sparqi's death notes

A suitably dramatic title!

Borrowed it along with my icon graphic from the cartoon 'death note'.

Previous practice threads:
kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/thread/3886748/sparqis+logs
kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/thread/4014822/sparqis+logs2

Time to get the ball rolling again...third time lucky!

Intent: StreamEntry

Have been feeling a great deal of aversion about noting out loud particularly and doing anything meditaion wise generally, so its been sporadic, messy and half hearted for a number of months.

This morning just to note and without method or explicit intent noted:
tired, wanting to go to bed, sore eyes, tight eyes, rear head abstracting, fuzzing, airy absorbing, abouting, seeing, orb tight, leg jigging, anxiety, breath holding, pride, 'little boy lost' eyes, hesitation, nagging 'something to do/think/decide before plunging', 'world weariness', sighing, urge to rest, unsatisfied, 'fed up', orientating, agitation etc....which aggregates to: 'procrastination', 'give up', 'try again tomorrow', 'blaseness', 'apathy', 'cant be bothered'.

Then: relaxation, settling etc, then hara blissing, hara blissing absorbing, sighing pleasant, hara dwelling.

Provisionally a new distinction has come up to articulate a felt difference between 'absorbing' and 'dwelling'. This has been the closest Ive managed to shift from the habitual head dwelling to hara dwelling. The magnetic 'bliss' facilitated the shift from absorbing in the hara to dwelling in the hara. Nice...thought Id start my journal on this first death note of head dwelling.

Also great to see AugustLeo, triplethink and chelek back....those 'fossils' stirring the ashes adds for me needed inspiration!!

yeah, well, thanks sparqi, actually your new thread title reminded me of my last attempt at adopting a pet thread. I was going to slowly work out some thoughts on a possible fourth gear idea, but before I could even spoon the first word into it's mouth it turned on me and started a free form poetry food fight. Next thing Kenneth started wondering out loud if I'd lost my mind. Should rename that thread, triplethink jumps flaming pumpkin across grand canyon of miscommunication.

Anyways, good luck. Y' know, overall, in practice this isn't all sunshine and fuzzy animals, there is a lot of grunt work involved in serious progress with meditation practices. It takes awhile to develop the necessary psychological calus's just like with bricklaying or filling out income tax forms or whatever. Sometimes I think people, in their natural and understandable enthusiasm, can sugar coat their descriptions of some stuff in ways that seem very reminiscent of the gawd awful terminology used in early translations of some of the buddhist texts. All I know is, honestly, sometimes what is happening is really great and sometimes it sucks massively. Like Kenneth and others say in their own various ways, you are getting somewhere useful when it doesn't particularly matter anymore what it's like from one moment to the next, one day to the next, and yet you are still working on it anyways.

"I was going to slowly work out some thoughts on a possible fourth gear idea"

Please do triplethink!!

"Like Kenneth and others say in their own various ways, you are getting somewhere useful when it doesn't particularly matter anymore what it's like from one moment to the next, one day to the next, and yet you are still working on it anyways."

very relevant...appreciate it.

This morning I had two 45min sessions of hara anchored noting

My general gist has been this practice over the last couple of months. My noting vocabulary needs some translating.

General Pattern:

Note generally as awareness wanders around the hara area, expansion and contraction of the belly, hips, pelvic girdle, rear sacral, legs. When awareness wanders back to the head, note for example 'bright selfing' (when the sense of self is around the eyes and seeing), 'dark selfing' (when the sense of self is around the back of the head), 'head centred' (the perspective encoded into the mind images is from the head), and while breaking these down, note eye orb tightness, (eye muscle) fous tightness, (eye) lid tightness, optic nerve tight (back of the eyeballs into the head), face images, poise images, lips etc. With the dark selfing its scalp tightness, perching (sense of self is behind and above as if perching at the rear of my crown), brain flushing, pulsing etc. The 'dark' shorthand is due to the absence of the visual field as contrasted with the 'bright' selfing.

Often drift off into thought, mostly about method, then I catch myself (note 'method thought') particularly with rememberances of intent (note 'intent') and bring back awareness to the belly/hara expansion/contraction. I reinforce the remembered intent with reminding myself of images of hara centredness to refocus/reabsorb on the hara.

Initially there is usually a background of agitation, fidgeting, uncomfortableness, and I often snap back into head perspectivism particularly when sensations around the eyes and the back of the head arise, or a felt sense of 'need to see where Iam', 'to orientate myself', 'remember what Im doing' arises. Habitually this is a visual cognitive action, thus I snap back into the eyes it seems.

cont->

At about 20 mins, my hip gets painful from sitting so I swap legs, then I note instability, asymmetry, agitation, re-arranging etc as they arise.

