Rob_Mtl's practice thread II

This is my "guilted out by Aquanin" practice journal

I haven't kept up my journal since about a year ago. As I said on the "Third Path" thread, I just seemed to lose the vocabulary to describe my experience, and lost interest in "advancement". Nonetheless I always did wish there was more data from people in my position. Judging by the "Third Path" thread, I'm not alone feeling this way. So here goes.

Tonight, 1 hr. formal sit. Resolved to do 3x10 breath count, followed by the Witness, watching for the transitions between jhanas.

I have been out of practice in naming jhanas, but there were distinct moments of unprompted shifts in eye-position. About 20 minutes in, I was kind of sludgy, so I noted "sleepy" which prompted me to stay alert. I then experienced a "jump" and bright light after which I immediately became more alert. By about 40 minutes in, I had kinda lost track of my "Witness" resolution, but became very interested in ambient sound, and a sense that I would periodically drop identification with "me as the hearer of the sound" - the sound existed by itself. Bell ring.

Recently, a part of my practice has been to breathe deeply whenever I remember to. For a long time, I've been dealing with the fact that post-meditation is often very tense for me- experiences that others may describe as "bliss waves" or pleasurable chill-outs seem to end up for me as a knot of unpleasant tension which I find difficult to "disembed" from.

Ages ago, as a teen, I was prone to panic attacks. At the time, I developed a habit of holding my breath to suppress panic attacks. Though the panic attacks subsided, and the inclination toward them disappeared after stream-entry, I think this habit has conditioned me to cut off my breath and become tense over just about anything. So lately, I'm resolving to breathe.

Welcome back rob. Your posts in my log and your original journal helped me greatly, so don't think of it as me guilting you into this (only messing with you here) but as helping others. You have a great way with words. I can't wait to hear more about your practice.

I'm so glad to see you here again. You were a big support to me last year, and I've missed you.

My path(s) narrative:

1. I REALLY want to be enlightened
2. Wow, that was freakin' cool
3. I'm confused and bored as hell, now what?
4. What the heck are these jhana thingies???
5. Mellow, mellow, mellow, chillin' is the best thing ever
6. Okay, let's get on with it since I obviously have no choice in the matter
7. What do THEY know that I don't know? Huh?
8. This is frippin' ridiculous. Enough already with the cycling and stuff, Stop!
9. What do they know? Seriously? I'm gonna ask them.
10. They say stuff but it makes no sense to me. WTF?
11. ... click ...

Ahhhhhh........

What I'm getting at is this -- this stuff changes all the time. It will confound you. That's part of the thing, so just hang in there, keep talking to us. It'll do it's thing no matter what after a certain point and you will be okay.

"
My path(s) narrative:
....
...."

The best map I have seen so far!
But what if 7-10 (my stages) is a closed loop?

It's not a closed loop... but it can linger a long time, and since it is characterized by a lot of frustration and confusion it tends to be a difficult period. A friend of mine called the third path territory a sort of long dark night. But it's also one of the most fascinatingly fertile periods for looking at everything you think you know and realizing you don't know anything, seeing what you're attached to, what you are resistant to, what self-identity and habits you are hung up on (I am this kind of person, that kind of person, I deserve this or that, I want this or that - all opportunities to study how those feelings arise and who is experiencing them). Really helpful for me were (repeated!) reminders that frustration and confusion are expressions of resistance/aversion...

Great to see you back, Rob. I'll second all the comments about your posts being useful to me.

I actually find myself in a very similar position to yours, and I've very curious to see how things go for you

"
My path(s) narrative:

7. What do THEY know that I don't know? Huh?
8. This is frippin' ridiculous. Enough already with the cycling and stuff, Stop!
9. What do they know? Seriously? I'm gonna ask them.
10. They say stuff but it makes no sense to me. WTF?
"

Chris, what was the feel of your practice like during this time? Did you put in long hours? Was it frustrating, or did it just kind of matter-of-factly hum along on it's own? Were you doing a lot of reading and thinking about dharma matters? Were you trying to expose yourself to new and different concepts, authors, etc...?

For me, it's been more like 80% of the time I would be happy to stay right in this place. I've let go of so much tension and worry; my life seems nicely framed by a sense of eternity that is always just over the visible horizon, but in which I have total faith; I seem to be able to go on with my work and life goals with a sense that their meaning is always in the "now" and not in some future I must always chase after. This is all great.

