How quickly were you noting? Did the frequency change throughout this sit?

What do you mean by the hands turning thing?

Does starting the second log mean you have started into a new phase of practice?

You probably already know this, but just FYI in case you didn't know Shambhala has been dealing with fallout from a pretty serious scandal.

Sat for 30 minutes at the office before I had to leave to meet somebody. I was ill (allergic reaction of sorts) and the air intake had been shut off because it was after office hours, but I did not space out, so I guess the fatigue has come to a break for now. I focused on the breath with relatively few distractions (stomach pain, noice, contemplation and discourse about observations). I kept the breathing within my awareness during these other notings, so I noted in separate layers. I noticed that I have some kind of mental image of these layers of noting (I neglected to note that with a word, but I was aware of noticing it). I filled out the breath notings with dots to stay alert, and I noticed that the dots tended to be synchronized with my pulse. No backward hands this time, but there was the beginning of a changed perception, if that makes sense. I also noted that it felt as if I was breathing into the area where my hands touched (thighs), as if I was holding a large ballon that was expanding and contracting. Also, I felt a fifferent kind of ”energy” in my hands while breathing in compared to while breathing out.

Sat about 40-45 minutes, focusing on breath as default but with openness to other sensations. Conditions were unfavorable. Brain fog and some pain due to allergic reaction from medicine (it wasn’t food this time), and my partner watched youtube videos about ant farms next to me, haha. I started out dull and with mind wandering, but clarity increased. Vibrations at a high frequency, first in my hands and then throughout my body. Some irregular slow waves. Showers of bliss over and over again, first very subtle and then with somewhat increased intensity. Then calm lightness. Changed perception of my hands. Perception of having my arms crossed, then of having palms turned upwards holding a sphere (they were resting on my thighs, palms facing down, left hand resting on left leg, right hand resting on right leg).

After the session I feel much better than before. Brain fog is gone. Pain too. Some energy restored. I’m grateful and somewhat surprised.

Sat for one hour. Breath as default focus. Noting.

Was exhausted so started out dull and spaced out and dozed off several times. After about 40 minutes dullness took off and then there was relative clarity. Even dullness is impermanent. Maybe after redirecting focus over and over again, and returning to a more mindful state over and over again, the brain eventually gets it. At that point there was the familiar perception of heightened awareness of sensations in my hands. This time I decided to investigate what those sensations really are. I guess I thereby shifted from clear peripheral awareness of these sensations to focused attention to them. That shift changed the sensations. They now seemed more binary than wavelike. Instead of waves moving through hands, I felt pressure sensations arise and pass on different points. The attention shifted rapidly between the hands and between different points of the hands. Each sensation stood out so distinctly that it felt as if the point of contact (with the thigh) braced itself against the surface. Maybe the waves are consciousness scanning through the body, and when directing focused attention to them they appear more the way particles do, that is, having specific locations)? And since attention constantly arises and passes, then so do the ”particles”?

There were moments of full body shower of piti (which at this point no longer feels like bliss, more like something that I recognize and let go of). Some kriyas, as if something needed to be evened out. I think this was the first time that I noticed such involuntary jerky movements locally in the throat/neck area.

Sudden noices did not startle me.

After the session I feel better than before it. More present, calm and clear.

High frequency rough vibrations noticable even off the cushion, like my whole body was vibrating. Slower waves still there in the background, turning into binary sensations arising and passing in rapid succession when investigated. Have been sick all day, felt like I was mildly poisoned. A 90 minutes session of hatha yoga combined with pranayama took away the worst of it but left me feeling overwhelmingly tired. Have done a formal sitting but struggled with staying awake (in the mundane sense). Took a long nap afterwards. Healing. Need to sleep. What I had planned to do this evening will have to wait.

Off the cushion thoughts about dukkha and impermanence even in the best moments. Less clinging to non-binary identity since there is no separate self anyway. This body feels like a masquerade dress that I put on to play with. Today I saw matter vibrate off cushion, and I realized that I have seen that before. 

Off cushion reflections:

I think I’m starting to see more clearly where my attention deficit is playing tricks on me and what I need to work on to get past that. I really need to develop the ability to notice when I’m about to loose access concentration due to dullness. I have made some progress in this area as of late, but it has only made me realize the extent to which I’m not there yet. I’m planning to order and read Culadasa’s The mind illuminated to get a more firm grip on what is happening. There are also some indications that my mind sort of tries to cheat and skip steps, and I think it might be helpful to learn more about the basic skills from more than one perspective. I’ll go back to reading Mahasi as well.

