterday may not work tomorrow, etc. This is the basic idea behind the yogi toolbox: take out the right tool for the job at any given time. The tools I have recommended are by no means the only ones available. Shinzen, in particular, is legendary for his creativity and effectiveness as a teacher. He's been pioneering the technology of awakening since the 80's and many of us, including me, have benefited; by all means, do his practice! All that will happen is that you will get enlightened!

Mucho metta...

Got up earlier today, did some qigong exercises I just learned from a DVD. Nice attention to breath and body.

After work I took the train and walked from station to home doing noting practice. Very prone to daydreaming. Quads sometimes seemed to help, sometimes got in the way. When I got home I made some tea and sat for an hour. I felt a bit of resistance because of the daydreaminess. It never bugged me during the sit though.

Halfway some clear light fluctuations started that lasted for the rest of the sit. I opened my eyes several times because I couldn't believe this wasn't coming from outside. At the same time there were some spots on the scalp where increasing pressure was felt. The sensations shifted slowly from one spot to the next and back again (behind left ear, on the top of the head a bit to the left, right in the middle of the forehead, slightly to the left of the latter, behind both eyes, and finally a ring of tension covering forehead, temples and back of the head). They became quite painful now and then. And all the while light became brighter, pulsed a bit for a short while. Some tingles on the back of the head and upper back, tiny muscle twitches on shoulders, back, face. Some short kriyas: head jerking to the right (long time no see!), shoulders and arms raising themselves.

After an hour I lay down on a mat and the pressure points disappeared all of a sudden, except for the middle of the head. Also the light sensations were turned down to where I could hardly distinguish them anymore.

Awesome details, David. Great report!

The past days every formal sit is quite similar (as to a short while ago what would happen during meditation varied greatly). Now the first half usually is rather normal with good attention deepening. Then clear light fluctuations start to occur, accompanied by shifting pressure points on the scalp and forehead. Some of these pressure points get a stinging painful quality as things progress. A band of pressure forms around the head and sometimes there's a sensation of tugging upwards. Short kriyas appear and vanish without warning. Often there are unpleasant physical sensations coming in slow and intense waves: unpleasant tingly tension shifting around at the base of the throat. It feels like panic.

Yesterday I was very aware of how noting out loud and breathing worked together. I noticed I would note twice on an out breath. Once at the start and once at the end of the out breath. Feeling how I would say something at the end of my breath caused me to feel unrest, similar to the panic I experience lately, but less intense, more annoying than fearful. This lasted for a while until breathing finally vanished to the background, making it all feel more restful again. But it reappeared several times.

Good stuff David. You seem much more precise than i ever was in your observation, or at least your ability to remember them

Thanks guys!

- Today: 1 hour noting out loud mahamudra style

It's been too long since I practiced mahamudra noting. Today I noticed lots of similarities with Shinzen's "focus on rest" & "nurture positive". Very pleasant to focus on pleasant sensations.

(I'm not listening for "the ships in the harbor", but try to find "absolute silence" when I get distracted. Even if it's dead silent at home, there's still the white noise in my ears going on, so I can just keep looking for that "absolute silence".)

Approx. halfway there was a period (10 minutes?) with lots of unrestful sensations in the body, especially nervous-like tingling all over and stinging pressure points on the scalp. Nevertheless it remained easy to keep nudging the attention to pleasant sensations that were appearing at the same time, even though those were more subtle. Today I noticed no light fluctuations while the pressures increased. Although the unpleasantness was often more intense than the neutral and pleasant sensations, somehow they remained in the background. The pressure points shifted and diminished in intensity while I hardly noticed them.

I enjoy the choice you can make with directing your attention that way. This is very noticable in situations where there are 'mixed feelings'. Like today the kids were making lots of noise downstairs. This triggered irritation, but at the same time I saw their lovable faces in my thoughts and felt things like affection, appreciation, love ... jumping in and out of my experience. It's a treat to be able to note those positive sensations while letting things like irritation just be in the background without focussing on them.

Having seen this so clearly, I intend to make mahamudra noting a bigger part of my formal and informal practice.

