Torsken swimming the seas

Hello all,

for a brief background of my situation, please see this thread: kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/thread/4745390/-

Since writing that post about one month ago I've been practicing more or less daily for about 30 minutes at a time, and read a lot on the subject from this site, Dharma Overground and Daniel Ingram's book Mastering The Core Teachings of Buddha.

I've been trying out different practices in addition to my usual counting of the breath, just following the breath with a silent mind (feels even more natural when the mind happens to be calm to start with), very little of Kasina (still haven't got the hang of that) and of course noting which I'm finally starting to get a hang of and which is becoming my primary practice - somehow I have started feeling even more concentrated during noting than when doing actual concentration practice.

At one point I got myself bit too worked up by the whole Dark Night scenario, thinking that I wouldn't want to do insight practices before really grasping the concentration and Jhana part as I read in few places that it would be easier to pass the dukkha nanans with them than as a "dry" vipassana practitioner. The thinking went on the lines that I'm practicing mostly to find relief to my remaining underlying angsts (even if they have already subsided a lot as I've gotten older), not to fall in a even deeper hole and possibly mess up my life with it. Guess that thinking is not totally unique when first time reading of the horror stories of the worst-case scenarios of DN, and not something that would bug me anymore that much - but still just wanted to bring it up for some reason.

On a positive note reading the book and several threads about investigation have got me doing some concious-level investigating of my toughts, feelings and desires. Not that it would lead to any enlightnment by itself, but it certainly is helpful in a therapeutical sense and clearing out the stuff that's on the surface of my mind, making it easier to dive beyond the surface to see what lies there.

Then to this constant feeling of pressure / tingling / electricity in my forehead. It's become even more clear that it is linked to two things:

A) Concrete issues in life, mostly from feelings of underperforming or being somehow incomplete or inadequate, and the shame behind them. This manifests usually in a dull pressure with minor tingling/wallowing.

Practice itself. Even if my forehead would be quiet on a given day, often very soon after sitting on the cushion and focusing my mind even for few seconds, it flares up. During good practice the feelings are not so much of pressure but more sharp, tingling, electricity, energy. It also starts slowly "growing roots" from the eyebrow / third eye area along the sides and/or top my head. It's more like canals that slowly get flooded during the practice and then again dry out when I stop, leaving just the reservoir at the forehead. The water analogy fits in the sense that sometimes I have felt a sudden sensation on my left temple, as if someone pinched a small hole with a needle there, resulting in a strong feeling of energy shooting out directly out from my head trough this small hole.

Few notable practice events from the past month:

Getting my copy of MCTB co-incided with a weekend, and reading of the book gave me tremendous motivation to practice. I think I did 2-3 x 30 mins (which is a lot to me) on both Saturday and Sunday, mostly noting. I remember that on Sunday evening something happened - combination of the practice and reading sentences of 3 characteristics like "this and that will not satisfy, is impermanent, and is not you" many times enough something really sunk in.

For some time my forehead quietened down, I slept better than I had in ages (before re-starting my meditation I had to use a lot of sleeping pills due to work stress), and all trough Monday to Wednesday in work I really felt like my work and me were not the same thing! All the worries and issues were there, but somehow they were not inbedded me in the same way. I had a meeting I usually dread, but slep like a baby the night before and went trough with the meeting with same sense of being just slightly dis-embedded from the whole thing. Sadly thou I was not able to catch the same state in practice in following days, and around Thursday/Friday this small insight (or whatever it was) had died away and I was back being my own very much work-embedded self.

Otherwise there hasn't been any major events as of yet, just few minor absorbtion experiences during practice that however were not particulary stable and required constant concentration to maintain. Some have felt like a "widening" of concentration (guess I was thinking of Kenneth's Chicken Herding example before that sit ), and others more mystical-oriented, feelings of something "swooshing" trough my body, and visuals like the room dimming around me in sync with deepening concentration and then - blip - someone literally turns the lights back on when my concentration falters and I fall out of the state.

Torken, what do you want to get out of your meditation practice?

Hi cmarti,

good question and thanks for replying! Made me a happy fish for a moment to see that someone took interest. The present me is hoping to...

- worry less, to keep a proper perspective on things. This I hope to achieve my better seeing things just as they are, and what they really consist of.

- be more present in life. In many situations I feel I somehow hold back and can't experience things fully, as if I'm looking at things from behind a thin veil or being scared of something that I cannot fully pinpoint.

- explore the different states of mind. Partly because of curiosity and the experiences themself, partly because somehow my mind hopes to find it's relief in them. I've felt great relief and freedom (even if just for a few hours or days) after the few times I've been able to really sink in and get a taste of states or insights or whatever they actually were.

- get these forehead sensations to quiet down. However that I'm hoping to follow from progress on the items above, as all that tingling seems to clearly be more effect than cause.

So in summary pretty much generic stress and anxiety reduction and exploration, not necessarily a great pursuit for full enlightement - at least not yet. Somehow all that seemed simpler in my earlier the Zen terms, now that there is this huge multiple-fold path mapped out in front of me I'm even a bit put back by it - and that whole DN thing, there's enough fear and disgust lurking on the back of my head already and wouldn't want it to surface any more than it has to.

But all that quite probably will change one way or another in the future and doesn't really affect my current daily practice, where I'm more on exploration mode seeing what works and what not, and trying to re-visit the the small moments of freedom I've found so far. Perhaps "the ride" will take over one day or then not, we'll see.

