Justin's Journal

I'm not sure that I will regularly journal, but have seen the utility of being able to review previous thoughts in the future.

Lately I am becoming more and more confident that simply working with what I already have and abiding in the present moment is all that I need to do. I have significant faith (gah, shocked I'm actually using that word) now that I have seen some of the Jhana territory for myself. I can also see that the sharpness of my mind to tease out the different flavors can use some work, so efforts to build "mind muscles" should be fruitful. I see no reason that I shouldn't eventually be comfortable with all the Jhana territory, though based on my laid back attitude about this, it could take a very long time.

I feel like I'm on a road trip today. I'm enjoying the territory that I'm currently in, but whenever I think about the map I get impatient to see the next town. I'm finding that more light experiential reading like Adyashanti helps me appreciate what I already have.

Felt anxious today and was able to look at the physical sensation being tightness in the diaphragm with a negative feeling tone. A lot of thoughts/inclinations would arise as to solutions to this state, such as going to a movie, grabbing a beer, exercising, etc. It was interesting to watch how reliably these thoughts/inclinations would come up one after another - I can definitely see the conditioning of neurons that wire together fire together in real time. I chose to examine this state rather than distracting myself with the now, though the problem becomes that eventually I distract myself with something else. It seems that I only have a certain amount of stamina right now for examination.

Practiced gratitude within awareness today while walking. I can't figure out if gratitude is an emotion or something slightly different. I can feel it as aching in the chest as well as some kind of tingling around the front area of my skull. It somewhat feels like a state as well as the body component.

Sat today with the intention to explore map territory. Started noting but just did it for a few minutes before being absorbed in the vibrations and flowing experience. Almost felt disappointed that I lacked the will to keep noting.

Then started playing around with letting go - would try to find equanimity then just let go of anything I found there, trying to let go of any control.

Cruised around all sorts of unfamiliar territory but couldn't lock in as that reexerted control. A number of times I cruised into this territory of some pretty heavy blackness and spontaneous eye flickering. Some territory had brief body twitching. Some territory caused my chin to lift. A lot of it was associated with cranal pressure.

Tried letting go of myself within equanimity - touched something there as well.

I was fairly unceremoniously dumped out of the session as I lost the ability to let go, so wrapped things up looking for the whole cranium and spine breathing then going to the spooky hovery witness. Explored there for a brief period, found equanimity, then intentionally rode down through the Jhanas to exit.

Googled the eye flickering and found reference in the Q&A. Interesting to me was that in today's practicer the eye flickering was a completely involuntary result of just trying to let go as much as possible. I don't know if I experienced this fruition/cessation territory or if I was just tasting the edge of it.

I just felt compelled to close my eyes and collapse toward the blackness where the flickering seems to spontaneously arise. I felt some pretty discordant **** as I was watching the falling of the flicker, but I'm not relaxed/concentrated enough right now to just let go. Definitely not feeling any bliss.

Again, totally confused as to how my experience matches up with the maps....**** it...awarenessssssss.

I had probably the most consistent wakefulness today than I've ever had. Its very hard to tell though how long I've been lost when I am, but I woke many times today.

No formal practice today. Just waking up periodically when not noodling. Feeling way too comfortable and expecting some sort of rude awakening.

Did a 90 minute yoga class today that was very physically challenging. I had a lot of questions arise around surrender, intention, and control as my body was often not up to the task today, which led my mind to have to decide if I was going to physically suffer or give up. Often when I would mentally surrender to the unfolding of the moment, my body would also surrender, lacking the intention to stick with the pose. It was a very difficult practice at the edge of my understanding, so I guess I just need to do this more and see what I find out.

The suffering during the class today was also very wierd. I was like hovering half way between being embedded in the suffering and observing it. There was like a line there that I would keep crossing back and forth as I focused on intention, which seemed to further embed me and refocus on surrender, which took me out, but also lost intention....not sure if I can have my cake and eat it too since control and surrender would appear to be true opposites, but perhaps they are a paradox that can both be held...dunno.

Sat for 35 minutes tonight at a dharma group. Started with the breath, quickly let go and just sat in awareness. Then tried to let go as much as I could. Then tried to do vipassana on awareness itself - really trying to look at awareness in the moment. This caused my head and neck to go back hard and as I looked there was a lot of blackness and it started causing immense pressure in the inside back of my skull. It was not a pleasant sensation but I wanted to look more so stuck with it. It felt like I was at the crest of something but couldn't get over it for relief.

