Anthony's Practice Notes 2

Awesome. Keep it up!

Noon 30min sit.

Started with kasina. Became focused quickly. Noted out loud: itching, aching, pulsing, vibration, bliss-sensations. Body felt solid at beginning but started vibrating and I felt rising and expansion.

I felt compelled to switch to 2nd gear. I asked 'who am I?' and 'who is experiencing these sensations?' I felt energy waves/pulses. The area between my eyes was pleasantly pulsing and vibrating back through my sinuses into my head. There was some imagery going on behind my eyelids. Light/dark waves swirling around. I tried to stay with the sense of the watcher, telling myself that anything that I am able to observe is not 'I'. I couldn't tell for sure but I thought that I might be leaning to one side instead of sitting up straight.

I started to pick up solid sensations again: itching, pressure, sitting. I started noting out loud again and I began to feel out-of-body floating. My hands disappeared into a pile of vibrations. I couldn't tell whether they were resting in my lap one on top of the other or resting on my lab separated. I almost wanted to open my eyes to find out.

I continued to note and then experienced blissful sensations, energy, pulsing, and strobing behind my eyes. After some time I began to feel slightly uncomfortable energy. I could sense a subtle shift in frequency, I felt out of balance and a little bit sick. This was hard to note specifically so I just noted 'unpleasant' or 'ickyness'. This faded and I returned to pleasant floating and the timer went off.

I believe this is the first time that I have been able to accurately notice moving up in nanas as well as moving back down. 3C to A&P to 3C to A&P to Dissolution to A&P again.
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Hi Anthony, first time I found a chance to read your log. Your practice sounds great, very inspiring!

Thanks kacchapa and mumuwu!

Today: 45min afternoon sit.

I sat down with the intention to do concentration practice for about 10min first. After a few breaths I felt very concentrated already so I began to note out loud. I felt aching and itching and pressure for about 5min. Then I began to feel comfortable and pleasant. I could feel gentle pulsing and vibration in my body and head. I felt like I could sit all day. I switched to second gear and I began to fly into some turbulence. I put my attention on the sense of the Witness and also what was going on in my feild of awareness. I observed strong pulsing in my head (physical sensation), lights and strobing (visual) behind my eyelids, and the combination of the two. Several times I experienced a rush of energy that went from my abdomen/chest to my head. It was pleasant and exciting as well as a little disconnecting.

When the strobing/pulsing was strong I tried to focus on it as much as possible and observe it as the Witness. I felt strong rising sensations, zooming forward/backward, left/right, and the sense of abruptly falling. At times I felt like I was going into a deep sleep, like I was just about to fall off the edge.

I began to sense solid sensations in my body again. I returned to noting: itching, pressure, stretching, repositioning, pressure, pulsing, vibration and pleasant pulsing. I returned to the Witness and experienced the strong turbulent pulsing in my forehead. I continued to observe and noticed pressure mostly at my third eye and the crown of my head. The pulsing became quieter and calmer. I dropped the witness and just sat with these sensations and let them do what they wanted to. It was pleasant and calming. The gentle pulsing/strobing continued to the end of my sit and if I close my eyes right now it starts back up again.
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Noon sit, 35 min.

Started with 10min of kasina. Noted out loud for the rest of time. Today I was noticing a lot of solid sensations. Itching, pressure, and aching. Less itching and more aches and pains in the body. I stayed with the unpleasant aching and eventually it would dissipate but reappear again or somewhere else. I noted frustration, heat, anger, impatience. Sometimes a blob of pleasant pulsing would pass over me as a wave of relief. I would soon return to unpleasant gross sensations and frustration. I continued to note despite the heavy aversion to get up, trying to be as patient as I could. I would start to get carried away by my misery and it would eventually dissolve with consistent noting and I would be released from it but quickly carried away again. I did end up quitting 10min early to take a nap. Going to try again later.

3pm 30min sit.
Noted out loud for 20min. Pressure, aching, strain, itching, planning thoughts, remembering thoughts, ect. Frustration and anger was present but not as much as earlier today. Eventually the body calmed down and I began to feel pleasant vibrations.

