Andy's practice journal

Tuesday, 4/3

So after a week of foggy, unclear sits with no review fruitions (I thought I had finished review A), and sits that started off with obvious objects and turned into naps, my last two sits have been much more active.

1) Last night, I started with mindfulness of breathing and fell vaguely asleep again. I occasionally had a faint sense of transitioning between jhanas and would get the initial sensations of the next jhana before I lost focus and drifted.

Near the end of the sit, I felt a thump in my body and woke up to very clear sensations of rushing coolness and tingling all over. Quickly realized this was review phase A cycling, so I played with inducing the three types of fruitions. I induced several of each type, then moved back to anapanasati, but it was hard to stay focused. I ended the sit, and was surprised that I had meditated for 35 minutes past the chime.

I felt a very strong sense of mellowness, calmness, and acceptance the rest of the evening. My body was relaxed and pleasantly tired.

[cont...]

[...cont]

2) The next day, I still had a lot of that mellow, calm energy from last night. When I sat at lunch, I did not start in A&P, but didn't fall asleep either. Instead, I felt a slow, gradual deepening that went on for quite a while. Eventually, I found myself deeply concentrated on nothing in particular, lots of body buzzing, energetic sensations, calmness, pleasure. I noticed some stable itches on my face, so I paid attention to those sensations, and how they changed and spread.

After this, I hung out in the deep, calm state for a long time, and noticed how my expectations changed the experience of this state. The more I let go and rested, the easier and calmer the state became. The harder I tried to focus on a particular set of sensation, the less clear the whole experience became.

Eventually, I got tired of this, and worked my way up to eighth jhana, then focused my attention on the inside of my skull by my right ear. This led to a mild fruition with a long, drawn-out exit that left things very quiet for a while. I ended the sit shortly after that and was surprised that I sat 25 minutes past the chime.

Tuesday, April 10

I've done very little practice since last Wednesday, either on the cushion or off. However, I'm slowly starting to have more motivation for formal practice, and am also working on building my momentum back up off-cushion. The last few sits have been chock full of sleepiness. At one point, I was having some stable itches before I got sleepy, now it's just sleepiness after five minutes of noting. I'm working on getting more sleep.

In general, it's hard to stay with any foundation for any length of time, except for body sensations. That foundation has always been easier than the others, and of all the senses, sounds are by far the easiest to note and disembed from. However, thoughts and feeling have always been harder to stay focused on, and I often find myself drifting awhile in thoughts before I realize what's happening.

Perhaps the difficulties staying with vedana, mindstates/feeling, and thoughts are a clue about where more practice time needs to be spent, and so I really like Nikolai's suggestions about making momentum practice interesting: dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussio...ards/message/2545840

(Thanks, Jayson, for posting this in limbic's practice log.)

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Tuesday, April 10

Another sleep^H^H^H^H^Hmediation session at lunch today. Started with noting, phenomena stood out clearly, and I got some body tingles. I remember feeling several strong shifts, with more sleepiness coming after each one. I rapidly progressed to head nods, and ended up mostly asleep. Occasionally, I'd gain a little clarity to find myself noting/noticing. I remember this pattern from early in the last path. It's easy to want to discount these sessions as non-productive, but I get the sense that some work is still getting done.

In the evening, I had a conversation with someone about dharma and what might happen as my experiences deepen. At night, I had a very hard time falling asleep. I felt myself passing through various jhanic states over and over. Eventually, I gave up on sleep, got up, and read some more of Adyashanti's 'The End of Your World.'

By coincidence, the chapter I read dealt with energy disturbances. In particular, he talked about many students that had insomnia come up as a result of their practice. It really seemed to fit my experiences pretty well. My sleep issues seem to have started when I seriously started practicing. Over the last few months, however, things have settled down and I've stopped taking sleep meds. Now, the vast majority of the time, I can stay asleep all night, except that I occasionally have some awareness during some of the lighter stages of sleep.

