| | Hey all,
Before I start this rather long introductory post, I'd just like to express the profound gratitude that feel for having access to such a wonderful resource and community. Thank you so much! I provide a lot of background info that might be useful in diagnosis in the following section, but if you're not interested or don't have the time, feel free to skip down to "My Recent Experience."
My Story So Far:
I began meditating in the style described in "Mindfulness in Plain English" sometime in October of 2010, using the sensation of the breath at the rims of my nostrils as my meditation object. I had never really paid much direct attention to my experience of the world until about 6 months prior to that point when I tried sub-lingual salvia divinorum extract. This showed me just how different and interesting my subjective experience could be and caused me to wake up and start paying attention in my day-to-day life. Visual experience, particulary in bright sunlight, became noticeably more interesting.
I started with 30 minutes a day every morning and soon (after a few weeks) increased it to one hour. The sense of calm that I felt after 15-20 minutes of trying to focus on my breath rather than my thought stream always felt like a reward that was well worth the time investment and tended to make my mood more resilient for several hours afterward.
After a week or two I could get to what I now recognize as access concentration in about 10-20 minutes or so if I kept very still, but became confused by the descriptions of a visual sign from MiPE. I spent a lot of time trying to find resources about the Jhanas and how to get into them but became confused by seemingly contradictory information. At the time, switching between meditation objects without losing my concentration was very difficult, so trying to switch my focus to the pleasurable sensations that arose in my hands and forehead didn't work. Frustrated, I went back to just focusing on the breath and my concentration seemed to strengthen over time without anything particularly exciting happening.
Right from the beginning, I noticed that weed seemed to make meditation noticeably easier. Although it did not improve my ability to concentrate, it seemed to increase the intensity of my sensations, making it much easier to notice their subtler properties. It was while high that I first noticed the sensation of my breath pulsing as I tried to concentrate on it. At the time, having not yet read MCTB or anything that described insight practice in detail, I dismissed this as a cool but unimportant sensory artifact. Meditating while high always felt like I had suddenly "gained a level" and been given the opportunity to see what my meditation practice would be like some time in the future. Sure enough, as the the weeks passed, my experience during normal meditation sessions would become more and more like that of my high meditation sessions from several weeks ago.
Oddly enough, the most dramatic experience I had was not during a meditation session, but while reading a book - "No Boundary," by Ken Wilber, over the course of two days. As is my usual style, I had been reading very slowly - speaking all of the sentences in my head and visualizing the metaphors - and performing all of the suggested exercises as soon as they came up. As I read, it gradually dawned on me that the purpose of many if not most "spiritual" practices seemed to be to cause people to really grok the map-territory distinction for particularly persistent categories such as "self", from their direct experience, rather than just as an intellectual exercise. In particular, the chapter on "the centaur" and the body awareness exercises in it noticeably increased the degree to which I felt "present" and to which my thoughts and emotions seemed just like my other sensations, or at least similar enough to them that I should obviously be able to combine the information that I'm getting from all sources.
As I read on, the map-territory distinction became more and more clear to me and I came to really grok, for the first time, that my experience of the world is merely evidence about how the world is and not direct access to reality. In particular, I came to understand my emotions as anticipations, beliefs about what will happen, combined with the physiological changes that tend to be adaptive for dealing with such situations (just as an example, I'm sure there's more to it than this). All at once, they lost much of their power over me. Before, my only real options for dealing with emotions were to ignore them or obey them. Now I found myself able to treat them as data that could be easily combined with information from explicit reasoning. This was AWESOME. I also felt far more connected to my body, like it was actually a part of me rather than this annoying thing that I had to take care of because it housed my brain. All sensations became permanently more vivid, particualrly touch. I could now get a preposterous amount of pleasure from simply putting the palms of my hands together in a classic "prayer" position. Now that I really understood that my aversions were due to implicit beliefs and not direct access to the way reality is, I could also easily convert the intensity of previously noxious (but not dangerous) temperature sensations into waves of ecstasy. This was also awesome. In short, my experience of the world permanently shifted to what I can best describe as all of the benefits of a mild dose of weed with non of the downsides (short term memory impairment, confusion, sensory overload). Also, I soon realized that the chronic fatigue I had previously suffered from most days was almost entirely gone. All of this happened around the middle of February and has continued to deepen ever since.
