Practice continues, though at times the terrain feels a bit featureless and drawn out. Lately I've been semi-obsessed with the notion of "listening" to the six sense doors with (ideally) the same sense of effortlessness that one can perceive a piece of music or read a book. What this experiment is revealing is that the mind likes to combine, to degrees, "audience" mode (perceiving sense data) and "author" mode (shaping / directing / interpreting sense data). It seems as though each faculty borrows from the same power source, where one faculty operating at full power hugely saps the other. A gross example would be daydreaming, where a particularly enchanting fantasy can totally hijack the mind-body complex -- which at this point is reduced to something of a drooling, gullible idiot. Another example is apparent in dreams, where gaining lucidity immediately divests the authored dream space of a good portion of its grandeur and solidity, often to a degree sufficient to fracture the dream entirely. Really settling into audience mode (essentially powering mindfulness) and watching this interplay at the subtler levels that present during meditation is strange, but captivating. Essentially it's just another way of poking at the subject / object relationship, which at this point I have to say is feeling super, super gross. I am so well and truly ready for this thing to pop.
I've also been bumping into some curious states, mostly as a result of disrupted sleep. Hard to describe. Reality shifts -- inside of a quarter of a second, probably -- and immediately reforms in a way that is exactly the same... but also not. Helpful description, no? All the content is identical, but somehow, experientially, there's a sense of it having done a 180. The space is very cohesive and integrated, including time as well. A lot like Giacomo Balla's
Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash. Also a very strong sense of "rightness" and joy as a result. Intense, brief, and really tough to put a finger on. My working theory is that of an especially vivid formation.
Earlier I had mentioned that desire to practice was quite high, but this isn't entirely accurate. It's more like once I start sitting, I just keep on going.
Edit: at some point, can't be sure where, interest in the samatha jhanas pretty much evaporated. They still manifest periodically and are enjoyable enough, but for whatever reason deliberately entering them holds zero appeal.