Last week started off with me falling asleep after just a few minutes. Before I'd fall asleep, though, I'd notice a shift into a state where phenomena became obvious, then maybe I'd notice an awkwardness about my breath, then an itch or two. Sleep followed shortly afterward. I've also noticed an increase in the stiffness and pain in my neck and trap muscles.

Near the end of the week, I was able to sit for longer periods, but the real meat of practice this week happened off-cushion. All in all, I probably got 9 hours of noting while driving done. I'd usually start with a few minutes of noting with the car off to kick-start concentration, then continue with my commute. On Saturday, I had a total of 3.5 hours of practice, which seems to have led to some trouble falling asleep because of involuntary meditation.

By Sunday, the sleepiness seemed to be less prevalent, and more excitement, rising energy, effervescent tingling was starting to come up whenever I'd sit. I had a session in the afternoon where I seemed to periodically pass through a rush of energy and body tingles over and over, but this might be review phase B cycling.

Since my last shift, I've been feeling little inclination to post practice notes on a regular basis. This is interesting to me, and I have a theory: I suspect that there was more about regular posting that served and inflated the self, rather than being actually useful for my practice, and I suspect I'm seeing through that better.

Also, when I went back and re-read my posts from my last path, most of the time I couldn't tell where on the maps I was. In addition to regular cycling, I had old path stuff happening at the same time as new path stuff. Review phase A cycling seemed to come and go for four months, I was never completely sure if and when I had crossed A&P, Dark Night was not really recognizable, and Equanimity came and went a number of times.

If it was this confusing to me (and I was the one writing), then I doubt it was useful to anyone else. However, perhaps it could serve as an example of how confusing things could get.

In any case, I've been back to sitting my regular schedule for the last two weeks, which comes out to 5 or 6 formal session a week, 8 or more hours of strong, off-cushion practice, and opportunistic practice whenever I can take advantage of it. I'm still keeping a personal log of my sits, and will post abbreviated versions of it.

I noticed the lack of wanting to post after a path as well, which led me to realize a lot of people do this it seems. Post like crazy until they get a path then disappear, which I think is actually not helpful to people working on the middle paths.

I think it's a shedding of attachment thing.

The only reason I still post so much, no matter how helpful or unhelpful it may be to me at the time, is for others as well. The thing that has helped me a lot is the people on this site that journalled through 4th path. Just reading the journals and seeing the various experiences can be helpful when things get confusing. For example, seeing that someone is going through a confusing period as well, even if it doesn't quite relate can be extremely helpful.

4/16 - 4/22

Mon: Slept poorly last night, but felt a lot of jhana-like body sensations, energy, tingling when I woke up. On the drive in, colors seemed more saturated, shapes were interesting. Attention seemed to be more on body sensations than thoughts, although I was definitely noticing verbal and image fragments. Definitely have more energy and excitement this morning, plus lots of subtle, effervescent tingling.

Tue: Woke a number of times at night,tried to meditate but fell back asleep. Sat for a few minutes before the drive in, but didn't immediately start into the cycle. Still, noted on the way in, and it almost seemed like thoughts and mindstates were a bit easier to notice. At lunch, fell asleep after about 10 minutes, but drifted in and out.

Wed: Woke up a bit early and meditated. Kind of interesting -- there was almost no thinking going on for a while, until I heard voices in the house, at which point thoughts started coming up again. Had excitement, difficulty focusing on noting on the ride in. Had a long sequence of angry, fearful scenarios come up, but later, had blissful energy and excitement in my core. Lunch: fell asleep, I think. I remember moving through clarity, less clarity repeatedly. Reading in bed, I felt some energy moving, and thought I might meditate involuntarily when I tried to sleep, but I didn't. Woke up tired, not wanting to get out of bed.

Thu: AM: sat in the car in the park, and for a long time, it felt like nothing was happening even though my noting seemed on track. I was noticing images and talk, bird and car sounds, body sensations. It seemed to deepen, but not cross A&P. Lunch: walking meditation for 50 minutes.