I have noticed a reduced amount of cravings but also an increased awareness of at least parts of the craving that still remains. Some of these cravings I can handle with equanimity. With regard to others I can be equanimous about not being equanimous. I can see that they are conditioned and I can see how silly it is, and I’m kind of getting used to the idea of letting go of them eventually.

I have dips with more cravings, and I notice how the cravings are creating suffering. Even though giving into them may feel good for a short while, it’s never as pleasant as I used to imagine. I probably still do that, but it’s like I always know that it’s just chasing something that doesn’t exist. Also, I can feel that giving into cravings makes me lose balance. It makes me more prone to craving, and it forces my body struggle with the stress from it. I find myself more often than before deciding that I don’t want that kind of imbalance.

Still there are some cravings that feel more entangled with the illusion of self, and I can feel the self holding on to them.

Meditating on the train while sleep deprived and on medication for motion sickness was not a good idea. Focus and clarity were there for maybe 10 minutes. The remaining 35 minutes were increasingly sleepy and dull. Now my shoulder hurts, too. Ouch! I should have slept instead.

Something really scary is going on. I don’t know what this is. It seems to be full-blown panic but it’s also physical. First I tried to meditate in a seated position, but after maybe 12 minutes I had to interrupt because this unbearable panic spread through my body and grew more and more intense. It felt pretty much like that one time when I fainted due to a bursting ovarian cyst. The thing is, I have a cyst right now; I recognize the symptoms that started yesterday (I have had quite a few cysts over the years). Therefore it made sense that the panic attack was my body saying no, especially since the cyst was now also pulsating with pain and my whole body was shaking. As I lay down it got better, and I thought the cyst had either finally burst or the seated position put too much pressure on it. I then tried to meditate lying down but fell asleep. As I had now stopped shaking, I decided to meditate standing up. First it went well and I thought that I had just been silly to even consider this being a dark night thing, but then the panic returned. I opened my eyes and tried to ground myself in seeing and hearing ordinary things, but it didn’t help. I had to lie down and hug myself and just breath. In doing so, I felt that the cyst was pulsating with pain again. I don’t know if the cyst is causing this panic reaction or if the panic reaction is causing the increased pain in the cyst. I will consult with a doctor tomorrow. Now that I’m lying down I feel better again. It seems like the meditation triggers either the pain or the panic, and whichever comes first triggers the other one. Sometimes pain seems to manifest as panic for me, so it’s difficult to know what is what. I have never had such reactions to meditation before. I couldn’t even imagine it to be possible, although I have heard of it.

The first time I did try to just observe the sensations. It started as chaotic vibrations especially in the throat area. Then the panic came. I felt pressure around my heart, and showers of both cold and hot dots arising and passing rapidly on my skin. In doing these observations, the screen went brighter and clarity increased. I had a heightened awareness of my hands and at the same time they started to feel like they were not my hands and kind of dislocated. That is common for me and I don’t mind it at all. Still there was fear to such an extent that I was unable to stay at a sensate level. I was increasingly lightheaded, dizzy, and nauseous. I felt like I was about to throw up and at the same time felt like I was suffocating, as if somebody was strangling me. I felt that I was afraid of what would happen if I lost my sense of self, and thought that maybe this was what it felt like. Suddenly I wasn’t so sure that I wanted it. There were parts of me that did want it, who kept saying that this was just the self trying to defend itself, so I tried to just stay with what happened and embrace it, and it kind of drew me in, and that was unbearable. I couldn’t take it. And now I’m afraid of the panic.

I don’t even know what I’m so afraid of. It’s not like things will just cease to exist. Either they already don’t exist or they do exist on one plane, and that will continue. I will still be in this body. I will still be able to love. What’s there to be afraid of? Am I clinging to a sense of normality? I don’t even believe in normality, and normality never believed in me.

I managed to meditate lying down with my eyes opened for 20 minutes without falling asleep or panicking, although I did space out briefly three times. I focused on all breath sensations. One of the times I spaced out I remember images of bandaging a foot for some strange reason. Some thoughts came up about self. The thought of having no soul scares me. So does the thought of there being no higher power with a higher purpose. I felt guilt for bringing a child into existance if there is nothing there, no meaning. Then I realized that my son’s self is as much an illusion as everything else, and that scared me even more, and I felt bad for putting him in the position of having to deal with such an illusory existance. Then I realized that there is no me that can be blamed.

Even though I kept my eyes open, I got that strange perception about my hands. I have a hard time describing it. Maybe it’s like they are having their own awareness? Still, ”I” am aware of having that awareness, sort of. It’s like awareness is not tied to any center. Yet, there is still something there that interprets these perceptions and ties them together.

