Things are good. Concentration practice at the beginning of sits is evolving, and is definitely a good idea. After getting to a relaxed, attentive state, I spend some time noticing and gently releasing subtle tensions. I realized today that there's a particular way I tense up in my forehead and around my eyes when I am trying to focus, and I was suddenly able to let it go significantly. It felt like a sudden understanding of what kind of focus I should be aiming for. It also made the sit more pleasant.
I feel like I never talk about specific details of what I do during practice, which may make it hard to offer advice, so I thought I'd do that now:
1) Set timer (usually for an hour)
2) Do the concentration/relaxation practices described here and in the last post. I do this for about fifteen minutes or so.
3) Then I do insight practice:
I switch my attention to the sounds around me. Usually this is a combination of my computer fan and insects/birds/etc outside. I tend to rapid-note, trying to break the smooth computer fan noise into "atomic" moments of sound. This isn't hard, so I then try and add another sound source in, trying to hear the atomic moments of the crickets chirping at the same time. Sometimes I try three. The more intense I note, the faster things seem to move along in terms of shifting through insight stages up to my edge:
When thoughts arise, I note them and they very quickly dissipate. It's extremely rare that I ruminate in fantasies/rehearsals/memories for more than a second or two. Maybe once a session there'll be a 5-10 second lapse.
Sometimes distracting pain/tension/pleasure arises, and I switch focus to that. This feels less rapid-fire than sound. I tend to just attend to how they change moment-to-moment. "Attending to change" feels enough like noting that I assume it suffices for insight practice.
By about 55 minutes (I'm guessing), severe leg pain often arises, and I watch that closely, noting all the obvious "desire to check clock", "desire to stop", "desire to move", etc. Today was the closest I've come to failing to stay till the end. I finally moved my leg and the timer immediately went off :-)
I sometimes note "observer", "centeredness", "background", and "everything" Or rather, I sometimes invoke these in a row. Invoking or noting the observer makes me attend to what sensations make up the observer. Noting those sensations makes me attend to what is noting those sensations (some sense of presence or centeredness). Attending to
those sensations makes me want to attend to everything all at once, to kind of leave no room for the self to hide. This makes me want to see what's "in the background", which is usually just more sensations plus a vague sense of being in a certain place in space. Then I try and hold it all, get exhausted, and relapse back into just being a simple (usually visual) observer.
I think that about covers it. Still don't have a clear sense of where I am.
Oh, also, interesting thing: I have a friend who describes herself as compulsively engaging in negative self-talk, and I remember being someone who did this a lot as well. I was thinking about trying out this practice of repeating self-talk to yourself when you notice it arise so that I could report on its effectiveness to her at some point. So I kept an eye out yesterday for any such thoughts. There were none! What the hell. I seem to not engage in negative self-talk. I'm pretty sure I used to. A lot.
Primarily what I work with is rehearsals of future conversations or fantasies of the future. And those could involve negative beliefs about myself, but I just don't hold them strongly anymore. Here's a list of things I traditionally don't like about myself: Lazy, lacking a clear sense of purpose, jumps around from interest to interest, easily romantically attached, socially needy, bad at meeting new people.
I look at that list now, and it seems recognizable, but really, really muted. Two months ago I could have wallowed all day in my sense of laziness, my sense of being overattached, my sense of wanting to overcome my lack of expertise, etc. Today I can write this post, reflect on each of them, shrug, and get on with my day.
[Edit: Also, clearly practice makes me more of a windbag on these posts

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