Fri: Only had time for a short sit at lunch, but still got sleepy.

Sat: Had a long drive, and managed to get in 3.5 hours of off-cushion practice, and also one dreamy formal session.

Sun: Fell asleep meditating in bed.

4/23 - 4/29

Mon: AM: Sat 10 minutes before driving in, then noted all the way to work. Mindstates seemed much more noticeable. Lunch: 40 minutes of noting. Started with several noticeable state transition, then a lot of dreaminess. Next, sudden clarity, followed by an incredible, overwhelming, full-body rush of cool tingles and chills. Noting would restart, and then stop again when I'd get to dreaminess, and then pick back up again after the rush of tingles. This happened maybe 10-15 times in the span of 40 minutes. Had a lot of bliss later in the afternoon, but also a sense of nostalgia, loss, sadness. PM: Sat for 15 minutes before driving home, moved into dreaminess in 10 minutes, was drifting by 15. Noted on the drive home but my motivation was low.

Tue: AM: No session before driving, low motivation, didn't feel like noting, some sadness present. Turned off the timer after 15 minutes of driving. Lunch sit was mostly drifting in and out of clarity. PM drive: watched my breath for 10 minutes, and then drove home. Was able to sustain samatha for most of the drive. Evening sit: watched breath, then drifted in and out of clarity. When the timer went off, I woke, and had a huge rushing, accelerating sensation, like I was in a very fast car and had just hit the gas. Wonder if this is the start of A&P?

Wed: AM sat for 15, counted breaths 10x50, then noted 4F, four notes each. Had gotten into a pretty good noting flow @ 15 minutes. Drove to work and noted. Lunch: tried to watch breath again, but got sleepy and drifted in and out of clarity for 40 minutes. PM: watched breathing on the way home. Evening: samatha practice for 40 minutes.

[cont ...]

4/23 - 4/29 [...cont]

Thu: AM: noted on the way in, but was not able to stay concentrated. Lunch: 10 min. of mindfulness of breath, 10 of noting (got drifty and dreamy and moved in and out of clarity), and 10 of witness (hard to stay focused on it). PM: 10 minutes of mindfulness of breath, then the same on the drive home. Evening: 20 minutes watching my breath

Fri: Worked my way to 6th jhana after waking up, shifted to witness. Was able to maintain witness even in the shower and until I got dress. Had a very satisfying sense of bemused detachment from what my body was doing. Did more samatha before the drive in, and then watched my breath on the drive.

Sat: Felt sleepy on the drive in, so I finished listening to Buddhism Before the Theravada series. Did a 40 minute sit in the evening.

Sun: Watched my breath for a while on a long bike ride, and then did a short sit before bed.

I've been trying to do some Witness work. However, I've gotten away from pure samatha work, and this seems to make staying in the Witness much more difficult. So, this week, I worked mostly on concentration via watching my breath. By Friday, I was able to hold objects in mind longer, and had one good session of witness in the morning, just watching my body doing its thing to get ready for work. I started with some 6th jhana in bed before I got up, and then told myself to stay in this as long as I could after I got out of bed.

I then had a very satisfying sense of detachment from what my body was doing. I was able to watch my body moving and thinking as it went through the morning routine. It's done this more than 15,000 times before, so it knew what to do, and I didn't need to try to control things. So, I just watched. This lasted all the way through the shower and getting dressed. It started to fade when I got my breakfast ready, and when I started talking with my family it passed. Very interesting.

Nothing else very interesting happened the rest of the week. In some ways, it feels like I'm getting close to A&P,but that's not clear to me. I occasionally see very faint moving shapes in the periphery of my vision, and feel some excitement, but it doesn't last and doesn't progress.

Monday, 4/30

50 minute session in the evening. Started on the cushion, and moved to floor when upper back spasms got too bad. Even so, I was starting to get into watching my breath by the time I moved. On the floor, I noted, and didn't get sleepy. I did eventually get some faint moving lights in the periphery of my vision, and then lots of drifting in thoughts.