Off cushion:

I don’t know if these are rough high frequency irregular vibrations or if I’m actually shaking with tremor. I recognize this from before, about ten years ago, nine maybe. I remember wondering what it was. I know that it was subsequent to having had something energy-like shooting upwards through the spine and exploding in the head. I cannot recall how much time had passed inbetween and what other sensations had occurred in detail. I’m pretty sure, though, that it had been very turbulent and panicky but with periods of exhaustion and brain fog. This was before I even tried Kundalini Yoga. It was that time when everybody seemed to die around me and I was waiting for a neuropsychiatric investigation and everything was quagmire, after getting divorced. I remember that it all started after I had said to a friend that I had given up on happiness and would settle with an interesting life. It seemed that I had evoked something there.

I don’t know if I can take this again.

I probably can. After all, I got through it last time. This too shall pass. But I don’t want this happening over and over again. I need to finish it this time.

I’m scared to meditate. It’s not that I’m afraid of what I might find within me; it’s what I may not find there. I’m scared that it’s nothing there. How can emptiness be a good thing? It sounds so meaningless. I need meaning. I need there to be meaning already. If it’s up to me to create meaning, what if I don’t have it in me? And if there is no me at all, how is it even possible to create meaning? If there is no agency and no purpose, how can there ever be any meaning?

I probably need to listen more to J. Krishnamurti. He seemed to get it and still not despair.

And I will meditate. I have decided once and for all that I will do formal practice at least 20 minutes per day without interruption. 20 minutes. That’s practically nothing. I will survive that. Jeeze, this is silly.

I felt stable so I decided to sit for 20 minutes just to get a positive experience. That was a good idea, because I didn’t panic, and now I’m not afraid anymore. It was uncomfortable, physically, but quite managable. My whole body felt buzzy and a bit restless. There was a somewhat changed perception of the hands. Slight pain and blissful sensations occurred simultaneously.

I can still feel the buzzing sensations throughout my body, buzzing like static / TV noice.

Oh no, oh no, oh no, please don’t let this be A&P again! Off cushion showers of piti in the midst of daily life. Although I do appreciate the energy, I would rather go forward than backwards.

As soon as I sat down and closed my eyes there was rapture, and then I was drawn into spaciousness. Nothing fancy, but wider and deeper than I’m used to. My eyelids flickered and there was noice in my right ear, a creaking sound that turned out to be rapid clicking. After a while my eyelids relaxed and the noice stopped. There were spinning movements and rhythms that sometimes were coordinated, sometimes out of synch. There was lightness and a slight shift in the gravity, like on an air plane going down for a landing. I didn’t need the noting. When I tried to use noting, I couldn’t keep up with all the sensations, and that caused tension.

Regardless of whether or not I intend to meditate, as soon as I close my eyes I’m drawn into spaciousness. It’s like I’m taken for a ride. There is movement around me and through me, and I’m moving through space. From time to time I feel motion sickness.

In the end of today’s yoga class there was some time for meditation. I noticed tensions in the facial area, resisting the motion into space. I relaxed my face to the best of my ability. That increased the motion but decreased the sickness. Sometimes it was kind of wobbly. There were spinning motions.

It was as if someone pulled my chest and head up and pushed my shoulders down into a relaxed position and the chin backwards to elongate the spine and tilted the pelvis into a correct position. It was automatic. Cool.

Today’s thoughts have been almost ridiculously constructive and nuanced. I have smiled all the time (okay, I’m excaggerating a bit here), been attentive, considerate and nice to strangers (and I’m autistic; social interaction can be exhausting, but it wasn’t today), and managed to do all the things I planned to do and more. I think the duukha me would have found this me slightly irritating and then felt guilty about it. When I think about that, I feel compassion towards the dukkha me and want to hug them or something.

This is low equanimity. I’m certain about that, but it actually doesn’t matter. What matters is that I do my best to be a decent human being and stay attentive to what happens, or how. It is what it is, regardless of what it is called and regardless of what I or anyone else believes. Please remind me of that if/when I drop back into dukkha nanas or lose direction, because the same things matter there as well.

Sat down and did not immediately get drawn into spaciousness. Realized that I was expecting sensations rather than being attentive to the present sensations. Became more mindful. Was drawn in, but there was less of a ride this time. The shoulders were pushed into position once more, but only subtly.

There were soft waves, but they were looping. I don’t know how it is possible, but I sensed a outward circular movement. This would mean that the touch sensation reached out from my body, to the space around it. I don’t know where in these sensationes the body ended and the space started.

