Justin's Journal

Sat for 20 minutes. Initial noting, followed by paying attention to fast visual fuzz, some other stuff, then lots of fairly violent body shaking and twitching. Sometimes it was the head shaking side to side - sometimes full spinal waves. Attention seemed to zoom out to the whole frame of experience a lot of blackness was experienced with eyes pointed toward third eye. Something shifted and a sense of falling back into a similar cycle. More shaking, was losing focus to paying close attention and started getting caught up in tiredness and dream-like images. More tiredness, exited session.

Walking in awakeness 20 min. Again played with tuning into the sense of being alive in this moment. The result this time was an experience of very powerful, masculine vitality overlayed on the normal sense of awakeness.

I'm not sure how accurate this observation is, but attention was often pulled to my abdomen and there was a memory of my early martial arts training speaking of the hara. I contemplated that this would be a very good place to act from in a martial arts context.

Nearly constant awakeness today, definitely the most I have had in a single day. Narrative didn't start up until I was quite tired. I will guess that I was riding off of all the awake people at the conference. Shaking (kriyas?) were still quite strong today - the don't bother me too much but I am self conscious of it bothering others. They add some interestingness to the practice because they feel entirely to be outside of conscious control. I would prefer to move through this state.

Less awakeness today than yesterday and significantly reduced clarity. Time continuity felt very sporadic - accelerating, decelerating, and blipping/skipping forward to the next period of wakefulness. Had one episode of intense fear arise from a rather disassociated state. The kriyas are more tame today and when they do happen there was a greater sense of agency to tone them down.

I had a weird sit right now. I started noting out loud but things felt hollow. I then started focusing on faster vibrations and just trying to note them as fast as possible but it didn't feel like any noting was going on just more of a sense of "duh, vibrations are arising". I did get some minor kriyas and something that felt like some weak approximation of cycling but most of my systems were staying on line and there was very little sense if absorption. Hearing was noticeable during a lot of it and there was a lot of narrative wondering what was going on. Stopped after 10 minutes.

I tried to look at the moment that attention shifts, especially when going from narrative to recognizing awareness, and just try to catch the bugger and see if I can see more closely what was going on there. Pretty much immediately crazy kryas erupt and I am immediately sucked into intense Vipassana.

Went with the crazy energetic vipassana for about 10 minutes while just standing there and am perhaps noticing a new jhana. After the eye flutter and seeking in the third eye, there is a letting off of pressure through the top of the head and another space of openness and equanimity. I honestly can't tell if the state itself is different or the same than other equanimity I have experienced as it is just the entrance that seems markedly different.

If I am going from open awareness to trying to catch this thief of the moment shifting attention it seems to require zero warmup and I am immediately 100 miles per hour in vipassana.

i am also noticing that as soon as I think about doing a 2nd gear practice, it immediately triggers open awareness and from this place 2nd gear is pretty hard to find since the self feeling is much more subtle in this state. I can still "fake" 2nd gear just because I know to shoot my attention to the middle of my head and embed into my eyeballs, but the state is just very unsticky and I quickly end up back in normal open awareness - I think my mind becomes bored with the effort of holding on to 2nd gear.

Hmmm. I can't seem to be able to sustain noting today. I sit, I start noting gross sensations out loud, then the fine sensations quickly show up and I start paying close attention to them. Immediately I notice the pressure and tension from paying close attention to the fine sensations and my mind echoes Kennth's instructions "let go of what is painful". I automatically do so and let go of the effort and tension and am sitting back in 3rd gear again.

The thought arises - "Is this it?" Is noting practice just a joke to get you to see how tense and unsatisfactory it is compared to simply being awake? Or rather, have I simply trapped my mind in some loop that is causing it to prematurely hit the circuit breaker on noting?

I guess the best thing to do is just wait and see what changes.

After my noting "fail" today, the rest of the day was spent mostly in 3rd gear using "what doesn't hurt?" as a reminder and guide when I found myself getting a little lost. I'm getting tired now and finding that narrative is taking over a bit more, so I think its time to go to sleep.