Had a very hard time falling asleep later. There was this vague swirling energy in my body. I tried to meditate, but couldn't sustain it. I'd note for a minute or so, and then find myself lost in thought a long time later. Got up, walked around, read for a while. I finally fell asleep several hours later.

Tuesday, 5/1

Surprisingly, I wasn't very sleepy this morning despite the lack of sleep last night.

30 minutes of somewhat consistent noting on the drive in.

20 minutes of walking meditation at lunch, noting. At times, there was this matter-of-factness about noting. Noting seemed equivalent to seeing, hearing, touching, but not thinking, or noticing feelings. I did, however, find myself lost in thought a fair amount of time, and had to explicitly turn my attention to feelings to notice those.

Later, noted for a bit before the drive home. I felt some movement through the cycle: first a shift where objects became more obvious, then a difference in my breathing (a sort of hitch in the breath), then itches in my eyelid, then for a while a floating sensation and energy movements in my body, and for a bit, a vague unpleasant buzzyness in my body. After 15 minutes, I started the car, got on the highway, and was able to keep up fairly solid noting for 30 more minutes on the way to work out.

After my workout, I sat for 15 in the car. Concentration was solid, noting was consistent, but the nyanas didn't seem very obvious. My body was still shaky from the lifting. Noted consistently on the 10 minute drive home.

Wednesday, 5/2

Woke up before the alarm and worked on sustaining Witness state for 20 minutes. Managed to keep it up through the shower and up until breakfast.

On the way in, 30 minutes of noting, solid and consistent. Had some energy and very subtle excitement swirling in my body by lunchtime.

10 minutes of noting at the tire dealer, while waiting for a tire repair. It was long enough to feel an energy rush swirl around in my body several times, and long enough to start drifting into sleepiness.

20 minutes of noting at lunch. Similar to last sit: energy movement, vertigo, focus of awareness mostly was internal. Then, got dreamy/sleepy for the last few minutes.

15 of noting before the drive home. Floaty sensations, then eyes rolled up a bit, then swirling energy. Sleepiness/loss of focus started around the 10 minute mark. At 15, I started the car, drove home, noting for 30 more minutes fairly consistently all the way home.

50 minute formal sit in the evening. Started noting on the cushion, moved to the floor at 20 minutes because of back spasms. Continued to note, nothing special was happening, although I seemed to be in a stable concentrated state. Lost focus near the end.

Thursday, 5/3

All in all, I did a total of three hours of various formal and off-cushion practices today.

A couple of interesting experiences stood out:

In the morning at work, sitting in a meeting, I was able move into a stable state of some kind. I felt a sort of separation between the attention on the sensations of self and the sensations themselves, and attention rested comfortably in the noticing/noting of the "self" sensations. While this was happening, I was able to clearly see stuff arising and passing, easily note, watch my breathing, etc... I wasn't able to sustain this for more than a few minutes at at time, and I suspect it was because of wanting to focus on the material that was being presented. I entered this state a number of times, with the same results.

Then, at lunchtime, I did 50 minutes of consistently focused walking meditation, alternating vipassana and samatha. There seemed to be a very similar quality to the movement of attention in both practices. In the vipassana case, I let my attention jump to whatever it noticed next. In the samatha case, I noticed attention alternating between the distractions and watching my breath. In both cases, the movement of attention was very, very fast, sometimes coming back to the same object, sometimes jumping to different objects, and very noticeable.

In one highly focused stretch, I noticed very rapid jumps of attention to various sensations that came up, and then noticed related thoughts and sometimes feelings. arising as a result of those contacts. In a few cases, I'd notice an entire scenario playing out. I also noticed something similar happening during samatha, except that I'd drop the the newly arisen thought and return my attention to breathing, so the rest of the chain would rarely get started.

Interesting stuff.

