Hardcore Dharma ( DISCLAIMER. I worried for a while whether I should limit access to this part of the website, or at least make it harder to find. Some of the information you find here can be considered personal, so I leave the choice with you to read it or not. It's public. I'm OK with it. ) This log is about insight meditation (IM), and is a bit of a contrast with other logs on this website as it is all about subjective experience. Bottom line is that I find it useful. It fixes some bugs in my emotional makeup. The message is that focus on perception itself sets in motion a certain development. The brain seems to have this tendency to fix things once it knows what the problem is. It's possible to make it "flip over" by just zooming in on things that are stuck. You can change your mind (your ideas) about everything on a whim, but can't "unsee" something. Insight tends to be permanent. * * * It all started end of November 2011 with this HN post [3] which referred the Hamilton Project[6] website and lead me to Daniel Ingram's videos[4], book "Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha" [1], and Dharma Overground[5] website. Daniel's "minimal dogma" approach spoke to me in a very direct way. My background is in science and engineering and I can very much appreciate cutting to the essence without too much story. In case you wonder, I am not religious. It's a big irony to me that "dharma" means "truth". After about 3 months into doing daily IM practice I can say that it is definitely worth the effort. It gave me what I was looking for, which was basically a better handle on stress and anxiety. Beyond that it is interesting to say the least. More like a revelation, really. In this log I try to follow Daniel's advice and will attempt not to go (too much) into my "stuff". There's plenty of it though and I will just label it as such. I will also attempt to keep the logging of experiences separate from their interpretation, which isn't always possible either. Suggestion and wishful thinking are always lurking. [1] http://www.interactivebuddha.com/mctb.shtml [2] http://delicious.com/doelie/meditation [3] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3263767 [4] http://vimeo.com/23539030 [5] http://dharmaoverground.org [6] http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/ Entry: My practice Date: Fri Nov 25 19:19:13 EST 2011 I've been using a mish-mash of techniques in my own practice. I experimented with formal meditation somewhere around 2000, to pick it up again after getting hit by a personal crisis early 2008. I started from Pema Chodron's book "The Places That Scare You"[1], focusing mostly on being present. I've been practicing on and off since then, quite irregularly. Mostly informal, but switching to formal sitting meditation to try to regain center after being swept away by overwhelming emotions. This summer and fall (2011) I lived through another crisis and started reading Pema Chodron again, and finding more material on the internet until I ran into Daniel Ingram's book[2] early this week, which I'm reading now. My method of meditation after 2008 up to now followed mostly Pema Chodron's instructions. Focus on the outbreath. Label thinking as "thinking". When drifting off, be kind to yourself ("thinking, buddy!") but persistent in bringing back focus to the object. Experience emotions that arise, but don't cling to them. Stare the emotion in the eye, but don't feed it with a story line. Drop the story line. Learn to identify the story line. Focus on the experience. From reading a bit of Daniel's book, what I've been doing seems to be mostly insight meditation: experiencing reality as it presents itself, in it's purest form through sensations, not through abstractions (thoughts caused by sensations). [1] http://www.shambhala.com/html/catalog/items/isbn/978-1-57062-921-1.cfm [2] http://www.interactivebuddha.com/mctb.shtml [3] http://dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/dharma-wiki/-/wiki/Main/The+Three+Characteristics/pop_up?p_r_p_185834411_title=The+Three+Characteristics Entry: Dark Night Yogi Date: Fri Nov 25 19:31:12 EST 2011 [stuff] After watching the Daniel Ingram's video[1][2][3] I start to wonder whether I'm what he calls a "Dark Night Yogi"[4]. I recall having some strange experiences the first times I performed formal meditation, probably in the summer of 2000. However, I had more intense "personality changing" experiences somewhere around September 2004. I was calling myself elightened, though now I refer to it as my first manic episode. It lasted a couple of months. By new year's eve that year I think I was out of it. There where a couple of relapses but they where minor in comparison. I don't think I was formally meditating after this experience. I also turned into quite a grump after that, experiencing a lot of trouble not dealing well with challenges coming my way. I recall getting into math again in 2005 and experiencing some weird insights. The mathematical insights themselves where not that remarkable -- mostly gaining deeper understanding about some mathematical structures and algorithms used in digital signal processing. However, the way they presented themselves to me and their seemingly huge significance was, well, unusual.. Where I would use real-world analogies to understand these structures during my engineering studies, I started to "see" them more directly. Free-flow mathematical thinking still gets me in what I call a manic-like state. I don't have it so much with real, earth-bound problems though, like anything that has to do with (payed) work. Not enough space to float aimlessly maybe. Too much directed thinking instead of following intuition? [1] http://vimeo.com/23539030 [2] http://vimeo.com/23567498 [3] http://vimeo.com/23568408 [4] http://dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/dharma-wiki/-/wiki/Main/Dark%20night%20yogi/pop_up?p_r_p_185834411_title=Dark%20night%20yogi Entry: Restarting practice Date: Fri Nov 25 20:17:13 EST 2011 I'm trying to find a good place and time to practice. I'm making a lot of excuses lately. Quite mindlessly attached to that web browser. Apart from just "taking a minute" sitting in front of my terminal I don't get very far. This room is not very conducive, with the whining computer and the snoring dog. Entry: Alan Chapman - Becoming a seeker Date: Sun Nov 27 01:28:50 EST 2011 (paraphrased from the interview here [1]) When you get to a point in your life where you cannot find the fulfillment you are looking for, where it would be possible before like relationships, career, ... you become a seeker. Enlightenment is a process. Perpetually waking up. Getting into a groove of waking up. It's an activity. [1] http://www.openbuddha.com/2011/10/09/Alan-Chapman-Talk-in-Berkeley/ Entry: The Three Trainings Date: Tue Nov 29 10:53:01 EST 2011 According to Daniel it is important to distinguish the 3 trainings (chapter 7 in [1]); one of the cases where knowing a bit of theory is essential to not get into a cul-de-sac. 1. Morality Real world. Being kind to yourself and other people. Content of thoughts is important, as opposed to concentration & wisdom where content is only distraction. 2. Concentration Pure focus on object without deconstruction into individual sensations. Leads to blissful states. 3. Wisdom / Insight Focus with observation of true nature, of individual sensations that make up experience. The goal is insight into the nature of reality, of the three characteristics: impermanence, suffering, no-self. [1] http://www.interactivebuddha.com/mctb.shtml Entry: Waking up, reassembling Date: Wed Nov 30 01:16:38 EST 2011 Explain the experience of waking up with self dissolved, panicking and re-assembling. Since a couple of years I have this experience waking up. Last years it's been there almost every morning. This experience is one of disorientation. Feeling disassembled in some way. Having raw experience, and some feeling, sometimes anxiety, that is sitting there as a remnant of something that might have been important. It takes about 5-15 seconds for this to pass, but it is sometimes very prominent. I've experienced it as unpleasant mostly, though after picking up meditation again the fear of it seems to have vanished in at least one occasion. Not this morning as I woke up in a bit of a panic due to a phone call so I did not observe the pattern itself. Entry: Noon practice, 20 minutes. Date: Wed Nov 30 13:58:31 EST 2011 Wandering, worrying, anxiety, "oh-no"-ness, frustration, contempt. That's how I remember. I had a couple of laughs at the impossibility to stick to the breath. Some small moments here and there it worked, mostly I went off into wandering. I did not reach a calm state as I've had in almost all sitting meditations of the last days (3). I noted with: - wandering - thinking - feeling - fear - worry - hearing - seeing - pain The overall feeling that seemed to stick in the background was one of "this is not working" and my stuff calling me to attention/worry. The rest of the day was quite turbulent mentally. No calm as I had in the past days. Switching between quite severe anxiety and pretty blissful happyness while doing dayjob. Entry: Headache flashes Date: Wed Nov 30 14:04:01 EST 2011 Fairly consistently I'm getting flashes of headache in the top, back of my head, on two sides simultaneously, and a sensation that goes from top top to top back. This happens almost every time I go from jittery/wandering to a calmer concentration state. I've been experiencing these headache flashes ever since I started meditation after discovering Pema Chodron's books. Entry: Anxiety Date: Wed Nov 30 14:07:22 EST 2011 Because of the nature of my work (computer programming) I have no mental space to actually experience wandering thoughts for the large part of the time. However, I do often experience "background anxiety" which is a not-so-cognitive version of the state triggered by my stuff. These feelings go away completely in concentration states. The flashes of thoughts that usually trigger them do arise, but the reaction is not there or way less severe than in the "background anxiety" experience. Doing noting practice I have a very hard time to look beyond this anxiety when it's there. I can clearly know it's there, but I seem to be caught up in it, I don't see it as a sensation, i.e. it's got some kind of special status. Entry: More anxiety Date: Thu Dec 1 12:28:27 EST 2011 This morning I had it bad again. I feel better now after 20-30 minutes meditation in the bath tub. Used noting and the last 10 minutes or so I used counting (1-60, I got at 45 or so) to stay closer to the breath. At a point where I was counting a bit automatically, I decided to count backwards, just as I do with the dog when he's pulling on the leech. The experience of that and the confrontation with suffering it triggered made me laugh :) I seem to have reached some small stretches of say 30 seconds where the observation of the breath seems to have been pure. It was different. No chatter, just the breath's sensations. I can't really perceive or less note the stream of discrete vibrations that's described in Daniel's writing, but at least I can see the space in which they occur. It seems like new territory at least. I'm not sure what phase it is though. Can't yet bring my experience to the naming of phases of the first path. I do feel a lot of suffering and pain and misery, which can get quite intense, then passes away. I loose focus during the arising of this suffering and often go off into content. Entry: 30 mins Date: Sat Dec 3 21:47:26 EST 2011 Trying to make sense of the experiences. First half was as before. I get to a concentration state where it's possible to see mental activity as phenomena, without getting lost in their content. This is then interspersed with some content wandering from time to time. After 15-20 minutes I had an experience of breaking open. Calm, glow. Definitely a "state", so maybe one of the concentration states? No content wandering. Entry: Focus Date: Mon Dec 5 14:36:39 EST 2011 Yesterday's practice was uneventful. Nearing the end I was glad it was done. In the middle I had a dip of the jitters and I managed to sit through that, letting it pass away. At the end of 40 minutes though I just had to stop. Can't really focus well. Maybe meditate? Try that? Go against the stream, observe jitterniness. Had 15 minutes at noon. Entry: Evening meditation Date: Tue Dec 6 23:24:42 EST 2011 This morning about 15-20 minutes in the bath tub. Don't remember much of it. Maybe should write down next time. Just finished evening meditation, a little over 30 minutes. Two significant things. 1. Glow in palms of my hands and soles of my feet and forehead. They felt like balls the size of the palm of a hand. 2. Some feeling of something coming up, then a glow, flash, rotating stuff. It pushed my position backward automatically. I fell out of it after I started observing the impermanence/unsatisfactoriness characteristics. Not really a trace of self. That's experience. Now where does that put me? Are these concentration states or insight stages? Entry: Noticing neurotic stuff Date: Thu Dec 8 10:20:17 EST 2011 As described in Pema's books I am getting more neurotic during the day after 10 days of daily meditation of at least 30 minutes. More procrastination, more anger and agitation. The anger episodes are becoming more apparent, and in some sense more absurd and experienced as a waste of time and effort. I am noticing them, sometimes when they occur but almost definitely after having expressed anger in any way. The procrastination (doing the fun work/play instead of the hard, confrontational and boring work that I really have to do) is still quite strongly present, and still takes me on a ride for whole or half days. Entry: Yesterday's practice Date: Thu Dec 8 10:24:23 EST 2011 I was very tired. The night before I had only 5 hours of sleep. Almost fell asleep after 20 minutes while sitting. I felt a strong desire to stop but investigated tiredness, lack of concentration and desire for sleep or laying down. I was watching the clock to hit my 30 minute mark, and when it did I felt a calm coming over me which I proceeded to investigate instead of holding on to it. I observed it passing away and arising again. Going to bed I continued to meditate, observe that state which lasted. I probably was hanging on to it, then noticed I had faded out into pre-sleep wander and went to sleep. Entry: Today's practice Date: Thu Dec 8 22:41:45 EST 2011 Evening meditation was uneventful. Hard time concentrating. Wandered off many times. Quit after 33 minutes, with the intention to do 43. I broke off my noon meditation in the bath tub as well. Uncontrollable wandering, no patience to bring it back. In the evening meditation I was able to bring up the patience a couple of times. Noticed frustration and the wandering. Noticed through experience that I can't wander and focus at the same time. That sounds obvious cognitively. I'm starting to see the difference of knowledge through experience and knowledge through theorizing more clearly. Entry: Jittery Date: Fri Dec 9 16:18:12 EST 2011 I'm feeling a little mania. Need to be careful for bleedthrough. Hard to tell if it's genuine or suggestion. Feels real enough though.. I'm noting it. Entry: No-self Date: Sun Dec 11 14:23:39 EST 2011 Fri + sat evening meditation where uneventful. Much jitteryness. Much wandering. Much desire for going somewhere else. Desire for going on a tangent. Desire for floating in content and good feeling of novelty. Morning meditation clearly about suffering. Much wandering again. Then I saw some clear visual flickering. Strobes 5-10 Hz, on-off say 1 second on, 3 seconds off. After that I had some feeling of insight about separateness and how it creates suffering, manifested mostly by content (current disagreement / misaligned expectation between me and my wife), but also some kind of fundamental feeling: sadness that this is not necessary. The rest of the day I had a bit of a backlash. Much "stuff". Current stuff, past stuff. Feeling of separateness and aggrevation. Interpretation: - strobes: vibrations? From Daniel's book (paraphrased): many emotional experiences can be due to suggestion, though the raptures often are not. maybe this could be an indicator of where I'm at on the map.. currently I don't know. - stuff: Ego (illusion of self) bouncing back from the shock of being seen as a hindrance or even evil? Entry: Impermanence Date: Mon Dec 12 09:09:09 EST 2011 In yesterday's evening meditation, nearing the end of 30 minutes, there was a moment where time seemed to have been broken up in discrete events. Then there was a reaction of fear and also wonder. This morning I woke up with stomach ake. Work stress. I sat down about 15 minutes until some other life stress turned up. Focused on the clenching feeling in my stomach. The pain, and for the first