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Log Lady
Answer
3/14/13 12:05 PM
A little background first, since you don’t know me from Adam... emoticon

Taking Laurel’s advice of starting a meditation practice log (and Ian’s advice of reading the suttas) seems like a great way to ground my experiences. I’ve been reading other people’s practice logs, and wonder if I have had some of this happen in my daily life, beginning in my teenage years to now, age 40. This pretty much trumps all of my experiences in terms of strangeness. When I was about 14, I was sitting next to this writing professor at a, ahem, bar and he started reciting one of his poems to me. I looked into his eyes, listened to him and became, for lack of a better word, entranced. Everything except for his talking head fell away and it looked like stars behind him! All I could perceive was his floating face/head in outer space and nothing else. When he stopped talking, everything went back to normal. I think I blinked a few times, probably mumbled to him that it was a cool poem, stumbled in confusion to the table where my friend was sitting and drank so many Tom Collins that I still gag a little just thinking about this! I would be interested to hear an explanation for this, if anyone has one.

Instead of trying to fit the past within a certain framework or not (I’m finding it rather confusing), I figure starting from scratch with a meditation practice seems like a good idea. I haven’t yet, but I’ll try to make meditation routine, like going to the gym. I guess my goal would be to have some control over these states, if they are related to meditation, rather than have them pop up without me having a clue. This is all new to me, and I’m looking forward to seeing where this leads...!

Edit: I decided that I was getting to detailed, so cut a bunch of this.

RE: Log Lady
Answer
3/14/13 6:51 AM as a reply to K Jones.
Practice notes - March

3/8/13
-afternoon, sitting, staring at small red light for ~10 minutes: concentration okay after at least 5 minutes, background started flashing in an out with a solargram look--I’m assuming this is what is meant by “strobing.”
-middle of night, woke up, so stared into darkness, saw small spinning vortex thing in the center of my vision, but couldn’t keep my concentration much longer.

3/9/13
-afternoon, mentally noting sensations in body.
-middle of night, tried but couldn’t concentrate...snoring husband not conducive to meditating!

3/13/13
-decided to try following the Anapanasati Sutta, which fits nicely with Ian's suggestion of using original texts and Fitter's recommendation (below) of keeping it simple.
-I've tried it a couple of times now, got my muscles to relax some, all over and areas of body tingling, and this morning was able to follow a thought visually as it arose and watch it dissipate. (Sorry, there might be words that are specific to these things, but I'm sticking with layperson lingo until I'm more knowledgeable.) I'm trying not to rush things too much and keeping practice relatively short, between 10-30 minutes.
-tried again for a few minutes, felt like I am starting to get the hang of being "sensitive to the entire body," feeling like the breath ripples through my body out to my fingers and toes. Also, it was fairly noisy outside with birds, cars and planes, but I noticed when I focused my attention on a sound (as well as breath) my focus seemed to expand and I got some tingling. However, I guess my attention to sound has its limits. When one of our chickens started clucking outside of my window, I had to stop...it was too funny, and I started laughing!

K Jones:
*This pretty much trumps all of my experiences in terms of strangeness. When I was about 14, I was sitting next to this writing professor at a, ahem, bar and he started reciting one of his poems to me. I looked into his eyes, listened to him and became, for lack of a better word, entranced. Everything except for his talking head fell away and it looked like stars behind him! All I could perceive was his floating face/head in outer space and nothing else. When he stopped talking, everything went back to normal. I think I blinked a few times, probably mumbled to him that it was a cool poem, stumbled in confusion to the table where my friend was sitting and drank so many Tom Collins that I still gag a little just thinking about this! I would be interested to hear an explanation for this, if anyone has one.


Sounds almost first jhana-ish. I believe Daniel tells a story about how he entered jhana by staring at his teacher's head...

Instead of trying to fit the past within a certain framework or not (I’m finding it rather confusing), I figure starting from scratch with a meditation practice seems like a good idea. I haven’t yet, but I’ll try to make meditation routine, like going to the gym. I guess my goal would be to have some control over these states, if they are related to meditation, rather than have them pop up without me having a clue. This is all new to me, and I’m looking forward to seeing where this leads...!


Yeah. This sounds reasonable.

There are a lot of weird states one can put one's mind into, but at the end of the day, it seems like most people get into this practice because they want to reduce their level of dissatisfaction with life. So, you might learn to replicate some of these experiences, and others you might not. All of that is a lot less important than the ultimate goal, which is happiness.

I recommend starting out by mastering one or two (at the most) practices. It sounds like you're working on noting and concentration. That sounds like a good starting place. I wouldn't try to deliberately get myself into any weird concentration states at the moment. It's more important that you develop a calm/still mind, one that's capable of doing the work of insight. So, balance is the key right now. You might find that on your own, but if not, just ask for help, and someone here can help you.

RE: "One day my log will have something to say about this. My log saw
Answer
3/12/13 6:56 AM as a reply to Fitter Stoke.
Love the log lady quote! I haven't thought about Twin Peaks in years...might have to see if it's on Netflix. Your recommendations of learning to calm my mind and keeping it simple and balanced make really good sense to me. Thanks, Fitter!