For the last 24 hours I have been recognizing awareness at least once per minute or more. Thats well over 1000 times per day which gives a lot of opportunities to see the transition moment and triggers. This is kind of unbelievable compared to a few months ago where I might recognize it 10 times per day. The only time that I am not being triggered so often is when absorbed in reading and since I don't seem to find any suffering in that kind of absorption, it makes sense that recognition of awareness isn't being triggered.

I now clearly understand why people habitually seek distractions of reading, TV, snowboarding, and work flow states - they are just trying to get away from the pain of themselves and intuitively these are the only tools they know to use.

If I try to sit, I seem to be able to access a very light version of some of the Jhanas, but sooner or later I will recognize awareness and go back to the pain free state. I think it would be possible for me to do high effort vipassana again if I had a strong motivation to do so and overcome the tendency to go away from the pain. I am guessing that is what Bodhichita is all about. However, at the moment, even out of compassion, I see no need to explore more territority and I'd be happy just getting others onto this trip.

Metta.

The demon is in the cage but it is struggling to reconstitute itself and get out. It squirms and wriths around tryIng to make itself known and make itself real. Curious who will win.

I feel like I read The Complete Idiot's Guide to Enlightenment and that's what I got - some sort of dummies version of the big E. My mind has conditioned itself to recognize pain from self-story narrative and switch to 3rd gear so when things are good they are really really good lately. However I don't think I have experienced enough Dark Night by this point because when I feel a ton of anxiety in my chest I feel a great struggle with it - I try to let it be but I am still fighting with it as I am really resisting that part if my experience.

I also can tell that my current triggers have the finese of bringing a bazooka to target practice - there is a huge amount of insight missing that is likely causing the mind to often miss the point. Hard to say because I don't know what I dont know.

Much less recognition of awareness yesterday, but also involved in largely non ruminatin experiential activities.

There is a desire to be done with this silly project. Ahhh...there it is....done. (won't be done later). Just need to figure out how to feel done during the tricky mind states and emotions.

Was able to sit for about 15 minutes today by being very soft and light about it. Was able to notice a bit of space that the phenomena seemed to arise within.

Was somehow able to sit and focus on fast vipassana again today - I think it has something to do with the recognizing that I can get absorbed in something and not be suffering and also that I can set an intention to not go to my happy place when I feel tension and just let it arise.

Some interesting observations:

1) I was taking a very hot bath and there was sweat dripping down my face. The sweat drops were leaving an itchy trail of sensation across my skin. I could very clearly see the intention to move my hand to wipe away the sweat, but it was very very difficult to just be with the itchiness even as I watched it at a very fine grain of just bubbling hissing sensations. Eventually I was able to separate out the negative itching bubbling hissing from the actual physical feel of the sweat moving down. I could clearly see the shape of the negative layer and it was separate from where the droplets were at that moment. Even with this though, more focused in on this field of negativity, it was still very difficult to deal with. I could of course let my attention go wider and essentially distract awareness by allowing more in, but I could not crack the nut of not suffering in those moments...hmmmm...

2) I read the line "At that point, the intelligence that sees and that which is seen merges in the experience of self-aware wisdom: buddha mind, awakened mind, the mind that is free.". When I read this I was already in my current understanding of third gear, but then I was able to see that there was a very subtle sense "the intelligence that sees" that was not being objectified. Once I brought that subtle sense into awareness there was a very subtle yet unmistakable shift of an even more pristine quality. It occurs to me that it would be almost impossible to explain the difference in words other than a subtle witness sense was objectified.

Also surprising to me about this observation is that there was absolutely zero fireworks. This might imply that I have already seen this many times before but that some times I am in buddha mind and some times in subtle witness mind without being able to tell which is going on. It could also be that this subtle witness is a new creation as I have noticed that I seem to be coalescing a new sense of self around 3rd gear. It is really as if 'I' cease to exist when lost in thought and 'I' come back into existence upon recognizing awareness.

Excellent posts Justin!

If you look closely in 3rd gear, do you see any restlessness or some subtle feeling of unsatisfactoryness? Or would you be content sitting in one place for hours or days?

