Andy's practice journal

Hi guys!
Just to add to the circus,
I have had up to ten cycles since 2:nd path last summer and I have stopped counting...
Lost? Completely!

"Hi guys!
Just to add to the circus,
I have had up to ten cycles since 2:nd path last summer and I have stopped counting...
Lost? Completely! "

Nice! Something fun to look forward to

"...I have had a number of false cycles in previous paths that strongly seemed like path experiences (with Review A, review B, start of new cycles, etc...), but turned out not be so. -Andy"

I feel like a broken record (might've even written this in your thread before), but you'll have review after each cycle, whether or not it signified a path moment.

Are you sick of the nanas and cycling yet?

This might be a good time to listen to the Hurricane Ranch recordings with Ingram, Kenneth, Hokai, et al.

Also, NS does take some concentration and deliberate practice, but the pureland jhanas should just show up if you let the jhanic arc do its thing. But, who cares?

"But, who cares? "

Exactly. Letting go is the hardest part.

"This might be a good time to listen to the Hurricane Ranch recordings with Ingram, Kenneth, Hokai, et al.
"

Nadav, thank you for this. I don't know why I haven't listened to this before but it is just what I needed. All the talk about working towards 3rd path just lines up perfectly.

@Nadav

Yeah, I think you may have written this in my thread before, but I'm glad you reminded me. And yes, I'm definitely getting tired of cycling

I'll listen to the Hurricane Ranch stuff again. I listened to them before stream entry, so I'm sure I'll be able to get much more out of them now.

The big turbulent emotions from a week ago (fear, anger, frustration, hopelesness) seem to have subsided. I'm not sure if they were strictly situational, or if I was particularly susceptible for some reason.

In bed at night, and before completely waking up in the mornings I'm having some uncomfortable physical vibrations that aren't particularly harsh or heavy. The do, however, eventually compel me to move my body to quiet them down. They remind me of restless leg syndrome in some ways. In the mornings, I dont' want to get out of bed. It doesn't feel like I'm getting enough sleep, but I know I'm in bed long enough, and I'm not tired or falling asleep during the day.

On the cushion, I've boosted my sitting time, and it's felt more productive. I've worked on kasina to build my concentration up, played with the ReWire app quite a bit, and have done regular noting (less of this and more of the kasina and ReWire). In general, I'm getting a lot of tinglings, buzzings, and blissful vibrations when I sit.

My most recent sits seem to take me up to my cutting edge within 10 minutes or so. I then just hang out, trying to maintain noting. That is occasionally difficult, since I seem to cycle in and out of clarity, but it's not always the case. I've had some sessions where there's been no cycling to speak of, but things do get a bit dreamy at time.

Over the last week, I've been working with the ReWire app as an aid to staying focused on the cushion, and it seems to be working. It gives feedback very quickly when you zone out. More on this app later.

Sunday was spent driving 2.5 hours to look at a motorcycle I'm going to purchase, visiting friends there, then driving back. I'm very excited by the prospect of another motorcycle. I haven't ridden in 25 years or so, but every spring I've gotten the urge to get another bike. This year, the urge never went away like it always has.

After coming home excited, and going to bed that night, I woke up after 3 hours of sleep with strong eyelid lights and body bliss, and also lots of planning and imagining thoughts about the new bike. This went on and on the rest of the night, with the occasional fruition here and there, and I was not able to fall asleep until 5:00 am.

Monday, wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but I had lots of unpleasant energetic body sensations, buzzings, tingling. Did not have anger, fear, hopelessness. Thought about the new bike and set up insurance, delivery, and other associated stuff. I finally was able to make it to bed around 9:30 pm. Slept like a rock.