But the other 20% of the time, I go through most of Chris' "stages" several times in a day

This is perhaps the most compelling beginning to a practice thread that I've ever read. It's like one of those HBO dramas; watch a few episodes and your hooked. I'll stay tuned.

Yes! I just posted on the Third Path thread, and now I'm here and getting the answers to all the questions I asked. Wonderful.

20 min informal sit in the park at lunch. I started with Nadav's "Witness" instructions, and as often happens, I became quite interested in the ambient sound, which arouses an excitement / tension. I tried to maintain attention on the one who wants to grasp the sound- the feeling that, apart from the sound itself, there is a "hearing" that is personalized. Every now and then, though, the sound is just itself. This increases the sense of tension, along with pressure in the forehead.

As I described yesterday, I try to remember to keep breathing through these tensions, and when I do, this seems to lead to a sense that where the tension is "flows" more, letting experience move onto whatever comes next.

Thanks, everyone for your warm re-welcome (I've been around all along, just very very quiet ). I can only hope this thread lives up to an HBO drama. Idea for a series- an episodic drama with 16 episodes, each based on a nana

""Idea for a series- an episodic drama with 16 episodes, each based on a nana ""

It's been done - sort of...fairy tales and myths have been covering the path in metaphorical form for centuries... :^)

"Chris, what was the feel of your practice like during this time? Did you put in long hours? Was it frustrating, or did it just kind of matter-of-factly hum along on it's own? Were you doing a lot of reading and thinking about dharma matters? Were you trying to expose yourself to new and different concepts, authors, etc...?"

Hi, Andy.

Two things:

1. During that time I was very frustrated by the thought that others (after awakening) seemed to have or to know something that I just didn't and yet when I'd ask them what it was it seemed like nothing. They were trying to tell me about something but it was a something that was foreign and off kilter and counter-intuitive sounding, so I didn't, or couldn't, process it. I was not practicing with abandon. I was not interested in formal sitting at all. I just wanted the stuff to be over with so I could get past it and move on.

2. Right near the final act, within about two weeks or so, stillness became the sole focus of my practice. I had dreams about it, would wake up at night with images in my mind of stillness in the midst of chaos - things like a pebble falling to the bottom of a pond during a storm, a chair sitting in a room with the wind blowing frantically through open windows.... stuff like that. It was the contrast between silent stillness and chaotic movement that seemed to grab me somehow.

I was very busy at work and I was not reading anything dharma related.

What happened next is described in my final practice thread:

kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/thread/39...es%2C+Part+the+Third

Tonight: 1 hr evening sit...

I started straight in with the Witness instructions ("watching" from behind the eyes). I had a sense that I should skip my usual preliminaries, because I was still in a good working space after my lunchtime sit. I feel like the sit morphed through several phases:

1. Becoming interested in the arising of a cartoon image of myself over and over again, noting when I saw that image arise
2. Realizing the cartoon image seems to get built from a triangle of sensations buzzing in my forehead and my "smile" muscles at either side of my mouth
3. Noting the sensations in that "triangle" (which of the three corners is my attention going to now, or am I turning attention to the cartoon image?)
(These aren't verbal notes- just a kind of "check... check..." acknowledgement, since the sensations are going by fast)
4. Getting sludgy and spacey, having disconnected thoughts
5. Noting the sensations of sleepiness
6. Stabilizing in a more alert space, sludginess gone
7. Happy, self-satisfied, "dharma thoughts" internal monologue
8. Resolve to return attention to sense of "me" in hearing and seeing
9. A sense that all experience is just vibrating; behind the "phenomena" I am noting is actually just bare, non-conceptual waves; taking interest in the "there-ness" quality of all the different sensations I note
10. Being very OK that thoughts of "me" arise, there is no harm in that

Bell!

Copy-pasting from Chris:

seeking is hiding the sought
seeking is hiding the sought
seeking is hiding the sought
seeking is hiding the sought
seeking is hiding the sought

Which I KNOW perfectly well... except... what? What, already?

25 minute sit in the park at lunchtime, mostly "Ships in the Harbour" (although adapted, since the park I was sitting in actually is by a seaport ). Back at work in the afternoon, I maintained the watching of "me", the triangle of sensations that seems linked to those mental cartoon pictures of myself experiencing the present; occasionally experienced a well-being that was not so much a reduction of my usual baseline of anxiety, as a sense of totally peaceful co-existence with it. Reminding myself that this process is not about waiting for something to stop, or for something that will happen in the future- in fact, the subtle sense that I am "waiting" for something would be a good thing to note / investigate .

