Justin's Journal 2

It seems to be the fashion to start a new journal after a significant shift. Two weeks ago my 3rd gear practice peaked and I was aware most waking moments within a 24 hour period. For the week prior to that my sitting/noting was highly energetic with kriyas lasting for hours afterword.

It feels like that process burned away a significant amount of the sense of self located in the middle of the head. If I had to put a number, I'd say 70%-90%. I can still find the No Dog Witness, but it is much more subtle than before.

My total cushion time has been 20-30 hours - probably only 2-3 hours on jhanas and 10 hours high power noting fueled by Piracetam. The vast majority of my practice was just recognizing awareness as often as possible. While walking, usually 20 minutes a day, I would spend 80-90% of my time aware of what was arising in the moment. Six months ago, I might recognize awareness 10 times in a day, for just a few seconds at a time. It started slow, but eventually hit an exponential growth that culminated at the nearly 24/7 peak. I am now back down to recognizing once every 1-5 minutes for just a few moments at a time.

A few days after this 3rd gear peak I was clearly able to see the Witness and watch it vanish, which helped to further triangulate and clarify 3rd gear.

A couple of days later I learned the Mahamudra Noting technique which I currently use as a blunt instrument to defuse strong tension.

With the exception of hugely traumatic events, I find it quite probable that this mind will successfully short circuit any future loops of compounded suffering.

"Confusion dawns as awareness" feels most close to describing my path and experience to date. There is still much confusion, especially around the body and mind states - maybe this is the awkward teenager phase?

Thanks so much to Kenneth and all you guys - this sangha is exactly what my mind needed.

A decent amount of wakefulness today. I went for a hike then sat down to do some noting - the state change transitions were very subtle as if all of the energy in my body was already in a good place. I noticed a pulse out the top of my head that brought me to very pleasant 3rd gear - I wonder if it was a fruition. I had read about lengthening the fruition attainment so I just hung out there for a bit - it was very nice. Just subtly different than my normal 3rd gear. I wonder if the subtle differences I am seeing in my awakeness is some aspect of higher jhanas? Perhaps I'll decide to familiarize myself with those jhanas at some point.

Backsliding. Cause and effect is being noticed of decreased mindfulness leading to greater emotional reactivity and negative habitual patterns. The organism does not like this and I suspect it will adjust.

Recently I had been coming to the conclusion that absorption states such as watching a movie or problem solving are no better or worse than recognition of awareness - they are just gaps in time where one is asleep and then one wakes up again.

My view in this is now changing and I am again seeing that there is more than the binary lost/awake. There is the conditioning of lostness/awakeness leading to more of one or other other. The intellectual understanding of "each moment conditions the next" is now combining with my experience to show that just as moments of awakeness lead to more moments of awakeness, moments of lostness also lead to more moments of lostness and ultimately to unskillful actions.

I still have not had a period of more than a couple of minutes of gross suffering since my last shift, but I can see how the next subtle layer effects others.

Got to play with some suffering while sprinting up a mountain today. I could see the pain in my lungs but also the other thing that was arising that was making the pain into suffering. Sometimes it was there, sometimes it was not. I guess I would label this arising thing to be 'resistance'. Not trivial to deal with but I was grateful for it to assist my practice.

Tried to do Mahamudra noting during this but I needed to keep my concentration on my footfalls so it didn't work - instead just shifted to 'listening' 'listening' 'listening' 'listening' rather than allow room to think about positive mind/body states.

That sounds very similar to something I experienced today while walking a long distance carrying heavy things from the store. One thing I did to remediate this is notice not just the resistance, but the fantasy of getting to the destination. I wonder why the mind simply can't be okay with the discomfort of exercise. At the end of the day the resistance doesnt help. Would you feel the resistance arising from your chest?

I can't remember the location just that it was shadowing the physical pain in my lungs. It'll be interesting to look at this more.

Hit "rock bottom" in terms of my backsliding on awareness, but still haven't experienced memorable gross suffering since my last shift. This "rock bottom" has created enough disatisfaction to provide motivation to be more attentive and diligent.

The mind seems to have created a new floor in terms of how low it will allow itself to go into dukkha-land before it decides to hit the circuit breaker and either wake up or start mahamudra noting. Deep anxiety and depression seem highly unlikely future scenarios from this perch.

I think I am either experiencing a "fruition" and "fruition attainment" or another jhana. Either way, I am able to generate them on demand in about 5 seconds. I would love if someone experienced could jump in and help me clarify.