Tuesday - I finally got some good on-cushion time today. Worked on concentration, then shifted to noting. Kept cycling in and out of clarity with slow pulses of bliss. Had lots of body sensations, too, which stayed with me after the bell rang. They feel very similar to the physical sensations of anxiety and lack of sleep, but I've gotten enough sleep over the last two days. What's interesting is that there were only the physical sensations. None of the emotional components were present. I can still feel my body tingling and shaking a bit, but my mood is not negative in the least.

My how a week can change things...

Over the few weeks or so, my formal practice time has dwindled way down because of responsibilities, work changes, and other pre-planned events. I've tried to keep things going with the informal practices, but without the formal sessions, it's hard to maintain any momentum. Consequently, it seems like my ability to clearly see the three characteristics has taken a nose dive. I'm also finding that I'm getting lost in thought frequently, and if I try to note out loud, the same thing happens. I've also been experiencing a lot of sleepiness in my sits. About 10 minutes is all it takes for my head to start nodding.

I've been going through the same thing...look at my practice thread for Rob's advice. Helped me so far.

Sounds like we're on the same page here. I'd been reading through Rob's journal and I've picked Witness practice back up as a result. I sometimes wonder if I can push so hard on a practice that it hits a dead-end of sorts, and maybe that's where the sleepiness is coming from. In some ways, it feels like I'm fighting the noting practice and how it naturally wants to go, and sleepiness is the result.

After doing Witness for a few days, I'm noticing that while I sometimes encounter an initial sleepiness, after it subsides I get energized and seem to be able to hang out in it for extended periods. The last formal sit I did I ended because I needed to get back to work, and not because I'd fallen asleep or needed to stop. I could have kept sitting for a much longer time.

I've never really put much effort into Witness, but it sounds like this may be a good time to explore it.

Early last week, I noticed a big reduction in my emotional reactivity and an increase in energetic sensations in my body. These changes are still with me, so I thought I'd toss them in here for posterity.

I'm noticing that there seems to be this matter-of-factness about things that I used to react strongly to, eg. when teenaged daughter dumps her angst on me, when I'm tired and can't go to bed yet because unexpected stuff to came up that needed doing.

The lack of emotional reactivity is really noticeable after a number of weeks of being really sensitive and reactive. Instead of reacting, it seems easy to simply notice the thoughts and feelings that get stirred up, and that I'd normally get embedded into.

My sleep has been disturbed. When I go to bed, I can usually notice some "energy moving around" sensations. If I pay much attention to these, I become more awake, and find it harder to fall asleep. I'm also waking up more and earlier. It's almost as if I'm somewhat aware of not being quite asleep but not quite awake, especially during the very light sleep phases.

My ability to focus generally seems stronger and concentration-related body tingliness is happening again after a long hiatus.

Finally, I'm not sure how to classify this, but I'm noticing that at times, people's faces can seem deeply fascinating, interesting, and compelling to look at. There's just something about the variety, the colors, the richness of the expressions, how the light changes as it moves across someone's face. It seeems to have something to do with how concentrated I feel.

So, after 11 days, my concentration ability still seems noticeably better than in the previous month, and I can still bring up a bit of tingling when I'm strongly focused. Several times, I've felt like I could (and wanted to) sit much, much longer than I actually had time for. Sleepiness doesn't seem to bother me as much as it did a week ago. Off the cushion, life seems easy, smooth, and joyful.

Additionally, some stillness seems to have opened up for me yesterday. I can now (again) much more naturally and with little effort just notice longer-term phenomena arising and passing. I seem to be able to easily enter a listening attitude, with an openness and without expectation. I pay attention to what arises, let it soak in fairly well, then naturally transition to whatever arises next in my experience.

I haven't had an opportunity to do this for extended durations, but was able to do this for almost a half-hour on a 70-mile bike ride. Normally, I have a lot of difficulty noting/notice when I bicycle, especially when my body is working hard. This time, it just naturally flowed. I was also able to do it at work this morning while listening and paying attention to the content of a deep technical discussion. I have not had a chance to do a formal sit and play with this, but hope to do so tonight.

Something interesting happened today at my lunch sit.

