Laurel's practice

Thanks, Ed and Rob! I think I was feeling doubt: maybe I could just tweak things a bit, take up some kind of exercise or new hobby, and find peace and happiness without spending hours investigating itches or watching the breath come and go! Or more to the point, without rewiring my brain in ways that I can't at this point imagine. It was a case of doubting the characteristic of unsatisfactoriness-maybe the world is capable of rendering satisfaction after all. But then last evening I saw a news item, a story of child abuse so appalling that it knocked the stuffing out of me. I was plunged into another state of doubt, for another reason: life is so fundamentally unsatisfactory that I want to check out altogether; I hate having to inhabit a world in which such horrors go on; I don't even want to be an insect or a plant in such a world as this.

I began meditating with strong emotions: grief, horror, fear, despair. Somehow I got to access concentration and then began noting. There was a lot of torpor, dreaminess, checking out, I think. Finally I began to note itches, which were subtler than the night before. I noted beginning, middle, and end on them--the duration of these sensations was unstable, changing, crawling across my skin, shimmering or fizzling. But after I stopped I was immediately upset again; I couldn't sleep (still having trouble), could think of nothing, no words, no religious doctrine, no philosophical explanation, nothing that could express, explain, encompass, or in any way atone for such suffering. It seems as if the bottom drops out sometimes and one is left staring into an abyss of pain. Ed, you mentioned the Compassionate Mind--I don't know if there's a compassion deep enough to meet it head on. So I suppose this is the characteristic of unsatisfactoriness--it sounds so bland!

(cont) But this is how it is. I see myself writing these things, feeling these things, and I guess the thing to do is just go on practicing. But what I suppose I doubt now is not-self: I personally may want not to be or have a self to be the center of such drama, and yet I can't believe that there is or was not a suffering self--the child, who has died, who is mercifully beyond all pain--that experienced those things. But I don't want how I feel about it to be The Story, which at the moment is very much the case. And so I need to keep practicing, ramp it up. May all beings be happy, may they be safe and protected, may they be healthy and free of pain, may they live with ease and joy.

One thing that helps me (especially after retreats when I go haywire), is that no state of my mind or body seems to be static. It will come and it will go, and so will my aversion or attachment to it. "oh yeah I've seen this before - I wonder what it will be like this time, OK"

"Another observation about daily life (and retreat life, come to think of it): I'm having separation anxiety from my familiar ways of being and doing. At the retreat I noted a lot of guilt over leaving my family for the day, even though they were perfectly fine. I am still going to my old church but I sit there feeling disloyal and nostalgic. I long for ordinariness. I wish I could stop this craziness and just be a "normal" person. For a few days my fear went away, but now it's back with a vengeance. The only thing I keep telling myself is to look around me, and ask what my alternatives are. "

This is very familiar, Laurel. Balancing insight disease with family responsibilities can be tough. For example, this weekend my wife was out of town and my kids were at my mom's. For me, there was no question as to how I would spend this time: I would not be, say, doing leisurely bike rides or having beers with friends; instead, I was intent on spending hours and hours on the cushion.
This insight disease is quite strange, huh? I've also had the thought that I'd like to get this over with in order to get back to some kind of normalcy.
During the retreat, my mother-in-law, who lives with us, started having chest pains, unbeknownst to me. My wife was frantically trying to reach me on my cell. Afterward, I listened to my messages and was hit with so much guilt. There was guilt about leaving the kids with my mom and about not having been accessible during the retreat; a weird feeling that there's something shameful and wrong about being so focused on meditation.
Was I dark-nighting it after the retreat--lots of sadness and disappointment--or was I just down because SE didn't occur? These dynamics aren't easy to explain even to fellow meditators, at least in a mainstream setting. This is why KFD is such a valuable community. Hang in there! You're making great progress, and these are fantastic reports.

Hi Laurel, that sounds awful. There is no getting away from how harsh the world is, I find as I get older, stories in the news affect me more, make me feel sick and even in some cases, seem to burn something awful on to my brain. I'll confess its taken me years but I eventually stopped reading the newspaper and listening to news........but somethings you cant escape. .... 'This to shall pass'!.....as the saying goes.

hang in there!

You are the greatest--all of you. I can only imagine how I would feel if someone had chest pains while I was out of communication because of meditation--and that weird feeling about meditation being shameful and wrong is something I feel a lot. I imagine people think I'm self-absorbed, which of course is absolutely true, but I'm doing meditation to get past all of that! Ed, I think you're right about the harmful effects of paying too much attention to the news. It's particularly bad for me to do at night. While I'm grieving over a child I can't help, there's another child in my own home that I have an obligation to care for--and I'm meditating so that I'll be able to be better able to do that, among other things. This community has been an enormous help to me, both sharing my concerns and reading about others' experiences.

