| | It's very doubtful that you've had absolutely no insight progress at all. It's possible, but something like the Three Characteristics stage is more likely. If you haven't had any A&P stuff, and everything sucks because you meditated, there's a very good chance that it's Three Characteristics.
Meditation advice for getting through Three Characteristics: keep observing whatever you're observing and stay at the bare sensate experience. If you aren't noting, then it's definitely something to consider. If you aren't at Three Characteristics yet, then it doesn't matter because these instructions will get you there and then get you through them.
It's likely that at some point, you'll be able to observe reality happening too quickly to use specific labels as notes. When this happens, stop using specific labels like "pain" or "in-breath" or "feeling." Switch to something that isn't a word like "bip" or "beep" or "da" or whatever sound you like.
Eventually, things can get so fast that even the non-word noting slows you down. At that point, completely drop noting and just stay with pure observation of the sensations. Whatever they are, observe them. Keep observing them. If you get distracted, go back to mindfully observing something. What you're observing doesn't matter nearly as much as the fact that you need to be mindfully observing. Even if you experience much suffering, keep observing.
If suffering distracts you from whatever thing you're trying to observe, then observe the suffering. This may make the suffering get weaker, or stronger, or different in any other way. This may be a useful thing to notice, but the main idea here is to observe the fundamental nature of whatever sensations you're observing. So, PLEASE STAY AWAY FROM CONTENT. Don't get yourself stuck in thoughts like "it sucks to be in Three Characteristics!" or "I hate meditating!" or "this is impossible" or anything like that. All of that is content, which is incorrect for insight meditation. It's actually doubly unhelpful because those kinds of thoughts increase your suffering while distracting you from the insight work that you're doing to try and get out of the suffering!
When those thoughts exist, just stick closely with bare sensations of something that you're experiencing. It's true that thoughts are made up of bare sensations that can be correctly observed in insight practice. However, it's no easy task to stay at the bare sensate level of thoughts about suffering. Thoughts about suffering practically scream, "look at my content!" So just don't stay with those thoughts. Use your faculty for mindfulness to maintain your attention at the fundamental, bare level where insight practice operates. This is much easier with something like touch or vision than with thoughts.
So, to summarize the instructions for this: no matter how much anything sucks, the only thing that will cause you to progress past this state is to keep observing bare sensate experience. Content is USELESS here. If you're having thoughts of protest or complaint at how much things suck, then you need to redirect your attention to bare sensory experience and mindfully guard your attention so that it stays there. If you absolutely have to stop meditating because you're about to fry your brain, then fine, rest for a while. Perhaps do some metta -- this could be very helpful in toning down the aversion and suffering to a more manageable level. But this rest period should exist only for the purpose of resuming effective insight meditation soon. |