On Friday and Saturday, I did a home retreat to see if I could build up some momentum. In that time, I meditated 12 times, minimum of a half-hour each time. I did a mix of formal and off-cushion practices, mainly mindfulness of my breath and noting, but I did throw in some self-inquiry stuff, and also specifically looked at sensations of self with vipassana.

The samatha session were very stable, with a lot of strong focus.

Most of the noting sessions were also mostly strongly-focused, with not that much drifting. Interestingly, I experienced no sleepiness, but I did have some dreaminess and loss of focus on a few sits. I noted lots of rising energy, strong focus on noting, strong concentration, lots of energetic and pleasant pulses, moving colored shaped on my closed eyelids, tingling, buzzing, and during one session, the first fruitions I've had for a long time. It was fairly easy to sit, and I often sat past the chime. Near the end of the second day, I thought I could notice some unpleasant vibrations, buzziness, and some loss of focus a few times, but it wasn't that clear.

I didn't sit much on Sunday, but as soon as I closed my eyes to sleep at night, I started feeling energy rising, tinglings, excitement, all signs of an involuntary meditation session starting. For a while, I did self-inquiry, and experienced a sense of vertigo and a rushing sensation in my head when I was able to focus well on the sensations of the self. Eventually, I decided that I needed to sleep, but was still unable to fall asleep because of all of the heightened mental activity and the sensations from strong concentration. I tried various things, but didn't fall asleep until almost three hours later. In the morning, I was surprisingly awake and aware, and didn't really feel like I'd gotten only four hours of sleep.

5/7 - 5/13

Hard to tell what's been going on over the last week. After all the prractice time I put in last weekend, little in the way of obvious, noticeable states has come up. I had a few sits where I had noticeable excitement, eyelid lights, and body vibrations/tinglings, and then, the vibrations got a bit unpleasant after a while, and then I got sleepy. (Actually, there's been a lot of sleepiness, but then again, I've also been doing a lot of hard training on the bike.)

On several mornings, I woke up with a deep, heavy, unpleasant shakiness and vibration in my chest. I've also had some sadness, anger, hopelessness come up, but these seemed to pass pretty quickly. Impossible to say if it was related to meditation or not.

Truth be told, I can't really tell where I am on the maps, and what, if anything, is changing.

#justkeepinvestigating

Wed, 5/16

I'm feeling a kind-of pull to maintain panoramic, less-focused awareness. There's something about dwelling in the visual field without a specific focus object that makes it easier to stay mindful of the moment to moment experience. This seem particularly effective when I'm driving and where there is a lot going on in the visual field. I've noticed that when I focus on a specific thing, it's much more likely that I'll lose that mindfulness and find myself lost in thought instead.

Why don't you get so panoramic that sounds and the body are also incorporated?

Interesting idea. I've actually mostly noticed this while driving, so the visual field predominates.

I'm not sure how to apply this to sound and body awareness. With vision, there's central focus, and there's peripheral vision. I let my eyes defocus a bit and then let go of the center, so that I'm primarily noticing what's happening in my peripheral vision. When I do this in the car, it feels like I somehow "take a step back" from being involved. I seem to stop noticing small details, but see in bigger "chunks"

For example, I see the line of cars as a single flowing unit. The masses of trees on the sides of the road flow past in a blur of color and texture. I also seem to "see like an artist", in that I see bigger masses and planes, shapes and colors, textures and patterns, rather than smaller details.

I'll play with this a bit, and see if/how it translates to sounds and body awareness. Any pointers, Jayson?

Turn towards sound and notice whatever is predominant. Then open up and notice other stuff in the background. You can be aware of the foreground/background together and then relax the focus to equalize them so it's even. When you get a feel for it (I tend to do vision first, then sounds) you can include the body and look at it in the same way, as one big dynamic field rather than emphasizing tense spots, etc.

