Chris Marti:
Mike, I'm not very good at the noting thing. Never was. It seems like too much overhead. What I do is start vipassana meditation by sitting for about five minutes and focusing on one object until I can get concentrated. At that point, when I can focus on that thing without having to struggle too much, I start paying attention to whatever arises. As one thing arises (sound of a car on the street) I observe that carefully until another thing arises (feeling of the breath exiting the nostrils), then follow that thing until another thing arises (tingling sensations in the foot area), and so on. I focus in this way and slowly try to expand the field of awareness to include all the things that are arising and passing, which means I'm watching things that happen very, very fast. I just can't note things that fast, but I can "know" or be aware that they're happening. It's more or less like reading a book, I guess. I try to stay with that awareness as much as possible, paying attention to all the stuff going on - that's impermanence manifestingc - and paying attention to the obvious (by now) fact that none of these things are "me," and as much as I can to the fact that the arising and passing of every "thing" causes an odd tug, a desire to keep it around or to get rid of it, which is unsatisfactoriness.
All this time I'm focusing as much as possible not on the everyday appearance of these things - the undifferentiated appearance I "see" all the time - but on the processes that cause these things to arise. This is a major difference maker for me, by the way. When I hear a bird tweet it's manifestly not one event, but a series of events; the initial sound, the recognition or naming of it, the appearance of the conceptual mental image in consciousness, and so on.
I have no idea if this will help you, Mike, but it is what I do once a day.
Chris,
As this post is a little stale, may I ask: is this practice what you have continued with to take you to where you are now (which I am reading about in the "Cessation" thread on Kenneth's site)? Or have you modified it (and how) to make the remarkable progress?
-- tomo