Bill H Practice Log

45 min choiceless, started a bit slow, eventually got into tensions and burning, a few big energy releases accompanied by partial loss of duality, sensations quick, then calm and some ordinary stuff, after a bit a quick wave of tension going up the head, twisting the mouth up, slowly smoothing out into a wide, open awareness, many sensations, some drifting in there, calm but lots of stuff going on all over the body and the senses. After the first big energy rush the body broke into flashing pinpricks as well - been a while since I felt that. Had started slow to try and get a bit more concentrated - I had forgotten about that, will start sits off with straight mahasi from now on since the concentration always seems to speed things up greatly

55 min 4F noting, mostly sensations and vedana, some aversion thoughts noted, tensions and tingling the whole time, not very strong, felt like the sit slowly went from less calm and collected to more, the body settling down as noting continued, some strong tensions in the head though every so often and noticing how the mind is overlaying self images onto sensations in the head and body, and how there is some sort of 'grabbing' going on there...

55 min 4F, tensions and tingling, hard tension in the head for bit, a few energy rushes, after a while mouth twisting tension rising up the front of the face, then the noting got to be too much, ended up noticing for a bit, quiet, slowly objects in the body and mind were moving more over to being 'object', sometimes more, sometimes less, seeing in small ways that the tension in the head is just tension, not me, watching the mind taking it as 'me' , that process also not me, only seen weakly though - I can tell that there is a point where all objects are 'over there' including the process of selfing. I scratched this a few times but never stuck there.

some amazing painful tensions in the head and jaw last night - not just tension but to the point of very sharp pain. Noted and it came and went.

55 min 4F noting. tensions, some itching, period of fast sensations and energy rush, then it seemed like the sit got calmer slowly and more open slowly while I seemed to cycle through unpleasant stuff, noting the sensations and the aversion thoughts, sometimes seen clearly enough to cause a release of tingles and an increase in ease. I guess the dark night was never the problem, it was just that I wasn't noting it and seeing that the aversion itself was not 'me'.

55 min 4F, cycling through negative states, tensions and energy rush up to the first third of the sit I guess, then evened out and cycled through tiny bits of fear, some nausea, sadness, aversion, some shaking of the head, strong tensions and releases in the head, kept repeating the loop over and over, noticed the mouth twisting a bunch of times, the sensations were intense but the suffering keeps getting a bit less, noted over and over the aversion and where in the head it likes to glom onto sensations, very calm background and wide open, at some point the noting got easier, relaxed and flowed a bit, but this didnt last very long.

55 min 4F, tensions and drifting, sleepy in the beginning, into some itching/burning then after a bit energy rush/directness/fast sensations and started cycling again - Its like a wave of tension starts just below the jaw somewhere and rises up, twisting the mouth into/with some sadness, and the tension goes somewhere into the head - noting all this and any thinking that I can see. Was able to see some vague conditioning loop running that I haven't had a handle on before, sit slowly calmed and sense of ease slowly increasing. Open but not going out into the environment unless pulled. Funny how I see the same 'stuff' arising that I know has been there for years causing suffering yet the amount of suffering it causes is a tiny fraction of what I once remember.

almost forgot to write this down..

55 min 4F, some doubles and triples, it was subtle but seemed to pass through tensions, burning, itching, energy release, then started a number of cycles of tension rising up the face/head and a few different states but the sadness and mouth twisting was more noticeable than others, eventually got calm, open, head tingly all throughout, after a while got sleepy, noting drifting and daydreams, then closer to the end noticed a few more cycles of rising tension.. Lots of small stuff coming and going in the head and body, a few sharp pains in the third eye area.

3x30 min 4F yesterday, mostly cycling DN and after the sit for hours had an extremely painful tension all over the whole body..

