Cedric in Miami, FL.:
i don't think I am in the Dark Night as I haven't gone through A&P.
As mentioned in your thread on renunciation, since you feel energetic sensations, I think you have gone through the A&P. Energetic sensations really are the telltale sign, since you're feeling the dissolution of the physical, or rather its arising and passing away. But since you think you haven't gone through it, what do you consider to be the A&P?
The type of noting that I have been doing tends to be possibly too descriptive and involving too much thinking: for example, I find my internal dialogue as follows: "pain in knee", "worry about possibly causing longer term knee problems" "Awareness of awareness of worry", "itch in lower back" "full feeling in stomach"...Is this too wordy a noting practice?. Should I simplify it down to noting: "Pain", "Thought", "awareness" "Itch", "Feeling"?
Wordiness isn't so much a problem as thinking rather than noting. If you simplify the noting down to "pain" or "itching" for physical sensations, and "thinking" for verbal thoughts (and consider coming up with vocabulary for image thoughts, audio thoughts, different kinds of imagination, and memories) that will allow you to note more quickly (please don't feel any obligation to engage in fast noting), and do more complex noting where you're noting a physical sensation, the feeling of the sensation (pleasant, unpleasant, neutral) and your emotional state in just three words. Basically, once you get the terminology down pat, you can comfortably note everything. The First Gear practices on the front page of http://kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/ describe a very good way of doing this. This article describes a way to really put it all together for a very efficient noting system: http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.ca/2011/02/yogi-toolbox-detailed-noting.html
About "awareness" and "feeling", how would you describe that? Those are somewhat vague terms. I'm sure you're clear on what you're describing, but I can think of a few different things you might mean from those terms.
Also, I often find myself, at times, saying the mantra to myself: "arising, passing" as I observe every sensation arise and then fall away. Is this best? or should I not force it so much and know that just the simple noting is sufficient with out internally verbalizing the "arising, passing"?
Another thing, when I feel a bit fed up with things and have a sense of "spiritual sorrow" and I am doing noting practice I do the following: I note some phenomena arise and then I think: "This is unsatisfactory", then then next phenomena arises and I say to myself "this is unsatisfactory" . Anyway, basically my question is the same. Should I be noting this verbally or with so much thought or should I keep it more limited to just noting what arises and not verbalizing the unsatisfactory aspect of it to myself?
I recommend noting the hell out of it. To really make noting work for you, note everything. You can note unhappiness, dissatisfaction, disgust, unpleasantness, aversion, etc...as needed depending on the specific sensation. As mentioned above, You can also note the physical sensations and your reactions to them (pleasant, unpleasant, neutral) which accompany these emotional states that you're noting and the types of thoughts that arise at those times. If you consistently use a comprehensive framework for noting all sensations, you'll get used to it, then effortlessly good at it to the point where it will be reflexive. Then the 1st path will just be a matter of time.
Another closely related practice that I have been doing is that I note a sensation arise and note how it is unsatisfactory and that the absence of it or its opposite is also unsatisfactory. Would you recommend this practice or discourage it?
Thanks.
That depends on whether you're thinking about whether some imagined opposite is unsatisfactory or if you're simply noting a sensation that you're noticing is there at that moment.