turtle log

Mon a.m. 1hr noting. Felt like a lot of moving, billowing waves of strong sensations. At times it felt like it was blowing me up kind of uncomfortably like a stretched baloon. Minfulness was fairly steady but it felt like I was chasing a step behind sensations and catching their immediate after impression. When an hour was up, I had this feeling that if I could just sit for another 1/2 hour I'd get somewhere more satisfying. But I remember sittings with a similar state where I did sit longer and it stayed like that. Since it seemed like an unstable mind state, I figured it might be in DK range, but I didn't have negative thoughts or unpleasant emotions.

Mon p.m. total about 2 hours. 1/2 hour candle kasina but kept falling asleep. Tried meditating to music and that woke me up and I felt pretty mindful and still but couldn't really settle on any sensations. I could see them but they kept squirming away from me. It was pretty engaging though and I felt fairly concentrated afterwards.

Could only sleep for about 2 hours that night so I tried to follow my breath most of the night and it was still hard to hit the sensations squarely. But when I got up I felt stable and concentrated.

Tues am 1 hour. Felt kind of fried after little sleep, but had no drowsiness. Can't remember the sensations but they weren't as jumpy and I felt refreshed and cheerful afterwards. Difficult to be mindful at work today.

Tues pm. I'd love to sit for an hour and go to bed, but I have a deadline tomorrow and have to work this p.m.

Wed a.m. no time to sit, early to work to present projects to 2 different groups. Worked frantically all day to finish the 2nd one. 95% embedded in the attachment to success/survival. Didn't summon much mindfulness. PM 1/2 hour of sleepy attempted concentration on body sensations.

Thurs am 45 mins. concentrating on the sensations in my hands from the meditation rocking back and forth, left to right. Then trying to expand that to include feet, and butt/hips. Feeling totally freaked out about work demands, more and more projects, increasingly behind. An old friend, getting old like me, "let go" from his programming job at a time when our employer is growing not laying off. Will he ever find IT work again? Chronologically it makes sense that I'm in DK, but the anxious thoughts seem so conventional reality based. Tried to objectify them while sitting, but so panicked during the day that I put in 12 hours at work.

Thurs PM 30 mins of the same concentrating on physical sensations. Totally fried from too much work and not enough sleep, but woke up with totally convincing thoughts and anxiety that everything is falling apart. Sat for 30 mins, desperately trying to objectify the whirl of ricocheting negative thoughts, emotions, physical sensations. It helped some. As well as my wife's kind words. Renewed determination to stay present, more of the time despite long work days.

Friday am 1hr noting.I only remember that energy waves were moving around and they were watchable, but it was hard to settle attention on them. It felt like a mini-vacation to sit and didn't want to stop when the timer went off.

Friday night. Tried candle gazing for 1/2 hour but kept falling asleep, so got an hour of meditating on music. But still hard to settle on the sensations.

Sat am 1hr 15 mins. Energy waves moving around, especially trunk and head. Felt kind of exilerating but I couldn't zero in on any details. Found that if I took a broader view and followed an entire wave, or like a billowing cloud, that worked.

Went to an Emotional Brain Training workshop given by an old friend who became a zen teacher and works as a therapist. The intro theory included that manic happy states are the flip side of anxious fight or flight states. Nailed me on that one. So I settled into my mania and eventually relaxed into sadness with an edge of despair. I've never been able to watch my social anxiety with so much of a non-manipulative interest before.

Had to do programming work the rest of the day, and got manic again while working. Difficult to find mindful moments. At the end of hours of programming tried 1/2 hour of candle gazing. Couldn't stay awake so did an hour of music vipassana. Letting music moments and physical sensations take turns being predominate. Usually I focus more on drum and bass beats, but got off on noticing the vibrations in sustained melodies. I'm glad not to be working so I can feel into the body feelings that come from depressed and defeatist thoughts.

Sun am 2hrs. Didn't want any psychological or emotional stuff this morning so focused on sensations in the hands, alternating between left and right with each rocking sway of the trunk. Tried to feel the sensations in my hands instead of mentally looking down at them. (I've noticed that switching back and forth that way feels like an alternating brain hemisphere sync.) After awhile expanded to include left right with feet,hips and abdomen. Looking for wavy tingles, granular or vibratory sensations.

