Terry's practice log

11/13/12 7pm Kenneth leads me through the first four jhanas.

11/14/12 7am 45 minutes Kenneth's jhanas. Some time in 1st, then some time in 2nd.

11/14/12 10:40am 35 minutes Kenneth's jhanas. First I spend a few minutes in each of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. Then I skipped around. Fun! I think I'm getting it. Afterward, I feel some pleasant residue. The pulsing energy field I have experienced as a constant since emerging from the Forest Refuge a year ago is more prominent, and there is physical pleasure throughout the body. At the same time, the trauma-related inner child tension and sadness in the right chest is quite present (and was present throughout the sitting). Because of this, I hesitate to use the word "bliss" to describe how I felt during jhana practice and how I feel now.

"Fun! I think I'm getting it." -tfarrah

Yes, I think so too.

"Afterward, I feel some pleasant residue." -tfarrah

The legendary post-jhana glow! Nice. I felt a strong post-jhana glow after you and I practiced jhana over Skype last night.

Kenneth, thanks for the encouragement.

11/15/12 7:10am 30 minutes seated silent noting. As usual, I had woken with a feeling of dread. It is remarkable to see that feeling disintegrate and fall away with noting practice. The disintegration is a bit uncomfortable. I tried to let go as much as possible to minimize the discomfort. I wonder if this counts as an attempt to manipulate my experience?

11/16/12 6:30am 90 minutes whispered noting. Some notable things happened, but I forget them.

11/16/12 1pm 30 minutes Kenneth's 1st jhana, then 2nd jhana. Went deeply into 1st; felt uncertain about 2nd.

11/17/12 morning: Two long (~hour) sessions of inner child work. I gave careful attention to the sensations in the right torso and throat. On and off, I did noting, pretty much exactly as I do during meditation, except that I kept my attention on these particular sensations. But the session as a whole was different from meditation in that I moved with the sensations, sometimes on a very micro-level, in order to give myself comfort and satisfaction. I also gave (silent) voice to the doubt and restlessness that arose: this is a waste of time, this is dangerous, you'd better get up and do something ... you should be doing Vipassana instead. After quite some time, these messages gave way to different messages: I am afraid of being frustrated. I am afraid of feeling disappointed. I experienced a desire for the inner child sensations to resolve somehow, to go somewhere, to lead me to a place of rest or insight ... and I was afraid of the frustration and disappointment I might feel if my desire were not fulfilled.

Between the sessions, I napped. And afterward, I arose, did chores, and ate, staying mindful of the sensations all the while. I did experience mild frustration from time to time, but it was very mild. Now, I feel quite centered, present, content.

11/18/12 morning: Another long session of inner child work. Similar to yesterday in every respect. So challenging to keep at this practice. Doubt comes with the territory, but is amplified by the fact that nobody is directing me to do this work. It's self-invented. I will talk to T, my psychotherapist, about this. Again, napped afterward.

11/18/12 noon-ish: 15 minutes noting while walking slowly. Wanted to break up a pervasive negative mood associated with being alone in the house at mid-day and having accomplished nothing practical. Mood did lighten. After the meditation, I enjoyed some weight training and other calisthenics.

11/18/12 5:20pm: 90 minutes seated meditation: 75 minutes jhanas 1-4 in sequence, then 15 minutes noting. As usual, I felt unsure about the 2nd jhana. Didn't see any light, pleasure wasn't super intense. Other jhanas seemed right on and fairly deep. I even got the coolness on the skin in the 3rd. But ... I wasn't really settled and happy in the practice. Throughout, there was restlessness. Again, I wouldn't call the pleasure of the 3rd bliss, because I was constantly dissatisfied with it. And in the 4th, I did experience some aversion to unpleasant phenomena. I ultimately switched to noting because of all the dissatisfaction. Noteworthy that I was amped on the caffeine from green tea. Since I usually don't have tea or coffee of any kind, green tea is fairly powerful.

11/19/12 5:15am 30 minutes seated whispered noting. I had awoken with the typical intensified feeling of dread that comes (for me) with a caffeine crash. This sitting was an aversion pile-up. Over half of the notes were "aversion", and often it was aversion to aversion. Hopefully this is good practice for accepting my aversion to aversion.