After the sitting period, there was a video talk by Anam Thubten where he spoke about 'not believing your mind'. I started to look at things from this perspective from within awareness, and I noticed that this perspective brought about a certain aesthetic whereby in trying to look at the phenomena to not believe, they kept falling away - the aesthetic was very much like being at the edge of a black hole with everything passing over the event horizon. My normal "recognizing awareness" has much more of an aesthetic of being *in* the mid-point of the flow rather than watching it all fall away.

If I only had access to this falling away perspective, I think it would potentially really freak the crap out of me, so I don't know if this "don't believe your mind" is really the best perspective to start with.

Watched Kung Fu Panda 2 with my daughter today and cried. The feeling of the strong emotion was absolutely wonderful.

Based on people talking about body awareness, I tried bringing my attention inside as well as outside and have been locked into this wonderfully exquisite pure experience for the last hour or so. Its like my normal open awareness, but now I can simultaneously feel the sweet pain in my heart center, like sadness or love is just sitting right there holding the immediacy of the rest of awareness.

I absolutely love this sensation - there seems to be less equanimity but it is a really wonderful state.

I don't think I could have done this some number of months ago as when I tried to hold multiple things in attention simultaneously before it was extremely difficult if not impossible.

Was alseep for most of the last week. Started focusing on a software development project which shifted my habits of mind away from awareness and toward abstract thought. It was actually quite surprising to me how quickly these old patterns swept away awareness - my momentum seems less strong than I thought.

Sat tonight with a group for 20 minutes, just focusing on the breath, I think this time Jhana almost naturally with less intention. I could feel the quality of going away from something dominantly unsatisfactory in my experience to go into 1st Jhana, and then from 1st to 2nd. Didn't make it past 2nd. After the session, my ability to wake up seems to have somewhat returned after a week where it was quite difficult for me to will myself to be awake since my thinking patterns were burning so strongly.

Just tried to look for impermanence and my eyes started going bonkers flickering and strobing around trying to find some release through the top of my head. Currently reading about Nikolai's experience of stream entry and cessation and just trying to see what I can find. Still nothing that I can point to that seems like any cessation, fruition, or nirvana.

When I go *looking* for impermanence or unsatisfactoriness my attention is drawn to the top of my skull and I feel an enormous pressure like something wants to be birthed through my head in order for me to get some relief.

WOAH. Something intensely powerful and messed up just happened. I was rooting around *behind* my third eye there was tons of pressure than then spontaneously there was this ENORMOUS flash of white that caused my chin to just start driving straight up into the sky the flash was super persistent and my neck was just craning back reaching skyward stronger and stronger - I have absolutely no clue how long I stayed like that it seemed like minutes. I noticed that there was quite a bit of unpleasantness in my neck so it wasn't like a high equanimity situation I eventually started coming down a bit and brought my head back to a normal orientation, but with my eyes remaining closed, the flash still remained. Eventually I tried opening my eyes and noticed that my vision was totally unfocused even when in open awareness, where I usually find things quite vivid. I closed my eyes and road things out some more - thoughts were definitely arising. Even now I am wring this in some weird after halo of this phenemenon. The only thing I can relate it to was when I was in the spooky witness recently while watching the Jhanic arc videos, there was that same unfocused hovering feeling with the eyes open, but this was SUPER powerful and totally spontaneous. I don't remember looking for anything or inclining my mind a certain way, it just hit me like a sledgehammer..........

There was also a wide vision field of the bright white, so the experience had similar qualities to my experience of what I think 2nd Jhana is. This is really weird - I don't feel anything particularly positive though my awareness seems strong at the moment. I just feel like I was smashed in the brain by a giant baseball bat.

I am now very tired and going to go to sleep.

Very cool, Justin. Keep us posted.

Hmmm...tried playing with this again this morning and was able to barely touch something around the edges - its like after working quite hard looking for something behind the third eye and feeling the eyes pulse a lot I make a gesture of almost a mental yawn that snaps the rooting and opens things up, maybe almost like a stronger manifestation of the rising energy of 2nd Jhana without many of the pleasant attributes. I wonder if the strength of the yawn portion was related to actual tiredness and perhaps I was also somewhat in a lucid dream type state.

I just popped into 2nd gear on a whim. Interestingly enough, like last night, the negative aspects of the experience were the ones that came to the forefront. In the witness it is uncomfortable pressure right in the center of the skull. I think something is being overlayed on top of my experiences lately that is causing my attention to focus on discomfort.

Its almost as if my discomfort is presenting itself so strongly because it wants to force me to deal with it skillfully, to relax, surrender, and just be with it and watch it dissolve. I think it knows how stubborn my mind is right now in wanting to identify with the discomfort, so its asserting itself more forcefully so that I have to fully acknowledge it and let it be. Curious to see who wins.

