Bill H Practice Log

15/40 anapana/MM
have been restless during all the sits the last few weeks, even when very calm..

concentration OK, a bit drifty, MM started similar to the morning, rose up pretty quick, settled again in calmness, openness, listening, sometimes more sometimes less, some daydreaming and drifting, no sense of perfection extending out like this morning though, and still having various negative things happening in the background while listening, although I wouldn't say they were any difficulty. Had the mouth twisting tension/sadness into despair probably 6 or more times while sitting in this calmer space of sounds.

15/40 anapana/MM
concentration OK, watching the mind try to stay in its stories (been getting caught up in vices this week, notably playing games on the computer, being lazy) - eventually got calm and settled in the breath, MM watched my normal experience of the maps sail by quickly, only a few minutes and mouth twisting, eventually another release and just calm, then got calmer, more relaxed, more listening, openness, vedana interestingly was mildly positive even through the stuff I usually consider to be DN'ish, eventually was sitting there feeling lazy almost, relaxing into experience, just sitting there, started to feel like I was getting close to falling asleep almost but not really, more listening, very very relaxed, simple. Bell.

15/40 anapana/MM @ lunch.
concentration OK, MM similar to the morning at first with very quick movement up the maps, tension/energy surge/tingles/calm/mild nausea, sadness, despair, second energy rush, calm, then settled in to an interesting mode where the following were all mixed in, lazy mindstate, some daydreaming, listening, openness, calm, somewhat harsh tension cycling up the body to the crown, some mild nausea in the background the whole time...all happening at once, aversion present but very mild, even the harsh stuff was kind of neutral in terms of vedana, just intense.

30 min anapana while doing laundry - amazing, am starting to use thinking about the object as the means of concentration, not 'trying to hold awareness steadily on the breath', which always seems to lead me into insight territory and concentration doesnt improve. Thinking about the object is a different ballgame entirely - pleasantness rises immediately, and then what happens is that the brain slowly starts to discard everything but the object of attention. Near the end I was getting closer to one pointedness than I can remember being (without extreme effort), and it felt like taking an extremely pleasant vacation. Interesting. More to come.

30 min anapana again, this time the brain refused to go to the same place, and I kept hitting the harsh tensions I associate with third nana. About twenty minutes in this got to be a bit much, I switched to MM and whoosh the energy released, massive tinglefest and then calm for the remainder.

took a short break and then sat down to do 45 more min of MM, seemed like I started in some nausea, mouth twisting after a few minutes, hitting despair then another energy release, calm and smoe more unpleasantness, up to mouth twisting then it got kind of jumbly, shaking observer feeling, after a while everything smoothed out, hearing got clear, having more insights of 'there is no one listening' after each time there is some release of tension and hearing gets very clear, direct, settled into sitting more and more, calm, listening, sometimes with less sense of there being someone listening and sometimes more...

30x30min @ zendo. Difficult time concentrating, first 30 min was anapana. What is interesting though is that near the end of the sit I tried to 'remember' the near one-pointedness from the previous day and I immediately got very concentrated..
MM the next two sits, very difficult in a half hour sit to get very far, both times it felt like I got stuck in the cycling DN stuff, sitting there listening, opening, and noticing fear/sadness/nausea and a few others sort of coming and going like a stuck record player, felt the mouth twisting tension rise up and dissipate at least 10 times total, maybe more. Intense but OK.

Getting married tomorrow will do my best to keep to it but I will probably be off forum a bit.

Back. Day of the wedding all I could manage was 25 minutes of MM...
Yesterday I did get in two 55 minute sits, kind of rough, typical cycling through unpleasant states, somewhat intense - getting used to those.

55 Min this AM, 15/40 anapana/MM

concentration OK, MM typical initial tensions, a few episodes of intense energy rushing, fast sensations, then calm, eventually settled back into listening and watching/allowing/surrender while tension would work its way up the body, over and over again, each time passing through the head and there being some sort of insight seen with a slight shift towards functioning more from the hearing sense as a base rather than the thought world, listening over and over, I can feel how the default state of the brain is to rest in concepts instead of experience, and how there is resistance to flipping this over to a more experiential base.

55 min @ lunch, 15/14 anapana/MM.
concentration OK, need more time with this. MM seemed similar to the morning although the tension was getting very intense, MM not very accessible, seemed to settle into a mode of listening and surrendering as possible while looping of fear/sadness/some nausea/despair, very intense tensions in the body moving/cycling from stomach to top of head and starting over... Seemed to start to calm down and open up a bit in the last ten minutes, started to get some positive mindstates from the MM going, but tough today.

