Tommy M:
Give us a breakdown of the sort of stuff you're noticing in your sits right now, what sort of landmark meditative experiences you can recall and how things generally are in your life.
All the best & welcome to the DhO.
Thanks for your thoughts and the welcome.
I just posted a more detailed log
hereActually I'll just re-post here incase you guys have any thoughts on it.
Hi, I’d like to introduce myself and get some feedback from some of my fellow yogis. I’m using this moniker temporarily because I can’t afford to have admissions of drug use out on the internet. I’ll think about this some more later and decide what to do. Maybe I’ll make a different account with my real name or just let people know individual who I am that I’d like to be friends with. I am interested in making real life friends and becoming part of this community as I feel I have a lot to offer. Here’s some of my history for those interested or willing to give feedback or advice.
Before Meditation:Pre-meditation activities from the age of 15-27 constituting “hard-core” experimentations into the nature of consciousness/reality:
extensive lucid dreaming;
psychedelics; and
thought experimenting utilizing an unusually high degree of skill in both creativity and critical thinking individually, as well as in combination with each other.
Insights (A note about these insights: These insights were gained entirely outside the realm of vipassana meditation with absolutely no knowledge of buddhist thought or eastern philosophies. It is commonly said in these circles that “intellectual understandings” are not the same as “insights” gained through meditation, and for the most part I agree. However, I would like to suppose that both are actually labels and it is somehow possible to gain “insights” without meditation. I say this only because the following insights are known to me, they have been revealed to me, and hold identical characteristics as insights I have gained through traditional vipassana meditation.):
Knowledge of the true nature of pre-determinism/free-will.
Knowledge of the true nature of separation/connectivity. This leads to the “There is Only One Thing” experience.
Knowledge of true nature of self/no self. This leads to the “Universe is Experiencing Itself” experience.
Knowledge of the true nature of objectivity/subjectivity. This leads to the “Truth is Where it is Found” experience - I also call this one “The Grand Resolution to All Seeming Paradoxes” or “knowledge of the true nature of paradox.”
Meditation Practice Log (no knowledge of maps or anything outside of Goenka retreat)
1st Goenka 10 day Retreat Nov. 2010Really intense ups and downs
lots of pains the first few days which after a while got normalized and didn't matter that much
Lots of thoughts regarding future plans and sexual desires desires that would change radically day to day, seemed realistic at the time, but after retreat revealed themselves as neurotic over zealous wasted creative energies.
Lazy near the end just waiting for it to be over
legitimate “mind/body” insight that after retreat had the effect of increasing masterbation while simultaneously decreasing motivation. I think this happened because the mind was now aware that what it was craving was a body sensation, sexual in nature, and that it didn’t need to look to fulfilling any prerequisite, like being successful in life to get lots of hot chicks, it could just skip that step and go straight to what it really wanted, i.e., the body sensation.
Although I didn’t get what Goenka called the Bhanga, I did have several experiences that would be regarded as A&P. The most prominent being the impression that I was on about 3 hits of LSD after the 4th day sit (the first vipassana sit after 3 days of anapana concentration meditation). In other word, a high degree of flow through all sense doors, and more awareness than I could remain equanimous with.
The most significant insight of this course was a knowledge of the habit pattern of the mind. How by, not reacting to thoughts or impulses when they come up, they evaporate from the habit pattern of the mind and are less likely to come up later, and will be less powerful.
After 1st Retreatafter retreat i was really happy... for a while.
After a few weeks I got super lazy, complacent, played lots of video games and watch TV a lot which led to sort of depression, though I wouldn’t call it clinical depression or anything, just a slump.
This slump made me want to go back to meditate again, this time with my wife who had gone to a Goenka 10 day after the one I went to.
