A little rundown of the five "jhanic factors," might be useful here. They can be thought of as the general ingredients to a good samatha practice. Vitakka -- directed attention. Vicara -- sustained attention. Piti -- rapture. Sukha -- joy, ease, contentment. Ekaggata -- single pointed focus. The first two describe your efforts and are under your control, the last three are fruits of those efforts and can slip you into jhana.
Thanks, that's helpful.
So since this experience, I have dramatically ramped up my time. Just within the past twenty four hours I sat for 28 mins, then 38, and then just now for 61 mins.
My process now is basically solidifying a visualization of the air going up through my nostrils, and when I feel solid with that, I switch to the sensations on the tip of my nostrils. This is less visually directed, but looking back it's still a weird kind of mix between physical and visual. I think I can recognize that as mind / body, though my intention while I'm sitting is to solidify, not break down, this is just something I'm realizing in hindsight.
I notice when I get deeper into this second object, the tip of my nostrils start tingling. It's more like it's been tingling the entire time but I don't notice it until I get this deep, almost. It feels sort of pleasant- I read that getting into the absorption states has to do with switching the attention on the pleasurable sensation(s) that arise from being deeply focused, so I tried putting my focus on the general pleasantness of that.
My feeling is that I wasn't deep enough and I'm jumping the gun, because my attention still feels sort of "granulated". I can still see it switching around off the sensations on the tip of the nose, but I catch it so quick that it's just really minute.
This 61 minute session actually started off with about forty minutes of a lot of anger and a lot of frustration and a lot of story spinning, but I kept on through it, and eventually I was able to actually get my attention on the breathe, and my anger began to subside, and the normal process that I'm getting used to began (of solidifying the visual of the stream of air, then switching to the tip of the nostrils).
Where I used to feel impatient trying to sit for an hour, now it's really not a factor. I could definitely have kept sitting there if my timer didn't go off, and when it did I felt a slight like, disturbance upon opening my eyes. It was very sudden.
My own take on this is that I should just keep at it and in time I'll gain more control, and a pleasant sensation will arise and then I guess I'll be practicing stepping into an absorption.
Any advice or comments on this?