This was all so profound that, for a couple days, I seriously entertained the possibility that I had attained enlightenment. I felt like, through the ability to appreciate whatever I was experiencing at any given moment, I had achieved a sense of well-being that was completely unrelated to the particulars of my situation. For the first time, it seemed utterly preposterous that I would be unable to live a happy, meaningful life, regardless of what happened to me. Indeed, this feeling has lasted, although the limits of my abilities became clear over time. It took deliberate effort to remind myself that all information is good and that it is perfectly OK and possible to appreciate everything I experienced. I began to notice more subtle forms of suffering that I couldn't quite put my finger on and had a difficult time eliminating. I also realized that, despite seeing through the "self" concept intelectually, I couldn't reliably shake the feeling that there was something observing some of my sensations and I couldn't figure out how to observe that observer. Even so, my attitude and behavior seem to have stably shifted. I feel far less threatened by things and far more comfortable with profound levels of uncertainty.
It was around this time that I let up a bit in my sitting practice and shifted toward trying to be continually present throughout the day. I did this for a bout a month before I noticed a significant drop in my general sense of well-being and started sitting again. Shortly after doing so, I noticed that my concentration seemed to have improved significantly. I often find myself slipping into something like access concentration almost without any deliberate effort just from sitting still for a few minutes (or even less, depending on the activity). My mind will naturally rest on some object (breath, a strong sensation or my stream of thoughts), a feeling of calm spreads over me and pleasurable sensations arise spontaneously throughout my body, particularly in my forehead. I'm in such a state right now as I type this. In fact, my forehead is pulsing in a very noticeable and pleasant way pretty much continuously unless I become very engaged in some other activity. It feels like I am getting a perpetual massage and is the almost always the easiest sensation for me to investigate. Although quite pleasant, at first I found this to be somewhat annoying because I had no control over it. I would often sit down to get work done, feel the calm and pleasant sensations arise in my body and be overcome by a strong desire to meditate. I've gotten better at dealing with this since, but it was challenging to work on anything besides meditation or some activity that could plausibly contribute to my spiritual development for several weeks.
I discovered MCTB about two weeks ago. Two weeks before finding and reading MCTB, I had begun to notice the pulsing, vibrating aspect of my sensations occasionally in my normal waking state. Reading MCTB was unbelievably valuable. I had had an extremeley difficult time finding clear, reliable information about insight meditation and enlightenment on the internet and had resorted to trying to read the Vishudimagga, which hadn't been going very well. Upon learning exactly what I was suposed to be looking for and why that should work, my desire to practice sky-rocketed and my progress became much more rapid. I've been meditating about 2-3 hours a day for the past week and a half. Usually one 1-hour block after I shower in the morning, many shorter ones throughout the day during any "down time" like showering or waiting for someone and then 30-60 minutes at night before going to sleep. I managed into the 1st Jhana while somewhat high for the first time (I hadn't tried for many months) a few days ago and was able to follow through to the 2nd and possibly the third (see below) without much trouble. Later that night I was able to enter and stay in the 2nd jhana with a fire alarm (false alarm) blaring for about 30 minutes without difficulty.
