Jacki's journal

I've just been meditating for about an hour. My face still feels the sensations of pressure on the eyes, around the eyes, upper lip, sinus sort of area, front of lower jaw. The left over of my meditation session. I'm writing straight away after so i can try to remember. during my session i was kind of trying to take mental notes for this entry. (sort of like 'noting' he he)

so i started off staring up and ahead, towards the screen door. It's darkish, but a light in the next room illuminates it a bit. it's raining. I go to that place inside my head which i seem to be able to go to. it's clearer and my mind quietens down. it still chatters though. feel good. nothing hurts. i decide just to sit with my mind for a while and watch it. this seems to involve my eyes. as in the focus in my brain seems to be involved with my frontward narrowish focus of my vision. i'm watching and kind of waiting and clarifying my focus. i'm listening to the rain and noticing objects getting a light glow on one side. then i'm thinking that i wanted to try watching my breath. i do this a bit but it seems to make my focus wonder. i'm noticing the dog playing nearby and getting pleasure from this. i hear a neighbour start playing his drums and at first i'm enjoying it but then a bit indifferent. then i hear another neighbour shouting for him to stop. this is all kind of mildly amusing. i feel the joy build up, but only a little. i see the christmas tree (yes i haven't put it away yet) and it's going black. i blink and it gets its colour back. then after a while it goes black again. and i blink and it's gone. this happens a few times. i realise i haven't been watching my breath. i shut my eyes because they hurting. i pay attention to the breath it and it is so subtle.

it's very light and the in and out breaths are of very short duration. i notice it, and i enjoy the in between breath time, which is longish. i try to notice the beginning of a breath cycle (the in-breath) and when the flow switches directions to out-breath. i notice a sort of catch in the out breath a few times. then i'm trying to focus on keeping my mental clarity and noticing the breath. so i'm managing to sort of look at both, at the same time, meaning both the breath and the clear mind. this feels good. seems to induce flickering of my eyes. i start to become aware of my face. around my eyes, on my eyes, then a bit more of my face. it gets more intense. when i switch focus back to the breath, eye flickering thing seems to happen again. this kind of soft pressure on my face seems to intensify, and eventually it feels a bit like my face is getting mashed inwards. like towards the back of my skull. i try to just note it and just let it happen. it feels like my mouth/moustache area is pushed in, all the way to my jaw. my jaw is hurting. i note the touch of my lips (which tells me my face is still in the right place). it's like it's trying to get pushed out the back of my head. i feel pain in my neck and the sensation from the pushing seems to be in my spine. then it pushes more over to the back left side. i feel my head getting pulled over, like twisted, to the left.

then i say to myself.. umm... is this meditation session over yet!

i hadn't set a timer, but new it had been going for a long time.

but i didn't want to run away from what was happening. so i watched it a bit and just tried to relax and stop trying quite so hard. the pain lessened off but my back became rather sore.

right now, after writing this, my face doesn't feel mashed in any more. my neck is sore, especially on the left. and my back.

Um, up to three messages now, so i'll stop. that's the main bits of it i think tough i know there are sensations I've forgotten. oh yes, one of them is the at times strong visual graininess. i've been getting this a bit lately.
anyway, since you've gotten this far, thank you for reading this.

real happy to receive any feedback or info on my practise. i'm finding my feet with that. i've had contact with one guy who is highly realised and he's given me some suggestions. aside from that, i'm alone in the dharma world.

this was all kicked off my a goenka vippassana retreat i did in january. it changed my life. before that i had been to some buddhist teachings but never really managed to meditate. i hadn't even really tried.

goenka's course is MEDITATION BOOT CAMP. it is awesome!

thank you. jacki.

Edit: For completeness, just add here, that earlier that morning, I had been at my son's piano practice. I had twenty minutes left, I was in the waiting room. It's at a music centre where multiple lessons are conducted at once. So there was another person in the waiting. Room. So I shut my eyes and began. It reached a crescendo that was higher than previously experienced (excluding event at retreat, see below). Raining light and incredible, incredible, pleasure. eyes flickering uncontrollably. I was listening to someone play piano (it was my son's teacher actually) and it was exquisite. They finished the lesson and I was still in this state. Opened my eyes, the lights raining down continued. It was hard to switch back to normality.

