Bill's Notes

Thanks, Kenneth. Good to see your presence on the forum. I will continue to report what feels useful.

I still seem to be in some sort of transition phase where the effects of recent months seem to be slowly becoming more and more integrated. At the same time I have never felt so disinterested in meditation or spirituality in the way that I had framed it. Following my initial opening 5 years ago I poured my whole life into this journey and now the desire for further progress feels gone along with the interest in the journey. Any effort towards meditation just feels painful and this seems to have left me in a strange place as so much of me was invested in this journey before. For years I sat for a few hours a day and now I haven't sat in a month or so and can't imagine doing so. I am far from done, but I do feel done with effort, even the effort to surrender as the idea that being other than this and feeling I can do something to bring that about just hurts. I'd always kinda fallen back on surrender but now in the midst of discomfort to try to surrender just feels like an effort. I'd seen this to varying degrees along the way, but it feels seamless now. I know longer know what spiritual means, or what the spiritual journey is and there is a lingering sense of confusion about what I've been doing for the last five years. Kindness still makes a lot sense and moments like this evening letting the dog out and hearing the geese squawking in flight at two in the morning are possessed with a strange sense of beauty and timelessness I'd never appreciated before. I am not begrudging anything that came before, nor am I making any claims about any sorta spiritual attainment as there are momentary reactions that still pass that are not in line with all that's been seen, but wow, what strangeness this is. As a side note, because I was consumed with developmental progress I tended to neglect to some degree some of the work of relationships and career and mental health, and so I feel myself being pulled into those areas.

It has been almost two months now since I've done any sort of formal meditation. This has left strange gaps in my time because I devoted so much of my free time to formal sitting, even after significant shifts had already occured. I don't know what meditation is anymore. I remember the mechanics of what I used to do, but somehow even thinking of formally sitting down, getting into posture and practicing for some sort of benefit seems absurd though I may get back to it to some time. At the same time, I can still experience anxiety, irritation, and doubt in some ways. I seem to be able to easily slip into s two modes of perception that have been new to me for the last couple of the months: In the first, any sense of an internal and external space dissapear, any sense of the personal or a narrative becomes invalidated and there is just the environment but no sense of me observing the environment of there being a me apart from the environment. When I first encountered this it struck me as extremely odd and somewhat frightening, but now it feels more normal and comfortable. In the second state it feels like thought is slowed down and made null and the sensation of thoughts is felt as a physically relaxing presence. In this state the body becomes very relaxed and warm. After a period of time in this state I sometimes get jerked out by a sudden sensation of anxiety in the stomach. I can get into either of these states immediately by intending to, but I can't will my way in the way that I could with noting or concentration practice.

Out of curiosity I have tried practicing metta which was a main practice for a number of years. Where I used to feel metta centered in the chest area, the energy now seems to be focused on the skull. I don't feel the same warmth, but instead feel a tightness in the skull loosening up or opening. In my personal life I still feel warmth and affection for others and I am better able to hold contradictory emotions like love and resentment without needing to pick one or the other and make that the truth. Interested to see if I could get into jhana or concentrate I tried to focus my attention on the breath for a period of time. While it is easy to do so what results is that the internal and external space again lose their distinction and there just seems to be blind experience.

One of the more interesting aspects of the shift that happened several months ago has been the almost total lack of anything that could be called a mood. I remember when cycling seemed the bane of my existence and how I thought I would be stuck with the cycles for forever, only to have them seemingly dissapear. Last Friday afternoon for the first time in several months I found myself in what I can only describe as a bad mood. My body felt heavy and my thoughts were generally pessimistic. After several hours of this the mood seemed to evaporate and I found myself in a sustained open space where just the beginning of thoughts would form and then die so that thoughts were experienced intermittently as a tiny wave of slightly pleasurable energy in the skull. Since then thoughts seem to be getting continually quieter and experienced more as a physical energy in the head space. There is a deep feeling of relaxation followed at times with a feeling of physical tension with almost no commentary as though the body feels uneasy with what is taking place. It's probably just something I ate.

"Since then thoughts seem to be getting continually quieter and experienced more as a physical energy in the head space. There is a deep feeling of relaxation followed at times with a feeling of physical tension with almost no commentary as though the body feels uneasy with what is taking place. It's probably just something I ate.

"

What's that line from the movie "When Harry Met Sally"? "I'll have what she's having"

"What's that line from the movie "When Harry Met Sally"? "I'll have what she's having"

"

Haha. Yes.

I have found at times that "moods" have expressed themselves solely in body tension, and it could sometimes be some hours (or longer) before I figured out it even was a reaction to something specific in my environment. For example one time I had this sort of sharp pain in my stomach for several hours, but my mind was clear and calm, and there were no thoughts or stories buzzing around (nor had I eaten bad food!). Only when I arrived at a business meeting did I realize my body may have been expressing nerves about the meeting. I can't know for sure. I started referring to it as unconscious stuff manifesting directly into the body rather than passing through the story-telling centers of the mind. Sometimes its not even a reaction to any current event, as far as I can tell, but unidentified stuff, perhaps along the lines of karma or infantile memories/fears? For example I might have a period of kriyas with facial expressions that would be read as terror during meditation, but I am not afraid and there's nothing I'm aware of that would trigger fear. It's kind of interesting.

Yeah, that's how it is for me mostly these days. Thoughts still come, some times more than others, but the somatic effect of thoughts continues to get subtler. Interesting stuff about the infantile memories/fears. I wouldn't be surprised if that's correct. Thanks for reading and responding.

I dont know anything & neither do you

After 6 months of no practice i returned once again this week to binary noting (thinking/silence). This was useful, but then the noting seemed to be obscuring the silence, so now I am just kinda resting in the silence, and when thinking occurs I note that. thinking is felt mostly as a sudden tightening in the face, lasting generally about a second and then fading into silence. sometimes a thought doesn't happen, but i can tell by the sudden tightening that a pregnant thought is about to arrive. if i am at all pushing the thought away or setting up preferences, the practice is useless and can't accurately be called practice. i randomly started practicing one night, i forget why, and found it to be useful, which kinda surprised me. for a while i could not practice. it was actually painful to do so. i think this is because for so many years i practiced with a sense that i had to get somewhere, and there was some deal of pain i felt i had to get away from. like a weird dream to me now. now practice is just can i be as human as possible and feel as human as possible. moving towards naturalness. moving towards humanity. i never woke up. reality keeps coming home itself in pieces. i know this probably didn't make a lot of sense, but i don't feel like re-reading or editing. sorry.

"i know this probably didn't make a lot of sense, but i don't feel like re-reading or editing"


It made sense to me. Not so much in the head though, but in the heart. BTW, editing my posts bugs me too.

Thanks Alvaro.

I am having an occasional experience that was happening a few months ago, and then seemed to dissapear. What happens is that everything I see seems to be unified and radiating with beauty. I hesitate to use the word, but everything seems an expression of god, or seems to be god itself. I mean this not as a being, but as an expression of the profound and beautiful and impossible nature of existence.

What's interesting to me lately is trying to bring creativity into my experience. I've been playing with experience and watching myself put labels upon things, emotions, experiences, etc. It turns out that nothing is really any "thing" without the label. So I've been playing with it all, drawing new colors on old experiences. So the feeling in my body that normally might be received as a signal of some physical uneasiness I've been asking myself why that isn't joy, love, etc. I've been doing some more structured practice driving home from work and laying down to bed of just living as the body. But there is no goal. The only thing that seems worth reverence lately is to just lay down at the feet of whatever life is presenting. And there is a joy in that.