Hi everyone,
Earlier this year I posted an introduction about myself and also had a practice thread going for a while. A brief recap (you can read the threads
here and
here is that I crossed A&P and had a few days of equanimity at my first Goenka retreat in 1999, then proceeded to swim in the Dark Night for the next 12 years up until today. Every time I would do a retreat with intensive meditation I would make some progress (such as working with Vimalaramsi and Adyashanti for a couple years in 2009 and 2010 where I repeatedly got to 4th and 5th jhanas. (The more recent approach to sitting has been more open awareness and less focused because I just can't do that focused stuff anymore. Also whenever I go into deep relaxation or sometimes drifting off to sleep (in sitting or in receiving bodywork or doing yoga, feldenkrais, whatever) I often get spontaneous spinal movements, especially in the pelvis and lower back but sometimes going all the way up).
But in between these jhanic times my life was filled with misery, and physical problems as well--for one thing I fit the description of "fibromyalgia" with oftentimes burning, stabbing pain all over my body but mostly in the head/jaw and neck. I am experiencing it as I write this, although over the years the frequency and duration is gradually decreasing.
I am so convinced it is mind-caused and this is validated every time I sit down to meditate: IF I am willing to sit through the oftentimes pure torture, then after 20 to 40 minutes, the pain
pretty dang reliably dissipates, going along with my mind slowing down and me being able to see how the chain of (dependent origination) reactions causes the tension and pain in my body. If I'm ever in such misery I can't stand it, I pretty much know that if I just sit down and sit still and face it for long enough it will eventually dissipate and I will sometimes get a few minutes or hours of equanimity. BUT the problem is that as soon as I get up from the cushion and my mind kicks in again, the tension and pain in my body returns and I feel like I just can't live a normal life at all. ....... I feel like yes I know seeing impermanence breaks up the solidity of the physical pain but for some reason I don't seem to be getting any new, long-lasting Insights for a long time. Like a shift in perspective or state of mind that will prevent the same build-up of tension from happening over and over again. For this reason, I fear that my practice is being used as pain relief/medication.
If I knew that "if you are willing to sit for X amount per day through this awful pain, then you will at a certain point go beyond simple temporary pain relief into real progress", then I think I could muster up the courage for a strongly determined practice. But because I so easily cause tension and strain with a goal-oriented practice or an expectation of how much I will do per day, I tend to shy away from setting goals like this and try to focus more on relaxation/somatic practices.
BUT I REALLY WANT TO GET TO THE OTHER SIDE (i mean, OK, twelve years of DN...] and whenever I do things to relax myself, the tension always returns because I haven't eradicated its ROOT.
[I just reread the first link I posted here and I did get some really great feedback and my practice was much stronger for a few months. But then I hit a wall again with tension and resistance, so perhaps hearing fresh responses might help although there was a
lot of wisdom packed into that thread.]
In the past I was doing a couple hours sitting a day (the Goenka years, 1999-2003) but I eventually came to realize that I was so tense and my approach to the practice was so tense that I needed to ease off, so I stopped for a while and ever since then have been reluctant to force myself into intensive home practice--I don't trust myself to not be hard on myself to perform, achieve, succeed, etc.
I eventually (early last year) ended up in Reichian therapy to try to unravel somaticized emotions causing psychosomatic illness, but I always had/have the feeling (ever since '99 actually) that everything else is just moving pieces around on the game board and that real Insight is to be my only savior and relief.
I was recently reading other DN threads and it seems like people have super helpful stuff to say, so may I please ask for it directed my way?

Thanks all.
Danielle (was Uma)