Eventually note 'relaxing', 'settling', particularly down the back of the neck and spine. General body image tilts back onto the foundation of the legs of posture from the forward leaning eye dominated body image. Sometimes a downward pressure is felt and its like residual awareness/sensations from the head begins dripping down to the hara especially about the back of the neck and spine. The head incresasingly hurts, as if clenched, aswell as the nape and upper spine. Whether this is revealed or is a consequence of effort concentration, Im inclined to think the first. The head as a fifth limb feels like a tightly curled fist. Im hoping 'it' will work out how to let go of the hot coal in the center of my head! (The sense of the head as a fifth limb arises whilst hara centred...to test degree of hara centredness, I shake and nod the head to see if 'I' feel moved/disorientated, or whether its like shaking a limb about).

I find this practice useful as it clearly shows that 'head dwelling/centredness' is 'not me' and impermanent, that its just one place amongst others the awareness wanders to. Also it provides help in distinguishing between images of body sensations and actual body sensations, and the role of mind images with intent and focusing etc.

Evening 2x45min hara anchored noting
Dominated by subtle agitation, discomfort and disorientation whilst efforting to stick with the anchor. Some frustration, but noted. Often drifting off into past reflections and forgetting to note. Lessons seemingly learnt from previous meditations forgotten. Just got to slog through it.

Jan 2nd - 7th continued slogging through.

Jan 8th, caved in over resolution to continue samatha-ing the hara exclusively until I had gained as much facility with it as I had with visual kasinas and decided to mix it up to get stream entry where apparently it will get somewhat easier anyway. Altogether about 2hrs meditation. The highlight was swapping to the wheel when I noticed the pulsing:

Sense of opening back of eyes so that attention was cast back to the neck and down to the hara. Back of eye/inner head flutters/vibrations show up (aka the wheel). Sat and watched this. Vibrations suddenly seemed to be playing out upon a dark membrane which then dipped, and the vibrations slowly fell down to root chakra fluttering/vibrating all the way. Prob took it about a minute to fall all the way. New soft vibration shows up at about 1hz, as if the fabric of awareness rippled.

Sunday 09/01

Woke up early and stayed in bed. Eyes were especially tight and wobbled around randomly and compulsively. Concentrated on what seemed to be the tense complex of lower brow, eye lid and upper eye orb tension and 'watched' it in as much detail as possible with continual remindings that as its experienced, its object and therefore 'not self'. Somehow, probably due to the recent ramping up of concentration, there was more 'distance', it was more clearly an 'it', an object, yet it still had that peculiar quality of 'self'. An aggregate made of familiarity, intensity and various stubborn beliefs that it was a controlling phenomenon within the sensorium within which there was habitual absorbption. The arisings switched between self encoded somatic images..the bright, front of the head self images and the dark back of the head. The back of the head felt like a concave self event horizon. Nowehere to go this way. I attempted to take the head as object which included both arisings. I compared this with taking the hand with its two sides as an object. The comparison is germane because the head is like a fifth limb with sense organs as its (functional) differentiations whereas the hand has the fingers with its abilities to manipulate objects as its differentiations. The inferred self had only downwards to go and to within the chest area. A peculiar/bizarre felt boundary set itself up at about mid chest level, it seemed as if the inferred self would only project downwards so far. I investigated the body hara and switched to noting riiising and faaallliing. The 'concentration' or bare attention and contact with the body sensations were vivid and continual, previous attempts seemed fuzzy and feint...i.e. pale mind image type reflections of the real thing.

cont:

However this didnt last long as the tightness in the eyes seemed to migrate to the crown and became/revealed themselves to have a strongly magnetic quality. This disrupted hara concentration.

Later when the tight eyes returned it became clear that they were a mind image as it became clear there was awareness of two sets of eyebrows, which I guess is the insight knowledge of mind and body. There was the mind image version, which had encoded the self quality, perspective etc, and the larger rawer body version. The mind image version seemed to be located within the raw body versions visual field. Three realisations came (cant remember the order). First the sense of 'distance' from the tight eye mind image seemed to come from a de-absorbption and thus it could be 'let go' of. Second, the eye wobbling at least partly came from looking at the arisings and eye-shifting to look at their different locations. This became obvious when I noticed the arising first and then the eye shift. This is significant as do the eyes direct the attention (arising) and thus have a controlling status amongst phenomena or do the eyes follow the attention (arising)? Third, the tendency to get lost in thought, is because one is already habitually thoroughly ensconced/identified/embedded/absorbed in mind images, and whereever or whatever mind image arises next, be it a visualised body image or semantic image or fantasy image etc. The mind-body insight reveals the labryinth of dark and bright mirrors within mirrors wrapped in stories within which there is habitual absorbtion. No wonder one daydreams.

cont:

As the image was now more thoroughly let go of, the next self image popped up and was quickly let go of. At this point the inferred self had nowhere plausibly spatially to project so it became this nothing backdrop to the arisings from which or upon which the continual reincarnations of 'selves' to let go of, played out. This became really tiring, and felt endless. I wanted out of these endless reincarnations or in one. i.e. to absorb (to be) or to awake (not to be) that is the question!