My main formal practice still is noting (out loud when possible) whatever takes central stage. During daily life I'm keeping the body in awareness as good as possible. Especially emotional type sensations are easily observed while arising and passing. I notice I have the tendency to savour my words and the reaction they cause in my mind and body before I speak them. This usually is the case in relaxed situations. When there's lots of stuff going on, the autopilot kicks in.
I'm more easy going about not being mindful all the time since I've noticed that mindfulness is something that's more natural than say half a year ago.

Sits are quite uneventful again. For some weeks there were clear and sometimes painful pressures on the head, accompanied by unmistakable light fluctuations, but now that has all grown much softer and the past 3 days I've seen the "dreamwaves" getting stronger and stronger again. Kriya's still happen, but usually only 1 per sit. Often it's the body that shakes starting at the waist for just a couple of seconds.

1 hour noting out loud

In short the session went like this: attention was fine, then dreaminess kicked in but never really took over, attention got pretty good again and towards the end something happened I could describe like "accelerating thought zapping". There was a sensation of letting go of whatever thoughts that came up, like really not caring about them, giving up the illusion of control they bring ... thoughts seemed to follow each other up faster and faster, their contents appearing paradoxical a lot, until they were hardly properly formed anymore. There was a sense of relief, rather physical, like unnoticed tensions were dropping away, but also a sense of excitement. Not sure if any of this transfers what the experience was like. The weird thing was it didn't feel like a big deal, but at the same time it felt very "right" and "true". That's the best I can do for now.

Lately I find it easier to remain mindful during the day, especially during the week where there are more routines. This is more or less how it goes:

Today I switched between noting techniques regularly until I got to the office. I woke up and started noting mentally whatever sensations took central stage (Kenneth's "1st gear"). I continued this while getting up from bed, going downstairs and entering the toilet. There I switched to whispered noting "see out / see rest / hear out / hear rest / feel out / feel rest" and the occasional "gone"(Shinzen's "Focus out"). Going back upstairs to get washed and dressed I switched back to silent "1st gear". In the bathroom I took a bath and did "Focus on rest".

My wife joined me when I was getting dressed, brushing my teeth, shaved ... while we talked noting wasn't possible, so I tried to keep the body into awareness even if it was just 5% in the background (direct mode?). As usual with this technique, emotional type body sensations were most clear (stuff like tingling, tension ... related to enthusiasm, aversion ...) and while listening/thinking/talking the "see in", "hear in" and "feel in" remained rather clear.

For some minutes the autopilot kicked in when I went to the kids' room to tell them to stay in bed just a bit longer.

Then I went downstairs, had breakfast with "1st gear". Left the house and walked to the bus stop while freely floating between all the labels of "Focus out", "Focus in" and "Focus on rest". On the bus I switched back to "detailed noting" (1st gear). Walking to the train station I practiced direct mode ("how does that feel in the body"). While waiting for the train I focused on just sounds ("hear out"), on the train I switched back to "1st gear" ... etc.

My daily hour of formal meditation is usually alert and engaging with clear but subtle light fluctuations coming and going frequently throughout the session. Forehead pressure is felt on and off as well. Almost without fail there are two or three short kriya's out of the blue. One will be the body jolting up a bit as if startled by something that wasn't really registered. The other will be the body shaking from the waist up for about half a minute. The sad but good feeling of "giving up" towards the end of a sit isn't as obvious anymore and seems to be getting replaced with something: a short period of experiencing myself and the act of meditation as something that is just happening on its own without any effort of "me". This doesn't last long, and I have tried to prolongue it a couple of times to be able to investigate this development further, but that hasn't worked yet.

For a week or two I have been going to sleep and getting up an hour earlier to practice simple yoga postures while trying to focus exclusively on the body and breath. I've had varied succes with it, probably depending on how well rested I was. The past days I felt too tired to continue this, but I'll try to get back to it asap. It feels great to start the day that way.

Antero recently taught me "samyama" practice which I'm including at the end of my yoga sessions and in bed when the kids wake me up in the middle of the night. It's a bit like progressive relaxation but with wide open awareness. Great stuff!

