As usual, I refuse to just call this a practice thread and be done with it.
So, a shift in perceptual baseline last night has prompted me to start another practice thread and try to document whatever the hell seems to be going on nowadays. There was a massive shift in baseline around two months ago, roughly, which left no sense of location, affective emotions or self-referential thought in its wake. Since then however, and also in the month or so preceding that shift, there have been at least another three significant and noticeable perceptual shifts which have caused my entire experience to become more 'fused'; phenomenologically, the way the visual field was divided into a centralized area of focus and peripheral vision has dissolved and become effortlessly panoramic; sounds are just sounds, it's like they hear themselves and there's no distinction experientially between hearing what what's heard, and this is also the case for the other sense doors a'la Bahiya Sutta.
My everyday practice in recent months has moved more and more towards a Tibetan/Bön and Mahamudra-based approach, still basically freestyle non-dual concentration sort of stuff but with much more emphasis on emptiness and impermanence than before. My sits usually consist of 45 mins anapanasati but with attention to the bare sensations of the breath and seeing through the subtle fabrications still implying difference of any sort. "Subtle" seems to have become my word of the month, but it's the best way I can find to describe what's going on and to point out just how incredibly easy these little instances of clinging are to miss; accuracy in writing has also become much more important when trying to communicate now, much as I was a wordy bastard before it seems to have gotten even worse!

Anyway, to the practice...
Two sits today, both 45 mins in length but I worked with a Dzogchen technique called "Transforming the Five Skandhas Into the Five Tathagatha Buddhas", specifically the aggregate of form, in the first sit. It involves resting in the natural state (which I understand as being non-dual, non-conceptual awareness) and visualizing a white, egg-sized ball of brilliant white light, then recognizing the sphere and awareness as being inseperable, dependently arisen and luminous. After the shift last night, the ability to remain in that non-dual, non-conceptual awareness has become so natural as to be effortless, and so the only difficulty came when trying to visualize with any stability. I was able to call up a mental image but, and this is a pain in the arse to describe, it's not really an image as such, more like a stream of mental sensations that suggest something being "seen". It's weird to explain it but it seems more streamlined than just imagining something, more dynamic but functional nonetheless.
Tonight I sat open-eyed, which was a complete surprise to me 'cause it's not something I usually do and I have no idea why it happened. I just found myself sitting down, assuming an asana and then the sense of the body just vanished within a second or two of applying bare attentiveness; this is something new, I'd experienced this before but not as quickly and certainly not as thoroughly as it was tonight. It's difficult describe what practice actually consists of when doing anapanasati 'cause it's just a lot of recognition and letting go of subtle clinging to mental objects and processes. Not very exciting to read about, but I'll try to keep everything as phenomenological as possible.
I've been participating in various facebook groups connected to the direct-pointing folks from RT and LU which has been really cool, and a lot of fun. It's opened my eyes to how differently people convey their experience with this stuff and also how easy it is to muddy the water with words sometimes. I'm all about practice, techniques and available ways to 'wake up' but it's also become apparent how prevalent the whole "do nothing" approach is, particularly in those who's realizations have only occurred in the last year or so. It's not a big deal, but it reminds me of how we all must have reeked of enlightenment at one point, and how we still sometimes let one rip that tickles the nostrils of our fellow beings.

Real-life stuff continues to be testing as I go through a difficult split, sit on the verge of having my house repossessed, and have just been sacked from my job. I'm appealing that last part though so fingers remain crossed, but to anyone looking in from the outside, this current situation looks like a nightmare scenario....yet I'm quite calm and incredibly clear headed, it's not that it's not difficult sometimes, I'm not the Buddha or anything, but these practices and ongoing realizations have made everyday life more manageable in the most practical and sensible ways. I've also found someone who's presence in my life has led to all sorts of incredible things and who's involved in this adventure just as much as I am, something I never thought possible but that's led to a deeper understanding of how genuinely amazing it is to be alive right now.
I'll sign off with a thank you to the Buddha, the Dharma, and this wonderful virtual-sangha we've got here at the DhO.
Peace out.