I had to drive 45 minutes each way to an appointment this morning, so I noted in the car. I've read about people doing that, and have finally gotten into the habit. When I started out I had been running narrative threads through my brain, which is typical while I'm driving, but I settled into noting and the time passed profitably and even pleasantly. I just finished a sit and noted the usual assortment of itches, aches and pains, sounds, torpor, lights, and an occasional thought. The itches are getting more and more lively, less stable. I noted myself waiting for something more to happen. One of these days it will.

Evening sit: about an hour. I'm going to try to reconstruct this.

Began with the usual pattern, three times counting 10 breaths, access concentration, began noting. Alternation between torpor, dreaminess and alertness, dreaminess kept coming back, I kept recalling myself. Then the itches started. I did what Kenneth told me to do: held onto them, observed them, didn't let them go. For awhile they were nothing much, but then I got some really good ones. They were like fiery insects crawling across my face, shimmering, almost beautiful. I followed them and followed them.

Then the shaking started. It felt wild, like I was being shaken like a rag doll. It was mostly in my arms and hands, but it affected my entire torso. My legs were quiet for the most part. Then I noticed a feeling of compression in the back of my neck, moving up the back of the head. It moved slowly and painfully. It was deeply unpleasant, and it kept intensifying, and all the while the shaking was getting more and more violent.

Then I felt my face screw up in a grimace, which seemed to last for a long time. Eventually it relaxed. In the meantime, the tension in the head and neck got worse; I thought my head was going to blow off.

(cont.) Finally things began to shift, settle down, the shaking and compression eased, and I felt one, and then a second bliss wave pass over me. My body settled into a rapid vibration, which went on for a long time. My chattering mind was commenting on this the whole time, wondering what was going on, thinking about how I would describe it (which of course I'm doing now). I also wondered what people would say about it--what was happening to me.

Then the pressure began again, and the itches as well. The compression went up the neck and back of the head, this time more pronounced on the right side. The shaking came back, but this time it wasn't as wild, and it took over my whole upper body. I began to let go, to tell myself to sit back and let this run its course. The compression in the head got worse and worse, and I got a little anxious about it. Eventually it passed and settled down again. My body gradually stopped shaking and became calm. It took me a few minutes to decide that I was finished with it, at least for now.

Awesome!

Good job!! Strange things can be progress on this path. lol!
Keep doing what you're doing, it seems to be working.

Great things are happening!! Although, as Rev said... strange!

Okay, now I'm worried--when this group thinks I'm strange, then I must really be getting strange!

Tonight's sit (which just ended a few minutes ago) went almost exactly the same as last night's. It lasted over an hour. During that time the timer went off and I turned it off, my husband came home, walked into the room, into the kitchen, made a big rumpus getting an evening snack, opening and shutting the refrigerator, etc., and I was mid-eruption of trembling and compression. I was noting annoyance, wishing he'd get the hell out of my space already, sounds, and all the while this process was unfolding without missing a beat. I don't know whether I could have interrupted it if I'd wanted to; quite frankly, I think it would be a bad idea.

Like last night, there were two buildups of trembling; unlike last night, the compression in the head and neck occurred only with the second one. I began the same as last night with samatha, got into first jhana and felt nice bliss, calm, expansion, absorption, but then began noting gradually. Things unfolded from this foundation of calm. I had itches, the whole works, but the itches weren't all that important any more; they were just a vehicle or a prelude to what came next.

In the early stages I started having twitches in my legs (something that hasn't happened for awhile), and lots of sleepiness--or rather dreaminess, which I didn't mind because I knew it would eventually go away as I moved further into things. Then the shaking started, this time all over my body, and went on so long I began to get bored with it. I noted myself wanting something more to happen (of course the A&P with all the bells and whistles, right?), but then the shaking subsided. In between bouts of trembling I felt the vibrations again, and during the second round, when the compression and pain in the head started up, I felt the same anxiety I'd felt last night, except it was perhaps worse. I decided to stay with the pain, to focus my attention on it. It moved from the neck up the length of the head at a rate that was torture, so slow, and it bore down, getting more and more intense. It was unlike any headache I've ever had, and I know headaches.