1h 15m sit, while listening to The Hamilton Project's "Jhanic Free-For-All" podcast. I'm re-acquainting myself with the qualities of the jhanas. I followed the HP guys up to somewhere between the 6th and 7th jhana, and then just had a kind of strong "pop! shudder!" that sent me out of that state- I guess a non-path fruition that put me back in the lower jhanas. Weird and fun way to meditate, though.

1h sit, continuing my re-acquianting-with-jhanas project. I have never been sure if I have recognized the 8th jhana or not, but today, while in what I thought was probably 7th, I felt a shift into a space so weird that my mind seemed to recoil from it within half a second, a bit like one of those cartoons where the character casually walks out their front door, only to realize that their house is being lifted 1000 feet in the sky by balloons, and so they turn on their heels in mid-air and run back inside I don't really know if that "recoil" it possible with jhanas, but I do find people's ability to describe jhanas drops off at 8, and I would certainly say I could not describe what I was about to go into.

The "Third Path" thread has really re-motivated my practice, and I'm playing with all 3 gears full-time these days, especially the Witness, which I never really developed after 2nd path, and I am now seeing why I should have.

"1. Becoming interested in the arising of a cartoon image of myself over and over again, noting when I saw that image arise
2. Realizing the cartoon image seems to get built from a triangle of sensations buzzing in my forehead and my "smile" muscles at either side of my mouth
3. Noting the sensations in that "triangle" (which of the three corners is my attention going to now, or am I turning attention to the cartoon image?)
(These aren't verbal notes- just a kind of "check... check..." acknowledgement, since the sensations are going by fast)
"

Rob "cartoon image" is exactly how I describe something like this, that's been bugging me for years. I don't think I've heard anyone else mention this before. I'd love to hear more.

Hey kacchapa,

I just looked at some of your recent posts, and I think it's you who should be teaching me about this stuff. I love your sound-labelling technique.

Basically, I have noticed this shadow-image for a while now, and have only recently decided to investigate it really closely, because my recent playing with the Witness seems to make it quite apparent. I feel that the self-images correlates very strongly with muscle tensions in my face.

Generally, I feel like when we are "embedded", there is a ceaseless string of visual / auditory frames that unfold in our minds' eye and ear that stands in for actual experience, and this is the process of delusion / dependent origination at work.

It takes a lot of care to identify that this is happening, but once I do, I realize that there is always some physical tension "squeezing" out those images and all that mental talk.

Much of the past year, I have also been using sound as an object in a 3rd gear, "Ships in the Harbour" mode, but I might try some of your techniques to add the depth of some 1st-gear discipline to it.

I have really kind of fallen in love with the bottomless well of urban ambient sound as a meditation environment- it often makes me wonder why retreat centres have to waste so much money building remote rural locations!



(edited because I found that a sentence that I had moved, while writing this post, somehow got placed in a paragraph where it made no sense. Cartoon-guy did it!! )

Hi Rob, I'm a struggling pre-path yogi but it's great to hear (no pun intended) how much you like city sounds. They've always been pretty much my favorite meditation object.

"..there is a ceaseless string of visual / auditory frames that unfold in our minds' eye and ear that stands in for actual experience, and this is the process of delusion / dependent origination at work." Interesting, I've been wondering recently if it was something like that.

For a few years I've noticed that there is a cartoon image of my face that's constantly representing how I supposedly look at any moment. If I'm laughing it shows me laughing, same with frowning, being thoughtful, contemplative, angry, insecure, you name it. Is that how you get it? I find it really annoying I never made a connection with tension, I'll try to check that out.

Yes, that's how it is for me, too. I've noticed this for a while, but only recently did I get this sense that "hey, this seems to go with a certain muscle tension in my face". In my sitting tonight, I even noticed that I have this whole "me sittling all Buddha-like" mental cartoon that shows up while I'm sitting.

It is annoying, but I think that if you notice it, you're having a pretty fundamental insight. Keep looking at it, but don't try to chase it away or suppress it- in a way, the more obvious it is, the more you're disembedding from the chronic "I"-thought