@20min I was feeling fatigue from noting out loud and I switched to 2nd gear. Almost immediately I began to feel pulsing, rising, expanding, zooming. I felt strong pulsing/throbbing/strobing at the forehead so I observed it as closely as possible for several minutes. I feel calm and relaxed right now. Will try to practice again tonight after class.

I feel like I am tubling forward. Its a bit mixed up but at least it feels forward.
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35 min sit today.

Started with gross sensations. Soon after the body became quiet and subtle. I felt floating and vibration and pleasant pulsing. Then quietness. I felt spacious, relaxed, and a little sleepy. The pulsing at the third eye would come and go. Sometimes it felt like it was going to take off like a bottle rocket, other times it was slow and steady. I put my attention on the pulsing when it came and went back to noting subtle sensations when it left.

This session felt a little boring and uneventful. Not entirely sure what I should be doing at this point to make my progress the most efficient. An hour has passed since this session and when I close my eyes I can go right back to this still state again with pleasant vibration in my skull and pulsing at my eyes.
Alas, I have to go back to school for several more hours. Hope I am not too tired to practice when I get home tonight.
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30min: noting/2nd gear

Today's practice was pretty interesting.

I sat down and began noting out loud. There was a lot of aggravation, stress, and frustration. Pains, strains, aches and tension were the majority physical objects being noted. I was becoming very frustrated and angry with these pains as well as my practice and the world in general. I felt panicked and I wanted to scream out a few times. My face was scrunched up, I couldn't find a comfortable position, and I felt miserable.

I continued to note out loud. Everything settled down a bit. I felt the urge to shift to second gear. I asked myself 'Who am I?' and locked into my sense of a self. I continued to observe the body and kept asking myself 'Who are these sensations happening to?' and 'Who is experiencing any of this right now?'. I was thinking about a problem earlier in the day and this problem arose in my thoughts then I asked, 'Who is this a problem for?' and it was as if my mind gave me a sneak preview of what being enlightened must be like. I briefly had the experience of existing as a very simple sense organ. I was the 5 senses and a mind but no self. It hit me like a ton of bricks that my worries, fantasies and problems are all voluntary and from this vantage point it really did seem as if I could laugh at these things as being no more a danger to me than spring rain would be to a friggin rock on the ground.
cont...

This lasted all of a split second and I was amazed at how much experience you could gain in such a small window. I thought to myself, 'Wow! That's it! That's what I want to have happen!' I don't think this was a fruition or awakening or anything like that. It simply felt like a bonus sneak preview or the universe hanging a carrot in front of me to keep me going. I continued from this point in 2nd gear and tried to do this again, naturally. The experience did not reoccur and my body started to return to its agitation.

My mind began to wonder a bit and I think I felt sleepy. Then I remember a '˜bump' sensation and I wondered where I was for a split second. I felt like I had not been aware of myself at all for a few minutes. It was like I was driving down a highway with rough asphalt and all of a sudden '˜bump' and I was on smooth road and my irritation was gone. I instantly felt awake (not sleepy). I continued to observe to see what would happen next. My next hurdle was that I started to feel really bored with sitting. It wasn't irritating but I decided to just get up and do something else. Now my head feels like it is expanding. Equanimity maybe?
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I know very little, but me thinks something happened.

Keep us posted, Anthony.

After yesterday's sit I felt pretty good for the rest of the day. Everything seemed a little bit more colorful and enjoyable. I wanted to listen to some music or even play some video games.

Today I feel a little detached from things. It was actually a very busy and stressful day and probably not the best day for feeling like sitting on a park bench and watching the world go by. This lead to a little depression and frustration with my life, having to do all this work. Then that lead to feeling frustrated with not being enlightened yet and unplugged from such suffering.

I finally had a break to meditate and I recorded this session so I could have a better outlook on what is currently going on. I noted out loud and also described to my recorder what was going on in my experience.

10 min walking meditation/ 30min siting

Itching, pressure, pulsing, touching, hearing, pressure, aching, pulsing, strobing, itching, pressure, itching, itching, tingling, pleasant, pressure, hearing, pressure, aching, strain-unpleasant, floating, itching, itching, rising sensation in my head, itching, itching.

