Rob's Practice Notes

I had a Skype session with Kenneth yesterday, and spent my first hour-long sitting exclusively devoted to the "noting" method. (This after years of pinging from method to method, mostly revolving around "watching the breath"). Coaching from Kenneth gave me the confidence to realize I could note just fine, after previously feeling self-conscious and unskilled. I now know the work I've done before was valid, and paid dividends in concentration, but now it's time to strip down my technique, put down the books, stop worrying, and just shovel.

It was one of those sludgy, dozy sessions, but it had a different quality this time- the doziness was more active and became a subject of inquiry in itself, rather than a hindrance. I can't tell if the doziness was from pre-existing tiredness (the problem with practicing shortly after the dinner hour!) or the noting effort itself. The noting was pretty gruelling- I'm going for maximum "cognitive load", as Kenneth called it- noting in 2 or 3 "satipatthanas" at once to lock out any possibility of other mental activity! Even though it got spotty as I went on, it was quite intense- occasionally accelerating on its own momentum to a fevered pace, then crashing, so that I had to slowly rouse myself to find a sensation to note, and start back in again.

Occasionally there was an unsettling anxiety that went deeper than just everyday anxiety- a primal child-afraid-of-the-dark kind of anxiouness, as I noted away, with nowhere to moor things. That eased up, but then the session got kind of hijacked by my sleepiness. I look forward to a session where I go in with more consistent energy.

I can tell that this will be a heck of a ride!

Rob

AWESOME!

just do that

as much as possible

Weeeeeeee!

Thanks, mumuwu, for the inspiring welcome!

My evening hour was another exercise in sludgily fighting off sleepiness, which is odd for me. The noting collapsed utterly after about 1/2 an hour of effort and frustration, and I finished the session simply sitting and following the breath in my old way (which, strangely, was not as dozy).

I took a 15-minute sit in the park at lunch, and saw this. Might have something to do with the difficulty I have in holding interest:

Cool-pleasant-amused
Pressure-neutral-annoyed
Pressure-neutral-...
wait, what?
What? Pressure-neutral-annoyed *again*?
How unimaiginative!
OK, Annoyed. Whatever. Get back to work.
Humph. Hearing-neutral-...
What?
Arrrrgh! How *frustrating* that I can't tell what my mind-state is!

An interesting case of "embeddedness" caught red-handed! I seem to be stuck on the idea of observing *external* sensations, and I quickly re-embed in my own reactions and eventually hit feedback noise. Which leads me to just wanting to take a nap.

I'll try a bit of "See how it..." to de-personalize that reactivity. Then I should just try to kick back and watch, rather than "try" to note.

blank, dullness, searching, confusion, frustration, etc. are all ones I use quite often because I can't seem to pick up on the mindstate beyond those.

Note the reactivity

Heh. "Blank" comes to mind so often, but I dismiss it as cheating. Who's this "I" dude that keeps messing with me?

Note it as blank, not a problem. You are probably fairly calm. Try it when going about in the day and it'll be different.

I'm anxious as F*** right now lol.

A third evening going up the hill of "noting" intensively. I gotta say, I'm really growing to dread it. I'm not giving up, don't worry, but boy, it is a whole new thing. I hit a wall of doziness and extreme frustration after about 20 minutes, and kept trying to pick up the thread in the midst of a mind state from which I could read nothing but static.

I switched gears for a bit- I switched to actually noting content, since it was what I could find and identify quickly, whereas I kept getting stuck looking for words to note with when I tried to keep it general. Since it was mostly dreamy nonsense visual images, I could note the thing I was visualizing without getting "embedded" in it, in order to re-engage with the stream: "illuminated manuscript... basset hound... supernova...". This did seem to rouse my energy a bit so that I could go back to straight noting, but once I was out of the sludgy, sleepy zone, I was noting a lot of sadness and frustration and headaches.

This is humbling work- it sure pokes holes in my self-image as an "advanced" meditator. I feel like no matter how far I drill, there is still a manipulator trying to force a certain result, and this manipulator is getting very fed up.

"Arrrrgh! How *frustrating* that I can't tell what my mind-state is!" -Rob

Be sure to note "frustration." There is no such thing as a hindrance. Mind states like frustration, futility, sleepiness, self-recrimination, and aversion are perfect food for the wake-up machine. Put 'em in the hopper.

