Worrying about gaining stream entry is another attachment. How it works is that your amygdala gives you pleasant and unpleasant chemicals. A carrot and a stick. So if you day-dream about the carrot it's because you don't have it right now so you get a stick (cortisol). If you don't know what carrot you want you get a stick. If you have the carrot and eat it then it's gone, so you get a stick again. If you look for stream-entry you can't be thinking about it while you're meditating. It's just another carrot and stick situation. The best thing for you is to develop equanimity and if you can develop it enough to have equanimity towards ALL EXPERIENCES then you'll probably gain stream-entry. If not you can still develop insight in how thinking works and move beyond without having a "blip". You don't need stream-entry to get good results. Having strong equanimity on tap could be better than someone who superficially attained stream-entry but then savours the attainment (using the amygdala again) and starts projecting magical things with it and getting disappointed (dukkha).
Normality doesn't go away with stream entry. I haven't attained stream-entry in the classical way and I feel I'm better off than many who have. Keep doing concentration practices and insight practices and let thoughts be thoughts. You want to be normal like not in any altered states and resting with ease.
Your goal is this much more than stream-entry:
Bahiya SuttaSo don't stop thoughts (even if they are unpleasant) because stopping them has an element of aversion built in. Also don't add rumination to the thoughts. This way thoughts can pass away on their own (even if unpleasant) and they aren't built as a separate self. You want the thoughts to not pretend to experience what your consciousness/knowing faculty experiences. It's like when something happens to you the mind wants to react as if the thinking experienced it. Thinking IS an experience because of the carrot and stick chemicals it triggers.
Very simply let go of liking and disliking perceptions of objects. You may not let go all the way but the more you let go of those habits the less anxiety you'll feel.
If there's a biological problem with your anxiety then see a doctor and get meds (especially if you think there are some results from the prescription drugs you got before). You can meditate with them and eventually after years of practice you may get to the point where you'll lower the doses or let them go permanently. Without being your doctor it's hard for me to be sure on the advice. Meditation has been known to cure depression but only after extensive and skillful practice over years.
I still think that list I gave you above is a good start and should deal with your motivation problem. Unless you keep thinking about the benefits of enjoying sports etc. then your mind will dwell on the negatives. I believe in a balanced version of the dharma. I don't think people have to let go of enjoyment to an extreme level nor do I believe in addiction. It has to be a balance where the meditation keeps you calm and the relief and energy of that calm can help you achieve goals. I'm sure Daniel is achieving goals right now and I'm sure he gets dopamine and serotonin no matter what level of attainment he has. In his book he says that those who achieve Arhatship can go back to entertainment etc. How can a person do that without getting some enjoyment out of it?
A good description from Kenneth Folk on Shikantaza:
Practice becoming aware of the body sensations that correspond to a thought. Whenever a thought arises, feel the body. How do you know whether you like the thought or not? It's because the body sensations feel either pleasant or unpleasant. Notice that if you dissociate from this moment, i.e., step into the fantasy and leave the body, you will suffer. Suffering is not ordinary pain; ordinary pain is just unpleasant sensation. Suffering is cause by the dissociation, the stepping out of this moment, out of the body. Stay in the body and ride the waves of body sensation. Watch how the body reacts to the thougts and vice versa. See how the looping between body and mind IS the dissociation. Short-circuit this by returning to the body. Stay with the body as continuously as you can. You are stretching the amount of time you can stay in the body without being blown out of it by an event or a thought. To be in the body is to be free. To be in the body all the time is to be free all the time.
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"While you are practicing just sitting, be clear about everything going on in your mind. Whatever you feel, be aware of it, but never abandon the awareness of your whole body sitting there. Shikantaza is not sitting with nothing to do; it is a very demanding practice, requiring diligence as well as alertness. If your practice goes well, you will experience the 'dropping off' of sensations and thoughts. You need to stay with it and begin to take the whole environment as your body. Whatever enters the door of your senses becomes one totality, extending from your body to the whole environment. This is silent illumination."
-Master Shengyen
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Kenneth: See how the looping between body and mind IS the dissociation.
Mumuwu: Do you mean the moving out of the body to the mind and back?
I mean the creation of a third "thing," this pseudo-entity that is a composite of body sensations and mental phenomena. Living in this third thing is suffering because it takes you out of what is really happening in this moment; it becomes a proxy for experience. You can train yourself to stop living this proxy life of suffering by coming back to the body sensations in this moment. The body cannot lie. Being in the body is being present in this moment. Being present in this moment does not allow the pseudo-self to form. When the pseudo-self does not form, life is simple and free. It will be pleasant at times and unpleasant at times, but it is always free.
There is no conflict between noting and living in your body, by the way, whether you note silently or aloud. You can note or not note, think, act, talk, love, live; there is very little you can't do; you just can't suffer. If you choose to note, understand that there is nothing magical about the noting itself. The noting is simply a feedback loop to remind you to feel your body and observe your mind in this moment.
So it's up to you. There's no quick fix.