Abideasthat practice journal

This comes at a time when my desire is at an all time low. The general condition of my state has degenerated considerably due to problematic integration, mainly due to a destabilizing job that is very physically demanding and abusive. Fortunately, this job is temporary and will not exceed 10 more months. Hoping that sharing can provide an opportunity to get better insight into john's unique process.

My practic,e which at one point was a source of great pleasure and transformation has become mundane and stale. Facing quite a bit of dark night issues, problems integrating, and just an overwhelming sense of apathy as has never been felt before.

There has been much helpful feedback and support from members of this community. It's humbling to see the support. Thank you...

The practice consists of 15 minutes of a breathing pranayama, followed by 30 minutes of light mantra, followed by 25 minutes deep abidance in silence and then 5 minutes of opened eye meditation in which thinking and perception facilities are attempted to be subdued.

The practice will be done twice a day. So an individual session is 70 minutes long and this will be done twice a day. Unfortunately due to scheduling these sessions will take place as can be fitted throughout the day.

During the day, abiding in the "I AM" constantly and consciously. Is there a KFD term for abidance in the I AM? Is that second gear?

Noticed that this board has it's unique language. Will try to assimilate it into the vocabulary of this journal. If someone wants to bring me up to speed on them...

Will start the actual log tomorrow.

Great to see you get a practice journal on the go, hopefully it'll be beneficial and help you with this difficult phase you're dealing with. If it's any help, it took me quite a while to get to grips with Buddhist terminology so just focus on your practice and the linguistic stuff will fall into place. Keep the descriptions phenomenological, it saves worrying about that side of things and makes communication much easier without having bother about using inaccurate terminology.

In the meantime, you'll see dwelling in the "I Am" referred to as 2nd Gear, or occasionally "the no dog", while resting in awareness is generally known as 3rd Gear.

Have you tried using the noting technique yet? Your current practice looks like it's based more in concentration/absorption practices so vipassana could be just what you need to cut through the crap and make some progress!

Metta, Karuna and the very best of luck with everything!

What Tommy said!
Best of luck with your practice, John.

Yesterday evenings session was a bit frustrating. Find that after a long day of physical labor, couple by a big dinner is not the most conducive for meditation.

The quality of the meditation was foggy. Mainly it was the mind playing back conversations and occurrences from the work day. My abidance as pure consciousness was limited as my attention was consistently moving into the periphery of appearances. Frustration grew a bit due to the inability to dissolve these movements in thought into the light of consciousness.

In addition, there was quite a bit of sleepiness. The mind keep drifting into a pseudo-sleep state. There was a fight to state awake. Eventually the frustration overtook my meditation and stopped after about halfway through the sitting. This was probably one of the worst sittings that john has had in years.

My morning meditation are much more clear, deep and crisp. Sleep seems very important. It's amazing how the quality of my sittings, general state can literally change overnight with a good night sleep.

This particular morning sitting was more of my baseline sitting, if you will. A particular issue that is being with, persistently keep coming up to grab attention, but it was not as gross as it had been in the previous days. It was more transparent, as were the most of appearances that came up.

Absorption would last in about 30 sec. intervals and when an appearance arised it immediately dissolved back into the light of consciousness and john would fall back into absorption for another 30 secs or so.

This was pretty much the sitting. The quality, of the sitting itself was pleasurable. Light, and expanded. When john sits, he almost falls into somewhat of an energetic holding. The spin straightens up, and it's almost like a mountain of consciousness and it feels unmovable.

Restlessness on only a couple of occasions. The intensity/duration was minimal.

"Great to see you get a practice journal on the go, hopefully it'll be beneficial and help you with this difficult phase you're dealing with. If it's any help, it took me quite a while to get to grips with Buddhist terminology so just focus on your practice and the linguistic stuff will fall into place. Keep the descriptions phenomenological, it saves worrying about that side of things and makes communication much easier without having bother about using inaccurate terminology.

In the meantime, you'll see dwelling in the "I Am" referred to as 2nd Gear, or occasionally "the no dog", while resting in awareness is generally known as 3rd Gear.

Have you tried using the noting technique yet? Your current practice looks like it's based more in concentration/absorption practices so vipassana could be just what you need to cut through the crap and make some progress!

Metta, Karuna and the very best of luck with everything!"

Tommy,

Noting seems counterproductive to me. Is there benefit to 'noting' when one can readily transcend the 'noter'?

The noting that is done, is more of a general noting. Whether it is a bird outside, a bodily sessions, a thought or emotion sometimes there will be a noting that this is an 'appearance in consciousness'. Is there a benefit to specific noting?

