Hey Nikolia, sorry I didn't get back to your earlier post already. I will do my best to answer these questions, I am not sure my understanding of some of these terms is quite on the ball. As well, my memory of how it was before this last shift, and thereby my ability to come to definite conclusions as to what this shift wrought, is pretty faded.
Nikolai:
What is your ongoing experience of 'being', sense of existing, moods, affect?
My current sense of being is that there seems to be a frustrating shell of sorts between me and experience. Like my experience is of looking at at the inside of this clear plastic shell, which I am often trying to beat myself out of. It's like my mind dead ends at an impenetrable wall, and just builds up steam behind this wall, then stops with that certain thought path, and does it again.
When I look for a sense of existing, it's like I can feel a kind of airy wisp something, which then is seen to be not self. This process repeats itself over and over. It's quite frustrating, but seemingly unstoppable. Like I see there's nothing there, but clearly there is something which is holding me back, or somehow just there, which somehow is self, but also clearly seen to be not self...
As for moods, more than anything, right now thinking about it anyhow, there is just this underlying sense of frustration, of never being able to relax. What I was talking about earlier, the tender sadness, seems really to be caused by an attempt to break out of this shell, or do away with the strange permanent but not self sense of being here. I imagine something to be helping break of escape this barrier, and then I just go with it with all my might to try to escape. I think perhaps this process resulted in some experiences I have recently thought of a s PCE's. None of it is fulfilling, ya more than anything there is almost a felling of insatiable hunger, some frustration I cannot quench.
This feeling has been ongoing since, and started soon(maybe 4/5 days) after what I believe is 4th path.
As for affect, it hard to say exactly. I experience emotion as a sort of paralyzing force. It's like a bunch more energy just put in the system, and is overloading it. The main emotion I experience is anxiety, manifesting as worry or frustration, or if it's very intense as sadness(of loss, of say a hat I am very attached to), or anger. Emotion comes from the gut. When it occurs, it seems like the progression goes somewhat like; Triggered by an event, anxiety ramps up drastically, I see clearly this is occurring and react with suppression, I try not to suppress it and just feel it/ investigate where it came from, it slowly fades to baseline anxiety/ frustration.
One thing I would add is that this feeling of frustration if greatly reduced when I am employing attentiveness to sensuousness, which for me consists of focusing in somewhat of a vipassana-esque way on the sensation of the body, and also looking at visual detail. Mostly I just try to focus outward on the world happening to me as opposed to what's going on in my mind.
Nikolai:
Can you call up felicity in this very moment?
So I got the online definition of felicity as "intense happiness". No, I cannot recall call that up at will, thought attentiveness/HAIETMOBA immediately makes me much more at ease when I remember to employ it.
Nikolai:
Can you generate any affect at will?
I would say I can pretty much to the same extent as I could before this shift, and probably roughly the same as at any time in my life. I don't fel like that has changed much.
Nikolai:
Can you sense a tangible experience of 'location'? Anything that feels like having a location in the world?
Now that I look at it, location does seem pretty open ended. By that I mean it feels like right here where I'm sitting might as well be anywhere, kind of like I don't really care. Sense of location seems to be pretty reduced.
Nikolai:
Is there a sense of presence in the ongoing experience?
There is, for sure. When I am "on it" so to speak, when I realize I have been lost in thought, there is immediately a sense of presence in the form of the glass shell I talked about above. When I employ attentiveness and look outword, this sense is greatly reduced, by still fought against to some extent.
Nikolai:
What is your experience of imagination and images in the mind's eye?
Interesting question. I would say conclusively these are greatly reduced since the shift. I can still imagine visually with effort; for instance visualizing the line I wanted to take skiing. I do think my experience is more here now, and less in my head, in a visual and spatial sense, since this shift.
Nikolai:
What is your experience of illwill and sensual desire?
Reduced for sure. Right now it is hard to conjure them, for instance, wishing harm or thinking about sex produce very little emotional of physical response, somewhat disconcertingly little response in the case of sex. I would say I have a relatively low sex drive most of the time anyhow, but this does seem especially low. One area I really noticed a lack of what I guess you could call sensual desire was taking risks skiing. Normally I am driven to really push myself, and try to charge hard, but skiing yesterday I really didn't feel the need to jump off cliffs, or just generally take excessive risk. I still ended up pushing myself to do it because the friend I was skiing with was skiing like I normally would, and a part of me wanted to keep up with him. However there was a large sense of "what's the point of this?, why not just enjoy the moment right now?", which is definitely new.
Nikolai:
Do you experience any sort of sensations that seem to 'relate' to affect?
Ya, pressure, or tension, or maybe thickening almost, in the core area. If you were looking at a body diagram it would be a ball behind the first four abs, right below the bottom of the ribcage in the middle of the chest. As well, pressure at the temples spreading a bit onto the side the forehead.
Nikolai:
What have you observed in daily life in situations where there would have been an affective reaction? Is there anything different, changed, reduced in such situations? What are the differences, phenomenologically? What happens now and what doesn't happen now that was different?
Feeling is much lighter now, it's like the clouds of feeling have risen a bit, of maybe gotten thinner, and are now no longer able to be quite so oppressive and block out so much light. Also it seems like my attentiveness at the best of times before the shift is now my baseline attentiveness. What I had thought was a PCE, and was probably an EE is now essentially my baseline. Like I said above though, at first the experience was quite carefree and not subject to strong emotion. However at time passes, what I originally viewed as small, remaining emotion has come to seem larger and more oppressive.
It is WAY easier to be in a good mood, and to be friendly now. I don't have to work at it quite so much and it seems to flow naturally. Also, I definitely need to spend some time investigating why I feel the need to be nice, that seems to be a large driver of anxiety. A stumbling point on this is the harmless idea, ie: I will think "being friendly is being harmless, eh?". However I have the sense it is not so. Friendliness definitely feels like an emotion of sorts. Although it is pleasant, it also seems blind to life in a way, too caught up in being happy to do anything else. Perhaps harmless is more simply not being harmful?
Nikolai:
What are your experiences of the following:
The mentally felt sense of: self / self-obsessing chatter / being / presence / location in the world / subject to objects / duality / inner world / me-ness / instinctual passions / any affectively felt mind state / moods / being of any kind / being the absolute / being one with everything / being one with anything / being connected to everything / being space / being infinite consciousness / being no-thing-ness / being the void / being anything / imagination / the flow of time / existing / craving of all subtle and gross kinds (even subtle preferences born from preferring pleasant over unpleasant vedana).
If anything has changed from above, how has it changed?
I'll try to hit those I haven't already talked about:
I still get lost in thought, and in those unconscious periods it seems like self obsessing, mindless chatter is the name of the game, though is does have much more of a positive, light theme than before. When I am being actively attentive, it is hard to get willfully sucked into self-obsessed chatter, though it does sneak up me relatively immediately after employing attentiveness.
Post 4th path experience of immediately seeing all thoughts as not self has continued, though for the first few days it almost felt like I had was identifying with experience more, which I put down to seeing the emotional self ties more clearly. No being anything really.
Flow of time seems normal.
I would say craving for mental peace faded immediately after the shift and has now returned to a strong force. There is some craving and enjoyment of things I have typically enjoyed such as outdoor exercise, but this has been reduced. It is still there somewhat, but I would really rather be actively trying to figure this AF thing out.
Interesting questions man, it was good to think about this so analytically. I am looking forward to hearing what you think.