I was working on counting and watching my breath. While doing this, I felt a lot of energy moving around in my body, and I got maybe 5 or 6 cycles of 10x breaths before things started to get dreamy. I switched to noticing, but it was difficult to stay with noticing, and I drifted off in and out of dreaminess and dream imagery a number of times. I had no sleepiness, just the dreaminess, and lots of tingling, buzzing, and energy movement sensations going on in my body. I also felt a bit of anticipation, which is pretty rare.

Out of nowhere, I had a sudden, short, accelerating-forward sensation, and felt a thump. Then, my vision started filling with colored clouds and I saw particles rushing past, kinda sorta like the starfield when the Enterprise enters warp. These particles faded away to leave the yellow orange lights and a lot of muted bliss. I never really got a bliss wave, but in all other way, this felt very much like a fruition.

Afterward, concentration seemed strong, and I didn't cycle back up to Equanimity, but just sort of hung out enjoying the body sensations and clarity of mind. I tried playing with jhanas a bit, then tried for NS, but nothing came of it.

Back at work, I had a lot of body bliss and some euphoria, but was also fairly distractible. Eventually, I was able to get deeply focused on a task for the remainder of the afternoon. In the evening, I was still having bliss, and during a deep and frank conversation, I was able to watch thoughts and feelings rise and present themselves into awareness. I felt content, unhurried, relaxed, even when talking about what usually would be difficult topics.

I had promised to fix a mountain bike shifter by the next day, and even though frustration arose many, many times, I was able to continue, stay focused, and get it done, even though it was way past my bedtime.

[cont...]

[...cont]


In some ways, yesterday's fruition feels like a path moment, but in other ways, it doesn't. Perhaps it's a 12th path cycle -- I don't feel that anything significant has changed. Mostly, I'm leaning toward this being an extra-strong fruition, along with the attending after-effects: bliss, euphoria, effortless mindfulness, strong concentration, spaciousness, stillness, contentment, relaxation.

Over the weekend, I'll see what if anything comes of this. Already, the effects seem to be fading, but it could be because I've gotten 3 hours less sleep than usual.

Sounds awesome! Your still aren't sure if you are 3rd path yet, right? I guess time will tell what it was.

Nice! Gotta love those thumps!

Yeah, this was definitely a wicked good thump, but it really feels like (possibly another ) A&P go-round and not a path. I'm having no new or even noticeable insights into the nature of reality, no "aha!" moments, plus I've also had these "thumps" before during A&P. I even spoke with Kenneth once during one thinking I had gotten another path.

On Saturday, I was wildly in love with the world. I had a huge amount of joy, tons of patience and was willing to be present with pretty much anything.

Driving out to a movie with my daughter was a riot of movement, shapes, colors, sounds. So much was happening everywhere, and it all seemed interesting. I was noticing all kinds of new things on the way there. Places I'd literally passed tens of thousands of times were new again. I was surprised by how much my attention was getting distracted from driving by all of this stuff, and I worked to pay more attention to the driving.

Emotionally, this felt like a peak experience. It felt wonderful to experience not only joy, love, gratitude, but also nostalgia, sadness, poignancy, even shame. Yeah, sure I laughed a lot along with my daughter at "Diary of a Wimpy Kid", but ferchrissake, I almost cried at a sad part.

Physically, there was a constant gently vertigo, and lots of bliss in in my core. It was also easy to get tingling along the bottoms of my arms and legs. All I had to do was close my eyes, breathe in, then just gently let go of my my breath on the out-breath.

[cont...]

[...cont.]

However, by Sunday, not only was all of this pretty much gone, but things even swung the other way a bit. I got angry with my daughter, was impatient with the dog, comforted myself with food. This morning, I didn't want to get up and go to work.

Today's lunch sit did not start in A&P as far as I could tell, but I did get into lots of dreaminess, then clarity, then dreaminess, etc... I had no noticeable fruitions, but was definitely a bit blissed out when I was done.