2nd Retreat Aug 2011So we went together, and because I had such an INTENSE time on my first course, my wife suggested I just try to keep it grounded this time
This conscious effort led to an experience of not reacting to the thoughts that caused me to have so many ups and downs the first retreat. In a very real way I became disembedded from the habit pattern of my mind, and just watched and remained equanimous.
there still was some amount of craving for or planning drug-fueled sexual experiences for after retreat, but mostly these were recognized for what they were, experiences in the moment that should be let go of.
This did get boring and I spaced out and slacked off a lot.
At the time I didn’t consider this equanimity to be an insight or a stage as I didn’t know anything about the maps. I just came to the conclusion that meditation was boring and not really for me.
After 2nd retreatafter a short honeymoon of clarity I pretty much fell right back into the slump I was in before.
I might do a little anapana here and there, but whenever I did I would just get horny and stop after 20 mins so I could take care of that
3rd retreat Feb 2012by this point it was clear to me that mediation had a positive effect on my enjoyment of life, if even just concentration meditation, and I wanted to try to incorporate it in my life.
I didn’t really want to go to another retreat, but I didn’t really care that much and my wife wanted to go so we went.
Still not aware of the maps, but I did go straight back up to this equanimity pretty quickly and just sort of hung out for the 10 days.
I could sit no problem, very little discomfort.
no real insights
I was pretty much equanimous except once in awhile I would want to get to the bhanga but it never happened and I didn’t really care much anyway
After 3rd retreatleft thinking, ya meditation is not for me
shortly after found meditation stuff on the maps via Ron Crouch’s website and read Ingram’s book
switched to noting style
After switching to noting style - March 2012I’ve been sitting progressively more and more over the last 3 months and am up to about 2 hours a day for over a month and there have been some dramatic improvements in my behavior and in my experience
lately there is a flickering effect present in all senses. like in the movie theater when you can notice the film flickering on the screen, or like sound is all little wavelets, lmy body feels like a metal pole that has been struck on one side and it is ringing, vibrating back and forth, in and out.
Currently I'm doing 20mins anapana followed by 40mins noting twice a day (so 2 hours a day). Recently, I sprinkle a few "stop on a dime" observations throughout the day that Shinzen Young recommends.
I should mention that the 2 hours a day is formal sitting, I find that most of the day I am meditating as I do my activities, which might explain why it seems I stay in equanimity, even high equanimity throughout the day, for long periods of time.
Seems like I am back and forth between lower and higher equanimity. I've had more than a few moments in higher equanimity that were pretty intense, just everything breaking up and waving all out of sync.
I was noting specific sensations, like itch, pain, bird chirp, circles, etc, but recently I've reduced my noting to 5 different options:
feel
ear
eye
mind
taste
By the time I have an attention moment that combines two or more sense doors, I generally just drop noting and try to observe attention. If focus starts to wane I go back to anapana for a bit, then back to noting
Lately, very subtle sensations are revealing themselves, like “body map,” “eye map,” “ear map,” and then these maps or projections start to themselves break up into flow, and I am disembedded from the subtle memory of being in a location specific in time and space.
Questions, Concerns, Wrap-upSo in my estimation it appears as though stream-entry is pretty close, although I’m not entirely confident that my experience lines up exactly with that of someone on first path as I have already “seen the no-self” Shinzen Young says. And I have seen it in the most profound way I can imagine is possible, albeit outside the vipassana tradition.
The last three months, since I started meditating every day has been the most fulfilling and enjoyable I can remember in my life. So honestly, whether or not I am on first path going for stream-entry, second path, completely enlightened or just on no path at all because the maps are a bunch of BS, all-together doesn’t really matter to me. The benefits are speaking for themselves at this point.
However, I am working on the assumption that this “blip” or “wink of nothingness” is actually something that I will notice, and have an impact on me and not just something that could pass by without having some sort of gravity to it. Because there are often times little blips all over the place if I look for them in between attention moments or at the end of an attention moment. I don’t consider them a big deal, and I don’t think they are the blip people are talking about as nibbana, unless all of you are all under some sort of group placebo effect by imagining this as a big deal.