I couldn't let go of being depressed, my mind and body felt partitioned and I was only able/willing to inhabit some of the space. This felt like it was gunking up my noting, but best I could do. Gradually trying to ease into more of my usual territory. Couldn't believe it when an hour was up, and unsatsfied went for another hour.

Doing general noting by this time and letting go of much but not all of the depression, and totally unwilling to go with any perky cheerfulness or especially manic exhuberance. Keeping it mostly to the sensations and feelings in the trunk. Eventually started getting a lock on especially sounds and retinal light sensations, and almost felt happy. Joining the family, I no longer felt depressed, and tried to be mindful of physical sensations.

Sun pm: 1/2 hour candle gazing. Felt like the flame was unusually absorbing, but then I'd fall asleep. I can always stay awake listening to music, so did 1hr vipassana mostly of body sensations, feelings, memories, and the music. Seems like the music keeps me alert and present, uses up some processing capacity that would go into day dreaming. But I wonder if it would be better to just keep sleeping through candle gazing and see what happens.

Monday a.m. 1 hour. Started off getting lost in thought, so switched to noticing the body as a whole while watching for thoughts to start. Repeated every breath or 2 "whole body". No billowing pressure today, mostly low key sensations like wavering tingling, and sometimes a peppering of pin-point itches, mostly accross my legs, feet, arms and hands, and not as pronounced in the trunk. It was interesting to see that a quick fragment of an image (like from work) could set off a big constriction in my chest. There must have been something like an interpretation or recognition of what the image fragment implied, between the image and the feeling. But I must have been identified with that and didn't notice/note it. If it happens again, I'll try to keep an eye out for that. Lately, even though sittings don't have any engrossing states, I keep being amazed and disappointed when the hour is up. Like vacation is over.

Monday at work. I kept remembering to be mindful but then ran into a strong momentum of resistance that was painful and aversive to pay attention to. Seems like that will be a good thing to try to investigate.

Tues a.m. 1 hr noting "whole body" every couple of breaths, and noting from 4Fs as needed. Sensations were a little flat. Mild tingles, pulsing throbs, vibrations and pointilist itches distributed around mostly arms, legs, hands and feet, and less so trunk and head. Spent a stretch investigating and puzzling over vedanas, and plan to post a general question about that. Got into a version of something I first remember getting several years ago but more so the past couple of years. It feels like my perspective starts to pull back from my head and the head's imaging and looking-at function seems like a brightly lit room from which I can't see out in the dark. My experience of the dark varies but it's generally still, quiet, not cognitive and more physical. Today it was this thing I've had before where being out of the bright noisy room, I notice that the body was quietly present all along but I have to be aware of it like from infra-red rather than flashlight of looking. At work so far I still have an occassional sense of distinguishing body presence from the image-production room in my head.

Tues pm 45 mins. Candle gazing and investigating vedanas trying to find exactly what lets me know that a sensation is pleasant or unpleasant. My working assumption has been that a vedana is a sensation add-on. Like 1st there is the bare sensation followed immediatley by the vedana. So, I've been picturing a vedana as a stand-alone something. And since any phenomena is a sensation, I've been trying to find the sensation that is the vedana. I figured it must have a location and a duration. But when I look carefully for it, all I end up with is whatever the original sensation has become, or the higher level reactions of aversion, greed etc. Or downstream reactive physical sensations.

So, then I wondered and investigated, if a vedana is a quality of a sensation, what can that mean experentially. If it's best to note something you actually notice, how do I get a direct hit on the actual vedana so I can note it. But if I look carefully at a sensation to find the vedana, sensations tend to decunstruct under scrutiny, so with all the changing subsensations, where has my vedana gone? It's almost like you have to be paying marginal attention to sensations to experience a seemingly solid vedana of pleasant or unpleasant.

