Bruno's practice thread #2

So I have given up on the very intensive 4h/day, every-weekend regime, in order to get my head uncooked. Symptoms that lead me to it were: head pain in the center of the head, really bad concentration and mental fatigue, strange motor coordination issues, and an unclearly seen and indistinct sensation of all-pervading, underlying tension and stress.

It's been a week and three days since I've paused any formal practice, and I have engaged daily in the following activities instead:
- going to the pool, swimming and doing the jacuzzi for bodily relaxation;
- walking in the park;
- laying down to physically relax.

My mind is still not working properly. I have a real hard time concentrating, worst than I did the beginning of this year, and the head pains are slightly better, but still there. I notice effects in my motor coordination, such as while trying to pick up an object to place it somewhere else, in the middle of the process there is a "lapse" of some sort, so that the movement becomes uncoordinated, and I will drop the object, or place it carelessly. I am considering to go see a doctor just to be sure it isn't brain cancer or something like that.

How often I have wished I could better understand what is going on with my brain...

Hi Bruno,

Yes, I think you should go to the doctor just to be safe. Although much of what you describe could be caused by the dark night, it will be good to err on the side of safety and in truth if it is just the dark night you are having a rather extreme case. Let us know what you find out.

Kenneth

Will do Kenneth.

Meanwhile, let me note that today's walk in the park was entirely surreal, very close to what I imagine would be a full-blown PCE. There is this annoying mind-noise process going on, basically it is the flutter which is focused on during the "sweet spot practice" going completely mental, blinking at 2-5 times per second and crippling cognition and perception in various ways. But there is also an approximation to a mode of perception where everything is absolutely gorgeous and really really peaceful.

For instance the sound that a leaf makes during the time it scrapes against the gravel ground when it is moved around by the wind: it is perceived as a delightful, and almost orgasmic experience. And when one perceives it that way, it seems to be happening on this completely silent stillness.

Very strange and fascinating, this journey.

Something about that sound of leaves rustling has always, as long as I can remember, illuminated that simplicity for me. You're description really evoked that for me, especially that it "seems to be happening on this completely silent stillness". For me it's also as if, in perceiving things this way, they are *exactly in their perfect place*, like completely settled into themselves. Yet completely resting in that silent, clear stillness, even as they move and make sound. Wonderful!

"My mind is still not working properly. I have a real hard time concentrating, worst than I did the beginning of this year, and the head pains are slightly better, but still there. I notice effects in my motor coordination, such as while trying to pick up an object to place it somewhere else, in the middle of the process there is a "lapse" of some sort, so that the movement becomes uncoordinated, and I will drop the object, or place it carelessly. I am considering to go see a doctor just to be sure it isn't brain cancer or something like that."

Just posting to reinforce the idea that you see a doctor, Bruno. This is a downside to thinking, as we often see people do, that literally everything they experience is due to their practice. It is not, and cannot, be that way.

Please go see a doctor!

It seems my head pains have passed for a full week, and so this weekend I have resumed practicing vipassana. Only today I got my health insurance finally approved by ION.

It seems that in order for progress to continue, I must walk a razor's edge between effort and relaxation. Even a tad too much effort causes tension and control, and a tad too much laxity causes me to get lost in my own various inner dialogues and imaginations.

My current practice is thus a mix of Chi Kung, water play, walking in the park and vipassana meditation.

1. My "Chi Kung" is really just joint rotations (every joint in my body) and various squats and stretches. Rotations really smooth out energy flow, and squats do really great things to my Dan Tien.

2. Water play --- I go to the pool almost every day, swim around a bit, sit in the jacuzzi for about fourty minutes, and then get dried, get dressed, and sit down for about twenty minutes, just relaxing. This helps me avoid over-striving.

3. Walking in the park is a practice also: basically I take a meditative approach to enjoying myself as much as I possibly can.

4. And when I am feeling relaxed and alert (and only then), I do vipassana.

Chi Kung is maybe 20-30m every day, pool and jacuzzi is 1h30 four-five times a week, walking in the park is maybe 1h30 5-7 days a week, and I was thinking of doing vipassana about 30m 4 times a week.

From the last two very relaxing weeks, I am glad to report that I am feeling much better, I can concentrate better and I am still feeling very happy about life. I have had a lot of dissolution in my intestines and particularly in my solar plexus; I feel relaxed and easy-going.

