1/30/2014
45 Minutes
INTENTION
Read a post by Ian And this morning in this thread.I had a blast of insight as I read these words:

"This is not me, this is not mine, this is not myself." Do these words mean anything to you? You spend too much time being tied up and invested in the concepts of your life's story without seeing it as it is, and thus seeking release through that insight. In other words, this insight hasn't occurred to you yet. We'll see whether or not this provides any food for further thought. "
I had to sit down for a minute after that...
Here's what I wrote this morning after reading those words:
"The attempt to find a sense of self is the the thing that my concentration could be turned on.
The desire for security of self is what is holding me back, and any attempt to 'understand' this in the concept of a me is, in itself, I making.
The deeper insight is that there is no I to understand. The fear *is* the result of looking for an reason or a context.
Every time I move beyond a desire for an I, there is also a fear of not an I.
That desire to maintain a me is binds me into the chains of karma, because I am looking for a way to maintain a self in each event as it arises and passes. But if i can turn my attention to that desire *within* the events, I can recognize that they will happen with or without that response and sense of self that I have been inserting into them.
Instead note that 3 truths of that desire. Note the 3 truths of the insight into that desire.
In every moment I can turn the attention can turn to investigation of the sense of self that is looking to arise in response to every experience that I note.
There is no me to be held back."
With that in mind I brought the intention to the cushion today to investigate the echoes of self that come from awareness of base sensations with great intensity.
My intention was to focus, with a balance of the 5 spiritual facilities, on the elements of self (particularly the fear of the dissolution of self that I now believe is the element binding me into karma) as possible.
ON THE CUSHION
Definitely an interesting session today.
After a short time working on the breath to establish some base concentration, I moved my attention to the self. At every point, as I felt any sense of limitation or self appearing, the attention was turned onto that sense of self.
Rather than trying to open the doughnut of dissolution through rapture I worked to come to it from focus, using concentration to remove concentration from the moorings of a sense of self. (Recognizing the I making that is the binding force in the karmic chain.)
At some point I simply was noting everything as "self self self", seeing every element of perception as an echo of self rather than simply raw perception.
At points, where focus was lost I moved focus back to breath as a steadying state, and when I found that balance I returned to the self as the concentration object.
While it may not have been as intense as some of the sessions I've had previously it felt far more equanimous than I had previously.
I came out of the session feeling focused and calm.
INSIGHT
I'm guessing at some point I'll need to get even finer in my awareness of perception so that I can begin to fully tease self from the raw perception. Right now I'm just beginning to examine the cracks in-between the two.
I feel like at this point I have a practice that I can follow for a while. There is a sense of "balance" and tranquility to it that hasn't existed after previous moves forward. That is, this came from something intended, and not from something I backed into.
There is a public session tonight that I'll be attending. I'm interested in seeing what happens there and where it goes.