My son was shouting loudly at his computer game. Felt grateful that I’m doing Vipassana. Such incidents are no interruptions, but possibilities. I could notice how the shouting effected the space around me. The movements became anxious and fast and less circular.

I don’t know how long I sat. I had set the timer to 20 minutes, but I decided to sit longer.

Close to the end I remember seeing the large chimneys with huge light bulbs on them, made to look like a gigantic advent wreath, that are visible from the new lunch room at my work. The other day I pointed out to my collegues that the light bulbs were still there. Now I was there again, pointing to them. I don’t know if this memory came to me so vividly just because I have read in MCTB2 that it can happen. I am rather susceptible to suggestion, so it is quite possible. Even if that is the case, it was cool to have such a vivid memory. I really thought that I was there. Normally, my visual memory is very poor. I was a bit dissappointed, though, that I didn’t notice my mind wandering.

Sometimes it seems that I’m having trouble noting the difference between my sensations and others’ sensations, such as those of my cats or my son. Logically speaking, I’m hearing them and imagining doing what they are doing and feeling the sensations that they must be feeling, but I sense it. Not in my body, though, but where they are. I know that awakened people are able to perceive that perceptions have their own self awareness, but I’m not awakened. So is this me being sloppy and dull, or it is possible to have glimpses of this before awakening? It’s not exactly as if I’m perceiving things from their perspective either, because at the same time I also have an immediate perception of the density of their bodies and their smell and their warmth and texture. Everything is there immediately. I can’t tell what is triggering what. It’s just there. These moments are rather brief, though. Then it comes back to ordinary sensory input, I think.

Off cushion, doing laundry: There are pulses in my vision field and things moving around in my peripheral vision. Is this a good thing or am I going mad?

There are tensions in my face muscles making me nauseaus.

I lay down and meditated with one cat on each side, relaxing the face muscles as much as I could. That set off swirling motions in space. For a brief moment I saw layers of swirls on the black screen instead of the usual flat screen.

There is sort of a pressure in my sinuses.

There was a subtle and slow threedimensional rotation in the black screen.

My son’s inbreath before coughing felt as if I was the one doing it.

All the time this weird tension in the facial muscles and sinuss. I feel as if I need to depressurize.

I woke up pretty zonked out and with pain all over my body because of allergic reactions to foods. The hyposensibilisation treatment seems to have made things worse instead of helping. Then I remembered that the ego doesn’t have to identify with being zonked out. Identification was moved to a metacognitive aspect that remained clear. Not only was I able to get out of bed to take my medicines - I suddenly stopped feeling zonked out (before I had taken the medz). The pain is still there, but it doesn’t bother me. It’s just there. I know it will pass. I can live with it.

All these subtle traps...

While brushing my teeth I felt the nausea and tension, and there was this thought that if I were to meditatate right now I would probably feel panic again so maybe I shouldn’t do that just now. Then there was this ”Wait a minute, what was that? What is it that is fearing what?” And I thought that I was afraid of the fear. Then I thought, no, I fear identifying with fear. But what is it that is fearing that? Apparently that point is already identifying with fear. That made the anxiety ”go away”. For a moment there was triumphant content. Then there was another ”wait a minute” moment. No, the anxiety didn’t go away. The identification point moved. The fear and anxiety are still there. Believing that they are gone is just denial, not liberation. They are there. There is no need to identify with them, but that doesn’t mean that they are gone. That’s not what this is about.

Did a 20 minutes sitting before cooking lunch. Very soon there was a heightened peripheral awarenss accompanied by a small circle filled with murk on the black screen. Then the black screen brightened up and the murk faded. There was rapture immediately followed by tranquility. Lightness. A distinct widening. Space.

In the latter half (?) of the session, there were instances of subtle dullness. Each time I recognized the dullness, the screen brightened. There were also instances of a dreamlike state which I guess is more than subtle dullness. The screen brightened each time I noticed them as well. I need to work with identifying these dull instances coming up before they reach the identification point.

Breathing was very easy. Sitting was comfortable and still.

20 minutes sittings are often underestimated, I find. A lot happens in twenty minutes, and such sessions are possible to squeeze in here and there. It is probably much better to cultivate hepful habits for twenty minutes than being dull for hours. Exercising in a sloppy way due to exhaustion makes one prone to injuries. I bet the same goes for exercising the mind. It’s good to know one’s limites.

I don’t know what to think about chakras, I really don’t, but just now I had the distinct feeling that there was a pressure to the third eye and that I needed to open it to realease something. While writing here, it changed. The crown of my head heated up, and now the pressure is there instead. There is also a minor pressure to the throat. That pressure seems to be moving upwards to the third eye. And now there is an increased pressure to the crown of my head. Weird. This keeps repeating.