The itching was dull and didn't last past one or two notes.

Feet began to tingle. Pleasant. Almost like they are falling asleep. Itching, pressure, tiredness, wondering, strong pulsing-pleasant, tingling in feet-pleasant, pulsing, heat, tingling, rising, itching, prickling, floating, pressure, hearing, aching, itching, pressure, boredom, itching, pulsing, expanding, itching, tingling on skin, pleasant pulse, wondering, rising sensation, tingling, pleasant sensation, vibrating in my head, aching, itching, itching, pulsing, pressure, calm, enjoyment, itching, pressure, hearing, touching.

Many of these sensations were popping up and going away at a rapid pace. This went on for several more minutes like above.

cont...

At about 15 min in I began to have patterns of light in the vision behind my eyelids coupled with a slow wave like pulsing in my head. Then I felt a little disembodied and it felt like I was leaning to my left. Then my body felt a little ticklish. Pleasant.

A few minutes more and there was a crawling sensation on my neck. Then I started feeling a little irritated again. Heat. Itching. Unpleasant. Frustration. wanting end the sit, painful tension, heat, stomach pains. My attention was broad and I was sensing these things happening in the body all over. It felt like I was coming down from a high or something.

Then I felt a little dizzy, coolness, rising, feeling like I am falling forward, vibration in my hands, pulsing, rising, pleasant, coolness, relaxation. I began to feel pulsing in my head again so I focused on that for a while. I felt relaxed and a bit sleepy. The pulsing kept coming in random beats, sometimes they were very pleasant and deeply felt, and other times it seemed more like a light strobing in my vision. I continued to pay close attention to this. I felt a little bored and somewhat disappointed that nothing huge was happening.
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45 min practice just now.

I changed gears quite a bit in this session and I also tried the Mahamudra noting. I began with noting out loud and quickly became calm and stable. Sensations would break away into more and more subltle vibrations when I put my attention on them. If I stayed with a body sensation long enough it would disappear all together. At this point I tried listening for the ships in the very distant harbor. This is harder than it first seems, I think. I really had to stay focused to keep searching for something that isn't there. At first I was experiencing a good amount of pulsing in my head. This was a bit distracting to my distant listening but I tried to note both and keep going.

I began to feel more and more stable in my sitting posture and very calm. Sometimes I would feel like my center of attention was no longer inside my head but somehow outside my body. The birds outside my window began to make a lot of noise and I began to get distracted. I started to feel frustration and annoyance so I went back to noting out loud. They eventually quieted down and I did too.

I shifted to 2nd gear for awhile and eventually had a hard time noticing any sense of the watcher. It was all just awareness of objects (I guess this is 3rd gearish) so I just let go and got lost in the ocean of mind and body sensations. After some time the sense of a watcher returned so I went back to noting sensations (silently this time).

My 30min timer went off but I continued for 15 more minutes. I was pretty relaxed and started to specifically watch the pulsing/strobing at my forehead. I understand that if you pay close attention to this you may experience a fruition. That has never worked for me but I keep trying anyways.

cont..

Also, I just wanted to mention that since my experience, as detailed in post 31, I have been feeling a little relieved and more confident in this practice. What I experienced, if only for a brief second, was amazing and exactly what I would like to have happen for me. I am not there yet but I am starting to feel like it is coming around the corner. I have two crazy weeks of school left and this summer will be very relaxed for me. I will soon double my efforts and try hard to make as much progress as I can this summer.
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I just listened to Kenneth's 'Choice' talk. I laid down to listen and my mind was very much receptive to it. I am sure I was in some sort of jhana state most of the time. My body felt like it was floating and I was experiencing very pleasant vibrations and energy welling up through my chest. I practiced every method he described as he was talking about it and I was very honed in on each one.

Afterwards, as I continued to practice, I felt very aware that I could not find an 'I' anywhere and thus felt very impersonal or disembeded from my suffering. I believe that this is the point of all these practices: to get to the place where you can access this most of the time. Then your brain will rewire itself in a way that it doesn't identify itself with a proxy self. Please someone correct me if I am wrong in this understanding!

Wow this is an exciting time in my practice all of a sudden. And I sense this is the case for several others here right now. Awesome.