So, I've been puzzling for months over how noting vedanas seems kind of arbitrary, or judgemental or inferential. No question that a complex experience can be really unpleasant or pleasant. But if I try to zero in on a hypothetical discrete vedana it doesn't seem to hold up. And then there's the question of hacking the vedanas, which I think I did for years while doing zen and especially zen retreats. And the hackability of vedanas makes them seem even more arbitrary or like a reactive construct. Clearly I'm just not getting it, since vedanas are one of the 4 foundations.

Tues work day: this was one of the best days of keeping a semi-continuos background thread of mindfulness while programming ever. Really encouraging. Seems that the being aware of the body as a whole sitting I've been doing helps with this. Settling back into the felt sense of the body more, instead of totally going with the intense feeling of staring out of my eyes with a self image.

Wed am 1.5 hours. Noting "whole body" and 4Fs as needed. Initially tried focusing on sensations but that felt hard and switched to a broader view. Things got quiet pretty fast. Started to get the feeling of almost a concentration lock on sensations and internal sound would stop. This was appealing and I somewhat encouraged it. Felt like noting was stopping for short concentration breaks before noting again. Mostly went like that for the whole sit. As I was getting ready for work it felt important to stay with body while moving. At work today, mindfulness not as continuous as yesterday. I got wigged about last minute add ons to a presentation I had to give in the afternoon. To get back to the body I had to try to include the unpleasant stress-related sensations, thoughts and feelings of insecurity, anxiety and migraine-onset. It wasn't easy to stay minful with all of that, but felt good when I could do it.

"Tues work day: this was one of the best days of keeping a semi-continuos background thread of mindfulness while programming ever. Really encouraging. Seems that the being aware of the body as a whole sitting I've been doing helps with this. Settling back into the felt sense of the body more, instead of totally going with the intense feeling of staring out of my eyes with a self image.

Wed am 1.5 hours. Noting "whole body" and 4Fs as needed. Initially tried focusing on sensations but that felt hard and switched to a broader view. Things got quiet pretty fast. Started to get the feeling of almost a concentration lock on sensations and internal sound would stop. This was appealing and I somewhat encouraged it. Felt like noting was stopping for short concentration breaks before noting again. Mostly went like that for the whole sit. As I was getting ready for work it felt important to stay with body while moving. At work today, mindfulness not as continuous as yesterday. I got wigged about last minute add ons to a presentation I had to give in the afternoon. To get back to the body I had to try to include the unpleasant stress-related sensations, thoughts and feelings of insecurity, anxiety and migraine-onset. It wasn't easy to stay minful with all of that, but felt good when I could do it. "

I've got a whole day of trade-mag writing ahead of me. If you can do this programming, I ought to be able to do something similar. Thanks for the inspiration! And great reports--nice details!

Thanks Joel! That was a really good day, met my expectations of what it's supposed to be like. The last couple of days it's been more upstream but it does feel like there is some mindfulness momentum. I hope your day of writing went well.

Wed pm. Work and family doings until late. Got up early Thurs a.m. after insomnia to sit for 1.5 hours but family issues started immediately and I sat 30 mins before work. I have some kind of difficulty practicing in daily life during the day if I haven't sat that much. Seems like maybe a mix of just the way it works and also some unexamined attitudes.

Thursday pm fairly wasted so did 40 mins of music meditation, only way I could possibly meditate awake.

Friday a.m. 1hr. After more insomnia, feeling drained but not at all drowsy. Very quiet and settled. Feeling the difference between being aware of an arm or leg more from within that part of the body rather than mentally looking down at it. Seemed too directed to note much. At work I kept feeling the need to stay with my body rather with, um, like maybe a self image that is leaning into the next thing.

Friday pm 30 mins. Just sat quietly feeling my body. It felt like there was gravitational pull of attention to the body. A close family member has been going thru so much pain that, when I was by myself all I could do was be present.

Sat am 1.5 hours. Mostly just noting "whole body" and trying to return to the sense of the body as a whole. It felt like trying to feel the body from within the body. It didn't feel this time like I could do that and to do detailed noting the way I usually do like target practice. Kenneth's image of an energy blob-lette seperating off from the oil in a lava lamp, seemed like a good description of watching my volitional energies, thought trains and images pull off from the body. And then paying the tollbooth and settling back again. Felt unusually mindful with this practice during activity this morning. It's lacking in precision but as far as continuity and physicality it's pretty good.