I think the phenomenon from the last entries were nothing special, just stupid human tricks. I am sure I will gain more clarity as to what it is later. Dud some 2nd gear practice just now after being triggered by a comment in one of kenneths videos that in advanced 2nd gear you can see self and phenomena arising together. I went second gear then tried to look at any self assumptions that occurrd and then kept on looping back to look in the middle of the skull to keep the no dog going. Eventually a body sensation arose and it occurred to me that perhaps that location as a body sensation was merely an assumption. My visual field started to darken considerably and there was some sense of starting to care so little that I was beginning to go off line. Excited thoughts started arising and was able to somewhat see them as more phenomena and was able to give up self enough to restrengthen no-dog a couple of times. Eventually the mental chatter started deciding that this experiment was over for the moment. Seems like some very interesting stuff in this direction. It's like going beyond unity into even questioning the perspective of unity.

Been experiencing a lot of awakeness lately since I decided to not work and take a vacation this week. The wakefulness is so mundane and ordinary that I feel compelled to call ******** on most of this process as a giant practical joke. It's like my ego says "okay, I want some more tasty enlightenment juice" and the dharma says "alright, try this jhana.....it will give you exactly what you think you want....sucker!". It's like if you are communicating with small self, the most skillful thing you can do is trick it with sage dharmic ********.

25 minutes of body meditation. I noticed that when my awareness went away from the body, the existence of the body seems to be only implied. Extrapolating this I can somewhat experientially taste that all things are implied by this neuronal mass even when not actively presented to awareness. I am not sure how much this insight serves me because I don't fully by it - by now I should know better to take something as true just because it presents itself as fact.

Awakeness was much brighter and enjoyable today - I am not sure if the brightness and vividness is from physiological factors or if it is a difference inhow I am inclining my mind. For example today I was vipassanizing my experience a bit more which maybe led to greater brightness. On the other hand, socializing has become weird as I have seemingly little interest in what people are saying and my mind isn't working to come up with interesting things to continue the flow of conversation. The thought arises that if I weren't practicing wakefulness lately then k would be depressed, as I can feel a lot of the heaviness and limiting feelings in my body.

Very weird. I was hanging out in open awareness and decided to look at 2nd gear real quick. I noticed it was a bit difficult to find. Went into it a bit, was having some thoughts about it, like basically shining the light of attention on the feeling of self somehow suppresses self from arising or conflates all known experience as self.

My 2nd gear wasn't stable and I went back to open awareness, but then decided I wanted to play with 2nd gear some more, but couldn't find it very well due to lack of narrative within awareness, so I started just making random I statements outloud: "I like this, I don't like that. That person made me angry...etc." to try to find a sense of I. At first I somewhat believed the statements and then all of the sudden it occurred to me that the statements were just phenemena and completely spontaneously without absolutely any intention I started vipasinizing what I was saying.

Within about 2 seconds this snapped me out of open awareness and 2nd gear and brought my attention immediately to the top of my head. My eyes started flickering totally of their own accord and I noticed that my eyes simply closed themselves.

I decided to take this opportunity to find this damned nirvana thing and so I just tried ride the wave and pay attention to whatever was happening. Lots of pulsing and rooting around occurred on its own. Something shifted when I tried to briefly pay attention to the aspect of no self. I was just lounging on my couch so my body moved me towards a more pre-sleep inclination and my mind shifted again away from the eye flicker to a more spacious awareness. Basically feels like everything came back around to open awareness on its own accord.

I'd never had my experience vipassinize itself before without being at the controls of the intention stick...very different.

Very little wakefulness lately, mostly because, I think I've been having an incredible amount of hedonistic fun with friends in town and few triggers for awakeness have been appearing.

One thing I have noticed though is that negative emotions seem simultaneously more amplified and more grounded. I had a trivial incident yesterday that caused me to instantly feel the most intense rage arise I've had in years and a split second later disappear. I've also noticed that my impulse control seems to have diminished - trivial things like grabbing for a cookie when I know better, but seeming to have less control over the action. Anxiety over future events seems like a totally alien concept.

Tonight I've been reading Nick's path journal and when he wrote about watching for the end of a sensation, I just sat there and tried to do it. Pretty quickly my eyes started twitching as they looked for the end, then again started fluttering and closing my eyes of their own accord. I just tried to not anticipate anything and pay attention to everything. There was various rooting around, and at some point missed track of what I was doing and popped into a similar quality of what I know to be 1st jhana with a lot of really fast vibrations. After watching that for a while and looking for the falling away again, my eyes started subtely twitching again, but at this pointthe kids were in the process of resisting bedtime and I felt compelled to come out to help.