Omni's practice log

-- 1 hour sit, noting out loud

It started out with sharp attention for both the outside world and inner sensations. After approx. 10-15 minutes the eyes started to flutter on their own. They stopped as suddenly as they started, then they remained open, but now the visual field strobed on its own for almost a minute. This was much clearer than I'm used to, nothing subtle about it: unmistakable strobing of the visual outside world, not really on and off, but like someone was turning a dimmer switch back and forth at a fast pace. This stopped all of a sudden as well.

Then awareness started to cycle. At one part of the cycle I seemed to sink deeper and deeper away from the environment in some sort of constant mumbling of inner sounds and images (things I could hardly remember) eyes wide open, but the outside visuals weren't getting through (neither did sounds or most of the body sensations, except for an almost constant tension in the neck). The other part of the cycle was ordinary awareness of inner and outer sensations. Back and forth all the time. Different from sleepiness with all the typical physical sensations in the face and chest, but still impossible to stay focused on the outside world.

Now and then in between of these cycles there would be a sudden ultra-clear moment with undisturbed attention to outside world sensations (nearly a minute?). Then the cycling would start again.

Twice or so there would be glitches, were I thought I had missed a (split-)second of what was going on, or the body would suddenly startle upright or gasp for air without any noticeable emotional sensation or thought accompanying this.

-- In daily life mindfulness is erratic. For hours on end I experience alertness and equanimity and then suddenly there's a period where it's hard not to get stuck in thoughtloops, usually accompanied with impatience, unsatisfactoriness and reactivity. And then it changes back again. This was very clear this afternoon when attending to my kids (2 and 4 years). The first hours my buttons were easily pushed. I lashed out, found myself thinking about work, other stuff I'd like to do today ... then this suddenly changed.

For example: I reacted to a temper tantrum of my eldest with virtually no emotional sensations or thoughts going on: at a certain point I clearly saw how she reached out her little fingers, delve them into my arm, and twisted the flesh in a good and hard vicious pinch. I saw it coming, detected no urge to stop her, I just let it happen, felt the stings of the pinch and then simply said: "look at my arm, it's turning red, that really hurts, it's not good to hurt people like that". No thoughts about good or bad, no thoughts about what I should be doing or saying, no tingling in the chest, rushes of warmth to the throat or face ...

-- 1 hour sit, noting out loud

Clear attention, yet again there were the intense outside-world/inside-world cycles. Or maybe I should say "experiential-mode/narrative-mode cycles"? Today the experiential parts were longer. Just the other way around from yesterday. At a certain point I noticed I was focusing on detecting the start of each thought. This helped to just shortly dip my toe in instead of falling entirely into thought streams. The nice thing is that this was quite effortless. The start-of-thoughts-detection-game was just happening before I consciously noticed it and kept going just the same afterwards. A giveaway for the start of the narrative parts was how the visuals of the outside world began to fade.

Somewhere halfway through the sit, the body got startled. As if something had surprised me, but the only thing I could notice were the body movements (arms jumping up, a strong gasp for air), nothing to be "blamed" in thoughts or emotions. This has been happening a lot the past months.

-- 1 hour sit, noting in silence + self inquiry

Lately I can't shake the idea that Kenneth's first gear (disembedding by noting) boils down to the same thing as neti-neti (if not just practiced as a trancy mantra). Today I switched from noting practice to neti-neti after 20 minutes or so. On inhalations I asked myself: "What am I?", on exhalations I observed all the objects in awareness answering "not this, not this ..." keeping in mind that subject and object can't be the same thing. You can't be what you observe. Oh and I like the fact that the breath is included in the focus. It seems to help with concentration.

I wonder what differences these approaches have, if any? I'll check it out the coming weeks.

Today I had the impression that litterally reminding myself that I am not the objects I can observe is making a stronger impression/insight than naming all objects. This sit didn't have the obvious rhytmical cycling between experiential and narrative modes like the past days, maybe because I'm not feeling well at all? Switching techniques halfway didn't seem to be the cause.

Something I've noticed often when talking, especially with other yogis (like just now on Skype with Nadav) is that I lose track of what I'm telling. If I just keep babbling, the words keep coming, but when I stop to reflect on something, it's often like the thinking is broken. It's just not happening coherently. I'm not saying that I'm not thinking anymore, images and sounds keep coming up all the time, but it's like bubbles popping quite quickly after they have appeared. And when a story stops all of a sudden it feels like a blank, like someone pressed the mute button in my head.

Sometimes this happens in stress situations as well. The mind is not following the storyline.
It's not like apathy or indifference, but it's like there's no interest in pursuing the idea/story and so the thoughts come to a halt.

This seems to be different when I'm less mindful, more on automatic pilot. Like at work where there's all kinds of stuff happening, problems that need to be solved ...

I understand this. I have been getting the same thing sometimes. I lose track of the point I am trying to make, because it seems that words are just flowing and I notice the whole process and forget what I was trying to convey.

Also happening in reverse though too, where I watch someone talking to me and realize I am not sure who they are talking to, and I lose track of the conversation.

Very odd indeed. I have started to try to investigate what is going on when I feel this coming on or know it is happening. Because it has normally been pretty anxious when it happens.

Interesting. I'm not sure if it's anxiety that I experience, although there's some worry in the background that I'm acting abnormal and offending my conversation partners.

