| | "I felt embarrassed about it and didn't want to post it, so I posted it." Love that attitude! It's the kind of attitude that counters the mushroom culture. If something important happens as a part of your meditation practice, it deserves to be talked about even if some people think it's taboo. That's why I love this place.
Let's see if I can add anything useful here... if I'm getting distracted by any sort of fantasizing during insight meditation, sexual or otherwise, there are a few things I've found helpful. There's always the standard noting of "thought, thought" or "seeing, seeing" or "touch, touch." But sexual thoughts can be so enjoyable that I feel reluctant to let them go, in which case it can be skillful to note some aspect of their unsatisfactoriness. I might note the thoughts as "unskillfulness, unskillfulness" or "distraction, distraction" or "discontent, discontent." If I don't want to note, then it can also be useful to silently observe the thoughts for a few moments and try to cultivate equanimity towards them. I've been known to call up the equanimity of the third vipassana jhana to help out here, though the third vipassana jhana itself can be a distraction from insight practice if I'm trying to move past dissolution into the later insight stages. So, usually the noting works better.
Once I'm ready to let those thoughts go, I just bump up to the bare sensate level. Even with panoramic, non-laser-like attention, a minute or two of noting bare touch or (non-imagined) visual sensation will displace the attention to sexual fantasies with attention to physical sensation in the present moment.
For concentration practice, I tend to follow Ajahn Brahm's advice that any form of sense desire, whether sexual or otherwise, indicates insufficient contentment with the present moment. From that understanding, I find that it's less skillful to just watch the sensations of sexual fantasy happening like with insight, because it's important not to give the sense desire a chance to take hold of the mind. So I'll generally just repeat the meditation instructions mentally to myself once or twice. That might be "I will stay mindfully focused on sensations occurring in the present moment." Then I'll go back to attempting focus on the breath, or the sensation of contentment, or whatever. Generally if I'm at the point where there's even a glimmer of pitisukha to attend to, then sexual fantasies aren't arising anyway.
I think fantasizing could also be considered restlessness, which can in theory be remedied by mentally zooming in on the meditation object. I usually fail to achieve results with any approach that treats restlessness as a bad thing to be corrected with the antidote of deepened concentration. This is probably because I have the concentration of a 10 year old. So I treat restlessness as an indicator that I have lots of mental energy, and I try to channel that energy into a lovingly stubborn dedication to staying with the meditation object. I find that this tantric approach, which treats the hindrance as a fuel source that can be used up in the process of enhancing meditation, works well for sexual fantasy that is marked by restlessness. If it's just sense desire alone, especially accompanied by sluggishness, then the antidote approach of generating contentment works better.
During either concentration or insight, if none of the above works, I do a few minutes (maybe five minutes at the most) of metta next to generate more contentment with the way things are now, so that there's no need to fantasize. Unlike trying to deepen concentration, I personally find that metta IS an effective antidote to restlessness and discontent. Maybe this is because frustration doesn't arise with metta practice like it does with attempting to deepen concentration. |