We'll see

Hi Bruno, glad to hear you're feeling better.

If I can make a suggestion, which absolutely IS NOT medical advice and should not replace it, I think your unfortunate brush with "brain frying" involved a severe case of directed attention fatigue, among other things. Attention fatigue is the neurological equivalent of pushing your muscles too hard and never giving them a chance to recover. Imagine if you worked out for 4 hours a day every single day and then worked out all day on every weekend. It would be terrible for your muscles and tendons, though of course they would be able to recover from it once you took enough time off.

Your decision to take it easy was exactly the right thing. What you're doing right now should work just fine, especially if you keep taking those walks in nature every day. In fact, if you can take a very relaxed walk in nature twice a day, it would be even better. The most restorative way to take those walks is to completely let go all control of your attention and thoughts, and just let the monkey mind play around for a while. Our monkey brains love to look at plants and the sky and other such natural things. Letting yourself enjoy an environment full of intrinsically fascinating things is a profoundly relaxing massage for the mind. So I hope you continue to spend relaxing time in nature any time you're ever at a risk of becoming mentally exhausted.

One other suggestion which helps many people dealing with mental fatigue is to eat foods that supply the raw ingredients for neurotransmitters. Mental fatigue, especially attention fatigue, appears to involve depletion of neurotransmitters. This is surprisingly easy to manage, because neurotransmitters are produced from amino acids. Whenever mental fatigue is troubling you, increase protein intake. (If you don't want to increase total calorie intake, then reduce fat intake. Don't skimp on carbs.)

Continued...

One of the best all-in-one foods to correct neurotransmitter depletion is the egg. Specifically, you need both the egg white and the yolk. The white contains lots of protein rich in glutamate, tyrosine, and phenylalanine. The yolk is rich in protein too, and it contains a lot of choline. Those four nutrients are, to my current knowledge, the building blocks for all neurotransmitters depleted by attention fatigue. (Eggs aren't a great source of tryptophan, which is necessary to create serotonin, but serotonin doesn't seem to be a significant player in attention fatigue.)

If you get 2-3 eggs a day, it will enable you to practice more without becoming fatigued, and when you get fatigued anyway, you can recover a bit faster. I can say this based not only on personal success, but also on the success of other people who have used replacement of phenylalanine, tyrosine, glutamate, and choline to recover more quickly from mental fatigue.

Of course, you'll still have to be on the lookout for over-efforting. Fatigue isn't the only problem it can cause. But if you keep spending nature time, and if you get those eggs (or whey protein, or soy protein) then the razor's edge comfort zone will widen a bit. That way, you won't have to spend so much time correcting your effort. (Ever gotten that roller-coaster feeling of "too much effort -- now too little! now too much! now... uhh... what was the balance supposed to feel like again?")

Best of luck with whatever you decide to do, and please keep us posted! And be sure to talk to a doctor if things go wrong again. It's possible for medical conditions to make the mind easier to fatigue. What if it was something simple, like a thyroid problem? If you corrected hypothyroidism, you could expect a dramatic improvement in your mental functioning.

Interesting post, Adam
I'm gonna go get me some organic eggs tommorow. woohoo!

Thanks for the tips Adam, I will eats loads of eggs just in case I found the following web-site about directed attention fatigue:

www.troutfoot.com/attn/

And although the symptoms related to emotional upheaval are mostly not happening for me (I don't get irritated, and I rarely get impatient, mostly because I decide not to), those having to do with mental functioning are mostly all there.

I found their distinction between directed attention and fascinated attention --- apparently these are two different mechanisms of attention available to the mind. I heard that in a PCE one has no sense of focus, could it be because directed attention is effectively replaced by "fascination"?

Headaches have returned by the way. Vipassana is off limits again. Today I went to the doctor, and took some blood tests (the dutch health system is incredibly efficient!).

I've got something really massive happening at the solar plexus region. There is some pain and tension in this region which has been trying to resolve itself for over a month now. When I focus on this region (in a very very restful kind of meditation, I just lay back and relax the area gently), two things will happen:
- my tummy and intestines will start grumbling like there was no tomorrow, and even my kidneys (I guess...) start woshing with water, apparently relaxing ever more deeply; and
- if I relax far enough, the giant tension will start feeling like I am running out of breath (just like when I was once kicked in this area when I was a child, and "got my wind knocked out of me" ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_the_wind_knocked_out_of_you ). I try to relax as much as possible, and it can get pretty difficult and painful.

