Andy's practice journal

9/23

10+30 minutes on the way to work
Hard to settle thinking down. It also didn't seem like I got anywhere, and when I got on the road, noting required effort, and the wide-open spaciousness did not appear.

30 minutes at lunch
Tried again to work on samatha jhanas, and started with breath-counting. Got sleepy very quickly and kept falling asleep. Did not have enough alerness to stop and practice something else. Later in the afternoon, I had some bliss and then slow, harsher vibrations rise up for me during a meeting, but that settled down within an hour.

So something changed in my practice in a significant way, sometime around 9/12. I woke up on Monday 9/12, and things were just different. I can't pinpoint exactly when it changed, but it's clear that the weeks before were noticeably different than what came after.

What was different:
- Sleepiness during lunchtime sitting meditation disappeared.
- It was much easier to remember to be mindful of whatever I was doing, or breathing, or body sensations, sounds, etc.
- There were even a few days where staying mindful was the norm rather than the rare exception.
- Direct mode and HAIETMOBA practices finally made sense and actually did something.
- In the first week after 9/12, morning drives had a sense of wonder, joy, and freshness.
- Noting felt heavy, but simple noticing was light and very, very quick.
- I had bliss present a lot of the time, and when I didn't, I could bring it up very quickly.

Now, 11 days later on 9/23, however, that's died down to what it was before. It seems like I'm back to the sleepiness, I get lost in thought in the second gear practices, and noting takes effort to stay with it.

I'll have a chance to do 4 hours of practice tomorrow morning. I'm curious if that will make any difference.

9/24, 7hr 30 min

Took advantage of a long drive and having the house to myself, and got a lot of practice done. 4hrs of noting/driving, and 3 1/2 hrs of cushion time. Long stretches of driving/noting have a tendency to ramp up the physical aspects of the following sits, increasing the strength of vibrations, bliss, the sense of energy swirling around in my body. Today was no different.

Sat for an hour after two hours of driving and a meeting. Walked prior to the sit to establish concentration. It took about 20 minutes, but I finally started getting sleepy. Around the 30 minute mark, I opened my eyes, and wakefulness slowly, slowly increased. By the end of the hour, I was mostly awake, but not really feeling like I was moving through the nyanas.

Got up, stretched, walked for 10 minutes, and then drove home, pausing twice at rest areas to close my eyes and note. By the time I got home, I felt crabby, and somewhat out of it.

(continued)

Once home, I took a break and ate, then sat in a recliner and counted breaths, then noted. Fell asleep, but woke up with very strong, deep, heavy and highly unpleasant vibrations in my chest and abdomen, dizziness, a very obvious hearbeat, headache, feeling shaky. Noting didn't seem to move me through this, so I took another break.

Lay down on the bed and noted to try to move through this nyana, but it seems like the vibrations only increased. Ate dinner and tried again.

This time, noting seemed heavy, so I lay on the bed and tried to notice as much detail as possible about the vibrations and shakiness. Pretty soon, there was little else in my awareness, but it seemed to be changing little by little. Eventually, I started feeling restless-leg sensations, and soon, that spread to my whole body. It was hard to keep from moving, but I stuck with it, and finally, it began to pass. The vibrations slowly passed, I yawned for a while, and eventually, outside sounds became more apparent, and things seemed almost normal, except for the buzzy, prickly tingling. Stayed with that, and it finally felt like I made it into Low Equanimity. After spending some time with this, I got up to find I had meditated 50 minutes past the chime.

Later in the evening, the deep, heavy vibrations came back, though, and were still there when I went to sleep. They were gone in the morning.

9/26

Morning
Uncomfortable chest vibrations came up pretty quickly after I started noting, but it seemed like I drifted in and out of thought a lot. It didn't seem like I moved through the nyanas much. The noting on the drive in was unremarkable.

Lunch
Started noting, and got sleepy and fell asleep in short order. Opened my eyes at the 20 minute chime, and gradually shed the sleepiness. Never got to full awakeness, but wasn't asleep either at the end of the sit.

