Daniel M. Ingram:
As to the phone-wrapper image: that is good progress: keep at it, and with practice it will stylize itself into something more regular and then progress from there if you keep bringing it up, but I would recommend candle flame, as, at least in my own experiments, I found it much easier than larger and less bright and interesting objects.
I bought a candle last night and meditated on it, and.. it worked! If the following text is too long, then please skip it - I have some questions at the end (as always =).
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My state of mind leading up to it was very excited/hopeful/motivated. I felt like I knew it was going to 'work'/have good effects, after doing the chopstick wrapper experiment. I read the MCTB sections that talked about it so I had some idea of what to do. (Unfortunately?) at the time I was also under the influence of THC... I didn't do it just to meditate, but I partook with a friend earlier and, before going to bed, decided to try the candle flame meditation.
I got a small one which was in a jar, meaning I couldn't sit on the floor and see it well. I ended up setting it on my desk and sitting in my chair, looking at it, sometimes through the glass, sometimes by bending my body over it (which was a bit uncomfortable) and looking at the flame. I'll have to get a candle not in a jar.
So then I began staring at it. Eyes getting tired, etc. I don't know if I felt a "shift" the first time I closed my eyes, but closed them I did after a bit. I was looking for a purple after-image, but much to my surprise, I instead saw a red dot! Just like MCTB said. Sometimes when under the influence I get mild hard-to-see visuals, but this was different - it was very red, very round, and very visible.
So I start staring at the red dot. It's only solid and steady for a little bit. I notice it keeps moving off to one side, so to 'follow' it I 'turn' my eyes. I know they were closed and I wasn't looking at anything, but I felt I had to follow it with my eyes. When I'd get distracted/tired of that, my eyes would twitch a little back to center, then the dot would disappear and re-appear a few times until stabilizing again to where my eyes were looking.
That happened a few times, each time the dot coming back a little less clear. At some point it was just gone, so I opened my eyes again and stared some more. This time I definitely noticed a 'shift'. The candle flame started looking like a tiny man who was dancing around the wick. I could see 2 legs, arms, a head; it was kind of cute. I close my eyes - there's the red dot again. This time there was a purple halo around it I assume was from the eye being fatigued, but the red dot was there. Same as last time - it would be stable, then appear and disappear as my eyes twitched, although I was a bit better at not twitching them this time.
It disappeared again, so I opened my eyes again. This time I sat back and looked at the candle through the glass of the jar. I got another shift, this time with the whole jar - it seemed to be clearer, more in focus, than the background. When I closed my eyes, the dot was larger and more stable, but this time I noticed that it seemed to be flickering just like the candle was.
The red dot didn't stay red the whole time.. at some point there was a smaller dot inside it of a color I couldn't determine - maybe white-ish? At some point I might have noticed a black disk instead of the red dot, but I'm not sure.
After 4 rounds or so my concentration was breaking. My unsober state caused my mind to release many thoughts that got in the way, so I decided to go to sleep. I just wanted to describe that, since I'm pretty excited about it. It's been the most unmistakable sign that I tried something that worked =). The only doubt is that I wasn't fully sober.. which I will remedy by trying this again sober until I get similar results.
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Anyway, some questions...
* Re-reading the MCTB sections, it talks about progressing through the
vipassana jhanas while doing this meditation, not the samadhi jhanas. That is really strange.. this seems like the definition of a concentration meditation. Why does it take you through the insight stages? Mm if only I could do it for 15 minutes and get my first fruition.
* Related to the previous question, but... when in a jhana, how do you switch to noting? Or rather, I can guess how, but how does staying in jhana work while noting? It seems like you need to concentrate on your object to maintain the jhanic state, but if you start noting it seems like you break it down instead.
* Where's the bliss/rapture at? I think somewhere it is written in MCTB that to really grab the first jhana, tune into the pleasant sensations of the body. When focusing on the red dot, I tried doing this. what ended up happening though is, since I'm used to using breath as an object, I would try to tune into pleasant sensations on my in-breaths. I think this diminished from concentrating on the red dot. Maybe those instructions were more particular to the breath object meditation? I think I'll just have to experiment here. Also I might have felt something, but couldn't be sure, as my mind was not fully sober.
I think I'm going to re-read the chapter on vipassana jhanas - there seems to be stuff there I missed the first time.
Thanks for reading if you got this far!