When tension does resolve, even for just a few minutes, there is a massive GROWL, suddenly "chi" or whatever is able to go through, and it feels really really nice! This happens if I manage to relax long enough while being mindful of the solar plexus region.

Marked shift. Maybe 3rd path?

I was trying to follow Kenneths "scan inside the head" instructions for NS. At some point, while contrivedly "Looking down the neck from the point of view of the forehead," something Clayton mentioned, I had a bit of a surprise: the usual sensations occupying the head all suddenly spiraled into the third eye (in the forehead, not the center of the head), a bit as if flushed down the toilet.

It felt really nice and my mind was super silent afterwards. I thought maybe that was it, maybe not. Today I tried doing it again with no success, but just now, however, I had a big fruition, something which I hadn't seen for months now. *blip blip*, my eyes were opened it was really weird and then the characteristic bliss and relief.

I think the time is ripe for 24(-sleep)/7 "just see it now" practice. Let's balance that effort and relaxation all the way!

I must say I found the following words by Tarin, which he wrote on Beoman's thread, very striking. My crown chakra lighted up quite noticeably.

(Tarin, replying to a question along the lines of "what is the faster way this can be done?")

"i think that if you're concerned with how much time it will take, nothing you do will make a difference as to how long it will take.

without that concern however.. anything is possible."

Suddenly I could see that I have a nagging concern about getting there. And could see that concern for what it was --- an unpleasant mental gesture, a sort of imagining the future, and I could see that it was happening now. A few minutes later I had a fruition.

Great stuff Bruno, sounds like progress I was just wondering a while ago how you were doing.
That Tarin quote is cold. I often find myself wondering 'when it is going to take me' and when I objectify that, its very rewarding.

awesome! I'm glad you were able to see that concern for what it is. i've got to work on it, too, I think, though reading tarin's advice soon after it started may have short-circuited it. let us know how your practice unfolds over the next few days.

I am sooo A&P right now. Tonight I have had several erotic dreams, including with a passion of mine from six years ago. I also meditated during my sleep, and had about five fruitions throughout the night. I woke up a while ago, and I'm not tired at all...

My mind is very prone to thinking a lot, and my meditation is mostly free awareness. It has been surprisingly easy to maintain awareness, and so I think that full-time practice makes perfect sense, and I'm doing it while typing these lines.

1. A&P is gone for a few days now, nothing really took its place, I am very stable. Life is really enjoyable.

2. I couldn't reproduce the event I suspected was NS, just like I couldn't reproduce the four jhanas. There seems to be something distinct in my own path from the typical development of other yogis on this site.

People here always talk about jhanas and pure-land jhanas which you can freely reproduce after you have gotten "access" to them. But for me, I have had access to (what I believe was) PL1, PL2, PL3, PL4, on two occasions, and once to NS, and now it is gone, poof, kaput. I can't get the first four jhanas either, although I've had clear access to them a couple of times.

The whole description of the path as gaining access to mental layers, just doesn't fit my practice.

3. On the other hand, I've had a few PCEs, and massive EEs over the past week, as well as various fruitions. My perception is becoming more and more pristine, and it really is delightful to live like that!

Quite frankly, right now, I find that the AF thing seems incredibly reasonable, down-to-earth, non-mystical plain-speak. Miles ahead of "dynamic meta-emotional personal streams," and "I am not my body."

I have already incorporated some AF elements into my practice. Every time I have a PCE, or every time I get around that mental region, I become convinced that is the right direction to pursue.

Its interesting at times our paths seem different but really they are very very similar. It seemed to me that access to NS and the PL was hit or miss and took a while to become consistent. Keep up the good work

Hi Bruno.

I would just add my two cents in here and encourage you to follow your gut; go with what is working for you. If that is AF, then really sink into it. My experience is that no practice--whether it seems similar or not--gets wasted in the end. You could end up doing AF forever and to some terminal point of realization or end up in a place that makes AF seem like a brief period of cross-training. Either way it will be useful and you won't have any regrets.