After work
Found it trivially easy to stay with entire breath cycle from start to finish. Did 4x10, then started noting. Uncomfortable chest vibrations came up, but passed. Then, I was able to just sit and watch to see what the next phenomena was that presented itself. Sat this way for 20 minutes, then stayed mindful and noted on a drive to pick up someone for a dinner meeting. Stayed mindful and noted while waiting 20 minutes for the person. I was hoping they would be even later, since the noting was going so well

Drive home after dinner
I found it hard to stay mindful without noting, and noting seemed more like work. It also seemed hard to stay focused on any sense impression, so I tried to see if stuff in the periphery was clearer, but it was hard to tell.

9/27
Morning
Some body tingling and vibration but terribly noticeable. Intended to sit 15 then get on the freeway. Sat for 20, hoping more would develop. Noting on drive in did not flow, and required work to maintain.

Lunch
Easy to follow entire breath cycle. Intended to do 3x10, but instead did 10 minutes. Had a few dropouts where I lost count, but not because of sleepiness. Started noting, and very quickly developed energetic body vibrations, tingling. The sense of my body got vague, and I had episodes of dreaminess but NO SLEEPINESS. It initially seemed like I drifted between clarity and dreaminess, but this got more distinct and the transition to clarity got more obvious. Eventually it got to where I was getting a strong bliss wave, brilliant speckles of light and color and strong tingling in my upper body whenever I transitioned. The stiffness in my neck was gone, and I wanted to sit like this forever.

The rest of the sit was strongly pleasurable and very, very physical: lots of sensations swirling around, tingling, pulsing, vibrations of different rate. I kept cycling from clarity to dreaminess over and over and over. Occasionally, I'd get bright strobing, other time, I'd have slow pleasant pulses in my whole body.

I eventually started to yawn, and the strong transitions stopped. 10 minutes after the chime rang the end of the sit, things had settled down and when I finally opened my eyes, I had cool tingling on my skin. I had excitement and bliss into the afternoon, but 3 hours later, I felt tired, worn out and kept yawning.

After Work
Started with breath-counting, but it was not as trivially easy as before. Eventually switched to noting. Didn't get the wild ride like at lunch, but instead felt a bit distracted. Noted all the way home.

9/28

Morning:
Took longer than usual to get focused well on my breath, but I slowly got more and more into it. Noting was the same way. I felt like I moved slowly and gently, but eventually got to a stable point. After 25 minutes, I opened my eyes, started the car, and got on the freeway. Noting didn't feel right, noticing didn't either, but HAIETMOBA did. I'd ask the question, then feel a sense of letting go as I waited. In a while, thinking would come back, and I'd do it again. I felt a sense of peace, of acceptance, of stillness, and all this though a traffic jam and having freeway traffic rerouted. Got 70 minutes of practice in this way before work.

Lunch:
Drove and noted to establish mindfulness. Started with 3x10 breath-counting, and then began noting. I seemed to move quickly into the same kind of cycle like yesterday. So, for a while, I bounced from dreaminess (where it was hard to maintain noting and mindfulness) to strong clarity with tingles, swirly sensations in my body, brightness in my visual field.

Then, however, internal awareness of my body faded, and it felt like a shell. Most of the touch sensations were on the surface of my skin. Internal sensations felt disconnected from my body. There was this sense of being internally moved by big waves, and sometimes my body felt like it slowly moving back and forth inside. I had some visual strobing, and these long, pleasant, slow-motion 'big' body pulses. This went on for a while, and more might have developed if I had had time, but I needed to get back to work. It reminds me of things in the weeks before first path.

After work:
During the day, I had felt more mindful of my surroundings than usual, but on the way home, I seemed to alternate between thoughts and silence (except for noting/noticing). I noted all the way home, but it didn't really feel as focused.

I hit a milestone in my meditation today. A year ago today, I got a meditation timer called Equanimity, and started tracking my practice time. Since then, I've put in some practice every single day.

Here's a chart from Equanimity (this calendar year only): www.screencast.com/t/J2Ivqt4ZjTAJ

9/29

Morning:
Sat for 10 minutes in my car before the drive, but it was hard to establish strong mindfulness. The drive in was not as focused as I would have liked, but it was what it was. Noted the whole way in to work.