55 min Ultrafast mind/body noting, tensions and burning, itching, then many energy rushes, tingles, releases in the body, mostly the head, a number of rounds of mouth twisting tension, many aversion thoughts noted, the fast note seemed to act like a wedge to unglom body and mind somehow, got into a very clear (for me) open state with no problems a few times, then fell back into the cycling tension in the head, where it starts just below the mouth and works its way up. Bell.

55 min ultrafast, tensions, some itching, a buildup of tension and then a release or two, rushing energy and tingles in the head, some mouth twisting tension a few times, a number of insights where tensions in the body and head seen clearly as not self, ease, calm, simplicity, attention seemed to go wide sometimes and contract other times, some clarity of sensation, then some drifting, had to pick up the note again, noticed I had dropped it in the midst of just being here.

55 min started ultrafast, then 4F - about 20 minutes to energy rushing and tingles all over, mouth twisting and sadness/aversion, then lots of tension rising over and over, starting at about mid neck and up into the head, would get up to the top and things would feel very equaniminous and wide, then it would start over again, seemed to get stronger as the sit progressed. At one point the tingles/tension moving around in the jaw and middle of the head were extremely intense, like I had 120V hooked up to various parts of my face and head, the shocking moving around. Aversion was constant and hard to see, noted it many times and had it break up into a release of tension and shower of tingly sparks inside the head once or twice.

55 min 4F/choiceless, started out fast, lost the ability to note somewhere in the midst of very strong tensions and mental instability and switched to mahasi, seemed like the only thing that could be done. Stayed on rising and falling, many tensions, pains and aversion thoughts quickly coming and going.

OK - this is not saying it cannot be done, but I think I finally have the results of my personal experiment.

I decided to attempt to go in the direction of the jhanas and more mental stability before continuing (with anything else), and it turns out to simply not be very doable for me at the moment. Initially it felt like I was getting some progress in staying on an object but over time stability and the ability to see the mind clearly has gotten worse, not better, even with some very good teachers leading the way.

I have however gotten much more accepting of the dark night, and the perpetual cycle I seem to be in.

Last straw was today again trying a samatha sit, which I have been doing 1+ hr per day for 4 months or so, finding the mind getting less and less stable, and finally giving up in disgust, switching on some easy, relaxed noting and finding a wide open awareness and stable mind where before there was none. Ahh well, its funny how I don't even seem to have control over what practice path I can take or what works. Amusement.

Seems to me my weak spot is still the thinking mind, not being able to even tell when it is active, so I will be trying to accentuate thought noting as I can.

Welcome back, Bill! Your experience is interesting. I wonder whether vipassana practice conditions us to keep going with it regardless of what we think we're trying to do. In any case, keep us updated.

doesn't feel like conditioning so much as the way awareness wants to work due to what energetic stuff in the body has been activated due to insights - its nearly impossible for me to do a concentration practice without the energy flying up to the head causing all sorts of instability. Its like where I am at the mind wants to be wide, and if I try to get it to do anything else its like trying to get a horse to drink water...

jumped the shark after a bad day.. Gotta give myself credit for catching it though. Back to what I was doing... Ahh those personality habits

Update - I have decided that I cannot easily make progress in samatha (yet). I have learned alot and know how to get very close to jhana but what seems to happen is that I get very concentrated and tranquil/relaxed and then shoot up through the arc off the cushion and get stuck in the dukkha nanas somewhere, unable to objectify them without a noting practice. This process takes 2-4 days or so and the whole time it becomes almost impossible to keep the mind on an object. This last time I got in a state completely without hindrances where the mind felt more unified than ever and enraptured (did this by relaxing the tensions away, not by force) - then sure enough 3-4 hours later I got hit with massive amounts of bliss off cushion happening out of my control (uh-oh) and three days of terrible tensions and anxieties mixed with anger and whatnot with the good ole jackhammering tensions in the middle of the head every time I tried any practice -
noting is the ONLY thing that seems to move it along in that space... It is also the easiest off cushion practice I have found - the rest of them seem to take too much bandwidth or require too much stillness.

