| | Having undergone what i believe to be an A&P experience, followed by some symptoms stereotypical of dark night descriptions, i've decided to shift my focus from concentration to insight practices, hence the "new practice log". Doing primarily noting technique, here's my meditation experience for the day:
Practiced for about 4 hours so far today. 1hr sitting, 1hr walking, 30mins sitting ///break/// 1hr sitting, 30 minutes sitting. Woke up very early to be able to practice for this long already. Still have trouble with sitting still for much longer than an hour or so, and sometimes i feel burned out, which is why i only did a 30min sit after the two 1-hour sets. I'm sure i'll get used to this eventually, no big deal.
Went pretty well today, started off a little bit on the dark side, i was very raw feeling, especially doing the walking meditation. I'm pretty sure i'm cycling through the dark night stages a bit. I will go back and forth from feeling really down for basically no reason to feeling pretty normal, sometimes happy, but rarely haha. I almost feel empty inside alot of the times. I get that pressure in the front of my chest ive heard people describing, it often feels like what i call objectless emotional suffering, in that its just there and i cant exactly put my finger on why it is there. This is largely my symptoms of the dark night.Last night as i was dozing off and today for a short while in meditation i felt the fear of no self. Basically when i was dozing off for some reason i thought about dying and what it was to no longer exist, and that freaked me the fuck out, and then today just a weird sense of frustration and fear of the thought. I feel very alone sometimes, and often times frustrated with random things. Its difficult for me to concentrate on everyday tasks. Overall though, i can deal with it.
So like i said today was productive, but lacked a bit of clarity in my meditation. My mind wandered a good deal and it was difficult to look directly at anything. Another characteristic i've read of the dark night. When meditating nonself shows itself the most (paradoxical language...), possibly because i seek it out most. Impermanence is there too, sometimes very acutely, and unsatisfactoriness is kind of in the background lurking around somewhere. I can see how reality is so not permanent, its just a haphazard mix of perceptions from the six sense organs, its really hard to grasp onto one thing, and everytime i look at one the others often elude me. Here it is easy to see nonself from this point of view.
So my first 2 1/2 hours of meditation were a bit dark, and raw, but my 2nd two were pretty pleasant, actually. I began to be able to accept sensations more and had less weird, unsure resistance to them. Everytime i felt like getting up or this or that, i could kind of get with - "theres noone here that wants to get up, no one here that is suffering if they do not get up".. I got some bouts of rapture and pleasant feeling in both my body and mind, and a couple times felt i was on to something but then it leveled off and i returned to normal again, that happen about 3 times within a matter of a few minutes. Anyway, i dont really remember what else went on haha, sorry if this was kind of a stream-of-consciousness kind of post ive never been one to proof read. Will update later/tomorrow
(Also, have noticed a marked increase in mindfulness/investigating ability outside of formal meditation. There is some kind of subtle, cant-really-figure-it-out paradigm shift in my thinking/awareness/whatever, and i'm learning to treat any moment where im not fully engaged with something as context for investigation) |