Lunch:
Drove and noted, but found it hard to get concentrated. The sit was the same way: lots of drifting in and out of clarity (but without the fireworks), but ended up getting sleepy halfway through. I think I'm coming down with a cold, and in the afternoon, I really felt tired, achy, wanted to go home, but felt somewhat better by 5:00pm

Evening drive:
Did not get a chance to sit before driving home. I was achy, tired, and was not able to concentrate much on the drive home. I noted, but would find myself noting while being deeply embedded in a long string of thoughts.

9/30

Morning:
Got a lot of sleep last night, and also got a chance for a 50 minute sit in the commuter lot before my drive in. It was similar to other sessions this week: very little sense of passing through the nyanas, and ended up in this very normal-feeling state. Over the course of the 50 minutes, tingling and body vibrations built up very, very slowly, but were definitely noticeable at the end of the sit. I opened my eyes, started the car and got on the freeway. I definitely had this laid-back, detached attitude, even though the weather was messy. I started noting about half-way through the drive, but it felt heavy and disconnected, and felt like work, and I'd find thinking going on while noting sometimes. When I didn't note, though, I'd find myself eventually drifting in thought, so I kept the noting going.

After Work:
Did not have time for a short sit before the drive home, and just jumped on the freeway. Tried to keep a wider, more panoramic awareness, but noting was a bit of work.

10/2

Morning:
30 minutes In bed right after waking up. I found it hard to count breaths, and kept losing count after 3 or 4, but then realized that I was cycling between clarity and dreaminess very regularly. After I realized this, I just relaxed and let it do it's thing.

Afternoon:
Got a short sit in, followed by a half-hour driving/noting session. Attention seemed more panoramic during the drive, and it seemed easier to notice the three-dimensionality of the passing landscape.

Evening:
In bed. Breath-counted for a while, then switched to noting, but found myself getting sleepy. Still seems like the rapid, noticeable rush past A&P is hard to notice, and then things get, well, very ordinary. It seems to take a long time for this ordinariness to develop into what physically feels like meditation.

10/1

6 hr, 20 minutes of total practice, a lot of driving/noting, but did more than 3.5 hrs of on-cushion formal meditation too.

Today seemed like a strange beast. The driving/noting revs up the energetic sensations when I do get to the cusion, and increases all the physical sensations of vibrations, energy flowing, tingling, twitches, eyeball rolling.

Apart from the body sensations, the meditation itself seemed to progress slowly. It took longer for thinking to settle down to where it was easy to watch. Passing the A&P and Dark Night wass difficult to spot, and eventually things got to this 'normal-feeling' state where not much happened. If it wasn't for all the body sensations, I'd wonder if anything at all was going on.

I'm also fighting some kind of flu, with it's aches, tensions, and vibrations, which seems to throw me off and makes it harder for me to orient my sessions. Found myself very tired all day, especially after the formal sits.

10/3

Morning:
Short sit in the car before my morning drive. Nothing special. Noted most of the time, and did some HAIETMOBA other times.

Lunch:
Started with a walk to establish concentration, then a 40 minute sit. Counted breaths 3x10 and felt a shift during this, so I started noting. Like the past few days, today it also felt difficult to tell exactly where I was. Early on, I had a small rush of pleasure, then things evened out and I found myself drifting in and out of clarity. Eventually, sleepiness took over, so I opened my eyes for the last 10 minutes. I kept my gaze on the trunk emblem of the car ahead of me, and watched as the width of focus changed from the emblem, to the entire rear of the car, to a wider panoramic view. This width of focus changed a number of times. One time, I had a strong disorienting shift while in the wider focus, and when things stabilized, the focus had changed down to just the rear of the car. I hesitate to call this a fruition, mainly because it felt like the entrance was long, and didn't feel like other fruitions I've had in the past. I had no bliss, excitement, tingles, eyelid lights, etc., after it. I did end up having some feelings of excitement and bliss grow as the afternoon went on.

Evening:
The drive home seemed to be more naturally mindful without me having to work much at it, and I found that it was easier to pay attention to vibrations throughout the rest of the evening. I went to a middle-school event, and found it interesting to hear all the sounds and voices flickering in and out of attention all around me in the auditorium.