Here's Jayson's pointer: thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/2012/04/...peripherycentre.html

Sunday, 5/20

Did an hour of meditation in bed right after waking up. Spent 20 minutes doing mindfulness of breathing, getting pretty absorbed and quiet. Then, noted for another 20. Felt some movement through the nyanas, and at one point has some bliss and pleasure come up and fade. A bit after that, things got pretty settled. I was absorbed, and stayed that way. I was noting very little, was fully awake, but noting seemed pretty heavy, so a lot of it was just lightly noticing what was in the moment, and what came up mentally as a result of these inputs.

The last 20 I spent on self-inquiry, and here things got interesting. A number of times during this segment, I got a clear sense that everything that was arising was different from the thing that was watching. There was all the stuff being observed, and whatever wasn't it was the observer. The best that I can describe it is that the observer was the background, and the observed was the foreground.

I could investigate phenomena all I wanted, but when I turned my attention to whatever it was that was doing the watching, things got very unclear very fast. Any attempts at watching the watcher directly seemed to slide right off. If I paid attention to the space that phenomena arose in, it was only through a sort of peripheral vision that I could tell the observer was there.

It seemed, well, slippery, and I couldn't keep my attention on it. It didn't really seem that there was anything there to look at, but yet there was this clear sense of separation between the observer and the observed.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this, but I'm definitely curious, and this is where I think Jayson's and Nadav's pointers on foreground/background might be helpful.

It's been a couple of weeks since I've written, so I thought I'd check in.

My current practice is still fairly similar:
- I'll sit in my car for 10-15 minutes before my half-hour commute to/from work. I do some concentration practice, then note, and then continue to do so on the drive.
- I also sit in my car at lunch 2-3 times a week.
- I sit at home 2-3 times a week as well.
- I also try to take advantage of any 'dead' time such at waiting for meetings, appointments, shopping, car rides, walks, etc. I'll watch my breathing, or note, or simply try to remain present and aware.

I'm still not really sure where on the maps I am. Previously, A&Ps were clear and unmistakeable markers on the path, at least in hindsight. This time around, it's not obvious when or even if it's happened -- a lot of previous familiar indicator are just not there anymore (more on this later).

Three weeks ago, I was having sleepy sits, little clarity, confusion, low energy, and a large amount of doubt. I also had periodic deep shakiness and a sort-of buzzy feeling in my head and chest. Most of this has started to pass. Over the last ten days, concentration has made a comeback and I seem to have more energy and motivation. When I do concentration practices, I now settle down fairly quickly, concentration is stronger, and I can bring up a kasina-like feeling on pretty much any concentration object. Noting is easier to stay with as well, and state shifts and states have gotten noticeably clearer. A few times it's felt like I could have sat for much longer.

[cont...]

[...cont]

It's still hard to tell what nyana I'm in most of the time, though. On previous paths, I had huge amounts of body sensations going on, e.g. various tinglings, vibrations, floating sensations, colored eyelid lights, vertigo, spatial changes, shakiness, etc. This path has produced very little of this physical stuff, so familiar landmarks are gone. However, I've noticed more subtle body sensations, mental tendencies, and attention focus changes. (In the interests of complete disclosure, I have been doing some fairly strenuous cycling training this year: maximum power intervals, lactate threshold rides, and long 3-4 hours long-distance rides, so this may have affected how things feel.)

New to this path is that I'm noticing more 'background' stuff, especially dharma and practice related thoughts that I seem to have somehow skipped noting. I'm also better able to note sensations of space, time passing, location, and how the sensations of me, myself, I, mine are present in relation to these.

In general, this post makes it sound like I've moved into Low Equanimity, but again, A&P was not really noticeable this time around, so I could be way off base. In any case, it doesn't really matter, since the prescription for making forward progress is identical: I continue to sit, investigate, and try to look at stuff and not for stuff.

" I continue to sit, investigate, and try to look at stuff and not for stuff.

"

I feel the same way right now. You have a great attitude about this. Me, not as much. Trying to get used to that "don't know where I am feeling" and trying to be OK with it.