Yes, my meditation is strictly a concentration/absorption aside from the pranayam and limited asanas that are done.

Is not concentration/absorption to goal of vipassana? Again, not the well versed in vipassana aside from a Goenka retreat. Thanks for yyour feedback and support.

best,
j

"Noting seems counterproductive to me. Is there benefit to 'noting' when one can readily transcend the 'noter'?"

Yes, without a doubt there's benefit! Noting while in the Witness/2nd Gear/"I Am" is an excellent practice, as is going through the jhanas while in this state.

Apologies for the brevity of the response, I'm just finishing up in work so I'll reply again later.

Back again...

I can assure you that noting is far from counterproductive, even after people have attained 4th path they can still use noting to gain insight and learn so don't knock it till you've given it a decent shot. I know what you mean though, and I've heard a lot of people say the same thing but if you start bringing it into your practice you will see why so many people are enthusiastic about it. Right now it sounds more like you're just being openly aware, more like shikantaza than straight vipassana, which is fine and I don't doubt that development will occur as a result of this practice, it's just that vipassana seems to allow for more efficient progress which also seems to occur in stages which are universally recognizable to every yogi who engages with this technique.

The benefits of specific noting are that you can thoroughly and completely disembed from experience which frees you from the process of identification with phenomena. I think that this is why it could be useful for you given your history and the way things feel for you right now, you're still identifying with some aspect of your experience which is what's causing this suffering you're dealing with at present. Sure, having 2nd gear/I AM as you're baseline is great and all but, like Ramana Maharishi said, the I AM is just the stick which stirs the fire and is eventually consumed by it. The stick you're stirring the fire with, the I, is burning away as we speak which is why things utterly suck right now, you've made progress and are now in, what we generally call, Dark Night a.k.a. dukkha ñanas (knowledge of suffering/dissatisfaction) a.k.a. life-sucks-and-I-want-off-the-ride-time.

Absorption isn't the goal of vipassana, insight is the goal. The Buddha taught three trainings: Wisdom, Concentration and Morality. Vipassana is the road to Wisdom with a capital W.

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With vipassana you're using momentary concentration on each object appearing in awareness in every single moment, constantly labeling and objectifying until the perceptual knot unties. It's mechanical and simplistic, it's only once we start talking stages and insights that things become a bit more compllicated so don't over-think this as you will waste your time trying to figure it out. It's a no-brainer, literally. I wasted time on bad technique and trying to figure this thing out and IT DOES NOT WORK. You know already that the mind isn't what gets this done, you've seen enough through your previous practice to know that this is all completely possible so it's up to you whether or not you choose to give this a go or stick with what you've been doing so far. Don't get me wrong, the way you feel right now will pass eventually and it's just part of the process but, and I speak from experience here, noting will make it pass faster and good practice will make it much easier to deal with.

I know it's difficult right now mate, this stuff really, really, really sucks at times but everyone here will know, to a greater or lesser extent, how you feel so talk about it and get some different opinions. We're all in this together and everyone here wants to help each other so join in and see what happens. I've just had a really horrendous pass through this territory which I've mentioned in my own thread but it absolutely does pass, and it'll inevitably come again 'cause it all just cycles until you're done with it so get y'er arse on that cushion and start objectifying sensations!!

Hope this helps a bit.

Metta, Karuna and a big manly hug,
Tommy

I want to add in my two-cents' worth to support what Tommy is saying, and to support your practice. I had a lesson with Kenneth this morning, and am in the process of moving into noting practice myself. I've had dark-night stuff for years now, and while I'm not going to give up my concentration training, I realize now that the noting practice is the only thing that's going to get me beyond this.

One thing I've discovered about this forum: when it comes to feeling rotten, we've all been there, and we all want to help and encourage one another to deal with it and get past it. All the best to you, lots of metta, Laurel

Awesome, Tommy! Thanks for taking the time to write that.
Yesterday, I interviewed Thanissara, who's coming to Atlanta for a daylong retreat. She was describing how Ajahn Chah used to go out of his way to irritate, annoy, disturb and otherwise f' with his students whenever he saw them focusing overmuch on attaining and holding absorption states. What did Ajahn Chah want these students to be able to do? Well, he wanted them to be able to break down/disembed from the entire process of getting angry or irritated, right then in the moment. He wanted them to understand how they heard, saw, felt the triggering event as bare sensate experience, responded with aversion to it, had reactive thoughts as a result of it, and then felt the impulse to act one way or another out of that reactivity. Noting is a fantastic way to move from an ascending or transcending approach to one that incorporates the at-times tough work of descent and integration.