time the reaction to the pain separated as a distinct phenomenon, closely following it up. This reaction was experienced as a "oh no don't want" thought-feeling. Entry: Interpretation Date: Mon Dec 12 09:11:04 EST 2011 Reading more in MCTB it seems best to refrain from interpretation in this meditation log, and concentrate on experience, or at least memory of experience. I know from past experience that I am very susceptible to suggestion, so better be careful and not get carried away by the story of the maps. Entry: Watching Yuttadhammo Date: Mon Dec 12 17:29:04 EST 2011 Meditate all day: be mindful. Your work should be meditation and your eating should be meditation. I tried this today with walking our foster dog, which I don't like to do because he's undisciplined. Maybe I should do it too with the current phase of my contract work which I don't like either. Though that is concentration-based work.. How to? Entry: Resentment [stuff] Date: Wed Dec 14 09:25:11 EST 2011 As advised in MCTB I intend to not go too much into my stuff in mediation and meta-meditation (this log), but I'd like to mention the following. The emotion that seems to dominate most of my suffering in daily life is resentment caused by "perceived wrong doing from an individual"[1] or a situation. ( It's interesting that I also feel this from situations, as if situations have responsibility that can be invoked to attribute blame. It might not be so surprising that I'm also very susceptible to feeling blame and the blame-induced guilt. ) Anyways, let's focus on what actually happened in yesterday's 30 minute bedtime meditation. I got into a feel-good samatha state and started investigating its 3 characteristics. Focusing on impermance and attachment as usual, the feel-good soon faded and disappointment appeared, followed by resentment ("I deserve this! If I don't get it I want to stop meditating!"). I could intercept the resentment and stare it in the eye, and it also faded. This is remarkable as it's probably the first time I consciously sat through resentment without it pulling the rug from under my feet, without actively trying to feel better by doing some "me time" activity. It doesn't stick though. Woke up this morning thinking about work and resentment popped up again. Though now that I've seen it in a different light, it does look different. As a side note, I read on the Wikipedia page[1]: ... the differences between the three emotions are as follows: resentment is directed towards higher-status individuals, anger is directed towards equal-status individuals and contempt is directed towards lower-status individuals. That puts an interesting perspective on the targets of resentment, i.e. that they are considered as "higher-status" which is quite surprising, but makes sense indeed. Ties in neatly with that feeling of insecurity ;) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resentment Entry: Emptiness Date: Wed Dec 14 09:39:58 EST 2011 It seems that I can focus quite clearly on impermance and attachment/suffering, but that emptiness is experienced rather indirectly, mostly through suffering. Self seems to be not there many of the times when sensations and thoughts can be intercepted, but it just "jumps in front of me" whenever the content train leaves the station. The next step might be to go back to the instructions and see how to focus on emptiness in a more direct way. What I do see is that the story-style seems to be rooted in a self-image in a very deep way. From what I read in MCTB this is far from what the experience of emptiness is. Entry: Fear Date: Thu Dec 15 12:08:32 EST 2011 My noon meditation, a little over 15 minutes. Lots of wandering. I started with a very jittery mind, with a very uncomfortable distracted feeling. Before I had tried to quiet it down while sitting at the computer terminal but that didn't work so well. It seems formal sitting meditation is still necessary to get at access concentration to be able to observe just sensations when I'm not already very calm in the first place. So I sat in my usual quiet spot. Different because of daylight and the open windows. A lot of wandering at first but I came to better concentration later and started using a more aggressive noting approach. Before I had moments where there seemed to be nothing to note, but this turns out to be more about not seeing that those moments are filled with thinking and imagining. A very subtle type of wandering, different from the obvious, content-loaded storylines that are easier to spot. After doing this more aggressive approach, somehow forcing myself to a certain noting frequency, say 2/second, a brief moment of feeling fear appeared. Then I stopped to write this entry down. Interpretation: this is maybe the first time I touched a direct experience of nothingness? This aggressive observation seemed to have catched some of the constructed self thoughts that I didn't see at first, which freaked me out a bit. It felt as if something got snatched by the throat while sneaking around unnoticed before. Entry: Frustration Date: Fri Dec 16 17:31:49 EST 2011 It's starting to get frustrated. I'm having a lot of trouble getting to focus through the day. When I sit down, I usually feel better. The jitteryness usually doesn't stay. If it stays, it can get more intense. Yesterday, first 30 minutes evening meditation was like that. I was getting distracted and frustrated with the dog's noises. Tried to focus on that feeling but it got quite strong and in my face, not really possible to observe it without it swamping me. Today after work I felt unconfortably bored. Sat down, and got into some samatha feel-good state. Felt a strong feeling of satisfaction and clinging. A "finally! sedation!". Entry: Background Anxiety Date: Sat Dec 17 13:22:19 EST 2011 A strange phenomenon. A particular stuff stressor is causing what I define as Background Anxiety: a stressed feeling in my stomach that is there as soon as I start living ordinary life, after being cofronted with said stuff stressor. The strange thing is that the moment I sit down and focus on it, it disappears almost immediately. If I don't to this, it keeps stuck. Now what was clear (body and mind / causality stage?) is that thoughts trigger those stomach feeling, and clear focus makes this relation obvious and also makes the sensation loose its grip. What I don't understand is that when I'm writing (like now) the gripping feeling is there quite clearly. Maybe writing isn't such strong concentration? Maybe typing just goes too slow wrt. thinking? When I'm deeply concentrated on programming and I'm not bound by typing, this sort of phenomenon does not occur. It is as if (interpretation) there is some background thought thread running that perioidically activates/feeds the anxiety. As if it's keeping guard, making sure I don't dose off and dive into some fun activity with full concentration? Maybe the thing to cultivate is to switch to full concentration immediately whenver such feelings arise. Starte them in the face immediately, and they vanish. Weird.. I'm trying this now as I'm writing and it takes only 3-5 seconds after concentrating for the feeling to come back. One thing to learn is then, how to have undivided attention while writing? I'm trying now to starre more carefully at the letters as they appear on the screen. This seems to help a bit. That leaves less room for other sensations to arise and maybe counts as a meditation in itself. It seems more quiet; leaves more room for the thoughts that form the sentences, but not easy to maintain. Entry: Blowout [stuff] Date: Tue Dec 20 17:55:06 EST 2011 I had a stress-related panick attack today. Interesting how the whole experience was a bit surreal. I was in the middle of it, knowing (rationally) that it was a self-feeding process, but I was so absorbed by it that I could not step out. Once it toned down on its own I could see it more clearly what just happened. These reactionary episodes are the main reason why I started meditating. To have them stop being such a big deal. They still happen, but it seems to be only the big ones that are left. I'm still quite surprised I'm intercepting the smaller ones, though. What makes this blowout so surreal is that I'm experiencing both brain-operating modes throughout the day: full cloudiness at stuff-convergience points during the day and clear(er) seeing at evening meditation and after such blowouts. Entry: Yesterday Date: Tue Dec 20 18:07:25 EST 2011 From memory. I'm experiencing more of the 3rd characteristic (selflessness) directly. The first two seem to have been easy to see when you actually look: impermanence and the arrival of suffering through attachment. The observer however has always been there. Yesterday and in the last couple of days I've had brief moments where this seems to "flip over" for a brief moment, until fear arises. Hard to say how much of this is scripted. Even thinking it is scripted might be scripted. Gotta love the circularity of it all.. This weird sensation of selflessness seems to arise when I note more aggressively. I have this feeling that some of the time where I think nothing is happening, I'm actually thinking but can't intercept it. Entry: Pfff [stuff] Date: Fri Dec 23 15:33:34 EST 2011 Things suck right now. I hate christmas. Meaning, the days before. Part of this seeing clearly business is that I know that now very clearly, I really hate christmas, and how people can get so worked up about the family stuff, the expectations, the trying to keep things stick together. Including myself of course. So I tried to sit with it. Sit through the shopping in a more mindful way. Trying to see that whole pattern of resentment arise and pass away. It's funny how even with feeling it seemingly more clearly, more intense, the lasting effect of it is greatly reduced. I can't stay angry any more. Now on to the rest ;) Entry: Feels like something is coming Date: Sun Dec 25 13:24:11 EST 2011 More of the meditation is moving towards whole sensate field observation, and regularly the feeling pops up that something isn't right. That I'm not getting why I'm still feeling separateness. It's hard to describe the experience. The explanation above seems almost perfectly scripted/suggested.. Experience of sadness, non-integration. In daily life, many episodes of resentment, hopelessness, panic, clearly unmet expectations and related frustration. Strong sense of separateness in response to current stressful situation with is out of my control. After short meditation I clearly see how the constructed separateness, the clinging to the idea that "This is not my fault, but I'm victimized anyway." causes the suffering. In short, I feel like crap! Entry: Last days Date: Thu Dec 29 22:40:01 EST 2011 Lots of frustration and aversion. One of these days it broke, I went from "I don't want to sit here" to a calm, aware, happy feeling that remained after the end of the meditation. The days after resumed with aversion, confusion, lack of concentration and more crap. Today after a long, intense day, a conversation triggered some heavy dualistic thinking: "you vs. me" + blame. I just sat down, calmed down, and started to see this pattern, locking out of it. Seeing that compassion is the way to approach this particular situation. Alright, time for the insight practice. Entry: Strange experience Date: Fri Dec 30 11:10:16 EST 2011 I'm experiencing a calm state and a sort of "now what?" thing in the background. As if I'm about to make a step but I don't know quite where. In this calm state I clearly see a "me" that's waiting for something to happen, and is getting impatient. It's a very strong feeling of separateness. I also had a quick succession of sadness (with tears) followed by very disorganized mind. Then a thought "it's all fluff" triggered, I sat with it and almost immediately I moved on to a calm state. [ Interpretation ] I'm starting to wonder if this is the misery -> reobservation -> equianimity part of the first path as described in MCTB. There are many correlations between what I'm reading and experiencing, but it's hard to say how much of it is scripted, and the correspondence isn't 100%. I don't see fear. I just checked[1], it comes before misery. Anyways... [1] http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/dharma-wiki/-/wiki/Main/MCTB%20The%20Progress%20of%20Insight?p_r_p_185834411_title=MCTB%20The%20Progress%20of%20Insight Entry: Very calm Date: Sat Dec 31 21:36:14 EST 2011 Lots of calm. Deep, deep calm. Some moments of aggrevation, which I hit with the "no substance" bat and then it turned to calm again. Entry: What has changed? [stuff] Date: Sun Jan 1 21:09:37 EST 2012 Comparing my behaviour now with say two months ago, what has changed? I don't meander on the internet any more. I can clearly see the pain caused by lack of focus, by following scatter-brained discussions. I can sit quietly. Before I would have to always be doing something or obsessively thinking about something. I have less anxiety. And when I do, the fear has a face - it can be related to something concrete. Less denial maybe. What hasn't changed? I'm still overly attached to obsessive about my programming projects, and experience suffering when things don't go as I planned (they seldom do). I still resent work quite often. I resent being forced into taking responsibility in life in general. Entry: Pfff Date: Mon Jan 2 21:04:37 EST 2012 Good case of fundamental suffering I guess. Hard time to concentrate, want to run away from things. Anyways, the complete opposite of my "good morality" report from yesterday. I'm probably giving it another try soon. Tried 2x30 mins, early this morning and just now. Didn't finish either of them, got frustrated wandering and couldn't sit with the frustration. This kind of tiredness is hard to deal with as it messes with the core of concentration. Entry: Letting go of love Date: Wed Jan 4 11:04:28 EST 2012 A strange experience yesterday, related to love. Following the instruction "observe, let go" I did this when a feeling of love arose. First, love has never been so radiant and clear to me as in recent times, doing this kind of observation and "letting it in". However, when it arose and I let it go in full awareness, not clinging to it, a great, deep, lasting equanimity arose. Observed this for a while, with my eyes open (usually I have trouble with open eyes). Then I started feeling attachment to this equanimity which I don't think really ever went away. After the bell this prolonged for a bit until I fell asleep. After that woke up with fear as I had throughout most of the day yesterday. Also this morning: uneasiness, a bit of panic, and more worry about the dog after new developments. [stuff] [interpretaion] It's kind of new to me to feel this feeling of love so directly for a dog, but yes, I experienced it and it was beautiful. Maybe it is about accepting the possibilities of it being hurt, i.e. the dog dying. Entry: Relapse Date: Sat Jan 7 08:14:55 EST 2012 Last couple of days (wed, thu, fri) where relapse days. No concentration, lots of sleepyness. Trying to know lack of concentration and sleepyness is hard. Entry: Re-observation? Date: Wed Jan 11 12:48:57 EST 2012 Current affairs: lots and lots of resistance to almost everything. I remember this feeling from before I started dayly practice. It feels as "simply disconnected", not wanting to have anything to do with the real world. At this time, I feel like that though the writing makes it less obvious. Cognitively I see that this is indeed something to "push through". But only after sittin gon the cushion for 10 minutes and walking away, then remembering that staying on that cushion and sitting through it is exactly the point. As for going to sit on the cushion in the first place, I don't know. Possibly I realized that something was not right and that sitting would provide the answer. In my current interpretation this state could be nicely summed up by the 3 characteristics: seeing everything as undesirable, feeling a clear duality, and not being aware of the impermanence of this state, looking for quick fixes that make it go away. So clearly "seeing" these things but not being "aware" that this is the nature of reality, and that clinging or pushing doesn't have the intended effect. So, after writing this I'm going to try again. Circularity being what it is, writing this down is probably already a displacement activity, doing something to not have to sit through it... Entry: Knowing fear Date: Wed Jan 11 13:16:42 EST 2012 It's becoming more clear to me that my fear is hidden deep down. I've seen sadness a lot the last couple of sessions: only very brief, half a second but intense shots of sadness that lead to the facial expressions that arise during crying. Today I got through the resistance mentioned in the previous entry, arriving at a point of calm but with an insistent contraction in my stomach. After