It's been around two weeks since I posted here. I guess I'm rambling on a bit, but it seems better to post something, than not to post at all:
04-11-2011 - friday
?? minutes, Half lotus on the floor. feelings of falling and other sensations of space started occurring, then my body moved into a more upright position. As a consequence of that the pain in my left leg became much worse and I stopped sitting at the 35th minute. I can't actually remember what I did after that (I did continue to sit for awhile.).
05-11-2011 - saturday
89 minutes, intended 90 but it seemed I had already been sitting for over 90 minutes. Tried out this: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/lee/inmind.html#method2.
06-11-2011 - sunday
90 minutes, started out sit with doing metta meditation, then proceeded to execute the 7 steps as outlined by ajaan lee's method 2. I sat one leg over the other for 55 minutes. I got some balance between body and breath and was able to 'look around' without loosing touch with that balance.
07-11-2011 - monday
90 minutes - Again sat for 55 minutes in half lotus on the floor.
08-11-2011 - tuesday
42 minutes, intended to sit 60, but stopped when the phone rang.
59 minutes, intended to sit 90, but stopped when I decided it was enough (it was around 2:00 at night, and I was tired).
09-11-2011 - wednesday
Woke up and was able to indentify with the observer for awhile. I haven't mentioned this before, but I have been working with cultivating on observer as well.
60 minutes, sat in half-lotus for the first part. I didn't sat in half-lotus for very long. When the pain become too much I changed position. The second part I sat on the cushion. Hung around in a state in which things were balanced.
60 minutes, sat in half lotus. Earlier today I was wondering about the why of meditation. Then I read TJ Broccoli's post in which she talks about breaking through conditioning by looking at things from a higher perspective through equanimity and objectivity. That made sense. After that I went through dhamma talks by thanissaro bhikkhu to see what he had to say about the matter.
In this sit I again experienced pain in my leg up to a point where I thought of changing position. I knew from past experience if I would sit through it, things would get better. I managed to relax my leg (by thinking space in the area). I found that I had to keep focussing part of my awareness on my leg in order for it to keep from tensing up. Eventually the sense of space became a pleasant factor in my sit (where before it was the whole body and the breath, now there was also space). The space didn't seem to appear after a shift. Neither did it appear because I had tried to cultivate it.
09-11-2011 - thursday
45 minutes, sat in half-lotus on the floor. This was in the morning.
60 minutes, sat in half-lotus on the floor, evening. Lets see.. What did I come across?
Again, pain in my legs. At one point I:
- was mostly relaxing my legs
- was experiencing space around me (while pain was increasing in intensity, somehow, perhaps, being aware of space around me seemed to tense up my legs)
- was smiling at the pain, experiencing pleasure, while the pain-intensity kept inreasing
- felt a balance between the pain and pleasurable sensations
- contemplated the fact that the pain doesn't remain after the sit
- tried sensing whether the pain was really that bad. Not sure whether it was, but the pain certainly tempted the lazy part of myself that wants to get up and sleep/zone out/etc.
- felt the urge to get up, and almost convinced myself that that was the most reasonable thing to do. Then figured things can be said for sticking with what you set out to do (improves self-esteem)
- contemplated the notion of maintaining an 'even keel'. With that I mean, preempt any emotional response to aversion and pain (thus mainting an even temper/mindstate/etc.)
- started out with a lot of aversion, felt my body posture was off, felt my breathing was off etc. Figured it all came down to my mental reaction to unpleasant sensations. As long as I could keep my mental reaction such that it enabled me to continue to sit, then that alone would be beneficial, regardless of all the unpleasantness.
- ended the sit, and reminded myself to keep feeling the way I was feeling during the meditation.
11-11-2011 - friday
30 minutes, morning
54 minutes, evening. Towards the end of the sit I started experiencing an increased intensity of sensations of space. The more I focused on the breathing, the more intense this experience of space became. Then my spine moved into a more upright, energetic posture. As expected this increased the intensity of pain in my legs (which wasn't that particularly annoying up to that point). As I sit here now, the sensations of space remain, and there still is a bit of a warped sense of space, which is nice. I don't know why I ended the sit prematurely (I intended to sit 60 minutes). I assume it is because a) the state I was in wasn't balanced b) feeling that I had achieved enough.
30 minutes, after writing the above, I proceeded to sit another 30 minutes in a more comfortable position.
12-11-2011 - saturday
30 minutes, morning
13-11-2011 - sunday
60 minutes, morning
60 minutes, midday, going into a state of contentment. And apart from feeling content, I sensed a balance between the breath and the body, and felt the breath energy throughout my whole body without any need for me to direct it. I wasn't in that state the whole time. maybe only a few minutes. As I understand it, this is what I need to be after, and what I need to be feeling off the cushion.
14-11-2011 - monday
45 minutes, morning. this time the experience that stood out most was the experience of breathing being like the
fulfilling experience of eating. I caught on to the breath energy rising from my legs to my torso on the in breath and on the out breath I tried to stay in touch with that energy. This was maintained for quite a while, until my attention shifted towards the tension in my legs. I tried my best to tune into the breath energy again, but somehow it didn't work. When I was with the breath energy, I was carefully tuning it with my breath: on the inbreath I would breathe in at various speeds (the same goes for the outbreath).
?? minutes, evening. Can't really remember what happened. Probably stuff i'm describing at tuesday's morning sit.