Frustration may become your best friend. If it's almost always there, it is a ready-made object, just dying to be used for fuel. Put it in the hopper (by noting it aloud), then note the satisfaction and gratitude that arise upon realizing that you have just converted your greatest enemy into an ally in your awakening.

Thanks for the encouragement and guidance, Kenneth!

I've done two 25-minutes sits since my last entry. I tried a bit of a change in tactic: when I hit the blank-feedback feeling of frustration, I label it as "That Feeling", and note its intensity and location: "That Feeling - medium - stomach; That Feeling - low-medium - chest". "That Feeling" quickly decomposes into identifiable sensations- attention snaps up from the dozy drift is free to find the judgement, tension, self-recrimination, relief... I'm still hitting "That Feeling" a lot, but the energy level swings up and down, rather than just seeming to sag and sag into sleep.

This last few days has really been like going back to school. I'd become used to practicing with a pretty dependable level of energy, and finding joy or calm in my sittings (it was mainly straight samatha, I guess). It's disconcerting to blow that all apart and start from scratch. Formal practice leaves a hum of irritable intensity as often as calm. Even after short sittings, it's almost like the kind of unpredictable intensity I experienced on a retreat. A big part of me wants the old, groovy way back!

I haven't 'journaled' for a few days, but it's been active- I've overcome to a great degree the neuroses I was describing last week about 'noting'. I gave myself a bit of a present- in an hour sitting, I take 20 minutes as pure 'concentration' practice, prior to beginning to note. Rather than breath, I've been using an improvised kasina (actually a paint-bubble at eye level on my wall!). I find I am able to settle surprisingly quickly (for me) into an 'access' concentration, and I slip into the noting almost unbidden. When the 20-minute bell goes and I take up formal noting, that sleepiness comes in again, but the last couple of sessions, I've taken up carefully noting the intensity of sleepiness as it arises.

This has had some really dramatic effects. With a few minutes' effort, the noting of the sleepiness seems to 'shoot it down' à la Daniel Ingram's Shootin' Aliens. Eventually, though, noting the sleepiness seemed to transform it into its opposite. The noting seemed to trigger a surge of energy / energetic attention / ultra-alertness. In one of my sessions, that 'energy' became rock-solid... sitting was painless, delightful, effortless... several times, I was shaken by a spontaneous shudder from the base of the spine... when the sitting ended, I had to pull myself out of that state slowly and carefully, but it felt like I could have happily sat there forever. Was that jhana? It did become difficult to remember to note, I must say, but when I did, it seemed to cause that energy to power down for a little bit, but then to reach yet higher.

Quite a rush.

Just finished a 45-minute sitting, noting relentlessly. Spent almost the entire time buffeted by shivers and shakes, rising columns of a very pleasureable energy that would dissipate in a sudden shudder, over and over. I actively tried to still myself, because the shaking was getting very constant- fun, yet tedious too. Periodically sound seemed to "drop out".

Hmmm... interesting. Sounds like progress, Rob. Keep on keepin' on! And keep us posted.

"Noting relentlessly," for the entire sitting will definitely get it done.

Kenneth

A kind of internal version of the strange shakes, and an underlying mood of constant exhiliration stayed with me for much of Friday. Sitting on Saturday, the shaking lowered in intensity and then stilled for a bit in mid-sitting. Since then, it's been less keyed-up than Thursday/Friday. My noting is improving, and I'm getting the habit of using it in low-pressure moments of daily life.

By "improving", I really mean I am learning to forgive myself for having a pretty limited vocabulary. I'm actually kind of surprised that I can only name about a half-dozen or so bodily experiences (albeit in many many places and to many degrees of intensity), and a half-dozen or so emotional states, and a few varieties of thought. What's more surprising is the rich and complex combinations- watching the very specific triggering of a bodily feeling by a mental image, or vice-versa.

When I first started getting some of the states and experiences you are describing I was so happy because it meant the things were happening, they were the fruits of real practice.
Are you feeling that or some similiar enthusiasm for practice?

I sure am- but also experiencing a lot of anxiety about "what comes next". I have gained "faith" in the path acting as promised, and therefore "faith" that I might before long head into some states that are as painful as these are delightful.

"I sure am- but also experiencing a lot of anxiety about "what comes next". I have gained "faith" in the path acting as promised, and therefore "faith" that I might before long head into some states that are as painful as these are delightful."