Just finished my morning meditation. eyes closed, settled in fairly quickly. tickle on my left cheek. no other irritations. using noting when remember. focusing on breath and noticing my mind is a bit fuzzy. i'm concentrated, but it's not really clear. so i let it be defuse. focus on breath. intending to follow anapanasati sutta as per here:

thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com.au/

feeling relaxed, calm, rapture. noting these things. seeing speckles and various moving lights & shapes. keep the breath in focus. try to move to feeling sensations in the body but not able to really find them. try sweeping, which brings up a light sense of body; not the intense vibrations i've felt in the past (especially on hands and feet). mind wanders. mind wanders a fair bit in this session. just go back to breath.

after 20 minutes or so start to feel discomfort in back. feeling hot. hop up to turn up the A/C. try to readjust posture on sitting again. still back pain. meditating again with fuzzy focus. seeing speckles behind my closed eyes. i start to notice pressure on my head, on the top, left side. then on the right, on top. then right side further down just above temples. suddenly become aware of same sensation on left side, only stronger. feels mildly like a vice on my head. it is pressure, but it doesn't hurt as such. it is just tight. feel fear. to deal with this i give myself some metta and ease up a bit; try to feel sensations in the body. feeling breath again and other tingly sorts of feelings. face tingles. nice feeling. vice feeling comes and goes. head feels tilted and twisted to the right. i sit with this head pressure for a long time. mind wanders. i check my watch and my 50minutes is almost up. i relax, my mind wanders. i feel a pressure inside my head above my left eye but in a bit. at the end of the session it seems to be a slight left sided headache.

towards end of session i feel a solid body inside my body. sort of cone shaped (but rounded at the top) up into my back. the top of it in the middle of my upper back. (i have felt this solid body inside me before. it moved forward through me towards the front. it felt like craving or something). i kept breathing and let it sit there. it became softer as my mind wandered.
checked my watch, only 5mins to go. thought there would be more. so just relaxed and let the mind wander.

after sit, headache in localised left side of brain behind eye but up and inward. same as where i felt pressure during sit.

jacki.

i'll just add that i've had some experiences of fear. a few days ago i felt it and last night after sit. and i woke up during the night feeling it. it's not too bad it is OK.

HEy JAckie,
Welcome to the forum. Consider yourself no longer alone in the dharma world.

Thanks fo your practice posts!

I'm also an old Goenka student, still like to go to their retreats going this wednesday actually.
So you're fresh out of a sit in January? That's awesome congrats. I came to this forum after my last retreat and it's been a great help. I have a book suggestion if you like was mentioned to me on a Goenka retreat some years ago - " A path with Heart " from Jack Kornfield. has a nice structured insight meditation slant and covers alot of ground and concepts.

CHeers
Keith

Thanks for making me feel less alone in the dharma world!
And thanks for the book suggestion... I've heard that book mentioned a few times so I will check it out.
Hope you make good progress at your retreat! All the best! Will follow your notes and see what transpires when you get back.
Metta, Jacki.

Sat for half an hour this morning. noted cotton wool in brain but noted quite well, a little quicker. noted noted sore eyes, warmth, mind wandering, sleepiness, torpor, noting breath (with more awareness better accuracy), noted equanimity, bodily comfort, noted couldn't jump straight into meditative state. watched breath, then body sweeping. noted light soft sensations, noted pressure, noted slight back pain, noted stretching up slightly to fix it, noted falling asleep (yes i fell asleep), noted ease and difficulty practising but noted not concerned about this.

i note concerned now though, to lose sharpness. and note loss of the awesome feelings experienced recently and note some disappointment.

sat for an hour late in morning. mind clear, eyes open, watching breath, trying to notice details of it. note calmness, note experience of beauty of garden outside. mostly focused, sharper than earlier this morning but still soft. sun light on tree outside gets brighter. note tingling in head and wave of euphoria, trying to pull attention away from breath and get absorbed in it. hold on to attention to breath. euphoria wave calms but still feeling incredibly good.