Sunday 1.5 hours I remember doing grounding in the body and eventually getting very concentrated, felt like a vipassana lock on body sensations, especially touch points. After, I was disappointed when mindfulness wasn't as grounded as I thought it would be. Felt edgy and somewhat scattered. PM: working late, just a short, sleepy sit noting body sensations before bed.

Monday a.m. 30 mins. Insomnia, family dynamics and the rush to work. 30 mins of just trying to get somewhat grounded with noting mostly physical sensations. PM: household busy-ness, another short, sleepy sit before bed, just noting body sensations and feelings.

Tuesday am 50 mins. Noting from 4 Fs. A lot of insomnia last night. Initially felt wasted, but before long started having pleasant energy sensations and the body felt more healthy. 20 min attempted meditation walk. I frequently remembered to note during the walk and the work day but it seemed like awareness was like teflon, just kept sliding off it into a dull aversion to fatigue.

Since Thursday I've been working with cmarti's advice to see what the mind does with sensations. After re-reading Chris's recent discussion with Joel about this, I think I have a better idea of the focus. Not sure if this is exactly it, but I'm trying to notice how unattended thoughts sprout from sensations into image fragments and then contextual pictures, story lines, plans. Trying to catch this as soon as it starts to happen, and investigate how, compared to the initial sensation, this is literally imaginary. I also watched most of the DO video on YouTube, but not quite sure how to appluy that yet. I'll watch it again. Seems that I have to be flexible about how to approach this depending on the level of resolution that's available at the time. I wonder how this relates to noticing how, when moving around, a sensation is followed by an intention to do the very next small thing, and that's an image of someting that hasn't happened yet?

Simple is best, Mark. Can you focus on one sense contact only? How does that sense contact become a "thing" or an object? How does it get separated into something other than subject? How does it get a name? How is it subjected to judgment as being good, bad or indifferent? What is forming that judgment?

Keep going!

"
Simple is best, Mark. Can you focus on one sense contact only? How does that sense contact become a "thing" or an object? How does it get separated into something other than subject? How does it get a name? How is it subjected to judgment as being good, bad or indifferent? What is forming that judgment?

Keep going!

"

Thanks for clarifying that, Chris! That sounds like unfamiliar territory. I'll give it a try!

"
How does that sense contact become a "thing" or an object? How does it get separated into something other than subject?

"

I've been doing longer sits in the a.m. to look into this the last few days, and candle gazing at night to try to increase concentration. Some of this extra sitting has been taken up with being extra zonked by insomnia, excess caffeine and long work hours spiral. This am, 1/2 hour candle gazing, concentration felt settled and had unusually pleasurable sensations. Pulled away for an hour of investigating and some general noting when I got spacey.

Here's what I've been coming up with so far. Take some time to settle into a sensation (sometimes hands, feet or butt on cushion). Trying to get a baseline of sense contact simply presenting, like when they come to you during EQ, rather than having to go looking for it. This feels kind of like being in or with the sensation. Seems that usually, maybe always, an image that seems somehow to supposedly represent the sensation just sprouts. At that point I think the image may not be a problem, just another sensation. Then a kind of habitual tendency to look at an image with my eyes kicks in, and then there is a self image of doing the looking at the image of the sensation. By then what originally felt more on the subject end of the range starts to feel pretty objectified.

Is that the right direction?

What causes a sense contact (touch, sound, sight, etc.) to become an object? A thing? Something with a name? What IS an object?

I've been keeping up applying extra practice time to see if I can understand this but not sure if I'm getting anywhere. I figured what I did last time was too analytical so found myself getting as still and close to the question as I could, like a koan since I don't understand it. After a couple of days I thought, if I become aware of a sensation and decide to investigate it for how it becomes an object, too late it's already an object. The sensation had already been there. So I just tried to feel into how to get immediate with what's happening wondering how a sensation can be experienced pre-object.

