Eddy's practice journal

Thanks Laurel. I have been advised to do metta before but I have troubles with tension while I do it (my mind tends to try to change things in the process). However I have benefited from informal ,metta-like, thoughts which kind of relate to western psychology I guess. One thing someone advised me to do on this forum and helps (when I remember to do it) is to laud and encourage myself every time that I get back on task after I lose focus. If i don't do this my practice can be painful because every time I get caught up in distraction I reprimand and criticize myself. Also when I do get good feelings I associate them with self acceptance. I do agree I might need some more lovingkindness in my life, I am very hateful and bitter, particularly when a pain or emotion gets stuck for a while.

"every time I get caught up in distraction I reprimand and criticize myself"

What causes you to believe that the reprimand and self-criticism isn't just more of the exact same distraction you are reprimanding and self-criticizing yourself from? (Meaning, what are the sensations that seem to imply it is somehow different? Is it really any different?)

I'm not a fan of metta practice as I have understood it --- the whole "I'm the puppy" thing always feels like self-comiseration to me, which gives credence to, and feeds off from, the feelings of sorrow and pain. I have benefited a lot from becoming my own best friend, though, which means being as helpful and benign as I can be to myself, both with actions and thoughts.

Im with you Bruno on the metta thing. It ends up being like that for me too.

After spending not so long a time on these forums, I am beginning to realize that what helps one person a lot may be absolutely useless for someone else. This also resonates with my personal experience. Case in point: my husband developed a severe depression almost three years ago, and I begged him to go into therapy, because that's the only thing I could think of (it seemed so obvious). I thought getting him on meds was also essential. Well, it was a disaster, he had horrible side effects to the meds (and I'm not just talking about the usual), and he hated talking to therapists, and things came to a complete, disastrous head (which I won't go into), and then lo and behold he started doing tai chi and horseback riding and Indonesian gamelan, and seemed to pull himself out of it. I could not have dreamed it would work; the moral of the story is he found out for himself what worked to get himself in balance, and it was kind of quirky and individualized, but who cares, it worked.

So: what Bruno says here makes sense, and I'd just second it, and then suggest one more thing, if you haven't tried it already, which may be some form of bodywork. In my case (and my husband's), a lot of suffering has come from living in my head too much. And also, listen to what Bruno says about reprimand and self-criticism, and about becoming a friend to yourself. All the best.

Thanks Laurel! This is great advice. And by bodywork I'm guessing yoga, tai chi? I'll be moving to college in a month or so and they will be offering those at the athletic center for free. I'll make sure I join those. Right now I do some weights and a bit of cardio here and there. It helps a bit but not as much as it used to. I can definitely relate to the whole psychiatric med situation though... not always the best for everyone.

Today I sat 30 minutes in the morning and another 30 minutes at night. They were very distracted and panicky yet there were some moments of peace and flowing pulses. I have been very restless and prone to dissociation through entertainment, and excessive social contact. What I mean by this is that I use hanging out with friends and my girlfriend at times to dissociate from bad emotions. One thing I have noticed is that it kind of dulls down my concentration. I find it very hard to meditate right after playing video games or talking to people. On a positive note, I have been able to successfully catch myself getting distracted and gotten more into detail on the workings of it. Todays sits were very distracted and and choppy but I feel that in the moments that I was concentrated I was able to observe a lot of how my mind works. The energetic activity in my throat has been increasing to the point where I note gagging, phlegm, choking feeling, suffocation. I note reactions of panic, worry, desperation. If I stay really steadily with it however it begins to slightly undulate and pulse then it solidifies again into that pain. In those moments of clarity and pulsation I suffer a lot less. They are brief but I am getting into them back and forth. Interestingly is that a couple times this week I am getting tiny brief cool rushes into my abdomen from my upper body. My abdomen is very hard for me to focus on and is usually numb, so this development excites me a bit.

Only did 30 minutes today. Been slacking off past three days. My noting session was okay with many distractions. Noted dissatisfaction, silky feeling (this softness I get at times that has no specific location), sharpness in hip area, pulses, throat knot, rapture, excitement, anticipation, judging, investigating, fear, tension, daydreaming, planning.

Today I had a strange experience. I was doing noting practice (don't know how long) and I fell asleep as I was doing it. I had a very vivid dream and all of a sudden something weird happened and everything disintegrated. At this point I was half asleep/half awake. Then I heard a very loud ringing and the sound of rushing. I felt pulsing throughout my whole body and strong flows. The ringing got louder and louder and I heard a roar as my body was vibrating intensely. I felt a lot of existential angst and panic as it all happened. Then it subsided. I thought I was going to get path or something. (I had the feeling that something was about to happen and there was a lot of pressure somewhere but then It all went away). Then my thoughts went back to normal and all was back where it was. Restlessness, throat pain, sadness, steady pulsing in some areas. Then I started thinking about different things and dozing off into fantasies. Early today I was walking at the park and decided to pay attention to different sensations. Though I was very restless, I had many little moments of laughter and pleasure that I cannot describe, usually accompanying some type of thought or insight.