Note that anxiety of coure.
And, there is no way you can know what states are ahead.

Well, exactly

That anxiety kind of gripped me yesterday afternoon, after listening to a series of Shinzen Young videos on "Dissolution" (particularly on 'kriya' which seemed to exactly match what I've been experiencing the last few days). I don't know if it was just some information overload combined with a bit of suggestability, but as I was walking home in the afternoon, I was thinking something like "it's true, all these thoughts and feelings are just these fields of energy crisscrossing back and forth, aren't they?" and feeling genuinely 'unrooted'. I was actually a bit afraid to start noting, thinking I'd just burst into tears if I did.

As I said yesterday, there has been an increase in "faith" that the path is real- this is surprisingly overwhelming- I'm kind of startled to realize that a part of me was holding back from actually believing the teachings even as I practiced them. I described the feeling to my wife as "feeling like I'd found out that both Santa Claus and Vampires were real, on the same day".

I sat for my usual evening hour last night and had a rather sleepy and distracted sit, although I eventually settled in, fired the noting up, and felt a kind of persistent burning sensation just above my right eye, like someone was holding a cigarette to my forehead at that spot.

This morning, I'm feeling like I need to lighten up a bit!

INSIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Great stuff. I just read the first 17 posts in your thread. I just started the noting practice a few weeks ago and my experiences are very similar to your initial experiences. I just had my 2nd Skype session with Kenneth 3 days ago. It's as if all my prior meditation experience isn't worth **** when it comes to noting. And the sleepiness and dullness, I though I had gotten beyond that a long time ago. The longest I've been able to note is 20 minutes at this point.

Exactly- I used to be proud of having "overcome" the dullness, but taking on the new practice seems to have caused me to hit a whole new kind of resistance! And yeah, it does make everything before seem- well, maybe worth a bit more than ****, but certainly pretty languid.

Fighting the dullness isn't over yet, either- after a couple of effervescent days, it came back in my last two formal sittings, but at least I have a bit more energy to rev up and note once I spot myself drifting.

On the other hand, I've snatched some informal sittings, just sitting on a bench in a park at lunch break. In those situations, I get into a fairly thick and alert concentrated state.

I lose the "thread" of noting pretty often, but I'm starting to see more and more, "Hey, there's SOMETHING going on, right? Just find it!"

Also, I've gotten a lot of inspiration for noting from Shinzen Young's teachings on watching thought (which he breaks down into "image", visual tought, and "talk", auditory/verbal thought). Thought is such a slippery fish to note, and his techniques gave me something to grab on to.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! Seeing all these people going through these similar experiences has helped me overcome one big hindrance I have- the tendency to discredit or minimize anything I experience.

I love this thread. Rob and bauseer, your willingness as experienced meditators to willingly suspend disbelief and try something new is rare and inspirational. I find that it's this very willingness to "pay the toll" of everything I think I know that leads to freedom from suffering. Here is something you don't hear much: knowing is suffering. Being willing to pay over your "wisdom" in exchange for freedom in this moment is so simple and so uncompromising... and so fundamental to what we do.

Rob, as you are seeing with noting thoughts a la Shinzen, the trick is to categorize them into baskets. If you can put a thought into a basket, you have seen it clearly; that's the feedback loop that shows you that you are doing it right and keeps you on track. You can make up additional baskets on the fly and any basket will do. Some of my favorites are "planning thoughts," "remembering thoughts," "imaging thoughts," "catastrophizing thoughts," "dialoguing thoughts," "arguing thoughts," "self-recrimination thoughts," "evaluation thoughts," "doubting thoughts," "self-congratulatory thoughts," "word salad thoughts," "scenario spinning thoughts," "fantasy thoughts."

Every time you note, you are soldering* another little connection in a physio-energetic infrastructure that will eventually be robust enough to ground all of your thoughts and mind-states in the body. When you can do that, remaining whole, there is no place to go. Tanha, the "cause of suffering" according to the Buddha, does not operate when there is no place to go. You are just here, complete, dynamic, undivided, whole. This is enough. It's all you want. This is where all this is headed... here. Meanwhile, note your behind off.

*Joke, referring to a recent post by telecaster: soldering is right livelihood. ;-D

Thank you Kenneth, bauseer, Nikolai, telecaster for your priceless insights and feedback. 'Onward, Christian Solderers'!