more consciously looking at that following a "show yourself" intent, that feeling went away after exposing itself more clearly as fear. Fear of many [stuff] things currently in the air that have possible but unlikely undesirable outcomes. Entry: Noon is the problem Date: Sun Jan 15 09:48:22 EST 2012 I like programming, but I get obsessive which eventually leads to suffering. How to manage this better? How to be mindful hroughout the day? Usually my mornings start alright, if I slept well. If I didn't then I'm launching right into aversion from the beginning, but let's stick with a day that goes well. The pattern: I start to work on something I love, get entrenched in it. Then I run into some difficulty, to which I start to react with aversion and frustration. This continues for a while until I burn myself out and get in a mood where I'm so locked into the negative side of obsession that everything else (my real life outside of this somewhat artificial hacking world) turns into an unmanageable mess. This usually happens early afternoon. I'd like to learn how to catch this before it overtakes me. Some ideas about mindfulness throughout the day: - Since it's so predicatble in time, maybe a fixed 1 pm meditation session can help? - Try to catch frustration and aversion when they arise. These emotions seem to always be the trigger. I get angry when I have a "good idea" and it turns out not to align with reality very well. When it happens, make sure that awareness of these sensations gets to the point where they go away: they are all fluff so are expected to pass when given proper attention. - Somehow set reminders? The main problem is to get carried away by the emotions and ideas. How to set a reliable alarm that kicks me out of it completely? Sometimes I have so much state in my head that I really don't want to stop, being afraid of letting it all die and having to restore it. The truth is that whenever I feel like that I'm probably tackling things the wrong way, and the house of cards is bound to fall on its own due to the huge amount of effort it takes to keep it standing. Entry: Back on track? Date: Mon Jan 16 00:27:54 EST 2012 Some things where different today: - started out happy (got into baking bread lately) - started noting again after seeing distraction pop up - felt bliss and rapture The noting made things seem like they where in the beginning: more clarity, more stability of concentration. I somehow stopped doing that or doing it less rigorously, which is probably the cause of a lot of the meandering of late. So why was that? Maybe there is resistance against noting itself that wasn't noted? It takes effort, so my low energy level in the past week was probably at least part of it. Overall I feel quite good today. The stuff's also better so that might be simply attachment. Entry: Today's mindfulness at work Date: Mon Jan 16 16:00:30 EST 2012 Today I tried to get at the pattern. Something like this: 9-12 high-energy high-clarity work. 12-13 first signs of superficial fatigue and joyful stress, short break helps 15-16 first signs of deep fatigue, dispairing stress, in need of "tomorrow" break I tried meditation at 14:00, which was difficult due to high energy and a presence of "work to do later" in the form of wandering thoughs and a tightness in the stomach. Trying to let go of that a rapture occured, which seems to happen easier in joyful, energetic states. Entry: Accepting pain Date: Thu Jan 26 13:29:35 EST 2012 That's a tough one, isn't it? I've been using some life stress to observe pain or a queasy feeling in my somach. I'm observing a pattern I've discribed before (pain going away when being concntrated). I've been using (at least) 2 different approaches: - Letting the pain in without resisting it. Being kind to the pain. Greeting it. In Jack Kornfield's style: "Hello pain, I know you." - Focusing on the individual sensations, in Daniel Ingram's style: trying to see through the solidified object (pain in my stomach) to see what flickering sensations it is made of. Both seem to work, though the second one is harder. Maybe because it relies less on suggestion and more on concentration and observation. Though the latter one is more profound. The former treats the pain with love, the latter treats it with courage. The latter indeed shows me rising/falling at a greater detail than the solidified pain. Entry: Morning meditation Date: Mon Jan 30 08:49:13 EST 2012 - obsessive, resentful mind - strong tendency to "be somewhere else" - very shallow breath, almost not there (caffeine?) - queasy stomach (coffee? hunger?) Entry: Loving Kindness & Insight Date: Sat Feb 4 09:43:37 EST 2012 I joined an IM circle in Lansing guided by Dan. Wednesday was the second sitting, where he focused on Metta in the second part. While not strictly IM, according to Dan Metta practice is something that comes together with Vipassana after a while, but it is important to start doing both as separate practices in the beginning. I'm having a hard time doing this, which probably means that he's right ;) It seems that Metta is a good way to approach the third characteristic (unity / separateness) and the second characteristic (attachment). With compassion and loving-kindness resp. I think I sometimes stumble into this kind of practice when I accedentally open up during insight practice, i.e. when I observe attachment face of love. This "letting go of love" I discribed earlier seems to be the opening up that is the goal of Metta practice. Googling a bit.. It might be interesting to read this thread [1]. I'm getting on a morning caffeine trip and finding it hard to focus. [1] http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/2433670 Entry: Anxiety, deconstructing the feeling Date: Sat Feb 4 10:35:11 EST 2012 Using more precise observation I've reached a point where it is possible in say 50% of the times to deconstruct the feeling in my stomach that is associated to anxiety (non-directed or not clearly directed fear). Instead of the solidified feeling of a "stone" or a "clenched fist", looking at it more closely without resistint it, a much more turbulent, non-constant pattern emerges. It feels a bit like waves of tension, starting in a center and bubbling outwards. The bubbling isn't constant either, it comes in salvos. I'm not able to control the rising of it, but observing it does seem to release some of the clenching involved. Entry: [stuff] Anxiety, Resentment and Boredom Date: Sat Feb 4 10:44:14 EST 2012 Man, there is a lot of anxiety and resentment! Much more than I was aware of. My overall approach to it is still not being aware of it, trying to make it go away. I'm aware of the more obvious ones, but there's a whole world of hidden attachments that I'm only beginning to see. One of them is boredom. I really don't like doing things that I've already figured out, and that just need the last mile of "maintenance attention" to put the details in place. Much of my motivation seems to be about the elimination of nuisance (scratching that itch), wanting that relief so badly. When I get the idea that a certain task will probably be much more unpleasant than just ignoring the itch it's trying to scratch, then bye bye motivation. I've never thought of it like this, but Jack Kornfield describes boredom as a form of judgement. Paraphrased: something isn't worthy of my time because it will not bring me the right amount of pleasant stimulation in exchange for painful effort. Entry: Equanimity Date: Sun Feb 5 21:14:45 EST 2012 This whole day was weird. Circumstances made me a bit nervous this morning, and I've been trying to apply mindfulness to the day. I'm procrastinating (taxes) which put me in a bit of denial/separateness space. Afternoon was very stimulating (dog training going well) which gave a bit of grounding. Evening meditation was very peaceful. Can't really remember much of phenomena, but there was a clear open space and lots of vibrations. Broad field. Concentrated on that feeling in my stomach that has been popping up a lot lately. Something keeps it there. I don't tink it has a physical origin, it feels too much like stress when the stressor is clear, but there's no clear stressor. It seems to vanish when I focus on releasing my idea of "grip on things". Earlier today the idea to "let go of *everything*" came to mind when meditating. Trying to do so made the feeling disappear, with a feeling of something else opening and space becoming larger. I also fell it shrink again with the pain immediately reappearing when thoughts popped up that where of the nature of "after meditating, I'm going to ...". Interpretation: something seems to be presenting itself but I can't really put my finger on it. It's at least related to a certain guilt I feel about "not doing anything", or "idling". It's hard to describe but it seems that often I have things running in the background that I'm not fully aware of. Staring at the physical manifestations sometimes helps, but it seems that often you need some kind of nudge to know where *else* to look. In my case here it's about letting go of the context of meditation, being the allotted time slot that felt like keeping everything inside a bottle. Entry: Good day Date: Tue Feb 7 20:16:41 EST 2012 Somewhat of a little stress ride in the middle, but overall I have the impression today was different. More naturally in the moment, and more naturally recovering back to base line after getting excited about someting. I feel happy. Entry: The No-Complaining Bracelet Date: Sat Feb 11 11:15:48 EST 2012 [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3578459 Entry: Good days Date: Sat Feb 11 11:16:11 EST 2012 Things are different. There is more happiness. I still get stuck. I still jump on the train, every day, but after a while, depending how fast the train is going, I notice I'm buying into the story and can let it go. [stuff] Yesterday was like that. Took a day off with Melissa but somehow got into a bad mood in the morning. I retreated into a used book store, and sat there while she went into another store. Was reading [1] and practicing noticing. Things cleared out after that. This is new. I used to get into moods like this, not knowing what happened, but staying stuck for the whole day. [1] http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/mahasi/progress.html Entry: Cycles Date: Sat Feb 11 18:22:36 EST 2012 Life has its cycles soaked in irony. Right after writing the previous post things start going downhill. Wound up in a spiral of reactivity, blame, resent, sadness, disappointment, ... I don't even know how I got there, but it was a gradual build-up from unnoticed little annoyances.. I sat with it for half an hour after external factors allowed, and the feeling in my stomach didn't really go away, which probably means the core of it wasn't observed fully. Storylines came up right after leaving the cushon. I'm still holding on to it. The insight was that it really is attachment, getting into a blind alley without noticing that it's the actual clenching that makes it hurt so much.. Though that seems to be enough only in the moment. The longer the clenching persists, the longer it can feed itself and the firmer it can lock in. Noticing that it is attachment only released temporarily during meditation. The automatic took over right away again, keeping the suffer-momentum going. Tried some loving-kindess too, but it just doesn't seem to get anywhere in this kind of state.. Just unable to open up. What seems to be the trick is to truly accept it. From Jack Kornfield's book (paraphrased): accept that the unwanted emotions are going to be there for a while, or will come back later. Only when that is fully acknowledged, then the clenching tends to release. Acceptance is hard. Back to the cushon, not done yet :) Entry: Morning judgement Date: Sun Feb 12 09:42:39 EST 2012 Basically, the stuff that drives procrastination. I've been thinking a while to do work as mindfulness exercises. The toughest time to do this is the morning, waking up right into judgement: "no, I don't want to". I've been reading about Affective Freedom yesterday. Seems related to IM in that the practice is mindfulness-based, but its focus is more clearly on happiness[1]. [1] http://actualfreedom.com.au/ [2] http://dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/2401384 Entry: Challenge Date: Sun Feb 12 22:16:12 EST 2012 Tried twice to bring up "stuff" memories to see how the train starts moving, and indeed it did in both occasions. I tried to focus on what happens at the moment of gaining awareness of the now, how the memories fade and how they immediately loose their grip once you step out of the story. It seems that a lot of the good feeling is still quite conditional on some memories not arising. When they do arise and I don't catch them early, they take off. And what becomes more clear: all the stories are about "me". Not about real issues, but about the threatening of ego. Most of them take the form of me responding to a disagreement, initiated by another person's expressed opinion or behaviour. From memory, that's not true.. There are storylines that are not about human interactions too, but those are not so emotional. They are more about curiosity. ( I had the laptop in front of me to record experiences, but it seems to be more of a distraction to log every idea that comes to mind.. Let's focus a bit more. ) - solar plexus. looks like that's my best point of focus, since everything seems to be happening there. any emotion that comes up manifests there first. when I just look at the breath, I don't notice queasiness creeping up. - the story about me. it's there, mostly about inferiority and superiority, comparison, judgement, and resentment through perceived superiority in others. it's the same as it ever was, but it's getting silly. maybe that's a sign of progress. something in me seems to be trying to step out of that loop, while the loop itself just keeps on playing and reinforcing itself. - aside from the "me" stuff there's the just wandering stuff. the "lalala i'm idling.. wow this mat is interesting." Entry: Where do I want to go next? Date: Sun Feb 12 22:47:46 EST 2012 - Find mindfulness in the morning. - Find mindfulness in a boring task, probably also in the morning. - Find mindfulness in "no, I don't want to do that now". - Practice concentration. It seems to be easier to cut the "me" loops, becauuse they are so emotional. It's harder to catch ordinary wandering. - Compassion & loving-kindness. Didn't do much of Dan's instruction these weeks because there seemed to be more important matters to take care of, though the few times that I managed to do it or stumbled into it, it definitely seemed worthwhile. Opening up is something I need in daily life. Entry: On the path Date: Sun Feb 12 23:41:42 EST 2012 I started this log when starting to read Daniel Ingram's book. So where am I on the path? I don't know. If I would guess, I'd say reobservation and early equianimity. What seems recognisable is the piercing through the "all fluff" of reobservation into the quiet open space of early equanimity, though this could also be pre-A&P. If it's equanimity, I must have had an account of the dark night. And I recall a lot of time spent in misery, crying about a deep deep feeling of sadness about the clear link between suffering and its causes, i.e. my own choices and choices of people around me. Disgust I've not seen so much of, only in it's lesser form of disinterest and boredom. Though there have been moments when I clearly felt "home sick" for an illusion of permanence. Fear following insights was definitely there a couple of times. Most fear however was fear for possible future real-world situations, i.e. worry. What worries me is that I feel better on the cushon overall: the heavy emotions do not arise so much, but that happiness makes me sloppy. Also, I don't tend to oversit. I stick to 30 minutes pretty much, with some continuation in bed, where I usually fall asleep. And then there's the mornings. They suck. No, they are beautiful but they are also filled with desire and attachment. They start to suck when obsession or aversion sets in. I'm just not aware/awake until hours after I get out of bed.. Entry: Responsibility and Panic [stuff] Date: Mon Feb 13 21:00:07 EST 2012 Be honest about doing what you can, and be done with feeling guilty when it turns out not to be adequate. I'm in a situation at work where there is a form of risk I'm not familiar with. A form of risk where tiny mistakes can have huge consequences. My mind is terrified by this, and it only wants to mitigate the risk by adding safe guards everywhere, while there is really no time to do so. The main point seems to be being careful and always fully aware, which from experience is not my strong point, and it often goes wrong. It has caused a lot of stress in the past. It's better now than before, but there are still