I've been lurking around DhO a few months now after having rekindled my interest in this thing people call meditation. Time to start my own practice log!

Something about my background: I was participating actively in a diamond way buddhist center for maybe a year around 2009. At the same time I was going through quite a lot of material on buddhism, including the MCTB, which duly impressed me. My practice was daily, maybe an hour or a half a day. I participated a few day retreat during this time (phowa) but it was heavily lecture based, with much less daily meditation than I would have liked.
Some memorable experiences from the tantric meditation period include being able to hear sound coming from children's playground maybe a block away and somehow profoundly sensing and realizing that I AM THERE. That I am not limited to this body, but rather all by sensual experiences are me, and being me is in this way more flexible than I had previously thought.
Second experience was right after finishing up a mantra/visualization meditation session. As I opened my eyes, I felt as if my body was bigger than my standard flesh-and-bones body. I was sort of gently vibrating all over, and these vibrations were extending beyond the boundaries of my body.
Ok, enough of the past! So, where am I now? I re-read MCTB in the fall 2013 on a bus commuting. I developed quite serious determination to give this thing another try. During christmas holiday I arranged time to meditate every day for maybe two 40min sessions.I try to make time to sit with my eyes closed everyday. 10 minutes is the minimum, but I try to do several 40-50 minutes sessions when personal life allows it. I also pay attention to the sensations when walking, or in the elevator etc, when I remember to do that.
My main short term goal would be to develop insight to the extent that I can understand what people are talking about, when they say everything is vibrating. I think I maybe saw a glimpse of that on 2009 as I described above, but after starting again I haven't gotten much further other than being able to note maybe 2-3 times per second quite consistently. Distractions occur from time to time, depending on the day. I have this bugging feeling that I am not doing it right or something, but after reading the DhO I can't say that I'm doing anything different than people seem to be doing here. It's probably just that I have t be patient and keep doing it!
Samatha-wise I would like to improve my concentration and learn to recognize the different jhanas. At the moment I am at a phase where I think I can attain access concentration maybe 50% of the time. I've used breath, lights behind my eyelids and candle flame as an object.
The visions behind my eyelids are the most recent addition to my list of concentration objects. The first two times I tried, I noticed after about 10-20 minutes that blue circles started to appear at the center of my visual field. I was able to focus on those and noticed a clear shift in my concentration, the background noise disappeared. Success! The next few times I tried doing this I was unable to get anywhere past the initial background noise.
Using candle light as a kasina object was surprisingly productive the first time I tried. I had read Daniel's description of what is supposed to happen (http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/dharma-wiki/-/wiki/Main/MCTB%20Bill%20HamiltonS%20Model?p_r_p_185834411_title=MCTB%20Bill%20HamiltonS%20Model). I didn't expect much, but instead I was sky rocketed exactly through the phases I remembered reading. After closing my eyes I first saw this noisy, textured background. But suddenly a clear red dot was visible and the background noise completely disappeared. I was watching this dot as it chanced color, acquired green and purple rings and I even saw a tiny star circling in the middle! At some point it became completely black and also disappeared. It was a bit hard to keep track of all that was happening, but this experience blew my mind as it was EXACTLY as described, no question about it! The next few times with a candle light didn't even go to the clear, initial blob phase, I was just observing the noisy background. Trying again this week I was able to follow the phases at least three time to the disappearing black dot.
I like to think that I'm somewhat visually oriented. The elaborate visualizations in the vajrayana tradition come relatively natural to me, and I have incorporated these visualizations to my current practice from time to time. For example, I did a certain visualization and mantra recitation recently and at some point the mantra started to feel like massive stone wheel that was rotating heavily in my mind.
The thing I like about MCTB and DhO is to be able to find descriptions of actual meditation experiences and attainments. This sort of thing was completely lacking from the diamond way approach. There were no maps, and any directions on how to meditate were considerably less clear than what I have found here. I asked many times how am I supposed to know I am doing this right, and never got any useful answers. Only after reading extensively afterwards I've come to the conclusion that they, too, were onto something. The method was just not right for me at the time.
I hope to maintain a balanced and healthy attitude towards this meditation thing, and also to keep practicing. This log is to be a reminder of that and also where I was at this time.
Let's see how it goes!

-J