10/4

Morning:
Sat for 15 minutes in the car before my drive in, and found it simultaneously easy to hear the flickering of sounds and touch sensations, and at the same time, harder to stay focused. Thoughts seemed easy to sense, yet I found it easy to get lost in them. On the drive in, I kept noting faster and faster, and was noting quite quickly at the end of the drive.

Lunch:
Still having symptoms from my cold/flu, and was feeling tired, so it was no surprise to me that I drifted in and out of sleep for 40 minutes.

After work:
Sat for a few minutes to get mindfulness started and then got on the highway. Noting was fairly solid most of the way home, but still felt like work. It was hard to relax and get into the flow of it.

Evening
Did 20 minutes of mindfulness of breathing practice, and then 15 minutes of vipassana. Concentration is still down a bit, and both the breath-counting and the noting was a bit drifty. It took me a long time to get settled, but I go there eventually. Toward the end, I started yawning quite a bit, which made it more difficult to stay focused.

10/5

Morning:
10 minutes of mindfulness of the breath, and 15 of noting before the drive in. The breath counting settled me down, and I was able to relax and let phenomena come to me (rather than looking for it) when I started noting. Noticed some rough vibrations in the chest early on, then later cycled through some gentle rushes of pleasure. On the highway, the car felt very smooth in my hands, and I was able to maintain letting phenomena arise in my awareness. Occasionally, I'd notice some thinking, and if I gently turned my awareness outward, I would get back in the groove of noticing stuff arising and passing. All in all, a very mindful drive.

Lunch:
Took a while to get myself settled in the seat. My neck stiffness has been fairly strong lately.
Started with following my breath, and noticed early on that my eyelids would start to twitch if I looked up at all. Looking down would calm the twitching down. After 15 minutes, my soundspace suddenly opened up to include the traffic noises outside, so I switched to noting. After a while, things got dreamy and hazy, so at the 30 minute mark, I opened my eyes and kept noting. My vision seemed very grainy. Near the end of the sit, I had this weird sensation where my awareness fluttered quickly a few times and then settled back down. Eventually, I started yawning and so then I ended the sit.

After work:
Sat for 20 minutes in the car and noted before getting on the freeway for home. Very little experience of moving through the maps. Was able to maintain mindfulness on the drive, even through a traffic jam. Mindfulness came up for me on its own more than a few times later in the evening.

"10/5

Morning:
10 minutes of mindfulness of the breath, and 15 of noting before the drive in. The breath counting settled me down, and I was able to relax and let phenomena come to me (rather than looking for it) when I started noting. Noticed some rough vibrations in the chest early on, then later cycled through some gentle rushes of pleasure. On the highway, the car felt very smooth in my hands, and I was able to maintain letting phenomena arise in my awareness. Occasionally, I'd notice some thinking, and if I gently turned my awareness outward, I would get back in the groove of noticing stuff arising and passing. All in all, a very mindful drive.

Lunch:
Took a while to get myself settled in the seat. My neck stiffness has been fairly strong lately.
Started with following my breath, and noticed early on that my eyelids would start to twitch if I looked up at all. Looking down would calm the twitching down. After 15 minutes, my soundspace suddenly opened up to include the traffic noises outside, so I switched to noting. After a while, things got dreamy and hazy, so at the 30 minute mark, I opened my eyes and kept noting. My vision seemed very grainy. Near the end of the sit, I had this weird sensation where my awareness fluttered quickly a few times and then settled back down. Eventually, I started yawning and so then I ended the sit.

After work:
Sat for 20 minutes in the car and noted before getting on the freeway for home. Very little experience of moving through the maps. Was able to maintain mindfulness on the drive, even through a traffic jam. Mindfulness came up for me on its own more than a few times later in the evening.

"

Great reports, Andy. I love the way you're working so hard at continuity. All of these sessions could easily have been (and for most people would have been) space-out times. Instructive and inspiring for me. Thanks!

Thanks, Joel! I appreciate the comments. I'm glad that you find my journal useful.