Trying to train myself to just stay with the breath. The simple honesty of it is so humbling.

Not feeling too much sensation so decide it's time to switch to goenka style anapana --- i.e. focussing just on the area below the nostrils. close eyes. this isn't so easy, i feel so anaesthetised. this has always been very easy for me. anyhow, gradually get sense of subtle vibrations; try to focus to increase this. note flickers of light, little sparkles in visual space. always moving like the anapana sensations. so relaxed i feel asleep apart from the feelings from the anapana; a light level of consciousness. then i note too, the mental space which is processing and is aware. it feels physical. so i am just these two things.

become aware that i am expecting something is about to happen (because i'm in such a special place mentally). i note "trying", "craving". this hurts i.e. creates "aversion". become aware that my knee hurts. i don't feel aversion to it but i know one has to look after one's knees. so i change position.

this shakes things a bit. note sense of "trying", and "trying not to try". i see white light, round, shrinking to a small circle, then out again to a large area of light, shrinking to a small circle. this repeats several times. my mind starts to "interpret"; i see the white circle is now a black circle with white around the edges.

i realise that this is probably what is meant by the term "strobing". i've never seen this before. it seems an ironic coincidence, since i have just that morning read an email from someone in which they suggest to watch for strobing. what spot on intuition they had. i'm sort of excited by this and though i try a little longer though my session is over for all intents and purposes.

this reminds me that a few days ago when i was meditating, it seemed that everything went black and was falling away. i freaked for a sec and then realised that i didn't have to fall away with it. but it was kind of like it was a choice.

i thought this was interesting, having this choice. i instantly decided not to fall. but it brings up the idea of trust, and how staying with the sensations requires trust. you don't have to make things up if you trust what is really there.

I've been sick for a while and too tired to do much. have meditated a bit but have been too tired to report on it.

Felt very worried yesterday that I had unleashed the beast, i.e. gone past the point of no return, which seems to be the A&P event. If you have an opinion on this I'd like to hear it. You see, I was thinking yesterday that I really ought to be waiting about 10 years to do this stuff in a full on way. Then, you see, my youngest son, would be 18. I don't wanna hurt him by being horrible. Yesterday and bit lately I've been really wanting my own space and snapping at my kids for no good reason. I don't like this. The first training is morality; without it, there's nothing else anyway.

I may have passed the A&P anyway. Let me explain.

On the retreat I went to in January, on day 1, 9th Jan, I had a very profound experience. It was really way out there. I was listening to Mr. Goenka talking, we weren't meditating, but i shut my eyes and somehow I ended up in a state of mind in which I thought I knew what it felt like to be a buddha. Infinite understanding and compassion for all people. glorious spaciousness. time stood still. I felt what it was like to lose the craving in the belly. I totally was with everything and I understood.
This lasted only an hour or so in this most intense part of it. Then it was softer. I was upset later that night, really needing support, information, and none was available. The next day too I was real grumpy and cross and got frustrated in a session and left and cried because i felt the instructions weren't clear enough. I cried my way through some "issues" over a couple of days but eventually felt alright with them. I was cranky and cross and

wanted to leave and annoyed and didn't like anybody for a few days. Eventually I settled into the rhythm of the days and the technique, and got into it. At some point i realised i wanted to become a nun. of course i can't because i have kids, but i wanted to.

The whole experience thoroughly changed me.

anyway, there you have it.

so, i'll just say a little about recent meditation sessions.

In my meditations I've had the visual pulsing (I called this strobing, but i have figured out that strobing is something else). Same sort of sensation on my face. Seemed to get a little faster and be more like throbbing (fast sort of throbbing) than pulsing.

Yesterday when meditating I was chatting away while meditating, a little more feverishly than normal. And I realised that this was to save me. It put a sort of net under me to stop me falling into the black pit.