-- 1 hour sit, noting out loud with R4FP (Random 4 Foundation Prompter) (see: is.gd/J3wRhX )

I used Duncan's R4FP while drawing/sketching. More often than when I used this script in the past (when I just meditated with it while not doing anything else) I got the foundations wrong now and then. For example, when the voice said "2" I'd respond with "itching" instead of "unpleasant". I did keep at it for the full hour, without losing pace.

It was pleasant to notice that it helped me to be more mindful. Usually when I sketch the narrative mind will kick in a lot, commenting on what I'm doing. When the output is being judged to be not good enough, this will create a sticky mental state for a big part of the sketching session (tension in chest, dull feelings in head, frowning, unrest, unpleasant tingling ...) or there'll be spikes of pride, pleasant tingling, smiling ... With the help of the R4FP things were more fluent and lighter, making the hour pass much quicker.

-- 1 hour sit, self-inquiry + noting in silence

I started with the structured approach of asking myself "What am I?" on inhalations and negating each object in awareness with "not that" on exhalations.

After a while I began to expand the negations like this: "I am not that tension in the leg. That tension over there below on the right isn't what I am ..." or "I am not those sounds. The sounds over there above aren't me." This made it feel more absorbed, sensations where observed more clearly.

Location started to play an important part. I was observing stuff "over there" all the time and this made it apparent that I must be somewhere "over here". I tried to pinpoint where this "here" was, arriving at a spot approx. where my brain is, behind the eyes. Not the entire brain but a much smaller spot in that area in the head where there are no physical sensations. All the sensations on (and in?) the head seem to be somewhere above/below/in front of/behind this spot. This spot seemed to be the source of the "audio in my head". I closely observed the sounds of the questions and negations.

Eventually I dropped the negations and no longer paid attention to the breath. I just kept asking "What am I?" and "Where am I?" all the time, hearing this in my mind and investigating what was in between those sounds. I couldn't find the source of the mental audio, just silence between sounds.

Then dreaminess started to kick in. I estimate this was about 40 to 50 minutes in the sit. The regular cycling between outside and inside world was there yet again. I switched to noting practice, which helped me stay alert. It felt quite different from the self-inquiry. Broader but also more superficial. I took the entire visual field as meditation object and saw when it started to fade and came back online in a slow rhythm.

Re: #450 and cycling

Hi David,

The eye flutter thing is familiar to me. When it happens for me (only sometimes), it happens once, and comes in the first 10 minutes of a sit. I'll notice muscle tensions in my eyes like they are turning inward and upward a bit, but the tension is much stronger than is actually needed for that motion. Usually, I sit with my eyes closed, and I do not notice visual strobing during or after, though.

The cycling is also something that has also been happening to me. I too notice a primarily inward focus, thought fragments, imagined sound fragments, dream imagery. It will suddenly pass, leaving a strong, clear, sharp, outward focus, and clear thinking. I imagine it to be similar to review cycling (A&P through Eq.), but not quite the same. I do not notice a fruition, but may sometimes notice a sinking sensation, or a sort-of inward, collapsing feeling.

The frequency varies, but when this gets rolling, I'm guessing one full cycle happens every 5-10 minutes (or sometimes even faster), moving in and out of clarity to dreaminess.

This cycling will get noticeably more intense, then fade, then strengthen again, then fade. This larger pattern happens 2-3 times in an hour, perhaps.

I'm not sure what it is, and have wondered if I'm actually riding the jhanic arc, with the strong, blissful, inward-focus peak corresponding to 2nd jhana, and the spaciness corresponding to 4th. It's not clear to me, though.

Hey Andy,

Yes that all sounds very familiar. Nice to read you experience this too.
I wonder if there are more yogis who do.

Yep, that's the rhythm of my sits too for many months now. Kenneth used to call this cycling in and out of absorption "the wheel" as a reminder not to resist it, since you can be sure whatever state you just lost will be back.

-- 1 hour sit

The intensity of the wheel (thanks for the reminder Nadav) seems to be diminishing the past days. It's getting more apparent again that all things are just popping up and disappearing on their own.

There's no one deciding to think of this next thought, no one choosing to feel a certain emotional sensation in the body in reaction to an interaction with someone or something, there's no doer to be found. No witness either. Or maybe I'm not investigating well enough?

I'm still fascinated by spatial relations though. This body (especially the head) still feels very much like the center of the universe, except when engrossed in sounds (thanks Antero! )

The sit this morning was delicious. I played some music (Benjamin Iobst's "Seven Metals") and started whispering labels. At first there were lots of thoughts: memory, planning, fantasy and mental states: impatience, uncertainty ...

These became less and less numerous until I found my body sitting there. It had stopped whispering or thinking labels, there were very little thoughts whatsoever, no apparent mental states apart from restfulness and a subtle fascination with whatever came up (tensions, warmth, sounds, occasional shortlived thoughts, some small kriyas).

This is a 'state' I experience now and then. I call it REC (Restful Enhanced Curiosity) because of the strong attention to the present moment. Sometimes weeks go by where this state is not experienced clearly, but then out of the blue there it is again. It seems to occur when it becomes clear that stuff is just happening without doer. Quite addictive I must admit. And lots of grasping when it doesn't occur for a while.

Towards the end of the sit, thoughts became more numerous again, impatience came back. Most of it related to having to start the workday and thinking of responsibilities to be taken care of.