I'm definitely widening my selection of "baskets", although, as I alluded to last week, it's strangely humbling to realize how few "baskets" I actually draw my thoughts from. Here I thought I was so creative and intellectual !

There's been a feeling in the last couple of days of "backsliding" to some prior bad habits, or perhaps I'm just noticing a layer of habit that went previously unexamined. I'm noting thoughts, but with an underlying intention of suppressing them, seeing them as "bad".

That's something I've been fighting for a long time, and was part of what I found so freeing about the noting practice: I just didn't have time to worry about whether a noted thought was "bad", because something else was coming up right behind it. I'm starting to note the arising of that 'suppressing' attitude as a recurrent "wanting" what I'm feeling now to be different: somehow purer, or more like some notion of a peaceful mind, or more like some prior blissful experience.

This last one is interesting, because once remembered, that prior blissful experience (including the pleasant waves of excitement from my sitting last week) no longer seem so blissful, but instead, like another sort of stressful discombobulation.

The last few days I've been feeling an undercurrent that wavers between a mild excitement and a soothing, nostalgic sadness. This is both in and out of formal sittings- it just seems to reside a little below the surface most of the time. It's pleasant, although it waxes and wanes along with a tingling around my eyes and forehead that manifests sometimes as a slight headache or slightly burning warmth in my eyebrows.

Sitting over the long weekend (long in Canada, anyways) brought some interesting new experiences. In the previous couple of weeks, I'd done a short "concentration" practice prior to starting to note. I feel the distinction is becoming less relevent, because awareness of arisings and vanishings all over is happening anyways, even if I am using an 'object'. I've changed my approach to concentration since starting to practice with KFD- I started to realize that "following the breath" was turning into a game where I was always inclining to manipulate the breath. So I'm training myself away from the breath. Instead, I'm watching a point on the bridge of my nose that seems to kind of tingle when I settle into a sitting- and if I'm counting breaths, I count not the breath itself, but the times that an exhalation 'lights up' that little glowing spot. Quickly, though, interest arises in all the other things going on in the surroundings, but rather than chasing off after them, I seem to be able to watch them in 'contrast' to that object. I don't spend much time with that, though- just enough to settle in, and then I turn to noting. Over the weekend, though, I took an opposite tack. Noting has become so quickly energizing that I reversed the order of things. I timed 30 minutes of noting *first* followed by 30 minutes of 'concentration'.

I know this kind of speculation is not my job, but, I do feel that there might be a movement upward through the nanas- within a couple of minutes, I pass through a period of little itches and muscle aches popping up all over. Third? (Yesterday was particularly interesting, since I have some weird pulled muscle in my arm that delivers a sharp stab of pain every 30 seconds or so, and it was interesting to see that periodic stab of "OW!" gradually morph into a kind of pulse followed by buzzy scattering up and down my arm). [continued...]

[continued from prevoius] After perhaps 15 minutes, I feel a mild version of the kind of exhiliration, arousal, and sudden shakes that I felt quite strongly a bit over a week ago, but has now become more subtle. Fourth? That comes to an end, though.

When I shifted to 'concentration' (which I feel is more of a diffuse noting practice, since I couldn't stop seeing all this stuff percolating if I tried), I moved into such a big, spacious "place" that seemed to envelop all the feelings, sounds and sensations I could have in a gently bubbling pool, and I felt no particular desire to prefer one and follow it. I could "just say no" to every stimulus that tried to present itself. Fifth?

I lingered in this enjoyable place for most of the 30 minutes; at one point, however, there was a short attack of anxiety, but it passed quickly. However, the same wave hit me about two more times in the hour or so following the sit, even though the "aftertaste" still retained a nice sense of this non-preferring kind of okay-ness, that even persisted and arose at other times of the day. Sixth? The attacks were kind of reminiscent of panic attacks (which I had many years ago) but without a sense of immediate threat, and therefore containable and observable- they didn't really disrupt what I was doing. [continued...]

So I have a couple of questions about all this:

(1) Am I seeing myself progressing up the "ladder" to 'Knowledge of Fear'?
(2) If so, should I do anything about that?
(3) Is it right to follow up a noting period with this concentration/diffused-noting practice? It feels legit to me- I swear I'm not just copping out from noting , and Kenneth does mention the usefulness of concentration post-A&P, but I'd like to know what people who've been through this would say about what I describe.