I've been feeling not so brilliant the last few days. yesterday i felt so bad for a while i felt the pain of despair and other self-bashing emotions. 'why did i dive in too deep into all of this' and such like things. i thought, why don't they warn you about this before you start. (well daniel ingram does in his book but not many mediation centres are going to hand you this book to read before you start). so these were the kinds of thoughts

i don't really feel like that now. although i do wonder at whether it is a selfish thing, to follow all of this, when there are others that depend on you. i suffer a lot of guilt about this.

however my feeling is that i'm on the ride, whether i like it or not. i think the important thing is to be able to properly switch back and forth between yogi and mummy. this requires self discipline.

because i've been sick with flu, my ex-hubby, who normally has the kids for two days a week, took them a day early. so this week, i have today (right now, it is saturday morning in australia) and the next two days. i am very fortunate to have this, and very fortunate to have the two days i regularly have each week; i realise now that i ought to take proper advantage of this.

i'm finding it not so easy to remember the details of my meditation sessions. the one last night, started out with using eye focus to mess with jhana. i'm not sure though that you can really use it to properly enter a jhana unless you already have it pretty well anyway. i've tried in the past to stay in jhana using my eyes but they get sore.
i ended up not doing that, but i can't remember properly all the details. i know i saw for the first time, the edge of the door frame, which was in the front of my field of vision, start to jerk, like someone gave it a short, sharp, shake then it would be still and then it would happen again. in the end there was a lot of pleasure

in the session. i saw the pulsing thing, which is getting faster. i see so much with my eyes that i can't even begin to describe all the visual sensations.

this morning i meditated for 1hr 20min, which is a little longer than normal for me. i'm getting into some kind of jhanic state/s fair easily. but i don't have good clarity. this turns down the volume on my internal chatter, but it doesn't really go away. i spent some time watching the mind state and the breath at the same time. this seems to keep me occupied and produce interesting results.i saw the suitcase that was sitting in my line of vision get a shake every few moments. an even quicker shake than the ones last night. and perhaps only a single jerking motion. i did some sweeping vipassana. i noticed that with my eyes looking in the right spot, it seemed to be easier to sweep and didn't produce eye flickering. when i sweep sometimes it becomes hard to get through my trunk region, i just get sort of bogged down a bit. so this happened. also if i actually sweep my brain (and not just sweep superficially), i get all kinds of intense things happening in my vision (very random, indescribable) and in my concentration as well.
this made me feel incredibly into it. eventually i slowed down a notch and my upper vision started going black, then i realised this was because my eyes were rolling up. i seemed to go into a new kind of state. it was more blurry for sure. it was mentally and visually blurry. i stood back a little from it and gave myself compassion for my background chatter and everything else. it was really quite a feeling.

during this latter experience, physically i sometimes got the feeling like my body went very slightly out of balance and then suddenly a muscle would contract to kind of wake me up and get me balanced again. so my body would suddenly sort of jerk/ shudder slightly.

when i lay down for a rest afterwards i again i saw the pulsing, the pulses themselves were much quicker, but still with gaps in between were still slow. i started to see some dark pulses, then, for a bit, alternating dark and light pulses. i often see a dark pulse after some light pulses, and it has a light ring around it. this morning i saw black and white rings going forward that encircled each other. when i am writing this it makes it sound so clear but really the visual field is usually for me a great big mess. i also noted that the white pulses were odd shapes with funny edges, not regular. i also saw black pulses with pin points of light in them. i've seen this a bit lately.

anyway, enough for now. i know i've missed stuff. when i meditated my mind runs over the three characteristics and things like that. this seems to form part of my insight practice. i'm observing too, directly, but there is also this background philosophising. i seem to need to chat away. so i'm just going to let myself do it. when i stood back in this session, and i did that, things seemed better.

finally i'll just add that even when i am feeling equanimity i am still feeling, underneath it, an unease. the good feelings didn't completely swallow me up.