15/40 anapana/MM this morning.

concentration poor, mind looping about 'stuff' going on, kept bringing it back.
Switched the MM object up to 'listening for the sound of the moon' - very different, many more positive mindstates, couldn't tell if I was moving up the maps or not. Light sense of perfection coming and going, openness and well-being coming and going, at times hearing very direct, many sounds arising and passing at once. sometimes allowing/surrender, then listening, relaxing, well-being, perfection, listening, settling in like this until the bell.

15/40 anapana/MM at lunch. Concentration more solid, MM ok , more openness and positive mindstates noted the entire time, it was clear this time that I moved up the maps and settled into listening/openness/surrender and watched unpleasant tension in the body cycle through its phases, moving up through the head and twisting the mouth up each time. The vedana seemed to be closer to neutral though, listening was very strong.

15/40 anapana/MM this morning.
Concentration OK, MM starting out, normall pattern, listening, then energy release, calm, a second release then shifting to unpleasantness, again settling into mode of listening, some openness, some relaxing and well-being with tension moving up the body, mouth twisting, then up to eyes, then top of head and repeat, usually with some insight involved, slowly becoming more and more able to let go into hearing, some fear and resistance to this, noting release seemed to work a bit this time to help open things up.

15/40 anapana/MM at lunch.
concentration stronger than the morning, very similar sit, MM rising up to what I assume is 10th nana, and sitting there for ~20 minutes or so moving through different unpleasant sensations, cycling over and over, hitting fear/nausea/mouth twisting/despair many times, like being in some sort of wash cycle. I could see clearly this time how the believe in a personality/doer is somehow keeping me in the loop, or at least how each cycle of the loop seems to hit the ego with anatta insight, especially right at the mouth twisting part...

55 min anapana after dinner. Had some initial difficulty, seemed like I was doing insight instead of concentration, hit some rough tension, kept playing around with technique until I found a way to solidify the breath (maybe) - by inclining it to be more and more pleasant. This seemed to help, but the one thing I get out of these longer concentration sits is that it is pretty clearly my weak spot. onwards...

15/40 anapana/MM
concentration OK, 'letting go into the breath' - got very relaxed.
MM a bit different this time, listening for the moon, everything in the body seemed subtle and for a while it felt like I was just relaxing, sitting there listening. I did feel a few things I normally feel after a bit like the mouth twisting tension, some sensations pooling in the head and releasing, and there was a small amount of unpleasant cycling going on in the background, but it was subtle enough that I'm not 100% sure it was anything at all other than just tensions.

15/40 anapana/MM

odd - concentration OK but I did something different here and the whole rest of the sit was different. What I tried to do a bit during the anapana was extend the length of time I could stay perfectly with the breath, from a small fraction of a second (I can stay with the whole thing but there is this inherent instability, so I looked for the stable microsecond and tried to extend it) - I was able to extend this a bit near the end of the anapana and could feel some sort of smooth pleasure start to arise, mildly in the background.
Switched to MM and it was different. Hearing felt wildly powerful, like I would barely attempt to listen and almost instantly the sense of self would nearly dissapear in a lake of sounds - I could feel the typical body stuff occuring in its usual way (moving up the maps) in the background but this time there was a different overlay, an additional factor. For the beginning of the sit there was, for a few minutes a sense of the whole meditation happening on its own, which faded after a bit but was then replaced by a sense of inside/outside unifying, with some sort of peace pervading the body, light joy, and near the end this opened up into a few moments of wiildly expansive and 'free of a sense of me' moments with a sort of panoramic hearing, that not quite being the right word for it, sort of an understatement. These additional factors weren't solidly present the whole time, but I dont usually notice these things all in one sit. Seems to me like I was a bit close to the jhana side of the arc that time, perhaps? I will keep experimenting with that method of concentration to see what happens, see if it is useful or repeatable.

15/40 anapana/MM this morning.
not able to repeat yesterday's, just sort of normal sit, concentration OK, not great, tiredness, MM not very accessible, body stuff seemed more subtle and wasn't too sure about this being insight until at some point noticed intense mouth twisting tension, and again settled into listening/some openness with unpleasant tension rising up the body in the background, although hard to see clearly, noticed mouth twisting tension shifting to eye tension/middle of head and then dissipation seuence, probably 4-5 times until the end of the sit. Last 5 minutes more peace, listening, openness, mild sense of OKness but mind drifting, having to drag it back to the task of listening a bit harder than usual.

-had noticed that after yesterdays sit I was having some strong periods of daydreaming, drifting, mind producing all kinds of sticky stories for some reason.

reread log back around the first of the month. Looks to me like moving forward temporarily came from doing that extra hour of MM a few days in a row - my time might be better spent doing extra MM instead of extra anapana for now.