flareups of panic. I've been working with this fear in meditation, to try to see it clearly. What comes up is the notion of honesty (that I did/do my best) and acceptance of imperfection. The honesty boils down to really paying attention without resentment (about having to use a particular tiresome approach) and blame, or any form of judgement. What happens however is that thus judgement gets in the way and cloud clear thinking. It is directly opposing honesty; it's not possible to be honest about being judicious while there is any form of judgment going on. Bad judgements get in the way of good judgement. Entry: Unsatisfactoriness Date: Thu Feb 16 16:56:22 EST 2012 Trying to move into unsatisfactoriness directly, following more of Daniel's advice. Having a tough day today after my morning outing. Brain doesn't really want to cooperate. Feeling boredom, dissatisfaction. Today is the perfect time, but I don't really want to ;) I ate a huge heavy burger yesterday. Maybe there's some correlation.. Entry: Meditation at Work Date: Sat Feb 18 17:19:47 EST 2012 I study a lot. Currently I'm learning the Haskell programming language, which is a treasure trove of beatiful abstractions that are rarely encountered in any other programming community. However it is quite hard; I'm constantly surfing my limit of understanding. Recently (or recent years) I've been getting frustrated by a "wanting to understand" state of mind. At some point I get tired and get really confused. This feels pretty bad. At such a point I can hardly let it go, so I try harder and get more confused usually. It spirals. I think I "should" be able to get something and of course then it's really hopeless to ever get there, mixing tiredness with a bunch of extra emotions that take more energy to sustain.. It's interesting how this works. I really like learning. Getting to clarity about things is a very nice experience. However when clarity doesn't come as expected, when things are too difficult or too hard to absorb at a particular time, the good feelig can easily turn into frustration or resentment. It's basicly greed for understanding. I'm trying to train myself into remembering Daniel's advice about investigating unsatistfactoriness: "How exactly do I know that this current phenomenon is unsatisfactory / desirable?" The first thing that happens when this thought pops up (or more correctly the observation pattern in refers to) is that the intensity of the desire desolves. Sometimes it can disappear completely so quickly that this trick seems magical. Immediately a desire to have this control all the time pops up! So I've been trying this a lot lately. There seems to be some improvement in intercepting sprialling thoughts. What also comes to mind when seeing this is the relationship with no-self. I seem to have somehow correlated/observed directly the correlation betwee desire and separateness. The wanting to take or push away makes the boundary between self and other very clearn: it's the thing you cross when pushing or pulling! Maybe that's going to be my vehicle? Desire and separateness? Entry: Strong desire Date: Wed Feb 22 09:24:31 EST 2012 Yesterday was challenging. Hard to concentrate on work due to lot's of noise in the house which lead to some agitation and (deeper hidden) resentment. Conflict popped up at the end of the day, not directly about this but highly likely indirectly so. I did reclining meditation for about 30-45 minutes followed by sitting meditation for 45 minutes. Focus on the emotional turbulence and the undesirability of it (2nd char). Experienced some brief moments of insight where it all seemed to "click": my attachment to the situation went away, making room for equianimity, settling in reality. These didn't last long though. Pull into the emotions and attachment was very strong. Attachment to reaching that "click" arose, making the whole meditation experience into a contradiction (experiencing wanting to experience unwanting/letting-go). I can see that there is indeed freedom from this particular form of suffering. And I can see that what is necessary to see that freedom is strong mindfulness. Some of these mental habits are so deeply ingrained... It really does take practice to see them clearly. Entry: Resentment against concentration Date: Wed Feb 22 10:39:07 EST 2012 Stress is rising these days, and I have trouble concentrating on my work. I wonder if I can turn this piece of suffering ("Pff, I really can't focus on this stuff now, leave me alone.") into a meditation exercise. EDIT: I managed to get started but it was more of a desparate move than anything else. Sinking away into something.. Entry: Lost Date: Wed Feb 22 20:12:53 EST 2012 Totally lost in samsara.. Had a beer, browsing the intarwebs, and vanishing small attention span. From this side there seems to be no cure, just indulgence. Drinking that Duvel was a bonehead move. I was restless, now I'm dense too.. I had a sprint of motivation untill I found out about my reduced abilities, so couldn't do what I planned. Entry: Shallow Date: Sat Feb 25 08:41:08 EST 2012 Things have been more shallow last couple of days. I feel tranquil, at ease, but there seems to be no movement after that. Restlessness (re-observation?) passes quicker these days. There seems to be some basic insight that piercing through the fluff by just observing is the wise reaction. This almost always leads to tranquility and a broader view, but it really takes the awareness of the "all fluff" part to move on. Fear has been arising from time to time in ordinary life when there is a silent moment. Some sense of "being" that's different. As if I'm no longer in a movie, but really just observing without any history, as if my life story is just a dream, and the only thing I can trust is right in front of me. Scary. Waking up in the morning is hard still. Especially when there's stuff already going on in the house, I feel aversion. I do catch the aversion in most cases, but not deeply enough to see it pass until I'm fully awake. I've also been noting again on some occasions as this seems to be the area where I slack the most. The thing is that doing this in the style of MCTB indeed is a bit of a marathon. It does keep you firmly in the present though, and the tendency & desire to wander becomes very obvious this way. Maybe that's why it is so hard: it really eliminates the wandering which can feel quite pleasant if you're in a calm, open state. Entry: MCTB Date: Sat Feb 25 21:32:17 EST 2012 Strange day today. Been working a bit on an art project, hit some bumps. Got very quite exhausted and fed up, then this disgust seemed to continue during the day. Took a nap, still the same.. Might be meditation-related then as it really seems to come out of nowhere (except for the strong attachment to the work that's tiring me out). Reading MCTB again, page 204: The Progress of Insight[1]. The first vipassana jhana is about building up the basic skills of what is a physical sensation, what is a mental sensation, how they relate, and what the Three Characteristics feel like in practice. The Arising and Passing away is about seeing this very clearly and profoundly for the object of meditation. The Dark Night is about these insights then coming around to the background and seeing more complex emotional and psychological constructs of mental and physical sensations as they are. The fourth vipassana jhana, meaning this stage, is about seeing the true nature of even more complex, inclusive, subtle and fundamental things, like space, awareness, investigation, wonder, expectation, anticipation, peace, ease, questioning, and those sorts of things in ways that cut through the center and include the whole background and foreground as well. About equanimity: The arising of some sort of fear of madness and death is not uncommon at this stage, ... [1] http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/dharma-wiki/-/wiki/Main/MCTB%2011.%20Equanimity Entry: Last week Date: Fri Mar 2 14:29:47 EST 2012 Looks like I didn't write anything down. Last week was uneventful, apart from the walking meditation session @ the Lansing meeting hosted by Dan: an interesting experience; so much richness that you usually don't see. The rest was attempting to see the background. I'm trying to be aware of being tired, depleted after a day of work. It feels like my brain is on fire. Instead of "flatness" what I would expect, there seems to be a violent fire of not fully formed ideas & images coming and going at a very fast pace. It feels more like "pre-ideas". Activations without "snap" into well-formed image. I've also been watching a lecture series[1] by Michael Gazzaniga which was quite interesting. Especiall the middle lecture about the "Interpreter" is quite interesting. See for yourself! I also re-watched Dan Ingram Talk at Cheetah House 3/3 on equanimity[2]. I'm still quite clueless about how the maps correspond to where I am with my practice, but at least the subtle awareness that is supposed to arise in the stage of equanimity starts to make sense to me, but I'm definitely not in a space where I can sit for a long time. Maybe my head is in the dark night and my tail somewhere in early equanimity? One of the things that started to make sense is "watching concentration" or watching the inability to concentrate, or the absence of wonder and interest. Thinking of this, watching the presence of wonder and concentration is still quite hard. Maybe I m not quite there yet.. ( EDIT: Reading that again it sounds more like a description of dissolution. ) Apart from wondering about equanimity, just as the week before I've been using the question "how exactly do I know that this sensation is undesirable" when faced with aversion. Duality becomes more clear at least when I snap out of it and start watching, both in positive and negative emotional states. [1] http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/all-news/gifford-071009 [2] http://vimeo.com/28182481 Entry: Can't do it Date: Fri Mar 2 14:51:13 EST 2012 I'm starting to get interested in the feeling of "I can't do this", as it arises in daily life when being forced to do a difficult task when there is no natural tendency to problem-solving. ( Which I do experience often as it is basically what I do and like. ) I'm starting to suspect that in many cases this is really more resentment and boredom than anything else. Resentment about being forced to concentrate on something that isn't worth the pain. Its interesting how the pain involved in mental effort sometimes is really invisible and completely overshadowed by the "need to know". One fact seems to be that at some points intelligence (the ability to understand something clearly) diminishes with fatigue. However, it never goes away completely: even if I feel I can't do anything, if something interesting pops up I'm immediately back on track. Somehow it seems that the last part of the downward spiral of tiredness is a feedback loop: because of resentment more energy is burned in worrying about not being able to work or work fast enough. Entry: On remembering advice Date: Fri Mar 2 15:53:34 EST 2012 The advice being: "there is something in your sensate field that you're ignoring". The context: inability to open up in Metta practice. I can experience the feeling of not being able to open up quite directly, however the thing that I'm ignoring is usually quite hard to find. Actually I have both experiences. Sometimes just the act of sitting down on the cushion can immediately pinpoint what exactly is going on, however in most cases it takes some patience. Once I gain awareness of the situation and then awareness of this particular advice I gain some direction and usually I find some form of clenching that, when observed, releases in a very natural way. I've realized that 1) being aware that you are stuck when you are stuck - braking the cycle - is a big challenge, and 2) the act of remembering the advice about what to do in this situation isn't a conscious thing you can control! It either pops up and lets you take a step back, or it doesn't and leaves you running in circles. Fascinating how this al works. Entry: Observing the effects of alcohol Date: Fri Mar 2 20:56:13 EST 2012 ( EDIT: I rarely drink alcohol in the U.S. but preparing going to Belgium for a visit I feel some urge to "get back into the mood". One of my impressions of the U.S. is that alcoholism seems to be much more of a problem here. I had the same impression of the U.K. Many people I meet here have a history of overconsumption and switched to not drinking at all. At home things seem to be different, more moderate. Alcohol is much more part of daily life, but there are more social rules and boundaries. Going too far and loosing control or behaving impolitely is not appreciated. I actually chanced into an interesting article about this topic recently [1]. ) There is a deep feeling of freedom when being intoxicated, at least in the early stages. It also brings back memories of other times spent in the same state. Something that doesn't seem nearly as romantic in the aftermath of sweating out the poison.. It is strange that this affinity towards those states is not there when the drug wears out. And from memory I know this doesn't last long. Even while drinking there is a point where impairment wins out over enthousiasm. I don't want to use the word illusion because the experience is as real as it gets. The early stages of intoxication are truly uplifting, energizing, motivating, relaxing, focusing, even cleansing. There is also a feeling of "no problem". The complexities of life seem to vanish, which is one of its greatest qualities. Also from experience, but being in the initial "rush". The first stage feels so good that one is inclined to keep drinking. Though that quickly wears out. Ping... First sign of wear-out. I think about an hour after starting my first glass. It's a strange feeling of the "real world" piercing through. It's some kind of desire to be able to think clearly while this is no longer possible. It's is predominated by a feeling that this intoxication business is really just an illusion, i.e. fake. That doesn't seem to be the case though. (from very recent memory) The first stage really feels authentic, so it must be some kind of chemical balance that shifts after an hour or so, going down the drain. It goes from feeling "real, but different" to feeling like you've just been scammed. From memory I recognize that moment, but I didn't recall it was so sudden and so definitive. Regret is starting too. Social awareness is starting too. "I shouldn't be doing this." Regret. Thirst ;) Really, a deeper physical feeling of thirst. Not like (from memory) desire and appreciation for the feeling of the beer going over the lips into the throat. Granted, that still feels good but the prime motivation of actually drinking that glass seems to have shifted to thirst. Vipassana binge. Hilarious. Laughter. Silliness is starting to set in. And fear that this experiment will soon lose its driver. Laughter again. Appreciation of absurdities. Looking up the link[1] below. In parallel while googling, starting to realize that I didn't really start this as an experiment until after I had my first couple of sips and started to get into the exiting part of the trip. I was actually learning some new programming tricks for a couple of minutes before. Confusion. Starting to do multiple things at once, getting easily distracted. Starting to mix up words in google searches. First realization that I need to stop. I had about 1/4 gallon. I'm not sure about the strength of this beer though, it doesn't say. It's maybe slightly more than pilsener but not much. It's an ale. A 1/4, That's 4 Belgian pintjes. Makes sense, that's what I remember being the border between just going out for a little drink (spreading it out over a bit more time than I just did) and starting on a binge. Found the link[1]. Re-appreciation for reality. From memory I know that stopping and jently coming down does leave you in a bit of an intoxicated state, but with more of a natural feel. From experience this is the state that does most damage because it's quite insidious. Things feel normal but you are stuck with an altered personality: lack of judgement and empathy and a lot of short-sightedness. It's hard to see that directly though. It really feels normal; only the memory is there to tell you that it isn't, that you might have acted or decided differently on other occasions. 