Lately my meditation has been taking me down lower in my torso towards my numb spots. I note a lot of popping, tensing, anticipation, boredom, waiting, fear, panic, peacefulness, sleepiness. I feel like something is going to happen down there but there is something that holds it back. I find a strong correlation between that and my usual emotional suffering i experience throughout the day.

I haven't been doing as much practice as usual due to me moving in to college and such this week. Today I tried to maintain much awareness throughout the day and did 15 minutes of formal sitting. I was only able to maintain good awareness around 5-10% of the day. I don't really know what to do now. I have been getting a lot more tightness on the right side of my body, specifically around the diaphragm/rib cage. Its difficult to keep the focus there because I notice high levels of aversion. I will keep trying to get back at it to see if maybe it dissolves. I notice when I focus on it for a bit it makes pulses appear very intense in my visual field and somatically throughout my body, kind of like heartbeats with a visual component. I get these little warm rushes into my abdomen which quickly dissipate. I note this of course. I am just documenting to see if anyone knows what this is, and for me to keep a track of what goes on.

Just finished sitting for about an hour and a half. The sit started as usual with the upper body tension and pulses. Then something happened where it was very difficult to focus and I felt as if I was going to fall asleep. After a while I started noticing something coming from my abdomen and diaphragm. A very deep deep sadness and pain came from there. It seemed to be flowing upward. It seems that its always there but it is very subtle so I never really notice that since I notice the more gross tensions in my upper body. I don't know how to describe what I felt coming from there other than that it felt like it was pulling me down and apart. It has a very odd depth to it that I cannot compare to normal emotions.

Good stuff Eddy. Perhaps you could try and bring some more resolution to your reports. It's difficult to tell exactly what you are experiencing (without more detail), however it does sound like you are heading in the right direction.

I suspect the sadness is connected to a particular nana.

The pulsing and energetic phenomenon you described in your last post sounds like it may be related to the A&P (more journaling will make this clearer). The tension prior to it may be a manifestation of the three characteristics nana. But, again, hard to say.

Hang in there man.

Thanks mumuwu. I will definitely try to give more details. Weird this is after all this meditation stuff for about a year now I feel like its harder for me to organize my thoughts and even remember things, so I tend to find it difficult to recall what goes on during sitting. To describe in a more detailed way what occurs with me throughout the day: Basically I wake up every day with tension around the neck, throat, upper torso. I feel like I am holding on to some crazy thing all day. I suffer no matter what I do to distract myself or to relax. Its like I'll be having a conversation and a huge amount of dissatisfaction will hit me right away. Then I'll avert the conversation and crave something else, like food. So I go get the food and feel nothing then it repeats with something else. I find this process closely correlated to the tension in my body as I notice it gets worse and worse the more those feelings come up. It gets even worse when i try to get rid of it so I just kind of wallow in them. I feel like I'm in some weird process of emotional self-loathing and I guess mental masturbation (only way I can think of it). I want to feel better but I keep holding on to feeling bad, then I make myself feel worse, then I try to accept it and become mindful but it stays then a bit later I get frustrated. It's really a big loop of this. I don't know what type of detail I should be using in my reports but I am open to suggestions.

This is all good stuff Eddy. It really sounds like you're going through some nasty dukkha. I think some more detailed journals over a period of time will really help figure out where you're at, and will also give you a nice record to refer back to and study.

Have you tried the mahamudra noting technique? It may be particularly useful at this point. It really helps to loosen the hooks of suffering. Direct mode may also be of some benefit in terms of dealing with some of that painful energy.

At this point it's really going to help if we can figure out where you are on the maps. In any case, try to take it easy and not be too hard on yourself. Keep in mind that along with suffering, things are also impermanent and these tensions and negative emotions will pass away at some point.

Have you read JLaurelC's practice journal? Some of her recent entry's may be of help / comfort.

Keep us updated, you can do this.

Metta!

I will try the mahamudra noting before I go to bed tonight. Now that you mention that direct mode, I just looked it up and it's very similar to something I've been doing kind of automatically the past two months. It usually occurs when I'm outside taking walks.

