I welcome thoughts, ideas, interpretations and advice.
At this point it doesn't feel like it's as simple as "keep practicing, you will eventually pop", or "just stop exerting yourself so much and relax into your what's already there, let reality unfold and do it's work", and some minor or major corrections need to be done to this practice. Ideally, in time for my weekend retreat in two weeks, so I can use that time to at least explore Equanimity as best I can.
Today's sit: 65-minute sit, untimed. Initial energy levels low, after a long day at work.
Resolve to do a sit seeking concentration rather than insight, maybe switching to insight towards the end if I feel like it.
Start off doing mindfulness of breathing, 3x10 outbreaths, 2x10 inbreaths, then trying to stay with the breath without counting. Mind wanders, I bring it back. Mind wanders again, I bring it back. Concentration more stable, able to stay for a few minutes with the breath, start feeling this familiar sensation of lightheadedness, also start to see lights in the visual field, shift my focus hard to the sensation of lightheadedness, and away from the lights as they tend to be hard to solidify (and so tend to lead me through a more insight-ish approach). Sense of a lot of effort and striving, I keep at it. After some minutes, the rapture becomes more intense but the sense of effort doesn't drop. I try to surrender to the rapture but it also starts to dissolve when I give up the effort. I sustain the effort for a while until I surrender, drop the effort, the rapture dissolves and I space out. Get jerked back from the wandering mind by a few images of bright lights and rapture coming back, this time effortlessly.
Then the following thought appears in the mind: I can reach Equanimity in any of two ways, either by the concentration route or the insight route, and I decide to keep treading the concentration route and start actively investigating reality only when in 4th samatha jhana. Insights seen until then are to be welcome, but not actively sought (i.e. as in noting, or as in sabotaging the mind's attempts to solidify reality).
Rapture drops quickly and I find myself basking in a feeling of well-being and feeling calm. After a while, this becomes boring and I consciously drop this subtle bliss as well, leaving only a deep peace felt in the background. This also holds for a few minutes, but after a while the mind starts to space out. I bring it back, it spaces out again. I start noting at a rate of one note every two seconds. Sometimes the mind speeds up to almost 2 notes per second, and I change the note to dat, dat, dat as I can't keep spitting words to name phenomena that fast. When it slows down I get back to words.
Physical sensations from the 5 sense doors are glaringly obvious, and at this stage the mind just notices them all, gross and subtle, without any exertion. Some energy waves noticed in the visual field going mostly upward and sometimes in 3D (upward and incoming), and a bit fainter than what I usually see when I do more insight-driven sittings. Feeling tones can be noticed in real time but aren't as obvious, I need to drive that noticing consciously. Thoughts are slippery, and I can note a bit less than a half of them in real time, but some 80% of them after 5 seconds of their arising, being embedded in them during that short period. I try to note mind states but they get intermingled with thoughts and don't change as fast as thoughts, so mind states are just a tiny fraction of my notes.
The background mind state was calmer than in my drier insight sittings. However the foreground of the attention field was filled with a lot of exertion. I tried just "relaxing into the present moment" many times but that resulted in spacing out so I went back at making effort. I kept noting and noticing, and this dissonance between peace in the background and effort in the foreground was apparent at all times. Some back pain started to build up. I just noticed it as one more sensation and carry on.
After some 10 times noticing willingness to end the sitting, I start moving to get up, some 50 minutes into the sit. I scratch the itches, stretch a bit but without opening my eyes. I notice some intention arising to keep going for a little while more, and I freeze in the position I'm at, probably not your classic meditation posture, similar to
this.
I started noting again, and a lot of the sources of different negative sensations became apparent, mainly fear and anxiety. I noted them, though in an unorthodox manner: "fear of this", "fear of that", "anxiety at that", more like the kind of things one would say to the therapist, but those feelings were present there and then so I felt it appropriate to note them like that. At the same time, they were fears that are continuously present, only lurking in the back of the mind, and it was the same time I put some of them into words. Something I noticed is that a feeling of joy and freedom was arising while noting all those things. After a couple minutes of doing that, I went back to a more conventional technique. The back pain dissolved in champagne bubbles, though that might have been because of having stretched earlier. Vibrations were all over the body, particularly over the arms/hands and were a lot faster than before and with a lot of buzzing. The energy waves were apparent again, but were fewer and this time, every time they flew upward, they dragged the entire background with them (first time I saw this happen). Also, when there were no energy waves i.e. only the background, it wobbled badly. At this point, thoughts of craving for stream entry were predominant, mixed with feelings of anticipation and the heart beating faster. I stayed mindful to those phenomena until they calmed down, kept calm for one more minute, and got up, eyes slightly tearful.