15 more minutes passed. I'm done with this. I definitely don't want to get drunk. Yawning. Time to go to bed and vegitate. I suppose my meditation today isn't going to be easy. Probably better wait a bit until this wears out because concentrating is not something I'm able to do right now. Of course, the obligatory email writing frenzy is starting. I find this one of the interesting properties of alcohol, and it seems to be happening later in the trip when things feel more normal: ease of social interaction. Ease of crossing bordersb with a fealing of authenticity that is otherwise hard to come by. Maybe this whole ordeal isn't so bad at all as long as you're able to keep it within bounds. There is definitely a point of loosing it ... ( Thirst. Getting some water. ) ... when you go too far, but the altered perspective is worth it. Even if it all seems naive after sobering up. Maybe that's what ordinary life needs more of. Naïveté. [1] http://www.gladwell.com/2010/2010_02_15_a_drinking.html Entry: Follow up Date: Sat Mar 3 11:13:31 EST 2012 Had a very good night of sleep. Yesterday night's experiment was interesting. I'm glad I still know where to stop though, but after all it's quite a limiting perspective being at the other side of it again. Alcohol narrows your view, and it definitely takes away awareness of some of the social complexities daily life is fraught with. Feeling good today. Just doodling I'm starting to see that I'm working too hard. Not enough play. Glad some time off is coming up. EDIT: Starting the 2nd half of that keg; finishing it before it goes rotten. I don't feel the initial excitement from yesterday. Feel mostly flat. EDIT: Morning after. Yesterday seemed different. It's striking that the 2nd day it already becomes "normal". I could definitely feel the desire for alcohol coming up in the late afternoon. This stuff is definitely addictive. The feeling of flatness continued until I went to bed. Had some panic attacks waking up, mostly centered around work stress. It felt like that open space I've been feeling lately and also in my afternoon meditation was completely gone. Conclusion, which I already knew: alcohol is OK as long as you can resist drinking too much. However it is hard to remember the bad feeling of the downhill if you haven't experienced it for a while. The memory of the good uphill part seems to last a lot longer, taking away the resistance to give in to indulgement. Maybe an interesting experiment is to note the effects of caffeine and make a report of my usual morning experience. Entry: Today Date: Sun Mar 4 21:07:30 EST 2012 I think I had a bit of a hangover. The tiredness at around 8pm gave a very nice sit though, I think more of a concentration feel. The thinking part is kind of numb from the slight hangover and concentration-work today, so this makes it easier to just let thoughts go; they seem to be only fragments. Might try some meditation when really tired. Though I already noticed that tired + disgruntled about stil being up is a hard combination to crack. I'm attempting to focus more on the background, the watcher. Space has become more apparent. The whole sensate field feels more coherent. A strange impression arises that "I've seen all this before". Especially when I was a kid, say 9-10 y/o, watching the clock at my grandma's while lying down on the couch. My early day however was soaked in resentment. Hard to be mindful when reality hits you in the face with too many things at once. That particular feeling of being overwhelmed seems to be triggering the spiral a lot. Might be good to train to catch it. My impression was that the early part of the hangover decreased awareness and launches you straight into storyland. Overall from these 2 days of consuming alcohol I had quite a bad experience, mostly from the day after. The only thing good, really was the initial ramp-up on the first night. Entry: Anxiety Date: Thu Mar 8 09:21:50 EST 2012 Experiencing fear without anything to latch on to. Headless fear, mostly harmless when noticed. Entry: Back in Belgium Date: Tue Mar 13 02:25:57 CET 2012 Started again formally yesterday, 20 mins. For the days before that I did what I could here and there. On the plane it didn't really work. I'm not sure why. I got in this state of reduced clarity that was actually quite nice. Just floating, reading a book. I did watch dissatisfaction after a while; sitting there squeezed in my seat with all the other people squeezed in theirs. Today was a busy day for the busy day, fixing some things that don't need too much thinking. Also nice, but time to come down from it. 30 mins. This one went deeper. Ended in deep concentration, with time apparently moving faster as usual when watching the clock. Some sadness that lead to tears. A transation from chaos to calm somewhere, again after noticing and using the "all fluff" technique; taking the chaos as is instead of resisting, which makes it pass. Before that I had some restlessness in middle 10 minutes. The first ten minutes took me from being absorbed in life to being in a calm place. Entry: Identifying with intelligence Date: Wed Mar 14 20:26:20 CET 2012 "Wit" is something weird. It's not always there. In my whole life I've always had the impression of being quite intelligent, but at the same time, also fairly naive and insecure. I've come to look at this as if the intelligence (and it's close companion curiosity) is sometimes just not "switched on". That part of my brain that looks for connections and finds them in flashes is easily washed away by strong emotions like fear or anger, or even resentment (boredom), and in times like this when I'm experiencing the symptoms of a common cold. But to come to the wisdom part: I've always identified with being smart. Then if it's just not working for some reason, I feel as if I'm not myself, or more strongly, as if I'm failing, falling short. I feel miserable when I have a cold, and it starts to dawn on me that this is really mostly because I can't think straight and I get angry about this fact: some cycle of blame and not living up to that self image starts to go on a roll. Entry: The interpreter Date: Wed Mar 14 21:31:39 EDT 2012 Suggestion, the interpreter and paths. One of the things that is so intriguing in meditation practice is the interplay of experience and story. The eventual goal being to somewhat eliminate story and end up in pure experience, but the way to get to that point is by incorporating techniques and practices that can only be communicated through story and before actually experienced, need to somehow be described in words to make it all make sense. What I find so interesting is that in experimental psychology, that story is not taken as seriously as what can be measured. Recent neurologic research seems to indicate there is a module in the brain that actually does all this post-hoc interpretation of facts, and it's often wrong. I'm a bit sick still so the point might be not so clearly articulated, but what I'm getting at is: what would be the right way to study experience and meditation practice such as it is described in the story surrounding buddhism, without relying too much on this fuzzy module? Entry: Cold & partial awareness Date: Wed Mar 14 21:58:26 EDT 2012 I just experienced "waking up" from the dull state that goes together with peak symptoms of a common cold. It's a wonderful feeling of "getting my wit back". As described in a previous post, it seems I can get quite averse to feeling dull, almost to a point of panic that wit might never come back again! We are such situational beings.. So it came back. Curiosity came back. Entry: Taking breaks Date: Fri Mar 16 01:56:28 CET 2012 Sometimes just letting go of a forced focus can be enough to find an out-of-the-box solution. It happened to me again today, working for a long stretch, then realizing it was time for a break. Just walking out of the room in the mind set of "I'm on a break" was enough for some solution to pop up through a channel that seemed to have been blocked by my forcing a particular way of looking at the problem. Seems that freedom and creativity go hand in hand, and frustration and dullness also. The thing is that it doesn't work when you take a break, but not really take a break, i.e. not let go of the mental clinging to the problem, or more specifically to the frustration of not finding a solution. It's really about letting go, free-floating that lets background thinking emerge. Entry: Good sit Date: Thu Mar 22 00:20:27 CET 2012 Had a 50 minute sit yesterday. Had to break it off a couple of minutes before the hour mark because it started to feel pointless. i had been struggling a lot in that sit. Got some spiralling thing going on in daily life. Lots of turbulence until I realized the "it's all fluff" idea. This didn't actually move me forward until some kind of perspective shift happens, which landed me into a feeling of peace after accepting the reality of now. I felt cleansed after the sit. I could "just lie down" on the bed afterwards, not being driven to mindlessly browse the internet. I have a feeling of being back on track, though today I didn't sit yet. Was reading dharma overground about Florian's awakening[1]. I feel as if the time I've been here back in Belgium have been in a bit of a haze. There was jet lag, some acute common cold attack and some drinking and all of them took away alertness. The other one[2] is also nice. Some funny quote: I've joked to some friends that there seems to be something built into reality which instantly renders any conceptualization of truth as gibberish. [1] http://dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/2057150 [2] http://dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/2691213 Entry: Fear of knowing Date: Thu Mar 22 01:34:22 CET 2012 Today's "show me what I need to see" resolution brought this up: Afraid of looking. Fear of knowing. Desire for ignorance. Entry: Emotional turbulence Date: Sat Mar 24 21:37:17 CET 2012 Lots of crisis around me. Lots of suffering. Some identification with the emotions. Some strange mix of aversion and compassion. Strange sit. I feel quite out of it in general. I'm experiencing a strange pull towards sitting. I might be using it as an escape. After reading Florian's post (see previous entries and [1]) I think something switched about the story of meditation itself. The main poin in that thread is about the seeker not getting what is sought, and the whole seek thing dissolving into irrelevance. [1] http://dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/2691213 Entry: More weirdness Date: Sun Mar 25 13:39:10 CEST 2012 Could be too much stimulation in the last couple of days. If there's anything on the MCTB path that rings a bell it's "disgust". I'm terribly unhappy with how the world works, and I want my illusion back. Entry: Response to Fear of knowing Date: Sun Mar 25 13:59:16 CEST 2012 Feeling more rational ATM, or should I say more attached to the presumed correctness of my rational world-modeling ;) Remembering from [1]. What happened here was interesting. I interpret it as a residual fear coming from early religious indoctrination, i.e fear coming from the "God knows what you're thinking" idea and the subsequent attempt to control thinking, to not go into "bad stuff". The fear that comes with "shouldn't be thinking about that" is still presents itself from time to time. Anyway, what I want to talk about is intention. It's a strange thing, but it seems to be important somehow in guiding/priming subjective experience. MCTB mentions making "strong resolutions" from time to time. [1] entry://20120325-133910 Entry: Overwhelmed Date: Sun Mar 25 14:17:10 CEST 2012 This log is moving from a sit log to a moment-to-moment introspection log. What does the feeling of being overwhelmed by emotions feel like? Some characteristics: It kills motivation and curiosity. This seems most obvious. Too much stuff going on around me and I collapse into a state of depression. Usually not chronic as there are things that can lift me out of it, i.e. some positive emotion or a thought that pops up, triggering curiosity. Closely investigating this state of depression itself usually exposes attachment, i.e. clinging to an image of an idealized, worry-free life that I might have had if I had taken some different routes. Maybe by definition, but being overwhelmed is hard to overcome. It presents itself as a distinct sensation: a wave of things coming at me, pressing me down, making me give up. Maybe it is interesting to learn more about this sensation itself? How exactly do I know that I'm being washed over? Can the hopelessness be pierced to see what is actually expected or hoped for? Hopelessness is blinding: there is just the feeling of not getting what is desired without any clear feeling of why the desire is there in the first place. Engaging a state of depression does take a lot of courage. It's also not an instant fix; it takes time to peel the onion, and the first layers are guaranteed to feel like crap. Entry: Daniel on Powers Date: Sun Mar 25 20:25:06 CEST 2012 Some interview with Ingram[1] and some discussin about powers[2]. [1] http://www.buddhistgeeks.com/2008/02/bg-061-buddhist-magic-what-is-possible-with-the-powers/ [2] http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/517647 Entry: Curiosity Date: Mon Mar 26 11:49:03 CEST 2012 Waking up, I want to go back to sleep. My morning routine is to get some coffee and maybe some bite to eat but please leave me alone and let me wander around. It's often almost impossible to imagine that I take joy in thinking about something until it just happens. Actually, I don't take joy in thinking. Mental effort is painful. It's only *finding* something that's joyful. As long as the finding happens with a high enough frequency, the process of continuing effort can be sustained. Let's dissect a bit more. Easy problems are boring: finding a solution isn't such a big deal as it's expected. There is no reward, only effort of kicking the brain into higher gear. Sometimes just getting to a certain kind of context can be the same effort for a supposedly simple problem than for a difficult one. Difficult problems are too painful: there is lots of processing required that goes on in the background while consciousness is drowning in confusion, loosing all hope there is ever going to be an end to it. It's said that confusion is good; an impetus for your brain to work harder. It feels like crap though. Then there is the sweet spot in the middle: those kinds of problems that can get you into a flow, where there is seemingly no effort. Brain automatically latches on to them and starts hacking away. In these cases curiosity is always there. Entry: Facing noon Date: Mon Mar 26 13:47:55 CEST 2012 20 minute sit at noon, when it usually is quite difficult. Started with a lot of restlessness, moved through pain while sitting, changed pillow then started to focus on the observer, the border between self and world. Observed 2 different states and a strange transition between them. Going from clear presence of self (in the form of rumination, worry, disappointment with current state of affairs of the daily life) to an absence of these things. Crossing that border a couple of times. I'm going to call this state no-self as that's what it seems to be. Not sure if it corresponds to what this usually refers to. It feels like a disinterest in rumination. Simply not interested. After about 15 minutes I had an insight, hard to describe, and writing about it now probably fills in some gaps with story so I'm not going to. It was accompanied by a warm, radiating feeling from just below my heart (center of chest where the rib case ends. After that a jolt of fear ("What's happening?") and a bit of disorientation. It seems that actively looking for permanent self (that which is supposed to be not there) seems to expose some of the elements it is made out of, like thoughts of possession. Wanting things a certain way so they can be put in a special box called "me". All of this is accompanied by a deep sense of relief, and a feeling that I didn't do anything except for looking in a certain direction to trigger a trap door. When I'm writing this I wonder if I'm now totally deluding myself, since this sounds so much like stories I've read before. Though I did not experience anything like a fruition, cessation. EDIT: 30 minutes later the first signs of duality appear again, caused by some aversion for a particular task and rumination. EDIT: A couple of hours later. After going into the real world for a bit I was cast into duality and reactivity again pretty abrubtly. My mood is pretty good overall though. Entry: Kenneth Folk @ buddhist geeks Date: Tue Mar 27 11:18:23 CEST 2012 1st Gear: When things become difficult, switch to mindfulness of the body. 2nd Gear: Turn the attention to the watcher 3rd Gear: Recognize the essential nature of mind, this moment is perfect as it is. Start in third gear and downshift. 