I was less inclined to chatter to myself this time; when I got tempted to do it I just noted what I was up to. The pain went on and on, and I thought, this must be what purgatory is like, and I briefly wondered whether it wasn't purgatory but actually hell, meaning it wasn't going to stop. I just let it happen, let myself worry while it happened, and then eventually it subsided, leaving my entire body in a state of vibration again.

A further word or two about the vibrations, and then I'm almost done: it feels like extremely fine grains of sand, all of them energized, with a very refined electrical pulse, all in motion. It's actually kind of nice.

I have a theory about all of this mayhem, which is that I'm working through some powerful blocked energy. What's weird is watching it happen. I had no idea I had the potential to experience any of this stuff. I have no idea what's coming next. Another thing that's weird: I'm experiencing the pain but not as an affliction. Somehow I know while it's going on that it's not really hurting me.

Hey, Sounds tough but yet also like something is working itself out at an energetic level. My sister has been in Austrralia for 2 years or so learning a healing system based on energy work. In the first year she came home and told me that when she was sitting she was expreincing masive shaking in her shoulder area. She could supress it in the day but when she sat it became very strong (i think she even took to mediating lying down as a result). I was little freaked out by it, but I hadnt really accepted the whole energy thing at that stage. She said she was told it was a little like a hose pipe, with too much water coming through it that sort of twitches and wriggles. Ill email and see what happened, but im sure its a good thing!

"A further word or two about the vibrations, and then I'm almost done: it feels like extremely fine grains of sand, all of them energized, with a very refined electrical pulse, all in motion. It's actually kind of nice.

I have a theory about all of this mayhem, which is that I'm working through some powerful blocked energy. What's weird is watching it happen. I had no idea I had the potential to experience any of this stuff. I have no idea what's coming next. Another thing that's weird: I'm experiencing the pain but not as an affliction. Somehow I know while it's going on that it's not really hurting me. "

Very interesting. Keep us posted, Laurel!

Thanks for the comment, Ed! I trust that if I'm doing something dangerous, someone will warn me here. I'll be interested to hear how your sister is doing.

Morning sit: 45 mins., followed the pattern of less eventful mornings. Good focus at beginning, but lots of torpor, dreaming. Noted silently for awhile, then realized I was floundering and drifting off a lot, so began out-loud noting and kept it up for awhile, went back to silent when things were too fast. Mostly mild (very mild) shaking in body, some buildup of heat, feeling of vibrations in body (but not as clearly as last night). Noted doubt, speculation, anticipation, disappointment, concern, guilt over abandoning family, worry over how the day would go, feeling vaguely weird and foolish, performance anxiety, and the like, over and over. Some itching, mild on the whole. Hunger. All of these thoughts, sensations, and sounds were very understated. A bit of boredom, fussing about the timer (should I leave it on? Turn it off?), some thinking of bailing, which I noted and from which I moved on.

I'm thinking that this was valuable even without much happening. Yesterday I kind of punted on daytime sits, saving it for night. I'm going to try to work in an afternoon session today.

I'm feeling vaguely concerned about how focused I'm getting on this and how I may tend to ignore other obligations, although this hasn't literally been the case--except for last evening, when I spent a long time reading other journals to get some perpective on my own situation.

"Very interesting. Keep us posted, Laurel!"

Thanks, jgroove! Your comment posted almost exactly at the same time as my update.

All of this is classic 4th ñana, Laurel. Welcome to the A&P. Keep on keepin' on.

Kenneth

These reports really are great. You are doing exactly the right thing, even if feelings, reactions, symptoms, etc. change- no sitting will ever be like the previous one!

"I'm feeling vaguely concerned about how focused I'm getting on this and how I may tend to ignore other obligations, although this hasn't literally been the case."

This stage of things does bring on a kind of obsessional intensity, and there are times you have to kind of Pretend To Be Normal. (Which, if you've lived with depression and fibromyalgia, you must know ALL about).

When I went through the first A&P/Dark Night lap (at least the first that I recognized as such), I kept reflecting that these bizarre surges of energy, emotion, and sensation were objectless. They didn't come from anything, they weren't caused by anything, they didn't mean that I had to do something special. They never last, not even 20 minutes. That helped a bit.

I imagine that, for the next little bit, you'll probably sway wildly between (1) "I should meditate way more to get through this!!" and (2) "I should stop meditiating completely before I go nuts!!" But on some level, "you" aren't making this happen. It's all working itself out without "you". (I mean, that's not entirely true, either. It's just another view, but it's a useful counterpoint to the instinct to feel you are running the show).