Sat for thirty minutes. Very tranquil. Either dullness or formless or unknowing events at the end of some breaths, subsequent to a feeling of shifting gravity. No nodding. Sitting was comfortable, breathing easy.

I hypothesized that the dullness I had experienced probably indicated the need for more diligent noting again, so I did a 40 minutes sitting with noting. It helped. When there was a pause between breaths I noted gone or sitting, dedpending on what stood out most. I noticed (and noted) an increased heartbeat when I noted gone, as if the disapperance of the breath scared me or something. When I had noted that a few times, that tendency faded away. I tried to follow sensations to the end, but if was difficult with the trafic noise. The sounds from different vehicles melted into each other. I tried to note subtle mind states. I didn’t always like what I found. Then I noted judgement. In some cases I had a hard time distinguishing between different senses. They all came as a package. That happened for instance when one of my cats lay down on my lap. How do I know if I have dropped down to being sloppy and lost sensory clarity or if I have started sensing formations? I don’t know which one it is. I do know, though, that it would be dishonest to make up a certain order of sensations in my noting when what I perceive is a package. Therefore I noted ”Zeke”, which is the name of the cat. Is that okay?

Sitting wasn’t quite as comfortable today. In the beginning I had to do some adjustments not only to the posture but also add another blanket to sit on, because the angle of the pelvis was wrong and that caused tensions that I thought might hurt my lower back. I also did some minor adjustments throughout the sitting to straighten my posture. I have pain today because I had a small icecream yesterday (there was craving, I admit it). I didn’t mind sitting, though. I could easily have continued, but I have an appointment now.

I think I have been gliding up and down between reobservation and low equanimity several times today. Is that possible? I have pms, which makes my Tourette’s worse and my mood lower (I have PMDD so I used to fall down in an abyss of apathy and worthlessness during pms, but that seems to have clearly diminished). I had to deal with a lot of stuff that tend to stress me out a lot today, most of which had to do with dealing with disability in this society as it is. I have done all the things that I needed to do today, but I felt that it was draining and that I had to struggle to regain mindfulness, and there were some mild sadness and disappointment/resignation. I realized that I had expected too much from equanimity. Of course it can’t take away all my struggles just like that, and I did know that it wouldn’t last anyway. I’m not exhausted though, like I would normally be from this amount of stress, so I guess that’s on the plus side.

Because of the setbacks today I felt that I needed some guidance. Therefore I did the gudied meditation in this video with Culadasa: https://youtu.be/zF6rkzTtvI4, after first listening to the instructions to get an overview. The session involves both wider and more narrow focus but always together with cultivation of peripheral awareness. The first few minutes of meditating were horrible. I felt as if things were crawling under my skin, and I had very annoying earbugs with songtexts that I could only partly remember, which added to the irritation. I had to adjust my posture several times. It felt so wrong. Then suddenly there was calmness and the earbugs went away and I could focus and stay aware. The posture did not trouble me anymore. It seemed almost automatic. Around the middle of the session the irritation came back for a while and then the calmness returned. There was energy throughout the whole 40 minutes long session. A few times I was distracted by thoughts but I noticed that and redirected my attention. There were very subtle and mild piti and sukkha during the calm parts.

Earlier this evening I went to restorative yoga. On the way there I had to walk fast, but I did my best to be mindful while walking. I noticed that the breath and the movements had a tendency to synchronize. The rhythm varied depending on how fast I went, but synchronization occurred pretty fast. It was as if all of the movements involved in walking and all the sensations involved with breathing formed a symphony and a whole.

At the restorative yoga all positions started out with irritation throughout my body but then transformed into calmness. I noticed that it was easier than before to wake up into full consciousness after the session.

I feel relatively calm and at ease now. I look forward to having the rest of the evening to myself and maybe do some reading and other stuff that makes me feel good.

Anyway, I realized this morning that it has become easier to be aware of other people around me and the subtle cues of their behavior in a way that enables me to be considerate and polite - offer them a seat, move out of their way, give them space, smile reassuringly if they are anxious about something, etc. I really appreciate that. I used to feel very bad about not being able to notice such cues, because I really want to be kind and thoughtful. I don’t want to burden or bother people, and I want a world where people can feel that they are okay if they happen to have a bad day or just can’t keep up with the speed (I know what it’s like to worry about that). Sometimes my attention deficit and my autistic propensity for sensory overload hampers my ability to be perceptive in this way and this makes me seem unkind and egocentric which I really don’t want to be (I notice identity clinging here; obviously the outcome of my behavior is more important than my identity, but I do have an attachment to certain aspects of identity, and that is probably counterproductive but also the best I can manage right now). I now realize that it is my outrospective (is that a word?) peripheral awareness that has been poor and that it is possible to do something about it. I’m in the midst of pms and still able to be more perceptive than I used to be in the morning rush. That says something about the potential of meditative practice.