My Recent Experience:
- Lied down with the lights off and no pillow. - I concentrated on the feeling of air passing by the top of the rim of my nostrils. - Almost immediately, the sensation became solid and was very easy to stay with - A deep, full pleasurable sensation spread across my forehead, pulsing rather prominently. - I concentrated on the pleasurableness of this sensation and a joyful anticipation arose in my body. I focused on the pleasurable aspect of that experience as well and spread the joy and happiness throughout my body. - I concentrated on the mass of pleasure until it became a steadily humming field that covered my entire body. I soon noticed that this state was now self-sustaining. - After a very short amount of time, I noticed that, despite being very intense and quite stable, this pleasure wasn't very satisfying. In fact, it was downright annoying. Remembering that this was the key feeling for entering the 3rd Jhana, I let go of the rapture and felt it drain away down my body from my head to my toes (despite the fact that I was lying down on my back). - I was left with a feeling of happiness, which was far less intense but just as stable. - Even this was still obviously somewhat annoying. I have vague memories of experiencing something like this before, but I didn't know what it meant or what to do about it. Having read MCTB, I interpreted the state as a sign of progress and decided to investigate the sensation of happiness in more detail. - It broke apart effortlessly into a pulsing, vibrating mass that was even more annoying. I decided to try to clearly conceptualize each of these little blips, buzzes and pulses as being simultaneously impermanent, unsatisfactory and not-self. Each of these properties was individually apparent without any "squinting", and keeping them all in mind at the same time while noting them wordlessly was not too challenging, though definitely effortful. - The vibrating mass of happiness turned into a somewhat-more-solid mass of pure irritation and "unsatisfactoriness." - I stayed with this feeling for a while, really getting into the groove of noting the three characteristics, both with my eyes open and closed, in every sensation I could find. - Eventually I got tired of this but, rather than trying to go back, I decided to try to push forward. I tried to break up the sensations even further, particularly the sense of irritation (I think this was critical) and sure enough they gave way. Now the everything was vibrating much faster, defintiely more than 10 times per second, though I'm not sure how much more, and most of the irritation was gone. - I played an engaging game of whack-a-mole in this state for an unknown amount of time: - It seemed that the most solid-seeming part of my awareness was where my sense of an observer seemed to be coming from. - Whenever I noticed that something felt solid I would try to notice more detail in it and break it up, thus pushing the sense of an observer out of that part. Initially, the sensations that made up the front (face) half of my body were vibrating much faster than those of the back that were in contact with my bed and "I" seemed to be in that half (more precisely, the back half of my head). - I allocated more of my attention to my back and tried to break these sensations up further. In the process, my sense of self moved a bit forward, but couldn't get into the front because I was maintaining my attention there so it moved into the center of my head and chest. - I broke up the sensations in my chest and and "I" retreated into the center of my head. My breath seemed oddly solid all of a sudden and this combined with the solid feeling in the center of my head to yield the interesting experience of feeling like some of "me" was being breathed in and out through my nose. Eventually, I managed to break up the solid breath feeling as well and this went away. - Focusing on the "center of my head," I was left with just thoughts as "me." When I realized that they were being observed and so couldn't be me, my sense of self would shift again somewhere else, to whichever place where my awareness was weakest. - I kept doing this for a while, maybe 20 minutes, maybe forty, it's difficult to say, without making much progress. Satisfied with my progress, I got up and chatted excitedly with a friend of mine for a bit.
Since then, I've been able to note the three characteristics in many of my vibratory experiences throughout the day whenever my attention turns toward them. When I meditate, the experience is much like what I described above, though noticeably more effortful when I start from my baseline (non-high) state. I spend most of my time bouncing between what feel like two levels of vibration, one that is around 5-10 beats per second, more in the foreground and somewhat annoying and one that is at least twice as fast but probably more, that seems to be in the backgorund and throughout my whole body and that is much more pleasant, thrilling even. I haven't quite managed to stabilize at the second, seemingly deeper level yet.
I would really appreciate any guesses as to where I'm at and exactly what to do from here. In particular, I'm wondering whether it would be best to really stick with one meditation object and keep trying to notice as much about it as possible or to chase the sense of an observer around as I did the first time. I have my own hypotheses about where I am, but I'd rather not risk contaminaitng your diagnoses. |