15-11-2011 - tuesday
59 minutes, half lotus on some raised plateau (not as high as cushion), intended to sit 60. Frustrating sit. There was anger, which is rarely present. I'm pretty sure this was because I wanted more than I was getting. When I decided that I was going to sit as long as it would take to get that experience I had yesterday (experience of fullness), things started to come together. At the end of the sit, in a supple fashion, leaned forward from the hips, resulting in what seemed a better, more forward alignment of my lumbar spine. Eventhough this caused pain, it seemed this was the way the body was designed to sit (felt very firm, including a sense of suppleness in hips). I think the increased pain in my legs was caused by some issues I have there (active triggerpoints?, tensions etc) that might resolve through sitting (combined with my daily intu-flow routine, and yoga practice).
10 minutes, full lotus, using instructions from a yoga book, which are helping me sitlonger in a less painful manner.
10 minutes, full lotus, changed leg position
30 minutes, half lotus on floor, working on microscopic orbit, alternating with working on breath energy. My intent was to sit for 60 minutes, but my pain was distracting me too much (I had already sat 20 minutes just prior to these 30 minutes).
25 minutes, burmese on cushion, worked on breath energy. Then when I focused on the Bai Hui point (crown of the head), things came together nicely: balance: breath body observer. Anytime I try to go for the observer, the top of my head is involved (I've read the reports of sensations at the back of the head in regards to the observer/witness, but sofar that's not been my experience). Before this sit I intuitively tuned into the observer (with varying degrees of success) and would find the top of my head involved. This time, without any intent of identifying with the observer, simply putting attention on the top of my head introduced the observer. After finishing this sit, I remained with the observer, in a more dynamic fashion than I would normally. Normally being, that my body would feel too rigid (eg driving car, and looking straight ahead all the time, unless I would need to check my mirror etc.).
15 minutes, full lotus on floor
8 minutes, full lotus on floor, intended 15 but stopped early because of the pain
30 minutes, half lotus on floor, intended 40 but stopped early. I did get to the point where I overcame the worst urge to get up.
16-11-2011 wednesday
60 minutes, half lotus on the floor and burmese on the cushion. I quickly got to experience a feeling of fullness regarding body and breath. I tried throwing in the observer by feeling out the back of the head. All that I kept throwing kept being thrown back at me: Attention would often automatically shift to the front of my head (eyes). I don't like having my attention at the eyes. I'm not sure why. It just seems to fuck up the balance. Anytime I'm 'balanced', I have to be careful for attention not to shift to my eyes, because if that happens, I'll be all eyeball and less body and breath. Though when sitting burmese, I let the attention rest on my eyes, and felt the front part of the body open up/relax. Regarding the breath energy. I'm still working on it. This time towards the end of the sit, there was more space, emptiness, void in my body, then there was energy. I didn't really get to what I was aiming at: a certain level of breath energy throughout my whole body, without the sense of it needing to be maintained, like in my second sit on sunday. That experience on sunday, is one I can remember quite well, as well as the one I had on monday, which seems easier to make happen. For a large part of this day I have been driving car and while doing so, I could easily tap into the experience of fullness/ of being satisfied with the sensations of my body, breath, etc. Mixed with that there's misery, love, compassion: dramatic stuff, all very enticing to think about, feel about etc. Whenever I catch myself become taken by drama, I stop it. This doesn't seem to result in repression: I tune into the calmness, the fullness of the current moment. I think at that moment, when I'm being relatively calm, I have to raise the bar, because when I don't, the cycle of drama->stopping it->being calm->drama->stopping it etc. keeps continueing. I need to have some contemplation going about what I want to feel (calm or drama?).
17-11-2011 thursday
60 minutes, half lotus on the floor and burmese on the cushion. Fullness, observer etc (but not all the time!)
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So basically, I think when I'm off the cushion I need to work on making the balance between observer, body, breath my modus operandi. Neither on or off the cushion can I tune into some full-blown breath energy thing, but I can tune into feeling satisfied/full, using the breath, body, observer.
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To get back at some things I've said:
Countering this restlessness I tried my best to deepen my meditation and keep my attention as wide as possible and to try and remove 'myself' from the scene and let the sit happen by itself. It occurred to me that the experience I was after could best be described as one of looking at things (sounds, body, breath etc.) from the corner of my eyes (figuratively speaking), rather than looking at them directly. Doing this actually meant including the lateral corners of my eyes into my awareness (something I've been doing for a couple of months now).
I seemed to have stopped doing the above explicitly. I think when I started 'tuning' into the breath and body, I started abandoning the above.
I hope to get more vipassana style experiences where my concentration becomes more discrete. So far I've only gotten one experience of that, one which I described in an earlier post in this thread. I could ofcourse start noting right from the beginning, but that doesn't feel right to me (feels like I'm not doing it properly).
Not after that anymore.
Oftentimes I will find pleasure (thrill/power/energy?) in pain.
Now I would say, that it happens, but that it is a rare event.
Everytime I was thinking of ending my sit, I realised that that was just because my mind had wandered of to a place labeled: uncomfortable place of struggling. It seemed the only thing I needed to do was stop being there, and start being with the pleasurable sensations, just by retu(r)ning my mind to the pleasure of the experience of the entire body. At one point I was confident I wouldn't wander off anymore.
The last couple of times I found myself struggling I wasn't able to pull off the above. I peeked at the clock, in order to subdue the urge to leap up to my feet.
Things became less sticky, noticing stuff such as jealousy, but also thoughts happening while in conversation or listening. A lot of the time I was thinking: wow this stuff really works! Still, there was an underlying feeling of fear and tension.
I haven't experienced the above since. I'm just going to work on the calm that I can tap into now, and hopefully I'll get more of the above experience.