Busy day. Had a quick afternoon break. Sat for 20 min. At first I didn't want to practice. I was feeling stressed out and dissatisfied with my life. I started to note out loud and just hung with it. I had a creeping feeling and the noises of people walking up the stairs outside my apartment made me feel very uneasy. There was tension in my face and I was feeling desperately dissatisfied with my situation. Very slowly I started to feel better. Siting was actually feeling restful and relaxing at this point. I wanted to practice more but I had to get back to work.

30min evening:

Noticed uncomfort and aggravation first. After 5min or so strong itching came along with some mind wandering. I refocused and there was a shift in concentration. I had a strong out of body feeling. I have had this particular one before where I feel like I am standing up when I am actually siting down. (could never figure out if this was a particular nana or jhana). It feels stable and pleasant with rising energy. I was experiencing lots of pulsing and blinking in my head.
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I have noticed that I have been experiencing strange little blips throughout the day for the past few days. I was watching tv the other day and I felt like my vision was shifting. It was slightly wave like with some zooming in and out. Today I bent over to sip from a water fountain and it seemed for an instant like the fountain was a few feet away and then suddenly very close and crystal clear in my vision.

I have been spending more and more time during my non-practice hours trying to stay as disembeded as possible. Sometimes I feel like I am very close to something peaceful but it continues to be beyond yet another hill in the distance.

60min sit tonight.

I began with about 10min of kasina practice. My concentration felt strong so I started to note. My sit began normal enough; lots of itching, tension, and pressure all over. I felt little pulses and jumping/zooming in my vision/eyeballs for most of the sit today. Sometimes I would feel a very abrupt bump from the top of my head followed by a wave of tiny flickering. I can't remember the middle of this sit very well. It seemed pretty uneventful. There wasn't any floating or rising energy or out of body feelings today.

During last 25 minutes I was observing my body in a broad way. I was feeling very gross and solid sensations. Aches, pains, coolness, hearing, pressure, ect. My attention felt solid and I didn't have any more mind wandering than usual. I was able to keep my attention on a solid sensation for a long time without it changing much. Last week I could barely hold on to a sensation for a split second before it turned into vibration and disappeared. I am interested to see what tomorrows sit will be like.
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"I have noticed that I have been experiencing strange little blips throughout the day for the past few days. I was watching tv the other day and I felt like my vision was shifting. It was slightly wave like with some zooming in and out. "

Anthony,

I experience that too. Typically when I go for a walk outside and I look at the sky. It fades - I think - just out.
Once it faded for a certain amount the vision jumps back to it´s starting point, like a scratchy record.
Can´t tell you what this means though...
Sven

I'm back after a break from practice. What can I say; I just dropped the ball there for a while.

I do think that this random break in daily practice has given me 1) a deep appreciation for having momentum in daily practice and keeping it and 2) a better understanding about how much enlightenment really means to me. I still thought about it constantly every day and longed for the day that I would stop contemplating it and start doing the practices that lead to it again.

I returned to practice with vigor this week and I have been working on rebuilding my concentration. I felt very untrained again at first but my concentration has steadily strengthened. I ran into my favorite old un-named jhana experience again yesterday where I feel very pleasant, relaxed, out of body, and elongated like I am 50 foot tall and standing up even though I am actually siting on my cushion. I always love encountering that one. I can stay sitting much, much longer in that state.
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45min sit this evening.

After becoming very concentrated and still, I began to note out loud. I noted gross body sensations mostly with a few sensations of floating or 'bumps' in my mind. In the last ten minutes I felt really in tune with the sensations as they arose. I asked 'What am I?' and focused on the sensations that make up the sense of 'me'. I noted the feeling of my face, the vision behind my eyelids, the space in the middle of my brain, ect. as the sense of I. I tried hard to investigate exactly what 'I' am. It felt very slippery and I could not put a finger on it. I just noticed sensation after sensation after sensation with nothing appearing as a solid self.

I started to feel pulsing again at the brow. These pulses are both pleasant and calming. They were not as strong as it was before I stopped practicing a month ago but I am amazed at how quickly my progress is picking back up.
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Welcome back, glad to see you back in the saddle!!