I did learn a boatload about metta and how it works - I dare say that it is about the closest thing to magic I have ever experienced. Pretty remarkable when you are doing metta and hit a strong spot in your mental cycle.

This morning's sit , freeform noting- lots of floating and sitting in a large empty space sensations, dropped into a dead calm of mind a few times, ringing in the ears, some interesting puffy sensations in the head... (I will have to start writing these down sooner)

had some very rough stuff off cushion, pain in head and face, pulsating, mild nausea a few times, noticing the sensations shifting from anxiety/fear to upset to some sort of painful tone, some instability..

Lunch sit, ~45 I think, more freeform. The whole sit the body was burning lightly, trying to keep awareness wide to allow it to expand as it feels like it wants to do lately, some rising falling while keeping a wide angle open, some pain and harsh stuff in the beginning - after a while what would happen is I would be noting rising/falling and whatever might pop into front in the sense field but then something the mind was doing related to a lump of tension in the center of the head would come up and if it was properly objectified as tension and self image thought it would release a bit and things would get expansive, a bit calmer. Still noticing that burning all over. It was calm for a noting session I suppose though compared to some of the samatha I have done recently it was very active! Will have to get used to that again...

Session with Beth -

Couple of things changed in my view of noting -

1. I had somehow turned noting into an attack on the self, instead of a process of identifying and objectifying/disembedding from all phenomena

2. I hadn't really ever considered that one must really become proficient at the 4F's, each in its own right being something that needs to be worked on. I can see physical sensations pretty clearly but mindstates/thoughts are very weak comparatively so I can see how this could keep me stuck!


Feel sort of like I am starting over - glad to have the support and knowledge

45 min this AM, alternated between physical and senses and noting mindstates. Normal physical stuff, mindstates were difficult to not get lost in so I would do a few rising/falling and then look/note and then go back to rising/falling again. some looping going on, tried to note it, saw it was a defeated mindstate/ failure mindstate (wow this stuff sticks around eh), then after a while could see a mindstate of *desiring* to be a victim, like being attached to self pity or something, the mind was doing this almost every time I looked at it. Interesting I know this stuff is in there but haven't really worked with it much yet.. more later

didnt write about the second sit yesterday...

This morning, two sits first an hour second maybe 30-35 min, Seemed to start off slow, sluggish from a good night sleep, then lots of self-dissapointment thoughts noted as I stayed on mindstates a bit until shifting back to more physical, seemed to do this throughout the sit as I find noting mindstates difficult, slow, and I get lost so I have to do it for a short time only... Had some burning/tingling after while, a release and shift where energy seemed to cross the midline behind the eyes and rise, then some sensations clearing, pushing, expanding, pain, tingling as something seemed to be pushing its way up inside the head, then during the second sit started to see more and more as object, and things got very calm, simple, experience seemed pure and easy, wide but not forced, noting far too much to add to the situation so I just watched for a while, with the occasional sense that everything was an object, with the question 'but then who?' wordlessly arising.

harder time of it today, 1 45 and 1 30 at the beach, mind very resistive and not very willing to do the work - noting as much as I could. Had a particularly sticky hindrance coming up like a broken record. Noted it and the corresponding sensations hundreds of times.

back. It appears to be basically impossible to make any kind of progress with samatha without getting into all sorts of nasty stuff and losing the ability to do samatha. It seems that although I have other wishes, noting actually works whereas what I have been trying to do just doesn't work for me.

Heh - looking at my posts. Looks like I am on a yoyo of rolling up the mat and throwing it away then picking it up again. Have to smile at this from the outside:)

45 min noting, all over the 4F's at random, whatever was center stage. Some pressure, moving slowly up the center of the head, after a while opening to a wider space, sense of the pressure opening wide up/out the top of the head, noting moments of seeeing, hearing, feeling, pressure, lots of self-images and half formed thoughts going by.

I want to thank everyone who does post their log here for continuing to do so. It is inspiring!