Lately in bed, instead of turning right over and letting the mind drop into dreams and sleep, I lay on my back with eyes closed to look at what's happening in "image space". Usually there will be some 'normal' thoughts at first, glimpses of imaging related to planning, memory, fantasy ... And more often than not a couple of sudden white flashes I've been having for a long time now.

Quite quickly images of a different kind appear. They are easier to follow, more consistent and they flow into each other as if a movie is playing on a dimmed all-round screen. Sometimes there are sounds as well, but that's not very consistent. It's a bit like watching the visuals of a dream without sleeping. I'm fully awake (but restful), aware of my body, the sounds in the room, breathing and often the heartbeat as well.

The images can be anything. For some days however it's been very colourful and landscapy every time: things that can be interpreted as underground rivers, lava streams, organic forms flowing, changing shapes and colour, while "the camera" is floating over and through it all. Sometimes it gets more psychedelic and abstract with smaller shapes changing quicker.

Friday I mentioned this to Nadav and ever since it's been happening in my formal sits as well, as if I have found the channel this stuff is being broadcast on.

Watching those visuals in bed is something I've been doing on and off since I was a kid. Sometimes forgetting them for months before rediscovering them. Now it's been slipping into meditation as well. I'm curious to see how/if this develops further. Edit: It seems to have something to do with being restful and tuning into the right 'direction' inside the mind.

Today I've been working at home. When taking short breaks, I sat for short periods with eyes closed just being aware of what was going on. The mind would calm down quite quickly (little talk / planning and the likes), in a minute or two subtle light fluctuations started and there were more kriyas again. During one of these short sits there was music playing and the body (especially the head) reacted to the sounds, a bit like a couple of months ago, but without the full blown dancing. There was an intense body-shaking-kriya for half a minute that was accompanied by a feeling of relief mixed with subtle melancholy.

After lunch I did some pingpong meditation on Skype. The lights and head kriyas happened there as well, although they were less strong. Tonight I plan to sit for another hour. I'm curious what that will bring.

Excellent work!

Have a look at this: dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/dharma-wi...The%20Fourth%20Jhana

"The focus of attention is now largely panoramic and thus even saying 'focus' here is a bit problematic. In the first jhana the object was finally clear but static and solid in a way that we can stay with. In the second jhana the object begins showing itself and some simple motion is allowed. In the third jhana we go from a spot of attention to a wide circle of attention and the motion gets more complex, so we now have two spatial dimensions and time. In the fourth jhana things get three-dimensional and mind-made objects such as visualizations take on a life of their own, becoming living, luminous and transparent. The fourth jhana includes space and awareness in a way that the previous three do not. Mindfulness is considered to be perfected due to equanimity, though this factor does not stand out as in the third jhana. When we are really in this state, the basic sense we have of where our body is and what it looks like can get very vague or even vanish entirely, though this is less true if we are in this state with our eyes open. "

Hey thanks for pointing that out Mu! It's funny to see the psychic powers mentioned there. I've had a couple of short weird events while being in such a state. I've postponed posting them here, because I thought I was being silly.

As for now, no further developments with what I decided to call "wakeful hypnagogics". The one hour sits of 1. yesterday evening and 2. just now were very similar: no more relaxed clarity, but lots of dreaminess. It's as if a dense layer is covering all sensations. There's an undercurrent of dreamlike monkeymind beneath that layer, with the occasional glimps of its contents. Today it was as if a part of me was constantly thinking/dreaming about work, while another part tried to sustain noting practice and failed miserably.

"Today it was as if a part of me was constantly thinking/dreaming about work, while another part tried to sustain noting practice and failed miserably. "

Hmmmm... And yet you were aware of that happening as it happened?

You have a point there.

-- Informal practice so far today:
Got up around 5:45. 1st geared my way through toilet & bathroom visit. Some direct mode interacting with wife and kids. Noting while walking to bus stop. Focus on body and sounds at bus stop. Focus out on bus & walking to the train platform. Focus on body and sounds on the platform. Focus on sounds and body on the train for a while. Switched to regular noting. 20 minutes walking from station to work while switching techniques with every new street I entered (regular noting, focus out, focus on body and breathing, ...) Focus on flow was very enjoyable when entering a square with people walking, riding bicycles, cars driving by, noticing how my body moved, the change in the sounds around me, the scenery appearing before me and disappearing in the periphery. A street full of direct mode and then at last focus on breathing just before entering the office feeling crisp and clear.