yesterday afternoon i had a bad experience. i didn't write about it then, because i didn't want to kind of "feed" it and make it worse.
i had been watching dharma talks on the net. i was watching some by shinzen young. i watched quite a few of his yesterday. i was watching the sort of darker ones when i noticed one called "Enlightenment, DP/DR & falling into the pit of the void". i had seen that void recently and so this seemed way too close to home. watching it really freaked me out. it gave me enormous fear. it was time to go meditate and i wondered if i should be meditating when i was so scared and anxious. i did anyway. it was like i couldn't resist. so it wasn't a lot of fun. i had a lot of bodily pain. i also went into a headspace of remembering a bunch of things that had been bad in life, much of which i hadn't thought about for a long time. it was horrible. i eventually tried to sit back from it a little. eventually it didn't own me quite so much. i remembered that saying "the greatest fear is fear of fear itself". i was fearful of going into the state of fear of not having a proper self underneath the constructed false self. this is a primal fear of mine because i've often felt in my life that i have had to construct myself from without to some extent. this might be because i suffered a trauma at a very young age --- 2 or 3, of being abandoned by my mother (grew up with dad). to me this has always meant that i've felt not very well put together. i was scared of getting this condition DP/DR. later in the evening i started to think of these thoughts as just more "content" and ways of scaring myself. not "real". it is the following morning as i write this and my equanimity is blunting it all a bit and i'm not feeling scared. sometimes i wonder if equanimity is a danger because it's like being drugged and keeps us from what might be really happening.

This morning when i woke up, i soon realised that my body was full of some kind of vibration that i hadn't felt before. an existential vibration in the sense of going right to the core and filling the whole body. i shut my eyes for a while and i noticed the pulsing was going really fast. like a quick flash and it was gone. it suddenly occurred to me, and i wondered why i hadn't made the connection before, was that it was telling me "i am arising and passing, do you get it yet?". strangely the pulses were not "arising" quickly, just "passing" quickly.
the bodily vibrations were very fast. again, shouting out to me "arising and passing!". they still are only, softer now. my mac just started vibrating a few sentences back but has stopped it now.

so i got on the cushion and noticed this sensation. it was like shaking. i when i tried to make a mahamudra thing with my hands (i think that is what its called) my thumbs were shaking and it wouldn't work. the mac is shaking again. i guess it is my eye balls that are actually shaking. it's stopped again.

i was even more chatty than normal during the session. not in a bad panicky way, just perhaps a bit excited or something. i watched my body using sweeping. i noted that the vibrations were "inside"; where as previously they were more intense in places like my hands/fingers, this shaking was inside my wrists and so on.
i tried to accept my chatter as a part of everything and as just another sensation. the difficulty is that for a time, i am really lost in the content of the chatter. it's almost like i am the thought that i am having, while i'm having it.

the whole "mind & body" thing goes deep. like actually noticing how attached we are to thoughts. after a thought is finished it might be easier to say "i am not my thoughts" but during is another matter.

i love the whole "mind & body" thing and conceiving thoughts just as more sensations and not me. i don't think i get that my body isn't me. i only get that it's sensations are not me. i can only "get" that i am not my body, to some extent anyway, when i think more second or third gearish about it. as a beautiful abstract thing. like your true self is just part of the ocean and the sensations are not you and you don't even really have a body at all.

during the session i noticed that the sweeping method was a bit like being aware of faster nerves connecting, like i could do it quicker. it felt kind of trivial though, like there wasn't much to feel. which i noted.

i do have a very solid lump inside my left side just above the hip but more in front. i had exactly this same lump during my recent retreat. at that time, i dissected it by feeling the separate nerves in it. this doesn't seem possible now, or even necessary, as it kind of doesn't bother me. plus i don't have the intense sensations of my nerves that i experienced on retreat.

i guess i'm a little bathed in equanimity. this is a nice change from my horrible experience yesterday.

This afternoon i finally feel ready to just let things be a bit. where ever i am on the path, it's OK. i don't feel quite the sense of desperation any more. going to a zen group tonight for some zazen. ready to just relax and enjoy myself a bit. this is not really a practice report. but an important progress report, if only for me.

i want to report something that happened last night while i was asleep. i kind of didn't really mention it before because it is probably just some random thing and also i can't even remember it properly.
so anyway, i suddenly woken up last night. i don't know what time or anything. but anyway it seemed like i had something go off in my body, like a convulsion or lightening or something that shook my entire nervous system. there was a loud noise. but i'm not clear on it. maybe it was just a dream or something. anyway, maybe it really happened and that's why i'm a bit shaky today. also this morning, after i wrote my post, i noticed this ringing in my ears. only it wasn't ringing in my ears, it was more ringing in my brain. and not high pitched like ringing, but a lower frequency. it got louder when i focussed more on it. it went away after a minute or two.