This meditation stuff is curious. We shall see...

Things are starting to stabilize since my last shift. I thought I'd toss out some notes on my practice over the last month or so, and then I'll lay out some things I've noticed since that shift.

Previously, my practice has been mostly noting-based practice, where I try to note/notice as many sensations as quickly as I could. Over the last month, however, I've been experimenting with primarily concentration-based practices. I've been doing a lot of breath-watching, and some kasina work, but not any explicit work with jhanas.

As a result of this, I've been able to drop some expectations of what concentration practice 'should' lead to. Previously, to build concentration, I used to focus hard on a single object like the coolness at the back of my throat when I breathe, trying to do this to the exclusion of any other sensations. Now, I play with arbitrarily widen or narrowing my focus. So, for example, I will limit the scope of attention to all the body sensations of breathing, but only to those sensations.

Or, after I develop some single-pointed concentration, I extend and widen that concentration to slowly include more and more sensations, to finally include all the objects I can notice rising and passing. This last practice seems to lead to feeling very present. I feel very still as stuff happens in and around me, and can watch all of this without being involved.

I've also shifted to a more concentration-based approach to noting. Rather than trying to note quickly, I'll instead focus on a object, be it a sound, a visual, a thought, a physical sensation, and then try my best to stay with it until it either disappears, or until another, stronger and more obvious sensation presents itself. Until the next object is clear and strong for me, I'll pay close attention to how attention itself flips quickly back and forth between the two objects, until settling down on the new object.

[cont...]

[...cont]

I'm continuing to have aftereffects from the big fruition Ia week ago. I still don't think of it as a path, and while the WOW! bliss is gone and I'm no longer wildly in love with the world, I do think some rewiring took place. I'm still discovering the extent of that.

On the cushion, most practices will quickly lead to drifting in and out of a dreamy, hazy state which is not sleepiness. Sleepiness can happen in this state, though, so sometimes it's hard to tell them apart. Usually, if I get sleepy, then the awakening can be a bit rough, with unpleasant body sensation, fogginess, maybe a bit of a 'hangover'. If I don't get sleepy, then I can simply open my eyes and carry on.

Off-cushion, things are way more interesting:

- I'm calmer than in the preceding weeks and months, and this calm is most noticeable in (previously) emotionally charged situations where I (previously) would have been embedded in my reactions. It's easier to simply let feelings/thoughts/sensations just happen, and watch them as they happen. This help defuse charged conversations, and leads me to explore my reactions more, and to listen with more openness to the other's point of view.

- I'm finding I don't seem to need to speak as often to defend a point of view, or to justify an action, and seem to have more patience with listening.

- I've got more mindfulness in normal, everyday situations, and am enjoying paying attention where before I would have zoned out.

- Awareness of awareness happens more frequently and for longer durations than before.

- I seem to be more open to new experiences, be they ordering something different at a restaurant I've patronized for years, or trying a new route home just to explore a bit.

I'm curious to what of this will last. Experience tells me that some of this will drop away, and that a smaller subset will remain. Three steps forward, two back.

Apparently I haven't posted in ten days!

I'll be out riding DALMAC ( www.dalmac.org ), so I'm doing some catch-up here for posterity.

Since switching to mostly concentration work about a month ago, and since the last shift in post #588, Aug 10, I've noticed a number of changes in my experiences both on and off the cushion. Most of these changes seem small if considered in isolation, but they add up to a noticeable change when taken as a whole. It feels like there's new territory to explore.

In general, my mood has been up since then. It's easier to deal with my teenaged daughter, and I seem to behave as if I had more patience. I say it this way, because internally, I'm still noticing the emotional reactions, but they haven't really translated to reactivity that's visible. I'm also much more motivated to practice.

One-pointed concentration is getting stronger. I can get a pleasant full-body tingling fairly quickly, especially on slow out breaths.