2 Modes of the mind: experiential focus vs. narrative focus. Following through to [1]: 2nd gear is looking at the no-dog. The trans-personal I. The part of I that doesn't have a stake in whether it lives or dies. Then some more [3]. One of the observations Kenneth is mentionins comes back over and over in dharma talks: allow the mind to see things clearly by paying attention in a very directed way, pointed at the next layer to peal off, and it will figure out how to let go of it; no longer do the thing that causes suffering. The process is automatic, cannot be forced and follows directly and only from seeing clearly. While this idea gets old, I find sometimes it needs to be restated in different ways (by different people!) to bring the point home again. It really is that simple. The difficult part is knowing where to look and distinguishing clear seeing from delusion and scripting. Another thing Kenneth mentions in the [3] series is something he got from his teacher Bill Hamilton: people expect a pot of gold when attaining stream entry, but it's more like one has been picking up gold coins all the way, and stream entry gives you an empty pot to put them in, hold them together. [1] http://kennethfolkdharma.com/2012/02/enlightenment-for-the-rest-of-us-the-buddhist-geeks-conference/ [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wCV4MBuW3Y8#! [3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqYUNHrLFq0 Entry: Is meditation eliminating looping? Date: Tue Mar 27 14:21:22 CEST 2012 When talking about formal languages (i.e. logic, mathematics) there is always a problem when loops are involved. What I find funny (as a far-stretched analogy) is that this seems to be what is happening in meditation: eliminating self-reference is what leads to happiness, just like in math! Maybe the idea that we know ourselves is keeping us from making artificial intelligence. Does an AI really need an I? The answer is probably no, just like we don't. The I is mental virus that detests itself (paraphrased from 5/6 in the series [1]). Or Kenneth from [1]: "This looping thing that the mind does where it tries to be subject and object at the same time." ( Is "funny" just surprise at patterns that happen out of context? ) EDIT: Maybe this is actually a lot deeper than I first thought[2]. A mind can't think about itself. It can only think about an abstraction of itself. There is no cycle. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqYUNHrLFq0 [2] http://xkcd.com/1046/ Entry: Equanimity? Date: Tue Mar 27 21:37:22 CEST 2012 Nice sit, 45 minutes. Started out a bit tired and a lot of wandering for 5 minutes, so I decided to go the concentration route first. This worked well. After about 10 minutes I was in a very quiet state so I turned attention to the current moment, then continued vipassana for 30 minutes. Turned my attention to background fear and restlessness. I ended up observing a mental construct consissting of fear of future regret, which sounds a bit like insecurity, and a recognition of patterns of active suppression of thoughts and feelings regarding fear of possible undesirable future events. Lots of content. Then my memory is failing me. I remember trying to deconstruct this architected mess of self-referencing and ending up at a dissipation for the thoughts. The loop in itself does not have a foothold, and there was a point where all future unfolding seemed OK. The insight is that thinking about future suffering ignores the fact that the future will some day be the present, with a present being that takes in that future now. The realization that if I can live in the current now, I can probably also live in the future now. In this view, fear of dying is quite absurd. There is only fear of future suffering before dying. Fear of unsatisfactoriness that, given the correct action now, might be avoided. This whole construction completely falls down once you start looking at its foundations. When I finally settled down to look at the now, some waves of bliss came over me that where at the same time very liberating (like letting go and feeling the wind) and also subtly fearful. It seems that I see now more clearly a form of "holding on" that I didn't notice before. Hard to identify what exactly it is. From experience I know that if I can actually see it, the mind will let go of it. Those moments where so empty of anything that it felt scary. I actually felt like I was letting go of something just to test the waters and then quickly grasping it again. During the sit I noted a lot of confusion. Real actual confusion like I experience it during work quite often: not being able to integrate certain sensations and having to let them go. I also realized that this is something that I usually identify with, or anti-identify: confusion is not me, it's temporarily loss of controll I'd like to sweep under the carpet. It feels scary when I'm identified with being clear. Actually it's strange that I identify so strongly with clarity while confusion is really my most prominent state, even when working. Maybe most of my procrastination is actually just fear of confusion? Is confusion really that scary? Confusion feels like floatig a boat on a turbulent stream. Sometimes head goes under and stuff falls off the boat. It's a bit of a hopeless situation: have to hang in there until it passes. Entry: Procrastionation Date: Tue Mar 27 22:01:59 CEST 2012 Is the avoidance that happens in procrastination just a means to cope with fear of confusion? Is confusion really that scary? Thinking in itself isn't such a big deal if it "goes as planned". It can be quite pleasant. The trouble is probably more that thinking and problem solving is really not so controllable as we might think it is. There is fear for the pain of confusion and the suffering it creates. There is fear for the pain and suffering created by forcing attention to look at a certain detail while the storm of confusion is raging. Entry: Blip Date: Mon Apr 2 01:08:59 CEST 2012 30 minute sit. Difficult. Lots of distraction. Last 10 minutes where better after piercing through the chaos. I went through pain, concentration, noticed sadness (misery?) and confusion (reobservation?). Went to equanimity and fell back spiralling on anticipation of stopping 3 minutes before end. Then started reading[2] and got very quiet and happy, fell back to jitteryness when following up on an impulse, observed that feeling until it passed and then read more. I experienced a blip after reading the following from [1] and focussing on awareness being aware of awareness happening: First. Imagine what it would be like to be dead (assuming no afterlife). Imagine what it would be like for there to be no experience happening at all. Now - notice how there is an experience occurring. Also notice that it isn't happening for anyone in particular but is just a field of experience. Notice that there is a knowing that there is an experience occurring. That the experience is bright and vivid and known. Part of this experience is the knowing that there is an experience occurring. In other words, awareness is aware of itself. Let that really sink in. Notice how there is no effort required to be aware. It felt a bit like a sneeze. A brain sneeze.. There was a buildup, a little fear and an uncontrollable blip. Feel calm and awake now. [1] http://delicious.com/redirect?url=http%3A//kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/thread/4780049/Recognizing%2Brigpa [2] http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/2011/10/yogi-experiment-riding-wave.html Entry: Day after Date: Mon Apr 2 21:23:41 CEST 2012 Feel a bit sick today. Didn't sleep well yesterday. Definitely some duality today. I did get over procrastination easier. I don't really feel like someting changed yesterday. I felt another one of those blips, a bit lesser, this morning. Probably related to illness. Entry: Still sick Date: Tue Apr 3 11:58:20 CEST 2012 Didn't do sitting meditation. Did practice laying in bed, observing altered consciousness. I feel frustration about life in general but it hasn't taken me on a ride yet. That seems to be a bit different. Entry: Interpretation Date: Thu Apr 5 09:32:20 CEST 2012 The question is of course whether the blip was a fruition or not. First, I'm trying to follow advice and not worry about it too much. It has become more clear to me that paying attention is what it is about, not naming things. There's always this defeating interpretation that gets in the way of real insight. Also, I'm still sick so have a bit of altered perception anyway, so I try to take everything with a grain of salt. Nontheless, some things have been different lately, say last 2 weeks, with a little dip last friday. One is a greater resilience to stress, and not taking myself too serious or worrying about making mistakes at work. Friday I could see myself behaving reactionary, and not being able to help it, but also not getting completely lost it in. For the rest I've been very much in the moment, not giving in to aversion so much. Yesterday's sit, 25 minutes. Had to bail out because of pain in my knee. It's already a bit messed up so I'm not going to macho that out.. First and last part where very quiet. First part almost asleep. Maybe not really insight practice. Middle part had some confusion which then resolved into equanimity. There is clarity, and hunting for the observer produces strange mind states. At times, I clearly see some "background me" as a non-penetrated bunch of thoughts not clearly perceived as a succession of sensations, more like a blob or a stream. It's the me that wants to do be done with this meditation already, sort of waiting it out to do the wandering thing afterwards.. I.e. the "story of my life". When I do see this, it drops away into a more pure awareness, and almost always this comes with a little jolt of fear and things flipping upside down. Feels like fear to let go of the very last foothold of that story of me. The other side of that feels wide open and beatiful, timeless. So I think I've seen selflessness, but it's not a stable state. It comes and goes. It might be a samatha jhana also. I don't see it clearly. Entry: Please, please, distract me! Date: Sat Apr 7 20:47:39 CEST 2012 Keeping on track with work mostly last couple of days, but today I got distracted (and found many beautiful things, so it was worth it). However it leaves me in a state of confion. Actually I had to walk out of the living room to be away from the TV, only to start link chasing on the internet. All better than going to the task at hand. From being annoyed by this phenomenon for about - what... - my entire life, I start to find it really interesting. Also during meditation, the "piercing" of aversion or avoidance behaviour tends to lead to different states of awareness. As if this piercings makes a weight shift. Things are different when you're able to let go of boredom. Yes, boredom is just aversion, judgement. There are so many things that are interesting when this tendency to get bored can be switched of, or at least, be seen for what it is. Maybe just like love/hate there is a state corresponding to interest/boredom that sort of transcends the polarity and gives a certain equanimity and space to it? Entry: Yesterday's sit Date: Sat Apr 7 20:54:26 CEST 2012 From memory... and mostly interpretation. Ended in deep equanimity, before that pierced through confusion (re-observation?) and I think one of the dark night trips like fear or sadness. Probably sadness. Before that I had a narrow but calm state and before that had to concentrate hard to get to some form of effortlessness. What I interpret there are some things that become more clear, which I think is the difference between the transition from 3->4 (from the three characteristics to the arising and passing away) and 10->11 (from reobservation to equanimity). I think I saw both in one sitting. The transition is similar: from uncomfortable to comfortable, from forced conentration to effortlessness, but in the former the focus is narow, while in the latter is is very broad. Even for reobservation, the confusion is simply everywhere: everything is wrong! So now the thing that becomes more difficult to answer: am I just parroting MCTB? Because this starts to look really a lot like things Daniel describes. Did I really see these things or am I solidifying them? Anyway, what struck me is the fractal nature: both 3->5 and 10->11 go from chaos to order, but the extent of awareness is very different. Entry: Relapse Date: Sun Apr 8 21:28:43 CEST 2012 Experiencing a relapse. Started around dinner tonight, after some tension that didn't directly involve me but did install a certain mood and aversion, desire.. Started feeling restless, out-of-sync. A feeling of not understanding what's going on. Last 2 weeks where so quiet and happy. I'm going to face it in a 30 minute sit now. Woa it starts to get hard to describe.. The fluff broke after 3.5 minutes on the cushon, then I started smiling. Noticed my attachement to the good feeling (I knew I could do it!) and moved on. Got very very deep. Thoughts that started circling where "give up all desire for attainment", "it's already there", ... I noticed that I'm missing some subtle line of self-story, some scripting, something that is "doing" the meditation. Looking at what that is makes it vanish instantly making me a bit dizzy. There are these very brief moments of "it's just this" but they are rare, and they still go with a jolt of fear and excitement, like "that's what I'm looking for!", "almost there!". Mostly there's some kind of loosing attention into just being. Hard to describe: there's a difference between looking at just being, i.e. observing the "justness" and just being. The former is directed, the latter is free-floating but without vipassana investigation. So I try to come back to the investigation, as that's supposed to make the most progress. Entry: Reborn into the moment Date: Sun Apr 8 23:35:46 CEST 2012 ( Yes I know, sorry for the choice of words ;) Pattern: doing something (usually reading), enjoying it, suddently I get bored. Bolt of aversion. Intercept it, observe it, it fades away into something I can only call confusion, some state of non-focus. Then a moment later wake up, able to continue enjoyment. This "moment of rebirth" is something I've never noticed before. It's the piercing through the aversion that seems to do this. Seeing the peak, and not letting it start a cascade. It seems that my brain is just not used to it. It feels a bit like WTF just happened? Hey dude, it's me, your self! Comon, join the party, get excited and all self-absorbed! And then not going with this causes a deep "thunk" and.. nothing :) Kidding aside (yeah I feel jolly these days, and I find this really funny -- wine probably helps a bit..) it's remarkable, and "rebirth" is the only word I can find that best covers what it feels like. Entry: Interesting HP posts Date: Mon Apr 9 01:57:12 CEST 2012 Nick's SE post[1] is quite a funny read. Following up to his noting practice post [2] brings up some interesting points: Within a few months of taking up noting, I began to reach the 11th nana of Equanimity of Formations in my daily sits. In my sporadic practice over the next couple of years, I would consistently get up into this stage. One day I re-read Daniel’s chapter on the 11th nana. In it, he mentions the mind “blinking out”. This is where there are the sensations of self or “I” presenting themselves to awareness in between other objects coming in contact with any of the six the sense doors. The sensations being misread as "I" create the sense of duality and separation. Yep, this corresponds pretty well to what I'm experiencing: blinking out, and not seeing clearly. Daniel Ingram says in his book, “One of the primary ways that the illusion of duality is maintained is that the mind partially “blinks out” for a part of each formation, the part it wants to section off to appear separate. In this way, there is insufficient clarity to see the interconnectedness and true nature of that part of reality, and a sense of a self is maintained. When the experience of formations arises, it comes out of a level of clarity that is so complete that this “blinking” can no longer easily occur. Thus, when formations become the dominant experience, even for short periods of time, very profound and liberating insight is close at hand. That is why there are systematic practices that train us to be very skilled in being aware of our whole mental and physical existence. The more we practice being aware of what happens, the less opportunities there are for blinking.” It now makes perfect sense. I've read this chapter several times but looks like I wasn't ready to understand this particular passage. [1] http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/2011/06/yogis-journal-from-chronic-dark-night.html [2] http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/2011/01/yogi-toolbox-noting-part-1-nicks.html Entry: Three Characteristics Date: Mon Apr 9 21:41:43 CEST 2012 1. anicca impermanence veranderlijk 2. dukkha suffering pijnlijk 3. anatta no-self kernloos Entry: Equanimity & fallback Date: Tue Apr 10 00:14:27 CEST 2012 I'm in equanimity (stage 11) most of the time these