Pirkku's practie notes

Hi! I'm going to start this thread in order to get some insight (hopefully) on what I need to work with etc. Most of my practice is of the cushion and my practice might not be so intense at others during at some points (due to my mental health issues). I'll do my best and hopefully we all get something out of it.

Yesterday: I did mostly the lightning rod and binary not of self-referencing and no self-referencing. The lightning rod was useful to see that there seems to be a sense of self locating around the eyes. Some sensations and thoughts showing up making up the sense of self. It seems more like a habit that needs to burn out than something solid. What I did was to say to myself "whole body" whenever my awareness drifted.
The binary noting was very beneficial as it was seen quite clearly and rapidly that self-referencing hurt, quite badly, and not self-ferencing was defenitely not as painful.
An interesting thing I played with was trying to really see the world without concepts. Finally I managed to some degree to do that (mainly due to the binary noting, I think) and suddenly my lecturer looked like an animal dressed in some clothes. Almost like a primate, if you understand what I mean.

It seems that my base level of being is moving towards (if it's not already there) to in the seen, only the seen, in the hearing, only the heard, in feeling, only the felt etc.
I was for example walking down the stair just now and my feet looked like alien feet popping up into my field of vision.
Today I'll continue the lightning rod and the binary note.

Cheers!

I did some noting this morning, Kenneth style (mahasi noting?).

Noting: despair unpleasent tingling, apathy, fear, cold-smooth, frustration, frustration, overconfidence unpleasent tingling, acceptance, contentment, bored, space, I, I, seen, touch, don't know, frustration, despair, sadness, apathy, wandering mind, agitation unpleasent tingling etc.

I noticed how interlaced the thoughts and sensations really are. I thought I knew but doing this very rapid noting (at least once per second if not more) really brought it home. When the mind state of agitation came, unpleasent tingling showed up etc. Really interesting. And the states seemed to cycle. Agitation, sadness, apathy, contentment, peace, space, sadness, anger, frustration, wanting to get it over with, contentment, bored etc. Not in that order thought but in order for you to get an idea.

I did vipassana noting throughout the day but that wasn't good for my mental health so for now I can only do 10 minutes of bodyscan, so nothing interesting to report.