Christian B:
Hi Ian, a few questions:
How often do you practice?
How long are your formal sits?
Which technique do you use?
Can you describe how a formal meditation session typically plays out?
Do you see any patterns in your meditation experience?
Do you see anything other than the feelings of anxiety that relates to the insight stages?
In general, knowing about the dark night and its possible negative side effects is a good thing, but don't script yourself into needless fear and suffering. The dark night tends to be unpleasant, but can be dealt with if you manage to practice consistently and avoid spillover of negativity into your daily life.
Usually about 20-30 minutes of sitting each day, and throughout the day I try to recognize intentions and movement and thoughts and feelings that pass through as what they are.
During the sits I do Mahasi style noting of thoughts that arise and go immediately back to the breath but I do not actually note the breath because this tends to make me focus more on the noting than the actual sensation of air flow on my nostrils.
Usually I will start witih a few minutes of metta or the daily contemplations, and then I will begin to follow the breath as stated above. From here two things can happen
a. I will follow the breath pretty consistently and get easy 3-5 minute streaks of pretty steady focus on the breath with a few low volume side thoughts that go away on their own, and very rarely get a wave of piti that will go away within 30 seconds(I think because I get surprised or excited)
b. I will not be able to follow the breath for more than 30 seconds without either getting completely sidetracked(often because of noting thoughts that occur- I think that the noting itself distracts me more than it should so I may stop that and just go back to the breath as soon as i realize I am starting to get lost in a thought) or following the breath, but having my perception of the sensation of the breath at my nostrils turn slowly turn into some random almost dream like thought, which happens often if I am sleepy.
Option b unfortunately happens much more frequently than a., but I have only been meditating for 3-4 months so maybe thats normal? I'm not sure.
Usually I will get an option a. during a session and then for the next few days get option b.s, until maybe 5 days letter I get a good one again. I'm a little curious about why I feel so restless on the cushion. Most people I hear talk about breath meditation seem to enjoy it even when they're not really doing much let alone jhanas, but often times I am sitting and ten minutes later I am feeling like I would rather watch paint dry than sit here with this discordant mind.
Nothing that I can think of besides anxiety and an inability to concentrate, but as I am fairly new to this I feel that my inability to concentrate is too much of an unknown to classify as a dark night symptom