Dear all
Tarin gave me some great advice that I have applied to my practice over the last couple of sessions.
what i recommend you do at this point is pay just as much attention to the background of phenomena that present as those phenomena themselves. for example, when it is visually dark and you see the 'skein' of lighter luminous shapes, note the shapes, but also note the black background over which you sometimes see those luminous shapes flash. another example: when you are noting the buzzing in the body, also note the physical background that the buzzing is happening against. this goes for all vibrations: note them, but also note the background (or sense of background).
This has had a fairly dramatic effect upon the quality of my practice:
1. I am rapidly developing a kind of fierce joy about practice. It is stable and does not appear to be like a mood, more like a tool. It helps me to concentrate better and for longer. I am noting the sensations associated with it and moving on. This has been developing for some time but Tarin's advice has accelerated the process.
2. On observing feelings of sleepiness and torpor, previously, to stay awake, I would observe the sensations but have to stay with them. Now I look to include another sense door not typically associated with those sensations of sleepiness. Sound works quite well. By expanding my perception I can stay much more mindful but also noticed the torpor rapidly cycles with sensations of elation and clarity, then back to torpor.
3. Looking for the spaces between sensations and the background too them led me directly to the sensations of other sense doors, which I duly incorporated into my awareness. For the first time today I was able to include 5 sense doors in to my awareness for brief periods. On average I could maintain between 2 and 3. One sensation that arose repeatedly was one of stability and safety, perhaps a more interesting effect was one of my vision sense merging with my sense of touch and for short periods becoming indistinguishable. Also for short periods I was able to maintain mindfulness of my linguistic thought processes along side several other sense doors. Previously it was an either/or thing. If thinking in words, my awareness would blink on all the other senses and vice versa.
Oddly, all this feels like no big deal. There are a couple of firsts here for me but I'm not too bothered by this. I think the fierce joy I described earlier has given me the belief that these experiences are repeatable. Also the advice that I'm getting from this forum is giving me much greater clarity over what it is I'm supposed to be doing, so things that happen in practice have a better context now. The fierce joy I'm describing will probably pass and motivation may become harder as a result. But, you know, ups and downs are inevitable in life, all part of the fun.
Not sure if I'm looking for advice yet (comments welcome, obviously) I just thought people who are following this thread might like to see the practical results of the the advice I have received.
Thanks to you all
Howard
P.S. I got 3 Mahasi Sayadaw books through the post today. "The progress of Insight", "Satipatthana Vipassana" and "Practical Insight Meditation". They are slim but pithy. Dipping into Satipatthana Vipassans at random I got:
In reality seeing does not occur at the same time as hearing, not does hearing occur at the same time as seeing. Such incidents do not can occur only one at a time
Now I have doubt, I thought I was doing so well including all those sense doors. Would I be better served cutting down on the number of senses and looking more closely at say just sound and vision and looking for the breaks?
Any Ideas?