Yours,
Mark

whatever you decide to do, keep us updated , your practice is interesting and inspiring.

Hey Bruno, what practices have you been doing? I get the impression that you're doing vipassana and also focusing on direct perception mode. Is that the case? Also, are you still doing any energetic practices?

You're right Adam, that is exactly my practice.

I still do energetic practices, mostly Chi Kung-inspired joint rotations and standing meditation (zhan zhuang). However I have no desire to cultivate chi or anything of the sort, I do these practices because they are great at dissolving impurities.

Today was a typical practice day: I did four half-hour sessions of meditation, and a forty minute walk in the park, as well as general mindfulness practice during cooking, bathing, conversation, typing this message right now, etc. (ain't it weird that I keep forgetting that whatever is happening is happening right now?!)

During the half-hour sessions I did (1) focusing on the dan tien, (2) a sweeping meditation throughout my spine, going through each chakra point in turn (3) zhan zhuang, and (4) a mix of 1 and 2. Whenever I can, I notice the attention-wave / annoying fluttering / tension-discomfort, and noticing it makes it prone to relax and dissolve. Interestingly I used to think that the fluttering happened only in the middle of the head, but now it is clear that it happens on each chakra as well. (I wonder if this is what Nick refers to as "self-contraction")

The walk in the park was very wondrous, I've had moments of incredibly clear near-perfection (attention wave still there though). It is during these walks in nature that the direction I want to go to becomes very clear --- it is like taking the absolute best feature of acid trips (that sense of fascinated contemplation, directness of perception, absence of filters), and getting rid of everything else. It is oh-so-very obviously wonderful, nothing-to-worry-about, hard-to-believe-it's-possible, and worthy-of-pursuit! It is so delightful I find myself laughing out loud a few times along the way.

Cool, keep us posted then!

Wow, had really great PCE's over the last week. And finally I've had a full-blown PCE without any need for a walk in the sunny park, right here in my room, just by gazing at everyday objects in the lamp-light.

The purity of the experience is increasing, too. And any application of other practices is being devoted to getting further and further into the PCE (it is really so fun to do that all other stuff was left behind).

Interestingly, just doing the stuff I do to get to a PCE has an effect upon the chakras (inside the spine), and the same kind of effect I was getting when working with them directly. What seems to be happening is that the chakras are being eradicated. When paying attention in that special PCE way, it feels as though the chakras (and the spine in general) are being put under pressure, and this pressure has a sort of eroding effect on each chakra, causing it to flutter less frequently, and with less intensity (causing a less intrusive attention wave, if you will). A bit like the flow of a river erodes a bunch of rocks. Except that the rocks seem to be the only thing that makes it seem like there is a flow in the first place, as if movement could only be detected through friction, as if the sensation of "arising and passing" itself is nothing more than this very friction.

More PCEs. Mindfulness during the day doubled, give or take, compared to last week. I'll try to increase it again this week.

PCEs are more pure. Today for the first time the annoying fluttering stopped (actually it was more like a gentle and sudden falling away). Just for about 10 seconds, I was fully here and now. Very easy, relaxed, and enjoyable.

I am getting some changes in my hearing. Sound texture is more rich than it used to be.

I realize now, that ever since the last major shift a few weeks ago, the pain in the middle of the head, together with the sensation of center point that was happening there, has shifted down to the neck chakra. Now it seems that all the fluttering is coming from there. There is also the occasional crown activity.

Practice became very simple. I sit down and realize that it's now (and it always is, isn't it?), and I contemplate, I gaze around at things, listen to the sounds and feel the body. If I get tired, I close my eyes, rest and relax, usually focusing inside the spine, while staying aware that it is now. During the moments of contemplation, and during the moments of rest, I enjoy being here thoroughly.

These past few days I've attended a nice reunion of friends, to celebrate the new year. And, I was happy to discover, I got none of the sourness that was typical for me during large social gatherings. E.g., I used to resent couples because I'm single, I used to have morality trips, I used to feel lonely, I used to want to show off, I used to get drunk and then cry alone in the bathroom, etc, etc. It seems that I simply decided to be happy and easygoing, and that it worked.

It is an unequivocal sign that some profound changes have happened.

Sounds beautiful, Bruno. May your happiness continue.