Come to think of it, I haven’t lost my temper in the mornings when my son refuses to go go school for quite some time now. Not even during pms.

I have continued listening to the youtube video series ”The magic of mindfulness” with Culadasa from Dharma Treasure Audio Archive, because I need to work with my attention and awareness both in order to be able to meditate more mindfully and to function more in line with my wishes in daily life. I find that this series gives me tools to work with, tools that I’m actually able to use at this point in my practice. Today I did the guided meditation in part 6. I was able to pay attention to the instructions throughout the session while still doing the exercises. I managed to pay attention to the particularly sensory input that I was supposed to pay attention to most of the time. I got tired and lost focus, but the instructions to relax the attention and work with the awareness in case I got tired were helpful. They came just in time for me to be able to hear them and make the assessment that I needed to follow them in order to retain mindfulness. I think that’s good because it enabled me to make habitual patterns that are constructive rather than follow the old muddy ruts that I wish to get away from in this infrastructure that constitutes my mind. Maybe I should measure the time in those parts of the session and use it to plan my own sessions. I also think I’ll use this guided meditation several times to really build those new pathways in the infrastructure.

(And now my soup is ready. Perfect timing. I had it cooking on a low temperature. It really is possible to make time for meditation as a householder as long as one plans the logistics.)

I sat for 20 minutes just to check in with the vibrations. The first couple of minutes or so I recognized the harsh vibrations from reobservation in my throat area. Then they dissipated, and there was calmness. Piti. More calmness. A widening. An altered sense of touch. A feeling of getting drawn into something. Then I kind of blanked out, lost mindfulness, realized that, came back, struggled back and forth with that, got lost in dreamlike stories I cannot recall. Piti and sukkha are there. Sati goes on vacation somewhere down the line. Why do I send it away? What are the mental processes that result in me going dull instead of taking note of what I sense? Am I blocking something out? Or have I exhausted all my concentration power? Both?

What brought on piti this time was the love for my cat who brushed his fur against me.

Heh, I just saw the visual effect, on the black screen, of going from total dullness to being alert when my second morning alarm went off. The darkness gradually collapsed into one single point in the middle of the screen. The dark area was circular throughout the process. It took maybe a second.

One of the reasons that I apprecite the series ”The magic of mindfulness” so much is that there’s a woman in the group who asks all the questions that I would like to ask. She even covers those times when I didn’t quite hear what Culadasa said, and asks him to repeat. Bless her!

Off cushion reflections: I think my distribution of how consciousness is used diverges from what is common. Because of how my brain is wired due to being an autistic human being with ADHD and Tourette’s, I’m prone to hyperfocus from birth, but also to be easily distracted (probably because so much of my consciousness goes into one thing at a time, leaving little scope for keeping track of where my attention is going). Because of the difficulties that I have met in daily life, I have acquired a rather unusual (for a non-meditator) metacognitive reflection skill in certain respects whereas I’m obviously less trained than average in other respects. That’s one kind of peripheral awareness, with subordinate skill sets depending on areas. For me the extent to which I have cultivated these different kinds of metacognitive reflections (the subordinate skill sets) varies enormously. That’s why I’m usually able to avoid reactive patterns* in my romantic relationships even if we are dealing with stuff that would be very unsettling to most people, but I struggle to notice the exact poing where my mind is going dull or I’m about to forget where and when I am (which used to happen a lot before I started on ADHD medication).

When it comes to outrospective peripheral awareness I had an unusual level of awareness of bodily sensations to start with when I took up meditation (although it tended to vary), whereas my peripheral awareness of what was going on outside of my body was extremely poor, as was also my spatial awareness.

Realizing this helps me to understand what is happening in my mind and what needs work in order to improve my abilities both to meditate and function in daily life.

