Double session tonight, an hour of sitting and an hour of walking (in the freezing bastarding cold) while going to see my friend.
During the sit - One major thing I saw really clearly was the cessation of the internal narrative, while following the breath and doing the anapana shuffle I saw it begin to break down completely and become nonsensical word-images. These were then seen to follow suit, becoming blurred and translucent before ending completely to be replaced by...well, nothing at all as it happens. On seeing that come to an end, things fell very silent and still with a complete absence of narrative thoughts which was incredibly restful and spacious.
- Something else interesting was an experience which, when I thought about it afterwards, seemed very much like this description of 4th jhana:
"Just as if a man were sitting wrapped from head to foot with a white cloth so that there would be no part of his body to which the white cloth did not extend; even so, the monk sits, permeating his body with a pure, bright awareness. There is nothing of his entire body unpervaded by pure, bright awareness."
With the whole body as an object, the 'brightness' was experienced as enveloping [1] but not in the sense of covering anything up, just in the way it's described in that quote; permeating, nothing of the entire body unpervaded.
- I've realized that there are extended periods when I don't seem to be experiencing anything via the sense doors but am still aware of
something. I haven't been able to determine how long these last, they seem like formless states as there is absolutely no sense of the body and the senses can't even be found, as far as I can tell so far. There's something happening though but for the life of me I couldn't begin to describe it yet. Interesting stuff.
There was other fun stuff happening during the sit too but nothing really practical or noteworthy.
During the walk - Having just gotten up from my sit 15 minutes or so before I went out, concentration was high and so I stayed with the body before taking on mental objects as I walked. I was just seeing things as they were, perfectly there without me doing anything, and kept on catching myself "looking" rather than just seeing, trying to add something to things but being caught before it could come to anything. Doing this repeatedly kept things pleasantly clear and still. I remembered how, only a few week ago in fact, I was looking at things and trying to stop seeing the visual noise which is absent in a PCE. Now though, I can see that coming up and let it go knowing that it's the very thing which causes the noise in the first place!
- I think, and I'd like some clarification from Tarin on this if he has the time, I learned something about the "being the stillness and being “the break” line from Daniel's notes (
here) tonight. I've already mentioned how much more apparent the stillness is, so while I was out I tuned into this and everything became very direct and clear in that PCE-like way. I found that I could "be" that stillness by continually letting things go in the same way I have while sitting, resting in that as much as possible makes it really obvious when something arises that's not required but it can still become a feeling tone if not seen clearly. Would what I'm describing here be what you meant when you said about "being the stillness..."? If not, would you mind saying a bit more about it please?
- Two guys walked past me. Nothing unusual. What was different was a really minor thing which has indicated to me that I'm actually doing this stuff right...there was absolutely no sense of fear, or being under threat, or having to be prepared to fight. This sounds like nothing, I know, but there was always this sort of tension twist/uncertainty thing that happened when I encountered people in the street who looked like they could cause trouble. The guys looked like "neds" (which is a term in Scotland for delinquent youths fond of stabbings, Buckfast, stabbings and unprovoked violence) and it would generally put me "on guard" in case they started up any shite. (Stereotyping, generalizing, all that tarring everyone with the same brush stuff, yeah, guilty.) That didn't happen. On the contrary, they nodded in a casual greeting/acknowledgement/social gesture way and walked on leaving the rather wonderful smell of a big grassy joint hanging in the night air.
I've rambled on a bit here but practice has been eventful. I didn't mean to imply at any point that any sort of major shift in perception has occurred, just in case anyone got the idea that I was slyly hinting at having attained something or other. I haven't. Things are just pretty damned good right now and I'm happier than I've been at any point in my life, even though there's all manner of domestic and financial dealings to be dealt with which would normally have stressed me the fuck out.
I'll no doubt do a bit of practice tonight and make use of my days off rather than sitting making nonsensical music, or smoking myself into double-vision.

[1] I tried to stay with this as much as possible without losing concentration, the first visual sign of it appeared as if it were in front of my head and above slightly but there's more to it than a purely visual part as it's almost tactile, but sort of felt as being something not-physical. It's weird but cool, more investigation is required but I thought this was worth mentioning.