During the day it seemed that another energetic line was laid down. this time from the front side of the solar plexus up the chest along the throat and to the back of my eyes.

Monday 10/01

Woke up this morning and something had changed. The habitual tension behind the eyes was 80% gone. That magnetic tightness was instead smeared down the inside of my neck into the chest, like goo sticking to the inside surfaces of a pipe running from the back of my eyes down to the root. Felt more embodied and present in this world. More feeling in the back of the neck and down into the chest and belly. It seemed as if my habitual centre of being had shifted from the head into the chest. I can relax more.

The image occurred when preparing to note that this will be entering the stream. Rather than floating about in thoughts/concepts, noting will bring fuller and fuller contact to the stream which is the real world streaming by. Real world stream immersion beckons.

Tuesday 11/01

Began setting my watch buzzer to go off every 10 mins and record degree of mindfulness/noting during the day.

Wednesday 12/01

Continued recording mindfulness/noting regimen.
Seemed central channel opening has the bonus functionality of conducting down from the head excessive 'charge' or tension from the eyes.

Thursday 13/01

Woke up v.early. Samatha for over an hour, reached jhanic absorption.
Noted during the day with regime.
V.tired, felt as if my head had seized/frozen, rendering noting as 'seized', 'frozen', 'bored' etc. Seemed like nothing was going on, no spontaneous wanderings to add variety to the noting.

Slept three hours early in the evening. Woke at 9pm. Nice big slot of at least 3 hours to meditate only without the 'should be doing something constructive' distraction.

First sit: visual object samatha. Wanted to test effect of this seeming central channel opening. This required samatha-ing at a deeper level of relaxation to keep the back of the eyes and throat relaxed enough to feel 'open'. The felt downside of this is that as there is little to no tension generated in the head, there is no 'feedback' or reassurance that Iam actually making an effort and concentrating and staying on purpose for this meditation and not drifting off into semantic lala land.

Concerns proved unfounded....cont:

Had the smoothest progression through the jhanas...began with little to no eye wobbling and shifting, sense of turbulence of pre-jhana was subtle, relativey quickly kasina steadied and with little sense of 'me' looking 'at' the kasina....it seemed all a 'continuity', as if aware of the sitting posture, central channel, relaxed eyes, kasina, the gross pointed shape of awareness, all at once, it being all somewhat gross consciousness manifestations...perhaps a hint of 'one taste'. Then the 'energetic' movement began rising to body radiating (2nd jhana), then energy dropping, radiance dropping away and legs going cold (3rd jhana), then stability, a bouyed feeling, a kind of even overall underwater feel and a sense of being able to examine at leisure anything I wanted at whatever attentional dilation in apparent stillness. What was new about this jhanic traversal was the lack of discomfort throughout. Usually there is a degree of bracing against and holding on during almost unbearable upsurges of nervous tense energy against icky bodily tightness, particularly between 3rd and 4th. This relatively effortless traversal happened probably three times. I stopped sitting after an hour and a quarter.

Second sit:
Sitting down to have a drink and relax etc, found myself still in equanimity/4th, so began second sitting. I hung out in fourth wondering what I could do with it, whilst simultaneously worrying about losing it. Somewhat spontaneously the space behind me opened out. Several options presented themselves and I went with 'just let go' (already, dammit!) and feel for the outer edges of awareness as one 'opened up'. This felt definitely the way it all seemed to want to go. Even with eyes open the sense of awareness 'width' was the foreground. The visual field was strongly diminished in terms of prominence to second or even third place after the kinaesthetic. After this movement outwards and hanging there for a while, there was a movement inwards which rendered the heart/centre of chest most prominent, and after that a movement outwards again. My memory is not clear for these latter movements, but I feel fairly confident I have now access to and have started moving around in some of the immaterial jhanas. What surprises me is that they are not wholly unfamiliar, not altogether new, Ive felt elements of them before, but not as part of a jhanic traversal. Ended sitting after half an hour.

Went to bed, probably still in 4th jhana territory and quickly began noting the images of very familiar states of being/posture/eye&head habitual absorptions popping up. Perhaps peaking at 3 times a second these different images of self relative to different somatic anchor points with their inherent different perspectives popped up and were noted and most importantly 'let go' of somehow. The quicker I 'leg go' of them, the quicker the popping up and the wearying sense of the endless reincarnation of selves became more prominent. I directed the popping up stream towards what is witnessing them, and again the popping up speeded up. The 'self' that was witnessing had no purchase, except for the background within which all this popping up was happening, and this was almost nothing. I'd guess this background is indicative of access to the immaterial jhanas. Then it seemed I felt as if I 'dropped' or almost fell asleep but caught myself and my body became pleasantly warm blood buzzed. It occurred (somewhat classically, thus doubtfully) 'was that it?', was that a fruition? Or had I just nearly fallen asleep? A little later it happened again, and I noted my arm & hand particularly lit up with that pleasant blood warm buzzing. Is this lighting up with blood warm buzzing the initial cruder version of what others refer to as the bliss afterglow of a fruition?