*) What helped to to develop this kind of metacognitive awareness was a series of meeting with a children’s psychologist when my son was four years old. Because he has inherited some of my ways of being neurodivergent, he struggled with some things very intensely, and I wanted to meet him in a more perceptive way. I struggled so hard with this that I ended up being inconsistent. I was the ”perfect” attentive parent in the beginning of the week and axhausted and reactive by the end of the week. I realized of course that this was definitely not beneficial for my son. I went to this psychologist because I wanted to learn how to be more perceptive throughout the week and because I wanted some feedback on what challenges and expectations were beneficial for my son and what was unreasonable, because I knew from my own experience that the expectations on an autistic child are usually not fair at all. Still, some challenges are required for all human beings if we are to grow. It turned out that the psychologist saw something else. I was already very perceptive towards my son, but not to my own needs, and I was exhausting myself. I needed to set boundaries that worked for me as well. If I did that I would have enough capacity to stay perceptive in a consistent way. This revolutionized my relationships. It took some hard work to learn to recognize the subtle cues of my body and the patterns of my mental processes to see what was coming up and take care of my needs in a timely fashion instead of suddenly being overwhelmed by emotions and automatic thoughts. It also took some hard work to learn how to communicate this to my son and to others in a constructive way, especially if the other person had their own reactive patterns that came into play. Furthermore, it took some patience and determination (and too often a lot of frustration) to wait for some people to accept my new boundaries. I sometimes forget how much work this was, and take this developed awareness for granted. The way many people get stuck in unnecessary conflicts continues to surprise me. I find myself wondering how on earth they did not see that one coming and dealt with it before it blew out of proportions. I need to remind myself that this kind of awareness takes a lot of work to build up, and not everyone has the resources to do so. The psychologist I was seeing was a blessing. I’m forever grateful to her.

And yet I fail to recognize the connection between staying up too late and getting dull and blanking out in meditative practice. That’s funny in a way. It’s great to have feedback from wise people.

Maybe there is a lot if identication going on with that particular set of mental processing that does not want to waste time on sleeping. That’s something to contemplate.

Today I’m fairly equanimous of having pms, and fairly mindful of the limitations of my mindfulness. I’m grateful for having realized that pms diminishes my capacity for peripheral awareness. That’s why I keep bumping into things and drop things and happen to throw away things while making gestures and things like that. Good to know. Then I can take some measures to be more careful, maybe slow things down a bit and take in the information that I need and be compassionate towards myself.

I sat for 30 minutes, focusing widely on the breath. There was piti as soon as I closed my eyes, then calmness and an altered sense of touch. Sometimes there was a subtle sense of spaciosness, sometimes a subtle sense of shifting gravity. For maybe the first half there was a strong sense of being present and aware of shifting mind states in addition to being with the breath. Later I lost that meta-cognitive awareness several times, but I came back to it over and over again. I sat on a cushion on the mat and it was comfortable. Far away in the peripheral awareness there was some minor pain, but that seemed irrelevant. Somewhere in the session there was a vague sense of threedimensional space on the visual black screen.

This evening I did the guided meditation by Culadasa in ”The magic of mindfullness, part 9”, 46-47 minutes long. It aims at learning the difference between peripheral awareness and shifting attention and at learning to check in on one’s mind state on a regular basis to avoid dullness. That suits my needs at this point.

There was immediate piti and sukkha as soon as I closed my eyes. First a bit too much (it made me shiver), then calmer.

It was good to have someone remind me to check in with my mental state, because I did go into a dreamlike state several times. At one point I was back at Malta with my son that time when all our money was stolen and a stranger helped us find our way to the police station and gave us some money and something to eat. I really thought I was there. I did remember to check in with my mind state inbetween the reminders too. I had to redirect my attention back to the breath here and now several times.

Towards the end of the session I noticed that eye movements seemed to shift the quality of piti or take it away completely. If I turned my gaze straight upwards between my eyebrows, the whole body piti transformed into vibrations of the chest. If I gazed upwards and to the side as if to remember something, it stopped immediately. Maybe there was a subtle thought there that I wasn’t aware of that stopped the calm concentration. It seems likely that it wasn’t the eye movements themselves that caused the piti to stop, but the mental processes that are accompanied by certain eye movements. I couldn’t replicate it in a reliable way by just moving the gaze, but when I tried to remember exactly where I had directed my eyes, that mental process seemed to do the trick every time. This little investigation caught my interest enough to prevent me from going dull again. Curiosity is the key, it seems. Of cource.

I was able to sit on a cushion on the mat the whole time without being bothered by legs falling asleep. I did straighten my position a few times, though.

30 minutes, focus on breath by the nose. Sat on cushion on mat.

Was curious about the red dot that I saw by the nose during yoga class when focusing on breath by the nose. Couldn’t see it in any condensed form now, was distracted by expectations. Did see very faint larger versions of it, though, I think.

Early in the session slight distraction from thoughts: planning how to describe experiences here on this forum. There seems to be a lot of identification stories going on with regard to meditative practice.