Just choose a reasonable, regular pace, and stay on friendly terms with the Normal. It is still there, waiting for you, I promise!

Things sure seem to be cooking!

Thanks everyone! Rob, what you said yesterday is spot-on: I've been going through precisely the alternation you mention, between wanting to push on and wanting to stop. I've also missed Normal in precisely the way you describe. Right now I've taken a day off to catch up on work and on sleep. I had let a few things slide. It's reassuring to have my experiences put into context: none of this is specific to me as an individual.

I read Daniel's account of the A&P on interactive Buddha and saw that he went through exactly the same stuff while on retreat. It lasted for quite awhile before he came to the A&P event itself. So I'm going to chill and trust things will unfold in their own sweet time. I'm leaving for a 9-day retreat in a week; in the meantime I plan to resume practicing today.

There is one thing I'm curious about, and that's why all my active sessions happen at night, whereas nothing in particular happens in the morning or even in the afternoon. Is there something special about time of day? What would happen if I never meditated at night, just during the day? I suppose it's a silly question; I'd arrive at something sooner or later. But I still am intrigued by the pattern.

Another calm afternoon sit, 45 minutes. Began with counting 1-10 three times, then decided to rest a bit longer as concentration felt weak, got to 1st Jhana, enjoyed it and didn't want to leave. Eventually began silent noting, first with sounds, then with thoughts, sensations. Some dreaminess came and went, lots of uncharacteristic brightness in visual field, came and went as well. Noted cars, birds, ringing in ears. Not much pain or itching, just a twinge here and there. I kept this up for awhile, then realized I was spacing out and got myself back into a more rigorous effort at noting. Decided after awhile to focus on the ringing in ears, which was a fine vibration, and then a few itches started, which also vibrated. The light vibrated as well, and it would come and go. Noted evaluating thoughts, comparing thoughts, a few anxious thoughts. On the whole pleasant and restful. Body felt a bit unstable, however; wasn't twitching or trembling, but felt less solid than in ordinary life. Noted that. Not quite the vibrations I had the other night. Phone rang a couple of times; first time was very jarring, after that didn't much matter, noted a few minutes later that I was not affected by it. Timer went off.

50 minutes last evening. Began counting, lots of distraction. Rested for awhile, then began noting. There was a long, frustrating period of silent noting during which I repeatedly lost focus, and found myself in dreamland. I would try to pull myself back in and then get lost again. On top of that I got confused, couldn't figure out whether to observe phenomena closely, or note them by name. So I noted "confused," but then I began to think I was losing my technique, and that this lousy session was my punishment for being a bad student (you can tell what my conditioning has been!). So I noted "story."

The itches rescued me from this period of being half awake. As soon as one of them hit my leg or arm began twitching. There weren't a lot of them, but there were enough to eventually trigger the trembling, which took over the entire body and became more extreme than at any previous time. The itches subsided, the trembling increased. There was a bit of pressure in the head, but it didn't travel all the way up, and didn't intensify to the same degree as previously. I ditched the timer (I'm not even going to use one at night any more) and waited for the whole episode to subside on its own, which it did, leaving me with the vibrations. I sat through those, and then they subsided. I'm not sure whether I should have powered my way through to another episode, but it was after 11:00 and time for bed.

Comment about out-loud noting: I'm finding it difficult at the moment, but probably I should push myself to get back to it. I've noticed, though, that even noting out-loud I can find myself drifting off and losing it.

I got bored and tired of the third nana, with itches and aches and pains, when that was what was happening every night. Now I'm getting bored and tired of the shaking that seemed so impressive a week ago. Last night's sit was about 50 minutes. I began with the breathing, but didn't really settle completely. I decided to start noting anyway. This time twitching started up almost immediately, and eventually resolved itself into shaking. There is now no gap between an itch coming up and the shaking; the body responds immediately to the itch, sometimes even anticipating it. The itch doesn't even have to be all that severe; just the hint of one starts up the shaking. This time I'd say there was even more twitching than shaking, meaning more significant movement. I didn't have much if any pressure in the head. There was some torpor here and there, but not as much as the night before. Eventually it calmed down. I didn't end up with the vibrations this time, for some reason. I just decided to end it.

I didn't manage to sit this morning, and I'm taking off with the family for an overnight trip, which means an interruption to practice. On Friday I leave for IMS.

BTW, I caught a thread on DhO about a new forum called "Ruthless Truth." It sounds as if the originator of the practice is aiming to pound the illusion of a self out of people with a sledgehammer, as opposed to exposing it gradually through insight. Hmm.