days. Life really is pretty damn good at this stage. Had a wonderful time at the family reunion. Big gatherings like that usually make me at least a bit nervous. None of that today. Everything went exceptionally smooth. It felt different. A lot of anxiety simply isn't there any more. However, like described in everything I've read, the state isn't stable. I fell back about 20 minutes ago to a clear dukkha stage. Ruminations, worry, blame, resentment, hello! The obvious thing is the narrowing of view, from broad, open, inclusive to small and self-centered. I'm going to follow Daniel's advice and keep practicing. I think I just observed a small shift to equanimity and back, just by concentrating while writing this. Maybe I've nailed that transition? Stopped fearing it? Acknowledged that the state I'm in is not under my control, but that simply observing is the thing to do. Without judgement or attaching anything to the "bad" feelings. The first hard emotion that hit was fear (of consequence of negligence). Not my own negligence so there was blame too, and resentment. Felt "wrong" after being in equanimity for a while. A state I remember all so well spending lots of time in it the last couple of years. Earlier I had a sit trying to go a bit deeper. I'm reaching a creepy part. It's all starting to get pretty strange from here on. Ok, on to the sit. Interrupted the sit after 5 minutes. Was hard to focus but after a while I started finding the moment. Once there I started looking for what was different, what was the feeling, where was it? It was located at the top of my belly. Then I started smiling, and space opened up. This transition was wonderful: from closed, self-centered to wide open and broad. It was (as it has been in the last couple of days) accompanied by a feeling in my ears: some muscles are doing something, nothing under my conscious control. Entry: The maps Date: Tue Apr 10 00:46:59 CEST 2012 It seems to me that the maps only start making sense after reaching equanimity a couple of times. I never really knew where I was but now I feel pretty certain. If I look back, the only things that were clear were: - 1. mind & body -> 2. cause & effect - 4. a & p: narrow, effortless concentration, bliss + event - 5 - 10: dukkha: major suckage, hard to concentrate and clinging to the feelgood states - 11: wide open equanimity On my life in general, reaching cause & effect seems to have changed something in the way I react to things, being more aware of the domino effect. The threshold of jumping on the wagon has gradually gotten higher. While in equanimity, it still happens, and whenever it happens it seems to kick me back to dukkha. Dark night (dukkha stages) has effect too. Makes the fuse shorter. Equanimity has a serious effect too. Lots of openness. And it's not the same as the A&P brightness. Equanimity is less self-obsessed. This latter property I didn't see described anywhere explicitly but for me it's quite clear, since I usually am quite so.. Some other comments: - There's indeed a difference between stage and state. State is not long-lived. Stage is maybe best described as a long-lived state? The stages are only clear to me in very coarse form: pre dark night, dark night, equanimity. This corresponds a bit to the vipassana jhana classification and not the finer-grained njana. - Reaching equanimity and able to stay in it for days it looks like dark night is real and seriously different. I think I indeed spent a lot of time in that stage (10 years?) and probably did cross the A&P around that time, remember a feeling of fearlessness but also zeal and self-centeredness, strong attachment to story. See earlier posts. At this point I have no interest in self image or at least not nearly so much as before, and if I catch the habbit of self-profiling I'm annoyed by it. I can also care less about what people think. Though I do think that being confronted with some personal assault a fallback would probably put me back into a state of caring. ( Speculation is still part of my un-observed self apparently ;) So my point is that before equanimity it seems that the maps are not so necessary. As Daniel puts it in one of the Cheeta House videos: in the dark night it's pretty obvious what to work on. Indeed, it's all right in your face and the challenge is to keep looking at it until it's clearly observed and the next challenge presents itself. Peeling the onion. In equanimity it's not obvious and you do need some guidance. Something is hiding in plain sight, and a bit of guidance seems to be necessary here. Entry: Back in reobservation? Date: Tue Apr 10 11:53:08 CEST 2012 I think I woke up in reobservation today. Lots of resentment. It's not carrying me away so much but it's definitely there. Out-of-sync with things. EDIT: I don't think it's reobservation, at least not now (13:00). Maybe it was. It's more the intensity. Yesterday I had a couple of dips or blackouts during reclining meditation, and some pretty strange visual images - reminding me of drawings I've seen from people on LSD, strange and distorted caricatures of faces and animals, and they were all looking at me, as if they suddenly noticed me (a bit like that lizards scene in Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas ;) So I'm wondering if these are fruitions. I didn't have experiences like this before. They are new from the last week or so (see [1]). I had 3 of them in a row, a couple of seconds apart. The last one I remember to truly go "dark". As for afterglow, I don't know. It left me a bit confused, as in "was that it?". After it occured I don't notice much difference from deep equanimity. I was tired and a bit in a weird state (see visual hallucinations above). Oh, there was a certain fear I seemed to have pierced through by bravely watching it, which gave a small bliss wave after it dissolved. No need to go into detail, something that pops up from time to time. So I don't know if I'm scripting, but everything feels quite intense, which I recall being another property. [1] entry://20120402-010859 Entry: Snapping out of it Date: Mon Apr 16 07:45:20 EDT 2012 It starts to get more systematic to get out of a state which I'll label "self-pity". I do still need solitude to do this; there remains a strong correlation between contraction (re-inforcing of separateness) and being among people, essentially not getting what I want, or being confronted with opinions that evoke some reaction. What has become more clear over the last couple of weeks is the "blinking" mentioned in [1], meaning that I can see it happen after the fact, and sometimes can see it happening in real-time. For aversion this blinking seems to be quite strong: the sensations that follow aversion seem to re-enforce a mental tape loop about why something is "wrong". This is hard to explain.. Just like non-self thoughts where hard to see in the past, the self thoughts are even harder to see. Their interruption of noting activity is very subtle. When they are actually intercepted, preventing interruption of noting, they indeed create a broad feeling of freedom which I can describe as "obviously not interested in this kind of empty rumination" or "this is obviously fluff". Practically I'm getting caught by aversion towards having to perform urgent work to meet a deadline. The work in itself is actually quite interesting, and it seems that the aversion is more directed towards the difficulty of the task; it requires a lot of mental effort. I'm recovering from jet-lag, feeling tired, so performing any form of mental activity is a bit painful. At least to the point where I actually wake up enough, get activated enough, such that the process starts guiding itself. All in all, intercepting the blinking is a very strange experience. A lot has changed in my perception of things over the past months, but this tendency to re-inforce the self is still there, hiding in plain sight. It starts to make sense now that "self is empty". It's still a bit scary though, especially in moments where that self provides a strong reference point to hold on to. I realize that letting go of this is a key point. And that indeed it needs practice. Paying attention lets you take a glimpse, then next time you know where to look and see more, and so bit by bit attention gets more directed. Subtle stuff :) [1] entry://20120409-015712 Entry: The Watcher Date: Wed Apr 18 20:34:30 EDT 2012 I found an experience that clearly triggers a sense of self: to sit upstairs, looking out the window, creates a feeling of out-there (them, the world) and in-here (me, not in the world). I played with it a bit this morning, going from focusing on my experience of being in the room, where that feeling is much more subtle, to watching out the window, feeling "me" pop up. That deserves further investigation. Entry: Integration Date: Thu Apr 19 10:46:08 EDT 2012 Integration is hard. Back to life again after 5 weeks of quiet, and launched right into the habitual reaction patterns. It feels odd now getting angry, as if it's glaringly obvious that I'm missing something, but can't see what. As if I'm wielding an axe at an imaginary fiend. Without going into details, yesterday and today had some build-up of old stuff. Looking at it now after calming down, it is indeed quite obvious what these patterns are: attachments to "how it should be", "it's all so simple if you just listen to me", attachment to approval for fulfilling wishes, and to not being in conflict. From what I read yesterday (Florian's thread on psychopaths[1]) it's starting to get through to me that compassion and the cultivation of it is more essential than I first thought. Just insight is useless without an actual connection to the world. I should listen to Dan.. EDIT: It got worse. I'm not really aware of what it is that I want and am not getting, or that I get and do not want. Maybe it's more of the latter... I'm pretty good as I am, don't want more, but neither do i want THAT... I seem to be much more challenged by aversion than by desire. Why is that? Both are two sides of the same coin. Why is one side so strong? In other words, it's doable to watch things arise and pass when life is fun and games, but quite a challenge with much more provocation around. It doesn't even need conscious provocation, just presence of situation that triggers a kind of judgement or separation. [1] http://dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/2974740 Entry: Dukkha Date: Fri Apr 20 10:35:20 EDT 2012 Dissatisfaction, back in the dark night it seems. I'm going for a sit in a bit, but I can say that at this point my general state is "not OK". Things are clearly not how I want them to be. I'm resisting strongly my current situation. (Stuff: Some work I promised to finish that's not taking me into flow; is taking me into resentment instead.) I somehow "know" this is fluff, but I don't "see" it: it has bite. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dukkha Entry: Sneezes Date: Fri Apr 20 10:44:07 EDT 2012 The "mental sneezes" keep happening. I'm starting to really wonder what they are. I don't think they are fruitions, since there is no sense of completion. Yesterday I went from suffering to letting go at some point and that's when one of these things happened again. Two days ago the same. It feels like something is about to happen, just like a sneeze coming op, followed by a muscular contraction (eyes, face, neck, sholders). Not very pleasant and kind of freaky. They don't really feel like a discontinuity either: things are pretty much like before, though it does interrupt things: the experience of the sneeze itself is like an ordinary sneeze: an uncontrollable contraction, a bit painful, followed by a relief of the tension from the buildup. This could also match A&P events, but so many? Why didn't I get them before? Unlikely, but if they are fruitions then it means I'm cycling, which could explain some of the ups & downs. I went from very unhappy to smiling contently about 10 minutes ago. Entry: Later, a shift. Date: Fri Apr 20 12:43:30 EDT 2012 Had a nice sit. Mostly equanimous but with a bit of background radiation: some queasy feeling in my solar plexus. I can't remember if anything happened, but I did feel a lot less restless. After sitting, some shift happened when reading "Saints and Psychopaths" by Bill Hamilton[1]. (There are other places to find it. Amazon price is a bit over the top.) Basically, I started laughing, right after a small interception of resentment and me talking out loud to myself, immediately followed by seeing the lack of substance of that sensation, where it shifted to the side and a deep sense of happiness and joy emerged. The idea of "getting the divine joke" emerged, as I heard explain somewhere on DhO. Very similar to the shift that happened in Belgium a couple of weeks ago. I'm assuming it's the dukkha njanas to equanimity shift. I guess the next thing to do is to look at this happiness and freedom, since it is easy to get attached to it. This morning I felt off (see previous post) but I had this idea in my head that I should not panic, and that I should not give into the torrent. This worked. Looking at the situation more clearly exposed some feelings of sadness, mostly sadness about not seeing that I was clinging. Sadness about hurting myself by not noticing the hanging on.. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Saints-Psychopaths-William-L-Hamilton/dp/0964490404 Entry: Weird.. Date: Sat Apr 21 21:11:23 EDT 2012 Strange sit. Very deep concentration. Started staring into some kind of void at some point. Blissfull with a lot of fear/anticipation. Some desire for attainment, some "yeah you're getting there". Hard to not be captured by it. I tried to keep noting and much of what I saw only existed for an instant. Sensations I can't describe well. Like bubbles of something. Lot's of things that triggered the thought "I won't be able to capture all this in words later.." What permeates the whole experience was a sensation of beauty. Deep and all encompassing beauty. Entry: Dukkha Date: Mon Apr 23 19:48:30 EDT 2012 Anger, hate, sadness, disgust, strong aversion, (near) inability to see the background of "todo, after meditating". Might be work today, which was a bit of a hell. Lots of aversion. Entry: DhO stuff Date: Mon Apr 23 22:03:29 EDT 2012 From [1]: If all goes well this will happen effortlessly and your whole field of reality will start to feel wobbly. The first couple of times you will get excited and it wont go through. But eventually you should get stream entry. ... And I would try to observe the observer with a high frequency of noting. The process of observing the sensations allowed them to be seen as not me, not 'the observer'. I think I've experienced this "wobbly" part, and also the excitement that makes it go away again. For me it works a bit different. Watch watch.. until there is a sensation of watcher, always in the past as it always takes front stage, then try to backtrack in memory and fading sensations and try to see where that came from. The "echo of the ego" or something. [1] http://dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/2963820 Entry: Transition to equanimity Date: Mon Apr 23 22:14:47 EDT 2012 It seems that zooming in to the background doesn't really work until one is actually stable in Equanimity. If there is any non-noticed unsatisfactoryness left over from the dukkha stage, the space will not open up. If there's "stuff", it needs to be identified and let go of first. Entry: Deep Date: Wed Apr 25 13:20:06 EDT 2012 Yesterday I had another sit full of new experiences. Started out with some lingering daily life frustration, there was a transition into (probably) equanimity while the "bad" feelings where still in the background. This was new. I was able to follow the physical sensations associated with basically anger for a couple of minutes. What was new was that these "bad" feelings where OK, and actually beautiful in themselves. Quite a strange experience! After the "bad" feelings disappeared, a deep sense of stillness and peace arose. Very very deep. I tried to observe this peace and also using a "how do I know it's peaceful/still/.." method and something seemed to shift. Then I got greedy, spinning a story of attainment and the whole thing sort of collapsed. Interpretation: seems that "bad" sensations that are not necessarily caused by the meditation itself don't necessarily go away after observing and acknowledging them. Makes me think of the idea mentioned by Daniel on DhO that there's some biological limit to how fast emotions can pass through your system. Entry: Sensation and mental representation Date: Wed Apr 25 13:35:40 EDT 2012 Yesterday's experience has shed a new light on the issue of experiencing physical sensation vs. mental impression. More concretely, in the equanimous/peaceful/wide-open state it is easer to see the sensations of anger (butterflies, muscular