11/19/12 Not sure, might have done some noting practice in the evening.

11/20/12 8:30am One hour seated noting

11/20/12 8pm Ten minutes seated noting. Purpose was to let go of a difficult emotion.

11/21/12 7:45am 15 minutes seated noting

11/21/12 11:15am 50 minutes seated noting. First whispered, then silent. I experienced pervasive anguish, but I didn't note "anguish" -- instead tried to note the component sensations such as sadness, anger (when people were playing foosball outside the room), aversion, and craving. It seems that the anguish arises from a difficult social interaction early yesterday evening. During today's sitting, I noticed some state shifts, which I don't usually do. After about 20 minutes, my head lifted and I felt a general lightness, similar to what I've been calling the shift from 1st to 2nd jhana. And then after 5-10 minutes, I noticed a coolness on the skin and a pleasant sinking feeling, similar to what I've been calling the shift from 2nd to 3rd jhana. Then, after some time, it seemed I shifted back to the second state (lightness) ... and after some more time, back to the third state (pleasant sinking). Lots of aversion in all states, however. I felt anguished before the sitting, and I feel anguished now, after the sitting.

11/22/12 8:30am 90 minutes inner child work with Eric. This is something we've done together a few times over the past year. Previously it had just happened without planning, but this time we began with intention. The idea is that Eric holds me and gives me gentle attention, and I give myself attention, too. As with the solo inner child work, I note, and let go of, a stream of messages saying that I'm wasting my time, I'd better get up and do something, etc. With Eric, I also experience fear that he will leave me. Whenever he tensed his body slightly, as before a cough or when adjusting his limbs for comfort, I reacted strongly with "Aaaagh! No, stop it!" -- and my sense is that I'm terrified of being abandoned. Perhaps some memory of when my mother would leave me. Once or twice during the session I noticed my body and mind relaxing. At one point it seemed that the tension in my right jaw relaxed. Eventually I felt the desire to doze off, and simultaneous fear of losing myself and also losing Eric. Eric said, "You are afraid that when you wake up, I"ll be gone," and I realized that frequently parents do hold their children as the children fall asleep, then leave them alone. It had never occurred to me that this might instill in a child an association between falling asleep and abandonment. As with the solo work, the session was hard work and usually uncomfortable, but deeply satisfying. I felt grounded and unperturbable for several hours afterward.

7pm 15 minutes seated noting. I was feeling overwhelmed during our Thanksgiving Pictionary game, and retreated to a guest bedroom to meditate. But then my back began to hurt, and I couldn't easily find a place to sit with back support, so I returned to the party.

8-9pm Seated silent noting in the living room at the Thanksgiving gathering. This was largely a means to retreat from social demands.

Learned at Thanksgiving gathering that Eric's cousin Graham has been meditating for 5 months. He learned from a DVD that he picked up at a music festival in Tennessee. He finds it very rewarding and is very dedicated. We were both pleased to be able to talk about meditation at this gathering.

11/23/12 9:30am 90 minutes seated noting, some silent, some whispering. I had awoken with fear and dread. Lots of sadness, sleepiness, craving, and aversion throughout the sitting. And thinking. And brief bits of pleasure. Didn't notice any states/phases. Attention seemed imprecise.

Your inner child work sounds interesting. I did some of that with a coach a couple of years ago. It uncovers all sorts of stuff. I had a kind of lucid dream from my childhood following a jhana session--really illuminating.

11/24/12 8am 45 minutes inner child work with Eric. I became quite angry at one point; perhaps the result of feeling more safe?

11/24/12 4pm 35 minutes jhana practice. Very sleepy. Intended to sit for 90 minutes but instead quit and took a nap before Zarina's brother's surprise birthday party.

11/25/12 6:30pm 40 minutes 1st, 2nd, and 3rd jhanas. Very sleepy; nodded off a lot.

11/26/12: No formal practice as of 8:30pm. Some noting while walking. Intense psychotherapy session this morning.

11/26/12 10:30pm 18 minutes seated silent noting. Afterward I felt very sensitive and vulnerable.