At the office I could see my awareness contract when focussing on certain tasks, or expand in between those (toilet visits, short breaks, drinking ginger tea, doing tasks that required little thinking).

Very much the same when returning home (walking, train, walking while switching techniques).

-- Formal practice.
I just sat for an hour and experienced a huge contrast with the informal practice that preceded it. Totally overwhelmed by dreaminess. Stronger than the past days. Where I could still note stuff the previous days, now it just didn't work. Constant mind chatter flowing like an underground river beneath a dense layer of muted sensations. Several times the body seemed to startle out of the dreaminess to experience half a minute of relative clarity. Two of those events were accompanied by laughing shortly about some conclusions the hardly noticable thoughts brought. I could never really remember what their contents was, but the themes were about surrendering, seeing thoughts/control as futile.

Sounding very good, David

Thanks Villum!

-- 1 hour sit, noting out loud
It started relaxed but alert. After a short while (5 minutes?) strong dreaminess engulfed me, but noting remained possible most of the time. The body was startled a couple of times. There were some short jolts of joy and amazement for no apparent reason (reactions to protothoughts?). On and off vibrating tingles appeared at the back of the head. Sometimes the sounds of the environment seemed to vibrate as well. Towards the end the dreaminess lessened somewhat and made some room for boredom, wanting to stretch up.

As I mentioned at the G+ hangout ( is.gd/uH5UkM ) last tuesday, for about a week now, dreaminess has made a strong comeback in my formal sits. The first days I felt the dreamwaves coming quite gently. They were blurring attention, making things vaguer but I could continue my noting practice. However it got stronger each day up to the point that I could be noting out loud, eyes open, sitting straight seiza style and still suddenly notice that my eyes had closed, the noting had stopped '¦ again and again, no matter what I tried. It was as if someone kept on hitting a switch and I could not see it coming.

Villum suggested to use a bright kasina to look at while noting out loud. This seemed to work yesterday. Today it didn't. But I suddenly remembered something Mumuwu suggested a while ago when I was going through a similar phase: to pay attention to the images that appeared in the dream episodes. I tried this and had a bit of luck, but the images were quite slippery.

Then I started to investigate what other parts were making up the dreaminess. I found a tense chunk of tingly pressure in the throat and upper chest, together with heaviness on the eyelids. When I focused on these, things shifted slowly. The dreaminess lost its power to cloud the other sensations and the chunk in the throat/chest slowly started to feel differently, more like sadness combined with relief. Throughout the rest of the sit I remained alert, but focused on the core of where the dreaminess radiated out from. The intensity of sensations in this core slowly increased. I'm curious to see where this might lead.

After a relatively long period of effortless mindfulness during daily life, the past weeks have been more challenging again.

In the years that I've been meditating I've clearly felt a gradual increase in overall contentment and equanimity. Some things that have bothered me for a long time seemed to bug me less and less. However the past weeks, although nothing changed objectively (foot still hurts after all these years), suddenly this became a "big problem" again, something that occupied my thoughts more than I had gotten used to. I found myself looking for a solution all the time and feeling despair that it would never come.

Disembedding didn't feel like it was enough, I decided to get pragmatic about it, looked up possible treatments, made another appointment with the doctor, bought another book and ramped up my meditation practice.

About the latter: Antero inspired me to take a closer look at the routines in daily life and how mindfulness increases and drops during those. Something that's been very helpful is being aware of the transition between two actions. Next to regular noting, I'm also naming each main action before I start it (unless I forget of course). I give the actions a Title and sometimes a Subtitle as well. Like right now I'm taking care of our youngest girl while updating this log, so "Title - Subtitle" are: "Take care of Mila - Update KFD log". In a moment that will be "Take care of Mila - Change diaper", after that it could be "Vacuum the house", "Talk to my wife", "Train commute to work - Noting practice" ...

I've also noticed these 4 main types of practice: noting, listening, talking & thinking. When noting is not possible, it's usually because I'm in a conversation or using my mind to think (about work, chores, problem solving ...). Maybe more about that later ...