To be perfectly honest, the space-out times continue to be a real challenge for me, and bring up a lot of doubt. I've tried working on technique, alternative practices, and anything else I could think of. It may be nyana-related, path-related, sleep related (I have some sleep maintenance issues), or the phase of the moon . At this point, I don't really know.

I do know, however, that what seems to work for me is to keep mindful as much as possible during the day, (which seems to be getting more frequent), and to keep a regular practice going. For me, even a little short stints of mindfulness during the day are better than none, and even 2-3 minutes of noting in otherwise "dead" times tends to keep the dosage higher, so to speak.

10/6

Morning:
Meditated on the bed before the drive to work. Seemed like it took a long time to settle into noting, and there was no sense of moving through the nyanas. I'd note, then find myself drifting in thoughts. The drive itself was uneventful, but I was able to note and/or notice pretty much the entire way to work.

Lunch:
Started with 3x10 breath-counting. I felt some possible shifts during this time, so I switched to noting. Shortly after thanm I had one strong shift, and outside traffic noises became very apparent. I kept noting, but did not notice any more shifts. Eventually, I started experiencing episodes of dreaminess followed by increased clarity. I tried to play with these, and resolved to pay as much attention to these as I could. For a few of them, I noticed that it prolonged and intensified the shift to clarity, resulting in a stronger shift, with more disorientation. Eventually, I got sleepy, so I opened my eyes and stared at an object about 100 feet away. My vision was fairly grainy and washed out in my periphery, almost like the ghost image from kasina work. Noting was easier with my eyes open, and I did not get the dreaminess as often. One time near the end of the sit, I had a strong body jerk, but there didn't seem to be any shift associated with it.

10/6 (cont...)

After work:
I sat for a very short time before driving, but even as I got into the car, I found myself noticing the sensations of me getting into the car, the sounds around me, the feel of the seat. I found myself not fighting to settle down -- my neck stiffness was still there, but I didn't feel a need to move to relieve it, and the same was true of some itches and hand and leg placement.

On the drive home, mindfulness was mostly easy, but I also found myself noticing the difference between mindfulness and not-mindfulness, thinking and not-thinking. It ended up being a lovely-feeling ride with some mild bliss. The evening sky was one huge blue-to-orange gradient, the sun was low on the horizon and lit up the road and threw long shadows and high contrasts. I turned on Wolfgang Rubsam playing the Bach Two-Part Inventions, and floated home peacefully watching, listening, and paying attention to both thinking and not-thinking.

Evening:
I basically fell into awareness listening to sounds and noises in the house, so I prolonged this into a 15 minutes noting/noticing session.

10/7

Morning:
I've been trying some different medications for sleep maintenance issues, and woke up this morning with definite cognitive and physical lethargy. It was work to stay focused on the morning sit. Watching my breath, active noting, and shinkantaza all seemed to peter out after minute or so. It wasn't until I got onto the highway that I discovered that Shinzen Young's Touch-Sight-Sound-Feel-Image-Talk framework worked pretty well. I found myself noticing vedana related to thoughts pretty regularly. I also had read the latest on The Hamilton Project and played with noting thoughts as future, past, and self-related. Despite the lingering effects of the medication, the drive felt productive.

Lunch:
Basically, a 40 minute nap interrrupted at irregular intervals by noting and/or breath-counting.

After work:
Sat in the car before the drive home. Found it hard to concentrate, and had to stay focused on noting. The drive was the same way. Lots of drifting into thought, and not realizing it until sometimes a minute later.

10/8

I've been having a lot of neck stiffness and pain over the last 3 weeks, most of it coming from spending so much time sitting in the car for so long. Today, I did almost 5 ½ hours of various practices: most of it was noting while driving. I noticed an undercurrent of sadness most of the way through the drive, which had apparently been with me for a while, and I had not realized it.

I did get a reasonable 90 minute formal session done in the morning, and three 30 minute formal sessions in the afternoon. Of the three sessions, I fell asleep for the first two, but was able to stay awake for the third. The session was focused for the vast majority of the time, and using Shinzen Young's TSSFIT framework seemed to work. I noted quite slowly, but was able to soak in each note pretty well. Did not notice movement through the maps, and it didn't feel like anything was happening.