30 min. noting.

Spent only a few minutes with concentration before I started noting out loud. I noted gross sensations: itching, coolness-pleasant, strain, aching, hearing, sitting, ect'¦ After maybe 10minutes I began to feel more relaxed and calm. My body felt light and energy would sometimes rush into my head making me feel like I am floating in space.

I noted gross body sensations again: itching and some pains/aches in my back. I continued to observe and note objectively. I began to rise up to a more calm and relaxed state again. When I put my attention on my third eye area I could feel pleasant and vibratory pulsing. Sometimes I felt like I was frowning even though I wasn't agitated or concentrating too hard. When I returned my attention to the body again I noticed I felt like I was leaning to the left and I could not sense parts of my body very well. I could feel the space where my hands rested on my knees and this had a gently vibratory pulse to it. I continued to observe the pulsing vibration in my head like I was a balloon floating in space with no agenda other than being aware of itself. If my timer wouldn't have gone off I suspect I would have stayed that way for good amount of time.

I hope I get time to continue practice again later tonight. I certainly know from past experience that while relaxing sessions like this one are nice, things change as the nanas move on. I used to get tripped up by this when unpleasant sessions happen but now I am ready and waiting for it. It's like any good adventure story: you have to travel through the dark forest before you can get to the castle.
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Haven't posted in awhile. Been doing minimal daily sits and noting throughout the day. Momentum, once lost, is frustratingly hard to regain. I am appreciating this more and more.

Past three days:
45 min/day . First 15min is kasina, then out loud noting with some 2nd gear at the end. First I experience some settling in discomfort, aches, pains, tension. If I continue to note consistently my body relaxes and I start to note ease and subtle vibrations. Pain and discomfort will occasionally arise again from time to time. I have been noting floating and expansiveness of the body and/or mind as well as pleasant rushes of energy. I have noted some anxiousness with a slight bit of panic or dread peaking in. I have only really started to notice this but my mouth begins to frown or tighten up. I used to think this was because I am concentrating hard but it doesn't ever happen when I am doing concentration-only practice so I am thinking dukkha nana here. There is often aversion to sitting, frustration, and stress and then a minute later I can be feeling groovy to be alive and just sitting. Sometimes I note a return to previous sensations and many times I end up in a calm and relaxed state where my mind feels open and comfortable with right where I am.

At that point I could just stay in that state and finish out the rest of my time but I like to kick it up a notch and go into 2nd gear practice and ask questions like 'Who am I?, What am I? Who cares about this sensation?, ext.' When I do this I start to experience a bit of chaos. My mind will zoom and pulse and I feel blinking and sometimes the sensation of abruptly falling. This almost seems like my illusory self is fighting back! It is easy to lose focus here and sometimes I can get a sense of disconnectedness and when I realize this I start to ask myself why I am doing this at all and for what purpose.

cont...

This last stage seems very unclear and tricky to navigate for me right now. My worry is that I am going about it wrong or not as efficiently as I could be. Either way I do feel there is definitely some real progress going on. In my daily life I am much more apt to catch myself start to get carried away by my thoughts, caught up in the perceived seriousness of life goals, or aggravated by my many aversions.
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""why I am doing this at all and for what purpose."
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That's a good question to ask every so often, just because sometimes the "best" technique can depend a bit on where you are at.

For what it's worth, sometimes kicking things up a notch is subtle kind of avoidance/distraction. Unfortunately, I don't know what the right answer, but I'll guess that you will have a better idea of your options if you explore the calm state as well as the 'kick it up a notch" state. Calm states can be investigated, but just need a light touch when noting (calm, space, ease, lightness, quiet, calm, peace, relief, wondering, looking, brightness, simpleness) and there can be subtle negative-ish sensations that barely register (faint heaviness, dullness, questioning, worry, doubt, feeling lost, inadequateness, boredom) and of course there can be distractions (noise, thinking, daydreaming, planning thought, progress thought) etc. Questioning can also help get you out of a rut. Who is experiencing this? is probably unanswerable but it sure helps bring you back to the moment! So it may not be an either/or thing

That's probably an obvious comment but it's what came to mind.