you said earlier you worried equanimity might prevent you seeing what's really happening...but whatever is happening is what's happening. be aware of the tendency to want things to be big and exciting. sometimes they are quiet, gentle or subtle or even boring. just notice that rather than hoping for fireworks. helpful?

i get your point - thanks for that.

i just kinda mean, it sort of makes it easier to focus if you're in a jhana, but it also anaesthetises you a bit. do you find this?

last night i went to the "ordinary mind zen" meeting. it was great. i like the zen rituals. i like the formality and silence.

i spoke to the head guy before it started. a really nice man. he said in terms of practice, to watch the breath and think of yourself as a kind of container. he also said to stay with that, and don't use some kind of concentration state. he said to do this or else maybe just do what i've been doing for a while and get into it over time.

i did the thing of just trying to stay with the breath and not using a jhana to help me do that. it is really hard to stay with the object this way. i did it, with a lot of mind wandering, for a while. it was a deeply touching practice. it was too hard though so i went back to doing the usual. whatever that is, i'm not even sure.

this morning i felt good. like i'd actually slept properly for most of the night. up until now, my sleep has been strange. sometimes half awake, half asleep. seeming to be dreaming about dharma practice.

but i'm more normal again now. i went and got a bowl thing this morning so i could to kasina practice. i read in kenneth's notes on this sight that after a yogi passes A&P, it's really good to do concentration practice. so i got my green bowl. i started with counting the breaths to get in the zone. then i stared at the plate. what a lovely, simple, practice. not very much happened, it was nice. the plate did some visual things, like glowing on one side, going black, etc. just he usual stuff. i was keeping a soft focus but still my eyes seemed to get tired and wanted to close. so i did that. my mind wandered but it didn't seem to matter in terms of the concentration state. soon i got a sort of pressure inside & on my forehead. it felt like a kind of intensity. it didn't hurt. i can feel it a bit again now. just talking about these things seems to have an effect.

it seemed to be a concentration state of it's own. it was very "absorbing" (sorry to use that word). it was easy to focus on and stay in.

after a while i got tired. i went for a lie down. i shut my eyes and started watching the show. you know the back-of-your-eyelids show that happens. it seems settled. i had some pulses, but it was like they couldn't quite be bothered. one or two were of moderate speed and went off into the distance. but mostly they just formed and then slowly shrunk a bit (you know, so it looks like they are travelling away) but then sort of slowed and turned into bigger blobs and so on.

this slowness is nice. it's nice to have this peace now.

peace everybody. jacki.

i'll describe my mediation session that i had at lunchtime today. OK so i did watching the breath, counting the out-breath, up to 10, three times. then i started looking at my green bowl.

at the start it seemed to be rippling a little. i've seen this a bit lately. like the carpet seeming to be hot so that you get a rippling effect caused by the rising heat. after that, a few of the usual things happened, like glowing on one side, getting darker then lighter. then i got the black circle in the middle of my vision. i stayed with this for a long time. i watched as it spread so that it covered almost everything. there was a sort of green fluorescent glow to the outline of things which would come and go, but the blackness was very expansive. i could see my dog lying near my feet and other things in the periphery, so i didn't just have my eyes closed!

watching this for a while like guessing 10 minutes. then a sudden return of regular vision and realised my eyes were wildly cross-eyed. back hurt.

shut my eyes, which were sore, cracked my back, and kept going. felt a kind of pressure on my forehead. i've had this before. then i feeling like there was a block of wood kind of holding up my cheekbones and eyes. eventually quite a lot of the whole outside of my head felt like it was wooden. (going in a bit but not actually inside my brain or anything). like a helmet or something.

hung with this for a bit, like 5 minutes. before finishing.

not sure i feel quite as at-ease now as i did this morning. feeling i'm in equanimity and might fall back into suffering again.