Thats a fantastic question Antero - Thank you! Its basically looking at 'What doesn't hurt' from a different angle. When asked that way, I can see a subtle tension, it becomes objectified and things open up a bit more. After the slight opening, the answer is a definitive yes that there would be contentment sitting there indefinitely.

One observation is that the subtle witness sense feels like a subtle *mind* tension whereas restlessness/unsatisfactoriness feels like a subtle *body* tension, but both of them open in the exact same way.

I think I'll be asking myself this question quite often in the near future.

Very cool, thank you so much for that gift Antero.

For sake of journaling accuracy I think the project can be currently summed up as:

- I'm done in the moments that I am awake. If something seems a bit off, I can ask Antero's question

- When I am absorbed in something like watching a movie, reading, etc. there is no clear light, but also no suffering, so no problem. (I might want to work on more habit change so there is the right balance of absorption)

- When faced with the infrequent moments of difficulty I can do Mahamudra Noting

With all this, I think I can be a pretty happy camper.

I should also note that I haven't seen half of the mental territory that people are talking about on here - I have no clue what these different high jhanas or cessations are about, but I also haven't seen Machu Picchu or Mount Everest. In this moment, its just not a problem.

"I now clearly understand why people habitually seek distractions of reading, TV, snowboarding, and work flow states - they are just trying to get away from the pain of themselves and intuitively these are the only tools they know to use.

"

Just catching up with you, Justin--this is so much the case with me; at least I know I'm doing it.

Hey JLaurelC - From my current perspective I actually view these behaviors as fairly skillful and intuitive - there is no suffering while absorbed, so no problem. The worst that happens is that it seems that some time was lost. I would no longer want to spend the vast majority of my time absorbed because it seems like I am missing the experience of being alive - but I feel like there can be a healthy balance.

I still have a lot of habitual tendencies toward distraction seeking, so I have some work to do - I just need more structure

I have been playing with Antero's question of "do you see any restlessness or some subtle feeling of unsatisfactoriness?" and "the intelligence that sees and that which is seen merges in the experience of self-aware wisdom" and its already quickly becoming clearer if I am embedded in a witness or not.

So far it seems like this subtle witness is really not a problem. There is only subtle unsatisfactoriness, which is still pretty dang good. Its only real problem is that it seems to be a destabilizing factor - it holds 3rd gear more on a razors edge of falling into narrative. When there is a subtle reminder to see the seer, then awakeness is very very stable.

On the flip side, I walked up to my brother totally Buddha'd out and he told me I was being weird - I think I was just staring at him. I easily switched to being embedded back in the subtle witness and was able to turn the weirdness down significantly. This is really wonderful to be able to see both of these perspectives as the subtle witness really isn't that unsatisfactory.

We'll see...

Playfulness and practice - "Oh, Hi Awareness!"

"On the flip side, I walked up to my brother totally Buddha'd out and he told me I was being weird - I think I was just staring at him. I easily switched to being embedded back in the subtle witness and was able to turn the weirdness down significantly. This is really wonderful to be able to see both of these perspectives as the subtle witness really isn't that unsatisfactory.

We'll see... "

Hahaha--my husband told me I was acting weird after I got home from my meditation retreat, although it wasn't for the same reason (no 3rd gear yet for me). But I guess we do have to put some kind of a lid on this stuff when we're with people. I have no recollection of what I was actually doing that was so uncharacteristic--probably speaking really slowly, and not quite "with it."

Some significant back-sliding on the number of awakeness moments. Whereas I was 90% at the BG conference I am maybe back to 30% again. (Its really impossible to tell since time is so distorted). Right now I don't fundamentally mind either being awake, ruminating, or being absorbed in something. When the ruminating starts causing pain, it usually seems to wake me up and automatically fix itself. The only thing I don't like about not being awake is the non-awake moments now feel like a total waste. At the same time, I can't beat myself up about it because those moments are history - so this is just the ruminating self making up a story.

I still have a lot of distraction seeking habits and my awakeness seems to be more head oriented than embodied, so we'll see where this goes.

Hmmm...really fascinating concepts on KFD the last couple of days....wait! Concepts!? Aren't they just those tricky bastards trying to keep me from being awake?! Ahhhh...awareness. (and metta