How I am experiencing this: From a somewhat self-contracted state, I begin rapid fire vipassanna, just trying to pay attention to as much stuff as possible as fast as possible. Gross sensations arise for the first half-second or so, followed immediately by massive shaking kryas. The mind notices the frankly disturbing body movement, the judgement of that movement, then immediately goes and hunts for the witness or self sense tending to target toward the back of the skull and spine. It seems like witness/self sense is perhaps contacted and then energy will shoot up in a ring around the skull and blow off pleasantly through the top of the head. Again, this takes all of about 5 seconds.

I open my eyes, and what is left would be noted as brightness, lucidity, curiosity and no discernible sense of self arising for at least a number of seconds. Without the intention to maintain this, however, a concept often quickly arises and my mind is again lost from awareness.

This place I have experienced many many times before just through recognition of awareness, but by going through this specific path it is easier to see when no self-contraction is present.

Illness and nausea is my support for mindfulness today. WIthout suffering there isn't much motivation for practice, so this is a nice change.

I've been doing about 30 second bursts of rapid fire noting periodically when I notice that I am stuck in self contraction even while attentive. During this 30 seconds I'll have a brief bought of kyras and then I start looking for self arising. Once this is seen there is a shift in energy and I am back to clean looseness, brightness, and lucidity. Having multiple tools in the toolbox has been helpful.

I had a bout of existential fear last night. The dominant feeling was confusion and struggle with why I was suffering over this. I think being very tired had something to do with it.

Congrats on your big shift Justin!

Thanks Ron. It feels very weird, because things have settled back into normalcy but *something* is different. I'm actually *less* aware right now than I was leading up to and immediately after this shift. I think this is because there is simply less compounded dukkha, so I need to really dig in and find my new motivation for awakeness. I think this motivation has to be compassion. But if I logically look at this compassion, being dualistic and just getting sh*t done for people is also useful and offsets the need to be totally awake. I can sense that I have a lot of learning to do over the coming months!

I was threatened by a very strong dukkha storm yesterday. The feeling in my body would have normally registered as deep depression. I struggled with it for a minute or two and then it became support for very strong awakeness. I was able to maintain near continuous awareness for an hour or so afterwards. My energy levels remained low the rest of the day, but I was thankful for this support. I think this low energy may correlate to poor diet and sleep the last couple of days.

Nice work and congrats Justin!

Dark Night symptons have always been very productive practice opportunities for me too.

I am starting to notice an energy signature in the shift from selfing to not-selfing. When my eyes are closed and noting, I often feel this pulse of energy going up in a ring around the surface of my head. I never noticed this before when walking around with my eyes open, but when I pay attention to the shift, it is still subtly there.

I am now seeing how the noting technique works. At least for me, its just rattling around in various mental states until you finally get the clarity that something is resisting some of the experience and when seen, it disappears.

Even further decreased mindfulness lately - though it seems to be kicking in at the right times. I noticed an instance today where I was conceptualizing/narrating my state and was able to let go of any concepts and things became clear and wonderful again.

Trying to let go of concepts and descriptions has been my practice lately. I can feel all sorts of selfing and conceptualization oozing in during the moments that I am paying attention.

In a very weird place lately. Recognizing awareness perhaps only dozens of times per day - so my contracted self wants to complain about this situation that there is a whole lot of unenlightenment going on, but then I realize that things are perfect, right now.

Moved my 'self' down to my belly earlier ala Nick's post ( nickdowntherabbithole.blogspot.com/2011/...ions-sweet-spot.html ) and I got stuck in some really heavy fear - took a combination of Nick's instructions on that page and Mahamudra Noting to break free from it as "I" was really averse to that state and "I" wanted desperately to get out of it but knew "I" couldn't get out by being an "I".

I realized tonight that I've been too caught up in recognizing selfing and not-selfing and have been forgetting the preciousness of NOW. Everything else is a fiction, we can watch phenomena arise and recognize patterns in its unfolding, but this recognition obscures the fact that NOW is the only thing that exists, and if we don't pay attention to it, it is lost forever.

I have observed that massive serpent spine kryas are associated with trying to watch the dropping away of phenomena or trying to look backwards in reality frames.

Questions and curiosity. These are what I need, but I forget. Hopefully I will remember more.

"... NOW is the only thing that exists, and if we don't pay attention to it, it is lost forever."

Well, "forever" is not a concept that is compatible with the rest of your comment, that being that there is only NOW.



I would also ask this: where do your memories come from and if there is only NOW how in heaven does anything happen? What is change? WHEN is change?

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Things are more inscrutable than they seem from this side or from that side of the perceptual razor's edge, as they are both always just now and ever-changing, at the same time.

Thanks Chris. I have a hard time holding both absolute and relative simultaneously.

Knowing vs not knowing - I haven't figured it out yet.