Hi Brian! (and everyone else too since this is my first post)
I've been reading this forum since May and its extremely helpful, if at least just motivating or inspirational to see what's actually possible through meditation. I know it's been said a bunch before, but I'm very grateful!
Back to this thread, I think my experience may be very similar to yours Brian. I'm curious to how you're practicing, if there's any overlap. I'll give a rundown of what I've been up to, experimenting with the 3rd eye stuff and maybe we can compare notes and questions.
What is really awesome, now that I look at, is that I've kept a journal starting in May. So its pretty easy to see the cycles and where my head's been at...
Quick background: I had very hard jhana/2nd jhana on retreat last October and have been sitting regularly for 30-120 mins a day for the last six months. After becoming addicted, longing and creating ego stories to re-create the jhana, I've finally settled down a bit. I was doing vipassana/3 characteristics meditations until May and began trying concentration practice after reading Dan Ingrams book then. I was coming pretty close to jhana again (4 of the 5 factors) for a couple weeks. However, I gave up on this for the time being and for the last month have been going in different directions by experimenting/focusing on different objects.
OK, back to how the 3rd eye stuff came up!
I started saying mahayana prayers and the 4 immeasurables to open up my heart, since I feel this is really important in setting the stage for being calm. Slowly I began noticing more energy/vibrations in the body, especially the heart chakra and flows through the spine (outside of retreat). During one sit I said outloud "om mani padme hum" and thats when I felt the 3rd eye come up, starting from a moving itch to a more solid or swirling object. Have you tried that? I find it helps and makes the object super easy to concentrate on, at least when its new. You can trace around it looking for edges, inspect through it and look for channels of energy connecting outward. At times it can be pretty defined. This has been going on for a couple weeks now and I generally feel the "pressure" there most of the day. If someone told me this last year I would have been a huge skeptic.
Anyways, I feel there are some seemingly unrelated things associated with this. I noticed how simple breath sensations lead to elaborating stories, creating a perspective and unnecessary filler. There's no way to avoid this, there's always some subtle emotions mixing in. If I can detach just enough, some of that filler will come across as "no self" - for instance, maybe as not identifying with that person who's talking in my head. So where am I going with this? I noticed these stories manifest as space. I hope someone could help clarify this more to me. But I feel when I get distracted and "snap" back to the present, I am actually creating the space around me. Anyone else get this? The scientist in me relates it to a quantum state collapse, or the part of the brain that correlates images from two eyes to make a 3d mental image. But last time I sat with my sangha this became very apparent and it was bewildering to look around the room during walking meditation. It was sort of amusing actually
A second effect this has may be on concentration. During one sit I got my clarity of focus down to a really small point on my nose. Then I felt a sense that it was just a perception, exaggeration, filler - as mentioned earlier. I don't want to go so far as to say "nothing inherently existing" But anyways, I "gave up" or "gave in" on the focus and it switched to be very inclusive of space around me. This inversion only happened once - but I felt the physical limitations, such as being confined by a wall, having objects forced to hold a form went away slightly. I feel like it was an insight into how our mind creates physical limitations somehow, and in whatever way it was connected to the 3rd eye as well.
Lately I feel I am not that distracted sitting for a while, or if I do wander, it doesn't bother me. But what is bothering is that I have lost a lot of the clarity from the 3Cs. (Calmness is still good, concentration definitely depends on the day)
Lastly, on a funny note, I sat with a new shambhala group the other day and the organizer lady said "my daughter just thinks I sit in bliss staring at my third eye! But this is hard work!" Meanwhile I had given up on vipassana 10 seconds into the sit and stared at the 3rd eye. gotta laugh outta that
I hope this post doesn't come across as totally self-centered; I don't know of any other way to explaining introspective ideas! If anyone knows whats going on, or better yet ideas on how to direct future practice it would be more than helpful
Anyways, cheers & thanks for posting your experiences!