If so then Ive experienced it before. During my zen days I would go to bed and meditate, get all these energy rushing phenomenon (perhaps transitioning cause and effect or the dukkha nanas, like my usual jhanic traversal), and then on a good day, 'catch myself falling asleep', like 'falling backwards' and 'catching it', followed by feeling infused by warm blood buzzing and happiness (that I caught it), and fairly often afterwards having obe/lucid style dreams.

Friday 14/1....time to consult with Kenneth about what has happened. I emailed him the above meditation logs and a summary:

Something has changed.
1. My head feels more transparent. My head feels as if it has reconnected with the rest of my body. My centre of being has shifted downwards from the head into the chest, which is confirmable without meditating on a moments reflection.
2.The back of the eye tension has 80% gone for 4 days now. This was a major somatic anchor for self-image habitual absorption. A big chunk of self has fallen away.
3. From 'the wheel' and watching the vibration within the brain, the vibrations were felt to dip down through the rear of the throat to the root chakra and later an energetic movement was felt coming back up more to the front of the body to the 'back of the eyes'. This seemed to form some kind of inner energetic circuit, an inner microsopic orbit. It seems that when excessive tension in the back of the eyes returns I can now conduct it down this new energetic circuit via a sense of opening the back of my eyes and throat....perhaps my central channel has opened in some way.
4. I feel a new level of embodiment, and a new granularity/level of body feeling within my trunk/torso&chest.
5. I have access to some immaterial jhana within formal sitting.
6. Probably what I'd previously thought of as a mind and body insight of double kinaesthetic imaging was the beginning of the teasing apart of the seperate self-image arisings which were previously overlaid upon each other and gave rise to a sense of continuity and solidity within the grosser material realm. Iam now thus able to experience this continual arising (reincarnating) of self images against a background of almost nothing where the inferred self is forced to project having nowhere else to go. I would guess this is 'Form is emptiness'.

cont:

7. Perhaps Ive identified what fruitions are.
8. I dont seem to be cycling (in everyday life), unless the easy jhanic traversal is what is meant by 'cycling'.

If I have identified fruitions as something Ive experienced before and this is a path, then perhaps this is my second path.

If not fruitions, then the opening of the back of the eyes, the completion of an energetic circuit around the back of the eyes or third eye in the inner brain with the root chakra, and the new found ability to conduct down 'over-charging' from the head is something to do with 'direct mode' and similar to Kenneths lightning rod stuff.

Interview scheduled for monday.

Fri to Mon, perhaps racked up about 12hrs visual kasina samatha.

This was totally confusing. Some sits had the easy jhanic traversal, as in post 15. In one or two nothing happened. In others seemed to get to the immaterial jhanas at some stages. In the rest I couldnt discern whether I was in 2nd or 4th or still in 1st for most of the time. My jhanic territory had changed. The usual markers for identifying them had gone, or were not reached. However I seemed at times extremely concentrated (relative to past times) so that I could stay with a grain of salt at six feet unwaveringly for half an hour with no effort, even whilst the physical eyes bobbed and flicked.

Had one instance of a maybe fruition.

Monday had interview.

After going over the summary, Kenneth said that it sounds likely that it was a path moment and that Id experienced fruitions. Time will tell which path it was.

Recent confusing sits make more sense as a mix of review phases A&B and beginning of new insight cycle.

HI Sparqui,

Sounds awfully a lot like path. I also have a similar suspicions concerning specific expereicnes of catching myself falling asleep suddenly while I was sitting in mediation in a calm state years ago. It would happen a lot. I just thought the head bobbing was me falling asleep. So I speculate I got 2nd path when I had said it was 1st path. But who knows.

Welldone!!!! You are pretty much on the ride now.

Try and learn to call up the fruitions and dive into whatever nana you wish to when you want. Make a resoltuion for full enlightnemnt as soon as possible!!!

"Then it seemed I felt as if I 'dropped' or almost fell asleep but caught myself and my body became pleasantly warm blood buzzed. It occurred (somewhat classically, thus doubtfully) 'was that it?', was that a fruition? Or had I just nearly fallen asleep? "

Congratulations Sparqi!

I remember getting second path exactly the same way you described. Nothing extraordinary, just a sudden twitch when falling asleep.

Antero.