15/40 anapana/MM @ lunch

concentration ok, stronger than the morning. MM easier than the morning, body tension much more intense and harsh though, immediate tensions, energy release after a minute, calm, then sort of lost track, just listening, after a while noticing the mouth twisting tension, another release, more calm, listening, openness, hearing fairly strong. I know some unpleasant stuff kept going on but I seem to have forgotten details, started to drift near the end a bit.

noticed that there is a difference between on and off cushion with MM, might try to adjust on cushion to match. Off the cushion I can do it, oh every ten or 15 seconds or so. Trying to do MM more continuously than that seems to prevent positive mindstates from building, but if I do it loosely like that off cushion I can feel the practice start to build on itself in an interesting way, where a sense of perfection starts to arise and gradually everything gets brighter and more vivid. This doesn't seem to happen very often on cushion, and I wonder if it is because of the amount and frequency of effort being applied. Or not.

20/40 anapana/MM
difficult time - concentration tough due to tiredness.
MM ok but after a while got stuck in unpleasant cycling, and what I can see happening is resistance of the mind to letting go of its viewpoint, listening gets to a certain point and then there is this 'no' that arises, and tension initially in the stomach, then jjumps to neck, then to the mouth twisting it up and then the eyes and middle of the head, all of this being some sort of struggle, the identity pattern not willing to let go into the listening.

an interesting observation I will add - post 114 it seems was an 'A&P' day, as later in the day I still had wildly powerful access to direct hearing/unified states just playing around later. Last night as I was sitting on the couch the mind started to create all these odd and fearful images, of death and sickness of myself and my loved ones, and this morning's sit was rough, afterwards feeling a combination of nausea and depression (since gone) - its almost as IF there is a larger cycle of nana's occuring over the span of days or weeks and then during any given sit I rise up through the nanas but they are smoehow contained or colored by the larger cycle that I am in...

Anyone else ever notice this kind of stuff pre-path?

had some really tough DN stuff after the post as well, all the sudden. Lots of anxiety, tension, awareness contracted, MM not accesible.
Then later kept at the MM off cushion and got into a 1-2 hour groove, where eveything seemed perfect, vivid, interesting, very much in the moment. Seems like you can almost 'ride' the state, with less and less effort required, but lazyness it seems crops up and then it fades. Sometimes it feels like I back-cyle when I fall out of that which is interesting since I didn't really equate it with equanimity, figured it was just great mindfulness, perhaps similar to low EE maybe? Not sure.

Seems to me like the more I do this the better life gets, overall, and I have these periods where its more like it used to be when I was a kid (I suppose), just the wonder of being here in this moment. (not dramatic wonder, just a soft, pervasive kind)

15/40 anapana/MM this morning. Concentration not great, although I was inclining towards making the breath pleasant and was successful to some dregree.
MM - tensions immediately, then rushing tingles/release of energy, immediately jumped to light nausea, then mouth twisting/sadness, then eye tension/middle of head tension and desire to escape, then a minute later release of energy, some thoughts/sensations seen as no-self, and the patttern started over again with the nausea, etc, seemed to cycle this way the rest of the sit, over and over, but each time seeming to disembed from content a bit more, listening as the anchor.

15/40 anapana/MM
anapana seemed a bit harder, some tension building as I was holding attention on the breath and the busyness of the mind strained against this in the background.
MM - lots of strong tension/energy this time, initial tensions, energy releases, calm for a few seconds and then back into the washing machine cycle, tension moving up the body quickly and stalling in the head, twisting the mouth up and then the eyes, head and rising up , release with some insight occuring and then all over again, harsh. Listening the whole time, about 15 min to go all the sudden something got cut and all thoughts and sensations for a minute were floating, disconnected from anything, ownerless. Big energy/tingles release with this disconnection/disembedding - Teflon mind, no problem possible in that state. Then things started to stick again, listening, more tensions rising up, harsh, until the bell.

15/40 anapana/MM
concentration OK, tough after waking up in so much pain again, jaw clenched in sleep.
MM ok, more accessible was the mild hint of perfection that had been gone yesterday. With about 15 min to go I decided I was holding on to the non-object too hard, and opened my eyes. I was still going through tension-cycling, negative vedana creeping up the body into the head and starting over again, but something felt more open about it, more natural, and cleaner. I may try this again. Starting to question the unwritten belief that I have that everything needs to be hard, difficult, struggle, etc - With both concentration and MM I would like to try shifting away from that as possible.