11/27/12 2:26am 90 minutes seated silent noting. Small animals fighting outside my window had awoken me. I then experienced very unpleasant emotions, so sat up in bed to practice. At first, 80% of my notes were "aversion". What a relief to have the discomfort almost entirely disappear with noting! Even while most of the notes were "aversion", my discomfort was greatly lessened. My attention was quite precise. At times I stopped naming many of my perceptions and just used "that, that, that," because I felt inclined to note as many things as possible. It made the emotion dissolve even more. Specifically, it seems that when I am noting an emotion, I conceptualize the emotion (and feel the associated discomfort) for as long as it takes me to think of a name and then say the name (whether vocalized or silently). If I don't have to think of a name, then all of this takes less time. This session was very rewarding. A couple of times I thought, "I'd like to stop this and just lie down and relax," but quickly realized that the relief was worth the effort of sitting up and noting.

When I did lie down, I continued to note, but, as is usually the case, my attention became way less precise simply due to being horizontal. How inconvenient. I wonder what the mechanism is of this. Now I understand a bit more why it has been advised (in the suttas? or ...?) to practice as much as possible while one is in good health.

4am 5 minutes Kenneth's 1st jhana. Despite the soothing effect of the previous noting session, I found myself exquisitely sensitive and vulnerable, and the sounds of Eric's preparing for bed were excruciating. So I quit and slept in the other room. Took a long time to fall asleep, probably over an hour.

11/27/12 6pm 30 minutes jhana practice on the bus. Jumped around as much as I could among jhanas 1-4.

11/27/12 7pm Kenneth guided me through the arupa jhanas (5 though . I felt like I was getting it.

11/28/12 7am 5 minute power-noting session!

11/28/12 10am 25 minutes Kenneth's 4th & 5th jhanas while sitting on a bench looking out over Puget Sound. Quit because it was too cold and damp. I guess I wasn't absorbed enough to be indifferent to unpleasant sensory perceptions.

11/28/12 10:20pm 40 minutes Kenneth's 1st through 5th jhanas. I felt like I was struggling to get into the 5th (infinite space).

11/29/12 Seemed that during the previous night I was in the process of discovering unimagined, counter-intuitive ways of being kind to myself.

11/29/12 7:40am 20 minutes silent seated noting

11/29/12 10pm One hour seated silent noting

11/30/12 4:30am 35 minutes seated silent noting. I'd awoken feeling very sad and fearful, so I got up to sit. But I felt too upset to do noting, so I arose. Specifically, I was really afraid of noting aversion. Every time I noted aversion, I panicked and checked out for a moment. I did note "panic" but didn't think to note "checked out". It was really unpleasant and I thought the kindest thing to do for myself would be to switch activities. I felt sad when I put my attention on the fact that Eric had left the previous night for a long weekend. Usually I don't feel sad at his absence, so this sadness seemed like a good thing. It felt like my infant/toddler child state was really up, exposed and raw. I reflected on the ways I was distancing myself from Trip, my psychotherapist, in particular by rejecting his invitation to leave him voice mail between sessions. When I thought of doing this, however, it seemed too painful. I tried writing to him, but even though many words came to my mind that I wanted to share with him, when I put fingers to keyboard, nothing wanted to come out. Finally I surfed Facebook for a while, left Eric some voice mail, then went back to sleep at 6am.

11/30/12 1pm: 30 minutes Kenneth's first jhana. My mind was active, but I didn't stomp it down. I just waited for it to simmer down on its own. Gave the issue some thought, and realized the only reason I prefer not-thinking is that I associate it with "good behavior" and progress. I really enjoy 1st jhana and it was nice to not go anywhere else. I love how, every few minutes, there is a delicious deepening.

I've been taking some kind of break. First, I've been spending a lot of time doing inner child work. It seems important to me now to be mindful at the level of psychological concepts (vs. at the level of perceptions). This has taken time away from meditation. Second, I've been feeling put off by the cumbersome aspects of this interface--even though I deeply appreciate that this website is here, and understand that it's a pre-packaged resource not intended for journaling.

I wonder when I'll be back?

I was intrigued by this recent piece in the New York Times on one meditator's experience doing a 30-day individual retreat at Dan Ingram's house: opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/17...-distance-meditator/ (heard about this article from Ron Crouch's email list).