As to the tingling in the forehead, it *might* help if you concentrated on the breath in the stomach instead of at the nose

As to the being more present in life, my first suggestion would be to try to feel your entire body during daily activities. Also, some of Jon Kabat-Zinn's mindfulness programs are really good for that sort of stuff. I should probably give them a look myself, they catch a lot of basics.

For the states of mind, jhana is the one i know best, and can be quite interesting. I do have a small theory that it might make the forehead stuff worse, but if you don't focus on something in the head, i'm thinking you might be able to avoid it. In any case the forehead stuff is a common phenomenon, in it's various manifestations

If you have the time, drop in on the Virtual Sangha tuesday at 8, central european time, and we can talk things over

Oh, here's Daniel Boutemy with some good tricks for getting rid of tension in the forehead
www.youtube.com/user/empty0grace#p/u/57/Xq4NVSp35Rs

Torsken, I started my practice many years ago having the same goals you now have - general reduction in anxiety, worries, and being more present for family, friends and work. It took some time and experimenting with different practices and traditions but those goals became milestone on the ay to something much richer and with deeper meaning. My goal now is to be truly awake in every moment, which also guarantees all the intermediate goals.

cmarti, yes, somehow I have a feeling that something similar will happen to me, at least as long as I keep on practising. Deep down I'm quite aware that my current sensations and current goals are just a starting point for something... something.

Villum, thanks for your tips!

I do some of my sits with the focus on the stomach, but regarding the forehead sensations it seems that the spot doesn't seem to matter much, as long as it's not the forehead itself (concentrating there causes the pressure to mount even more). Also my problem is not so much on-cushion, what I'm looking for is some relief from the 24/7 feelings or pressure that I get off-cushion and which have remained with me even trough the past years when I did not practice at all.

I viewed the video by Daniel Boutemy and tried it out in my latest sit, trying to keep awarness not on but around of the pressure area, altough with no success yet. But in a way the idea makes sense so will need to re-visit that later.

So far the only real reliefs I've found have been A) overriding the sensations by wordly activity, moments where I've really felt satisfied about my life - which obviously is not a permanent solution as we know that all is impertanent and nothing satisfies in the end - and C) the afterglows of times when I have gotten somekind of a minor absorbtion or insight during the meditation - which I hope to provide a more longer-term answer.

Btw, I think I've actually started to see a small distinction in the sensations. Off-cushion the feeling is almost always dull wallowing pressure on the forehead, and the same feeling amplifies after a bad sitting (much effort but little concentration). Then again when I do get concentrated or "sink in", the pressure might remain or go away but in addition to it I get sensations that are more sharp, more crisp, have clear borders and feel like electricity or energy.

Some actual practice notes for a change, why not.

This week has been going not so well at work, which usually heavily affects my mindstate. Perhaps as result of that, the practice has also been somewhat frustrating or at least "shallow". One thing to note is that some part of me still really pursues that first Jhana experience and I somehow measure the "success" of each sit by the level of absorbtion.. which of course is not an ideal approach, but even if I try to rationalize that all practice is good the desire to feel something special is strong.

* Monday 24.10. - 30 minutes, late at night, started with noting but was tired and got lured into shifting the practice to "concentrating" by silenty following the breath, a practice I still cannot really do well unless I'm superfocused to start with. On the surface there was some concentration but on the background I guess a hushed-down mind chatter continued and all kind of images came and went un-obscured.

* Tuesday 25.10. - 30 minutes, again late at night, proper noting this time. Quite on a physical level I think, lot of my noting still goes around a boring "rising, hearing, falling, pressure, rising, hearing, falling, pressure", either because there's not much else happening or (more likely) that I'm not concentrated enough to catch all the small toughts - and too heavily embedded on emotional level to really spot the more subtle mindstates. Decent sit nevertheless, with some new places tingling around my face (the areas where the tingling & electricity travels seems to be slowly expanding sit by sit).

* Wednesday 26.10. - off day due to some evening activities

* Thursday 27.10. - 30 minutes of noting. Somehow felt pretty quick and responsive today, caught much more small/subtle toughts and sensations than usual. Felt concentrated but oddly enough the forehead did not react too much this time.

* Friday 28.10. - 30 minutes of concentration, focusing on the forehead itself just for the heck of it. Somewhere in middle I suddenly realized that "hey, no need to pursue that special experience all the time, all practice is good" and all of sudden I relaxed, the focus shifted away from the forehead and I noticed how much pressure I had built up. This pressure soon deflated and this ended up being a pretty decent sit.

* Sat 29.10 morning - 30 minutes of silent concentration / keeping of awarness around and at the back of my head, as per the instructions in the video that Villem posted. Pretty bad sit in the end, mind was not calm to begin with trying to do silent concentration without anchors (noting, counting, etc) in that state once again led to something that's I guess very close to Sloth and Torpor. Felt lazy, stupid and dis-oriented sometime after the sit too.

* Sat 29.10 evening - 50 minutes of noting. Still tired, lazy, aversive, dull. Guess the work stuff was piling up around the end of the week, and some unfinished business kept wallowing in my subconcious, affecting these sits. A pretty decent sit still in the end, not super-concentrated.. an analogy came to mind of a long jog where you're out of energy and can't run anymore, but instead just walk step by step till the finish.

* Sunday 30.10. morning - 20 mins of noting. Aimed for 30 but gave up in the middle, legs felt numb, mind not focused, aversion, wanted out.

* Sunday 30.10. evening (just now) - 30 mins of basic concentration, counting numbers. Nothing grand but a decent sit. One of those "cork bobbing on the water" times, relative concentrated feeling but sorry, no immersion.