10/9

I did two sessions in bed right after waking up. The first focused on watching my breath, and I did a lot of drifting around, and never really got strongly concentrated. The second, a 45 minute noting session flowed pretty well, actually. I didn't have much of a sense of moving through any nyanas, but my body did end up tingling and buzzing quite a bit by the end, so something was going on. Tried to meditate for 30 minutes later in the evening, but fell asleep for an hour.

10/10

Morning:
Hard to stay focused on my breath or noting on the sit before the drive, and also on the drive itself.

Lunch:
30 minutes of walking meditation. Noting was noticeably more continuous in the beginning. Then, a 20 minute formal sit. Able to focus on my breath a bit better, but still had some drifting. Then, started noting slowly, and tried to soak in each sensation. One subtle, short body rush of bliss, but other than that, no sense of movement through the maps. Body was buzzing and tingling at the end, though.

After Work:
I didn't get a chance to sit before the drive, and just got on the highway immediately. Watched my breath for a while, and started noting. I tried noting slowly, and worked on better noticing rather than speed of noting.

Evening:
Spent 10 minutes trying to watch my breath, and occasionally, it would seem like there was awareness of a tiny spot of mindfulness in the center of a lot of other noisy thoughts, sounds, body sensations. I switched to noting for 15 more minutes. I slowly noted, tried to pay good attention, had some slow full body waves of prickly tingles every once in a while. Ended with arms and legs having lots of tingles and subtle body numbness. Yawning was just starting up when the chime rang. I felt fairly awake after this.

10/11

In bed before alarm:
Woke early, much to my surprise, and spent a little time on the breath, but was not able to strongly focus on it. Focus would come up occasionally, but sounds, sensations, and thoughts were more prominent. Noted for a while after that, using Shinzen's framework, and got some steadiness going for a while. Occasionally had some flowing sensations over my body.

Before work:
Sat for 15 before the commute in. Mindfulness of breathing still didn't really work that well, but noting was a bit better. Practice during the drive itself felt slow, but was occasionally well-focused.

At lunch:
Did noting for walking meditation for 30 minutes. Need to find a route where I don't need to worry about cars or other such distractions. Came back and did a short minute formal sit, and found it hard to focus on the breath without distractions. Switched to noting for the rest of the sit. Nothing special.

After work:
On the drive home, it was hard to stay noting, even when I was noting aloud.

After dinner:
A quick 20 minute short noting session. For the last few weeks, I've had very few physical indications that I'm meditating, but tonight, my skin tingling started shortly after starting to note. In a while, some slow deep flowing waves of subtle bliss started and would continue on and off. The tingling turned to subtle body buzzing, and after the chime, it took a while for buzzing to subside.

Evening:
30 minutes of noting started with skin tingling again, which then turned to body buzzing then to less pleasant electric-current-like vibrations, which then faded. After this, I had some yawning, then would get lost in thinking, and I would lose the thread of noting. More yawning came up, and I drifted between yawning, noting, and thinking until chime rang. It was the first time in a long while since I actually felt some kind of movement through the maps.

10/12

Before work:
30 minutes at home. Started with breath-counting and for the first time in a long time, I was able to not get distracted from watching my breath. Even more, I was getting noticeable skin tingles on my out breaths after a bit. Switched to noting, and in a short while, I felt a bit of gentle bliss rush. I was able to stay with noting fairly well, although things got a bit dream-like at times, and my noting would pretty much stop until this passed. I moved in and out of the dream thinking a number of times before the timer chimed.

On the drive in, I was feeling some body bliss, and noting flowed pretty quickly for a change. I was able to note all the way in to work.


At lunch:
I've been feeling some subtle excitement and bliss during the day, something I haven't felt in a number of weeks. I continued my experiment with walking meditation at lunch. I found a long sidewalk with grass on both sides, and very few cross-streets or driveways. I also wore a cap with a long bill, and pushed the bill down so it block the view of pretty much anything except the sidewalk in front of me and the grass on either side. I was able to note pretty much continuously on this stretch of sidewalk, and probably got in a good 40 minutes of practice.


After work:
The drive home was nothing special. I didn't sit beforehand, and simply started noting once on the road.