A while back, I had a concentration session where I was able to intentionally rise up through the jhanas up to the seventh. I haven't done any jhana work in many, many months, and this came out of the blue and was a bit of a surprise for me.

Noting off-cushion seems easier as well, and seems to flow more naturally. More interestingly, noting mindstates has somehow magically gotten much easier. Before the last shift, being clear on mindstates was very difficult, and noting was slow. Now, it's noticeably easier and faster, and the labels just somehow come up for me. Because of this, I'm tending to do it more.

[cont...]

[...cont]

I'm finding that I can follow my breath quite well in everyday situations, and also when I'm out on my bike. Previously, practicing pretty much anything while on a ride was difficult to sustain for more than a few minutes at a time.

I've also been reading some Nirmala, and had a small insight into the difference between me as static thoughts, and me as dynamic and flowing awareness, presence, mystery, etc. I'm not quite sure how to explain this, but the difference seems more obvious somehow.


Very recently, I had some interesting fireworks:

A few days ago, I was meditation in bed during the day. I started with watching my breath, but fell mostly asleep. I woke after maybe a half-hour with my whole body buzzing and tingling very strongly. Pretty soon, a lot of excitement, rising energy, and bliss was coming up. It got fairly strong before it peaked, and then suddenly decreased. Not long after that, I started feeling a heavy shakiness in my chest. Eventually this subsided into a low-key matter-of-fact awareness of my surrounding. The whole session ended up lasting an hour and 45 minutes, and I really seemed to be along for the ride. I had a fair amount of thinking at times. My focus wasn't very strong, and when I tried to note, I'd get lost in thought, but this experience just kept rolling on without my doing anything to sustain it.

The next day, noting was pretty difficult. Objects were harder to pick out of a flat, featureless mass of sensations, and all sensations seemed alike in some strange way. I had to go looking for stuff to be able to note it. It was almost like the very early days of noting when I couldn't really find stuff to note. This passed after a day.

[cont...]

[...cont]

Since then, I've woken up a few times in the morning with heavy, unpleasant vibrations, and a general unpleasantness, but this passes fairly quickly.

My vipassana sits tend to build steam slowly. Occasionally, I'll get a subtle rush of bliss near the start, and sometimes I'll get a more panoramic awareness, but by and large, nyanas are not clear. However, I often get to a state where I seem to slowly flow in and out of bliss and dreaminess. I sometimes get strong, long-lasting itches, but they do break up and shimmer quite nicely. Today, I got some strong nausea part-way through a sit.

As usual, it's not clear to me what's going on, but I don't seem to be overly worried about it.

I haven't been very motivated to keep up the journaling here, but I've been practicing every single day. In fact, I managed to get almost 8 hours of practice between Saturday and Sunday. I've been continued to stress the concentration practice. My ability to stay with my breath seems a bit less than what it was a couple of weeks ago, even though I've done a lot more concentration practice.

In addition to just counting my breath, I worked on jhanas a bit. Solid jhanas have only ever really clear after path moments, so working on them now has the feeling of starting over. I did get into a solid first jhana a week ago, in a very short, time-limited session, but have had nothing so solid since. I can get vague 'handles' for all the material and immaterial jhanas most any time, but nothing solid at all in a very long time.

In fact, other than the rare session where I stay awake for the entire sit, most of my sits now drop into a sleepy, dreamy state after about 10 minutes. I can't really say I'm completely asleep, though. At intervals throughout the sit, I have some awareness that I've stopped noting or counting breaths, but at the same time, I'm not really awake either. Usually, when the bell rings after one of these sessions, I'm quite groggy and it takes 10-15 minutes to subside.

I seem to move through nyanas, though, I think. Early in my noting, before I get 'sleepy', I notice some brightening in my vision and sometimes some increased energy and bliss, and I'm suspecting that's A&P. As for the rest of the nyanas, I don't really notice much difference between them.