I just got up from doing 1 hour of sitting. I am trying to sit for longer periods of time now rather than just 30 minutes. It started off with a lot of the pulses and difficulty focusing. Then I got into a groove where the pulses were just hovering through my whole body softly. The whole time though theres this mass of ickiness that I feel towards the center of my body as this is happening. So there is this strange thing where part of the body is vibrating at a certain frequency and I feel like the center is at another frequency... If any at all. Towards the middle of the sit it got very hard to focus as my mind was wandering a lot. I thought about all kinds of things, it was as if my mind was trying to avoid this big thing. The whole time I noticed an undertone of aversion. No matter what I did I could not get rid of it. It was kind of like that background hum of the A/C in a building where its always on. It has the quality of grinding to it. At some points I fell into desperation. This was when the sensations either got very harsh or when my thoughts had to do with getting up or how much time I've spent sitting (or have left). I got a lot of fantasizing throughout the whole sit. I noticed many little numb subtle feelings briefly throughout my body that quickly disappeared to make way for my usual big grinding sensations. There were a few moments were I felt heat or pressure moving downwards towards my abdomen. I feel as if my upper body is holding something and my diaphragm acts like a dam. The fear or (or whatever keeps the dam together) is keeping whatever is on top from falling. However there are little moments where the dam springs little leaks and I feel something falling into my abdomen only for the leaks to close themselves off with tension automatically. I have a hard time breathing as if my breathe doesn't want to go down there. For some brief moments I got some strange dullness around my toes and parts of my legs. This was very uncomfortable.

Eddy, I'm frankly very worried about you based on your comments last week and I'm not sure that meditation alone is what you really need right now. Depression and anxiety can be the result of medical conditions and brain chemistry that cannot be affected readily by meditation.

Please reply, even if in a private message.

Thanks.

"
Eddy, I'm frankly very worried about you based on your comments last week and I'm not sure that meditation alone is what you really need right now. Depression and anxiety can be the result of medical conditions and brain chemistry that cannot be affected readily by meditation.

Please reply, even if in a private message.

Thanks."

Thanks for your concern. I have seen countless therapists and psychiatrists (tried all forms of medication) and they haven't been able to help much which is why I'm resorting to meditation. In a way it is my biggest hope. I will still be seeing a counselor on my campus to be safe and for support though. I know I can't do it alone.

Eddy, for meditation to work one must be in a reasonably healthy state. If that's not the case then once again I urge you to seek medical help and tell those people very honestly what it is that's bothering you. Meditation is not medication and it is not therapy. It can do only so much. If you saw therapists and doctors and weren't honest with them about what the problem is you should at least give them a second chance.

I don't even know what the problem is. I just generally feel bad.

So todays sit wasn't much different from yesterday. Something interesting keeps happening though. I begin to lose a lot of the tension and it becomes very hard to note anything at all. Its as if during the tension I'm standing on something and able to note and then that platform I'm on disappears. Then I get really sleep and I end up falling asleep. Then I wake up and its back to normal. This is all in relation to that big thing I usually feel emotions come from. I notice this sort of fixation and neediness quality to it. For example I was at a social orientation gathering tonight at my campus. The pain become so great that it distracted me from doing anything and enjoying anything. Its as if it was a baby crying asking for attention. Then it gave me a strong desire to go back to my room and just do nothing, and that is when I ended up sitting. Its very hard to ignore and it can get so powerful as to make me unable to have conversations and to read things or enjoy the activities I used to enjoy so much such as drawing. I find that it actually tenses up more during drawing and reading. Things that used to do the opposite for me... Not good for an incoming art student.

I am feeling more at peace since the second half of yesterday. I was only able to sit 30 minutes yesterday but I think that the steady mindfulness I applied throughout the day (noted about 30% of the time, a record for me) helped a lot. I am also seeing a little bit of bleed through into how I perceive myself and some other psychological things...

"Thanks for your concern. I have seen countless therapists and psychiatrists (tried all forms of medication) and they haven't been able to help much which is why I'm resorting to meditation. In a way it is my biggest hope. I will still be seeing a counselor on my campus to be safe and for support though. I know I can't do it alone. "

Hey Eddy - I'm so glad you're going to see a counselor man. I know I don't post a lot on your thread, but some of your comments have me concerned for you too, and I can't say enough how important it is to get therapy along with the meditation.

I'm a therapist myself, and I know that it sometimes takes a few tries (sometimes even more) before you come across a therapist who really "gets it" and can help. My advice is don't give up, because when it works, it's amazing. Therapy can be a safe place to handle a lot of things that are too much to work on by yourself. When you say "I know I can't do it alone" I feel a lot of relief - I wish everyone knew that.

If you have any concerns about therapy and want the real deal from an actual therapist please don't hesitate to send me a message. I'm totally available and would be more than happy to chat.

"If you have any concerns about therapy and want the real deal from an actual therapist please don't hesitate to send me a message. I'm totally available and would be more than happy to chat."

Ron, your my hero!

I havent practiced much today and yesterday due to the storm in NYC. Im stuck in my dorm with a roommate who always has guests over.. However I am starting to read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle since I've seen many mentions of it around the forums.