It's seemed like I have to be around the top of my game for this and most of the time I've been dealing with not enough sleep, too much caffiene, long work hours and lots of family activities. So most of my sitting has just been low 1st gear, mixing candle gazing and semi-fast noting just to keep things going, then when I catch a chance to be awake and alert I take up the question again.

Another challenge is that trying to focus on a single sensation tends to put me to sleep (probaly need the sleep ) or I start to drift. Except for a couple of times when I could do this, I've ended up appling the question to changing sensations. One day I had a state of feeling unusually close to my experience, kind of like an EQ state that easily spilled over into driving around and doing errands. Other than that what seemed like a high point, I don't think I know what I'm doing with this.

Mark, this process happens very, very fast so you can't really see the whole process as a string of events - but you can see the pieces of the process separately. This is also a rather large conceptual change from what you have been assuming is going on all your life.

And absolutely, maybe you can focus less on just one object and try focusing on those times that some very abrupt change happens in your flow of experience, like a loud noise, or an itch that pops up out of nowhere. Maybe your mind is better at focusing on change than it is at focusing on the repeated experience of the arising of one object.

You know how to reach me if you need more assistance.

Thanks Chris!

I've been talking with Chris about my practice since Feb. (It's amazing to me that Chris fits this into his busy career, family life, and all of his dharma dialoging and mentoring. I'm trying to take full advantage of this opportunity.)

My current practice direction got going after a week solo retreat a couple of months ago where I took up sound as my primary focus. I have about 20 one-letter or number lables I apply to the standard range of sounds. Trying to note whatever is predominant without focusing exclusively on one sound sequence. Seems like sound noting gets me into more spacious and jhana-esque noting than before, and for 1st time sitting and walks are about the same.

Increasingly I've been noting how a few simple sounds trigger an image environment. This is most noticable with sounds of people. I've been trying to notice the sound of the syllables of spoken words. Yesterday in the backyard I heard some sounds of my daughters laughing and talking and with only that had a full blown 3-d movie of them with an image of my body sitting on the deck that obviously I wasn't seeing with my eyes closed. Same with the neighbors in their yards. I was situated in an active neighborhood in my mind based on a scattering of sounds. It's just plainly obvious but I never really registered the extent of it before.

Nice, Mark. You're now seeing just how empty all of your experience is.

Keep going!

"My current practice direction got going after a week solo retreat a couple of months ago where I took up sound as my primary focus. I have about 20 one-letter or number lables I apply to the standard range of sounds. Trying to note whatever is predominant without focusing exclusively on one sound sequence. Seems like sound noting gets me into more spacious and jhana-esque noting than before, and for 1st time sitting and walks are about the same.
"

That sound noting sounds very intriguing. Would you like to describe the technique in detail?

Thanks Chris! I will.

Antero, living in the city there usually is a continuous kind of background noise that I label "1". Like unbroken highway sound. And usually some predominant repeating sound like sparrow cheaps, or my footsteps when walking. That's "2". Regular intermmitent sounds, like bird calls are 3. Human sounds, including my own, "4". This kind of pattern I can usually find most places. And numbers for dogs, trains, planes and cars going by. Best case is that I try to be ready with a label for whatever sound pops up next. For improvising less common sound situations, I use letters like N for wind buffeting my ears, D for wind in the trees etc. U for I don't know what it is yet.

Highway traffic actually has lots of different sounds, so I stopped using 1 for that and use H for a whooshing sound, x for more textured whooshing, v for vooming, z for zooming (never expected to have to describe this in public And combos, Hx if it's a mix. Some times there might be 3 x's at once but differnt pitches, so Xb for base, Xm for middle, xh for high. In this case I try to catch when the predominant one of the 3 changes. Also W for waxing, N for waning. I think Kenneth calls this cognitive overload. Being concentration challenged and kind of ADD, this has been working pretty well for me.

Wow!

Thanks for the detailed description. I can see now how concentrating on sounds will make the attention naturally expand and automatically includes the aspects of mind's nature: spaciousness spontaneous presence. All-inlclusive awareness of sounds arises continuously, effortlessly and without selection. And as you have already reported, it will bring the mental space into focus as well.

Great practice!