contraction mostly centered around stomach, and muscular "readyness" over the whole body) and the mental impression ("I am angry"), in the sense that the latter didn't really arise, or at least not that strongly or only in the form of subtle noting. Anger is quite interesting, isn't it? Because it's so mobilizing, it can be quite a surprise to find yourself being angry, noticing it - breaking the cycle while being pumped up, and having the anger deflate. Anger by itself relies very much on bying into it, feeding it. Not feeding it feels awkward in the come-down, but powerful after that, i.e. when regaining control. Entry: De-focusing Date: Wed Apr 25 19:57:30 EDT 2012 I like Nikolai's writing style[1]. Follow pointers, there are a lot of interesting articles linked. [1] http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/2012/04/yogi-experiment-when-in-midst-of-misery.html Entry: Another interesting sit Date: Thu Apr 26 16:50:29 EDT 2012 From memory, yesterday night. This time it's hard to separate phenomenology from story, because I started out thinking I was in A&P because of calm, confident mood, thinking that I would need to wade through the dark night stages to get into equanimity. And this is exactly what happened: Started confident OK, effortless sitting (A&P). Things starting to fall apart, only able to see the end of things, like trying to grab a fish in a bucket and it slipping from your hands (Dissolution). Then the realisation "next comes fear" and yep, it arrived. Immediately followed by misery. I think I felt some disgust too, and it was linked to something from my daily life, not necessarily practice. And after a bit of mixup of those (re-observation) I landed in Equanimity: wide open space. Followed up by observing the back of my head and some other suggestions from Nikolai's posts on THP. Awareness during the day goes deeper these days. Especially the morning resentment is more easily pierced, moving from "woe me" to observing sensations more quickly after getting up. Entry: Mindfulness Date: Thu Apr 26 21:02:27 EDT 2012 It's starting to get a bit freaky. During the day I have several moments of snapping into a state of quite pure self-observation. I'm feeling a lot of equanimity and de-sticking. Things still get to me from time to time. Resentment towards work and smaller perceived "theft of freedom" is still able to seriously get me on a roll, until I notice that I'm rolling. Feels like getting caught with my pants down. There's this brief moment of shame of bying into the cycle. Snapping out of it feels nice though. Entry: Restlessness Date: Fri Apr 27 13:43:22 EDT 2012 Yesterday's sitting and following reclining meditation where filled with restlessness. It was quite strong and unpleasant. After it I could not get to sleep, so I practiced some more, reclining. At some point there was a transition to equanimity. I tried to remember how exactly it happened but I remember not being able to. I think a combination of going back to "now" and especially noting resistance and letting go eventually lead to a transition. After that I fell asleep. Feel good an light today. Entry: Sitting through confusion without blinking Date: Fri Apr 27 14:54:50 EDT 2012 One experience that has been with me for a couple of weeks is the ability to note the sensation of confusion and not be carried away by it. Before I would get confused and basically resent that, and go on a self-pity trip, or on a forceful resisting, trying to focus hard on specific things that cause the confusion. Now it's possible to just ride the wave. Confusion feels like a ball in the center of perception. It's visual representation is a like a glowing ball of twine. It decays over a couple of seconds. Not resisting the initial unpleasantness causes a light feeling of bliss and freedom when it is fading. Entry: Bliss Date: Mon Apr 30 12:54:06 EDT 2012 Very blissful half-reclining sit yesterday, after a moment of suffering. Images suffering from a movie about WWII kept coming up (Sarah's Key). I tried to get to noting but I was getting very attached to the bliss. Maybe I hit a different concentration Jhana? I don't know much about this so I'm not going to speculate. After the sit I did full reclining on the bed. Dozed off at some point and woke up with pure sensation. There was some blip/shock which might have just been me dozing off.. I felt different afterwards, but I'm getting quite weary of suggestion here since I seem to be quite good at feeling different after having some kind of blip ;) So I don't know, let's see what happens. No hurry. Feel good in general. I also am very aware of sensations in the top part of my nose and into the corners of my eyes. Maybe these were associated to self before and tuned out? It's weird, it's always there. I had the same happen with a sensation in the back, top of my head. I can't feel it now, but it was very prominent. Entry: Confusion Date: Tue May 1 12:45:23 EDT 2012 Why is confusion so unconfortable? I can work for hours as long as I stay in flow, but when I hit confusion and have to actively step out of the box, two hours can mess me up for the whole day. Why does it take so much energy? I'm thinking that the suffering is really about not wanting to be confused, not wanting to feel that confrontation with not being in control. Does the exhaustion then come from the aversion (reaction), or just simply from the sensation of being confused? Entry: Different again Date: Wed May 2 13:43:18 EDT 2012 Hard to distinguish what actually happened from re-interpretation after the fact. It was a lot and it seems best to give in to putting it on the path: - 3 characteristics: uneasyness, first confused with dark night - A & P: wonderfull bliss, very narrow focus - dark night: dissolution, fear, sadness, confusion (re-observation?) - equanimity: definitely different from A & P, though also blisfull but with wide focus and space. - one of those "blips" I described before. didn't notice anything different after the blip. Life in general goes smoothly. I'm a bit detached from things, equanimous. Letting things fade out before reacting. Not getting provoked so easily, and when I do get angry it fades quickly without doing damage. There's definitely something different. I'm starting to think that maybe I got SE. I don't feel I "gained" anything, but that I lost things: lost being worked up all the time. From what I've read that might be a sign. Let's see where it goes, time will tell. Another sign is supposed to feel that something is done. Well, I feel as if something is no longer a problem. Not so much obsessed with the idea of getting SE. Entry: Resentment & fear Date: Thu May 3 10:36:20 EDT 2012 Not getting anywhere today. Got some task tension coupled to resentment and fear and I can't seem to pierce through that. Was reading some of Nick's HP posts [1][2][3]. Maybe it's time to use this opportunity of misery and serious woe-me selfing to get some insight. First, I'm trying to describe how it feels. Something's not right. Thoughts come up (shopping list, TODO stuff, resentment) in a way that hasn't happened for a while. So let's assume I'm starting at ground zero again. I try to concentrate on sensations, but concentration gets interrupted by thoughts and sensation that are not noted. This makes me get frustrated. "I've been through all this before, and really I just want equanimity so I can continue my meditation work." What seems to happen here is that instead of actually doing insight practice, I'm thinking/simulating it. That just went from verbal to knowing and things change immediately. So I guess I just need to start noting again. Reclining this time. Sitting was too painful, distracting. [1] http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/2012/04/yogi-experiment-when-in-midst-of-misery.html [2] http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/2011/10/yogi-experiment-riding-wave.html [3] http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/yogi-experiment-peripherycentre.html Entry: When in the midst of misery Date: Fri May 4 12:48:32 EDT 2012 Looking into [1] again because of a recent "woe, is me" attack. When I'm in a quiet spot, meditation tends to progress fine; I'm seeing more and more of the self-sensations, creating momentary "necker cube flips". However, real life tends to interfere. Especially getting into trips of resentment, basically people wanting me to do things against my natural flow, creating this carefully constructed feedback loop between pride and guilt. This also makes me think that I don't have SE (as I started to speculate earlier) because these tape loops do have sticking power. Anyways. Reading [1] I came to this, which din't parse correctly: There is a movement of mind to grasp at the resolution of a desire born of an evaluation of something that has arisen within the field of experience. (causes a buffer overflow on the receiving end ;) Taking it apart: sensation in field of experience -> evaluation of sensation (i.e. good/bad) -> desire from evaluation (i.e. want/resent) -> grasp at resolution of desire (i.e. want the want/resent solved) ... Sensations will arise as a result. They may then manifest as 'tense' unpleasantness which act as a trigger for thoughts, images and ideas about 'self' and how 'self' relates to those thoughts, images, ideas, and an onslaught of unpleasant 'self-narratives' will ensue and continue a viscous cycle of woe, is 'me'. -> tense/unpleasant sensations caused by the grasping -> these trigger selfing -> selfing triggers more selfing Maybe I've come full circle. I started meditating to be able to handle these woe-is-me trips and their associated cycles of suffering. It's more clear now that indeed, these trips are self-inflicted, and firmly rooted in habitual patterns that can be broken by awareness. As long as I'm not plagued by them directly, the awareness works well. I've significantly raised the threshold of getting caught, but there are those that would have gotten me good before I started practicing, that still get me. And with that comes a feeling of disappointment. I can feel something has changed, but it's not "good enough" yet, which is more oil on the selfing fire.. [1] http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/2012/04/yogi-experiment-when-in-midst-of-misery.html Entry: Hacking vedana Date: Fri May 4 13:50:04 EDT 2012 I saw a brief glimpse of this[1] one time[2]. Seeing a normally quite negative, unpleasant sensation as beautiful. [1] http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com.au/2011/09/yogi-experiment-hacking-vedana.html [2] entry://20120425-132006 Entry: Equanimity again Date: Sat May 5 10:47:44 EDT 2012 Day was full of suffering. Much dukkha, much selfing. To a point where it gets to be embarrassing: like I know cognitively on one hand that I'm feeding the loop, though on the other hand I don't "see" how to stop it until the intensity falls below a certain threshold, then I immediately become equanimous and happy. Did some reclining meditation yesterday night. Wide open equanimity. Investigating the watcher. Flipping between sensation-view and me-view. The latter arises automatically again when concentration is broken. It looks like it's easier to see now when watcher is there. Also, I've been trying to notice attachment to the open space that had been creeping up. Hard to describe, but it's a transition from narrow to broad that feels really good. Maybe it's a jhana transition? Solidifying? I've been looking for it then clinging to it and now realized that sensation and let it go. Things open up more after that. Experiencing wide open, clarity without the "wow, cool" reaction. Entry: The "You" *is* the fighting Date: Sat May 5 18:46:45 EDT 2012 [1] http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/2011/09/yogi-experiment-stop-fighting.html [2] http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/2011/09/yogi-toolbox-refining-and-discerning.html Entry: Last couple of sits Date: Sat May 12 18:24:53 EDT 2012 I'm starting to see the progressing more clearly: - acces concentration - A&P - dukkha - Equanimity Then, when in equanimity and focusing on the watcher I get "mental sneezes" quite consistently, so I'm wondering again if these are fruitions. In general, I feel pretty good afterwards. Most of the times this is right before going to bed, but when I do practice during the day and there isn't too much stuff going on to suck me back into life, the same pattern unfolds. Another thing is that even with stuff going on, the following approach seems to be quite repeatable: - Just sit down and get to the point where it becomes "natural" to concentrate. This can include some discursive thought that's hard to catch, but letting it arise gives a refresh of the experiential memory of how it is to let this go. ( Mind & Body ?) - Once realization is there that concentration might be a good thing, start with samatha practice, building up tranquility. - Once tranquil, start insight practice, focusing on "selfing". The samatha seems to give a shortcut to the stage of Equanimity, which seems to be necessary to start observing the watcher. Before that, it doesn't make much sense as there is too much inclination to focus on details. Watching the watcher at least needs a broad perspective, all-in "formations" ? Entry: Wondering .. Date: Sun May 13 00:48:29 EDT 2012 .. if this[1] was my 1st path moment. I keep having these mental sneezes and things feel pretty good overall. Very "normal" with some very bright (concentration) moments during the day that pop out of nowhere. I also think I'm cycling. Some weight has definitely lifted and emotion trips don't stick around for too long (though some people still get on my nerves ;) [1] entry://20120326-134755 Entry: Sneeze Date: Tue May 15 20:55:21 EDT 2012 Sneeze again after focusing on suffering caused by attachment to work stuff. Tried to look at if things where different after it and yes, the suffering was gone. Had a 20min sit after that which went from what I think was A&P into deep equanimity. No more sneezes after that. Tried laying down as I was experiencing pain but fell asleep for 15 minutes. Feel very calm and relaxed after that, with a bit of lingering sadness for going into a work-related attachment and resentment trip again today and yesterday. Entry: Couple of bad days. Date: Thu May 17 19:46:56 EDT 2012 Mostly caused by unrealistic expectations, and holding on to them dearly.. It has become so clear to me that happiness really lies in the letting go of things. The question then is, where do we place passion? Is there any room for it, or is it just to be done away with? Today I started working on something that's supposed to be fun, i.e. it is a "hobby". Though it got side-tracked a bit by wanting it to be something different than it was. By a lot of resistance to accepting reality as it is. Tss... Feeling pretty crappy right now. Maybe time to sit. Entry: Yesterday Date: Fri May 18 11:16:10 EDT 2012 Before sitting around midnight, 30 minutes, I was quite on edge. Even when it's no big deal to feel bad these days (which is an awesome develepment btw.) there is plenty of unsatisfactoriness going on. I went the samatha route. Not sure where I got, maybe 2nd jhana as I think there is at least some effortlessness going on. After that I eventually ended up in equanimity. The "investigation" feels really more natural than abiding in the bliss. Self dissolved at some point. I'll try to explain the experience. I was looking out the window at the garage. Doing so there was no sensation of observer, however focusing on the curtains through which I was looking created a clear sense of "me sitting in the room watching outside". I kept focusing on those sensations until they got re-interpreted as just sensations. No trace of me, just sensations. Accompanied by a great sense of relief and equanimity and a clear seeing of the absence of suffering caused by this disappearing of the out-there / in-here distinction. After the sit, the sense of self returned when I went to bed. Main feature of the sit: clear feeling of non-separation / selflessness. This has been quite reproducable lately. That feeling itself changes. My fear towards it does no longer kick me out of it. On to interpretation. Did I reach SE? Am I now cycling? How can this experience of non-separation be so clear and at the same time not be permanent? I've plenty of separation-based behaviour and story going on during the day. I end up in unsatisfactoryness and with almost no exception I can then sit for 15-30 minutes and end up in equanimity feeling very good after that. It seems obvious that I need to continue doing this, trying to note more in the process. Noting really is quite a powerful technique. It seems to make it easier to come back to a central point instead of getting carried away without focus. It keeps the attention "switched on".