In the middle of the session (?) there was a shift in mind state into something more spacious and effortless. The breath was very subtle and pleasant.

Later in the session stuff came up from unconsciousness. Sometimes it was dreamlike and dissipated as soon as I was aware of it. At times I was able to observe the content that came up without forgetting about observing. Unfortunately I no longer remember what it was. Now I feel a bit annoyed by that. As I recall it, it wasn’t scary or shameful, so why can’t I remember it?

30 minutes, breath at the nose. Started out with a headache. Noise around me. Was a bit annoyed at first, had to redirect focus from sounds and emotional reactions and thoughts. There were purple swirls spiralling on the black screen. They formed a circle. Then the noise became easier to just let be there in the background. There was rapture and calm and I didn’t feel my headache anymore. At one point there was a small image in the middle of the black screen. It looked like something was written in ornate letters. It was too dark to read, so I used the bright dot to light it up. It made the letters more visible but I still couldn’t read it. I then thought ”Hey, there’s a bright dot here that I can use as a light!” That made both the bright dot and the text disappear. I remembered that I should focus on the breath sensations, so I did. There were more dreamlike stories that came up that I can’t recall now.

I really need to sleep more.

30 minutes, breath by the nose, noting in and out and distractions.

I tend to slide between concentration and dullness and I need to work more on recognizing the difference. There is a certain flavour to it when the breath changes quality. It is lighter and still stands out more clearly, and there is breath where the hands touch the knees as well. It is pleasant and calm, and somehow that makes me relax in a way that allows unconscious stuff to come to the surface, and that’s where I forget what I’m doing and sort of start to dream instead. Not daydreams. It’s more like sleep dreams, although I’m not asleep. I forget to observe.

...

Yesterday night before I went to sleep I investigated my headache and found that the preassure sensations in it behave just like other pressure sensations. When investigated closely the wavelike quality dissolves and instead there are sensations of pressure arising and passing rapidly on various points. The mind tries to make something continuous of it, resulting in the weird perception of a larva crawling under my skin. I knew that meant that it wasn’t continuous. Disentangled from mental constructions like that, the pain was very managable.

Off cushion reflections:

There seems to be a lot of sentimentality coming up out of ”my” control. These are processes that probably depend on circumstances that I’m not fully conscious about. I guess it’s true that it’s not my doing. Patterns live their own lives. Still there is identification going on, which is kind of weird. It is a bit hurtful because it makes me mourn times that are forever lost. Yet, they weren’t that great and I know that. I spent much time back then dreaming of another life whereas nowadays I’m often rather content with the present. It’s like I miss the dreams, but they were never real in the first place, so how can they even be lost? Some of them even came true. It doesn’t seem to matter. It’s like I miss those dreams as much as the ones that did not come true. There are probably parts of me that notice the dukkha that is part of it all and keeps resisting it, as if that would do any good. Resistence is what causes the suffering. Thus, resisting these processes is probably just as useless. I’ll have to observe them patiently, however irriational they are.

There is also a subtle satisfaction (?) arising from the fact that these patterns keep repeating themselves, because it makes me feel that nothing is ever truly lost. That satisfactions is however paired with sadness and nostalgia. There is a lot of clinging going on here. At this point I don’t know how to let go of it. I guess everything that has happened keeps affecting what follows it, so in that sense nothing is truly lost, but that’s something quite different from trying to hold on to something that is frozen.

30 minutes noting with breath sensations as default but openness to other sensations, perceptions etc.

I’m not sure exactly where the difference is between moving attention and awareness, and I decided to not bother with trying to decide that for now. Maybe I still need to let my attention move in order to develop that wider awareness, and if so, then let it be so.

A lot of restlessness in the beginning, and some thoughts. I noted it the way it turned out. Then rapture and calmness took turns. With the rapture came a red dot in the center of the black screen. Breathing was easy. There was a lightness.

Then a leg fell asleep. First it didn’t bother me, but then I decided to take care of it. I massaged the leg and kept on trying to focus on the breath. I realized that was probably not such a good idea. The leg bothered me more and more. Thus I decided to focus on the rubbing sensations instead. That worked out better. After a while I realized that I had synchronized by breath with the rubbing and that the breath, the rubbing and a rocking of the body were all integrated into one thing. Somewhat later I could sit still again.

Less spacing out this time. I did have sort of a dream, but I regained mindfulness soon enough to actually remember it this time. It was about the Buddha entering into something (a cave but perhaps also a state of mind or a realm) in the form of a bird, which by someone was seen sort of as a deception. Therefore that someone (which looked like a character in a film that I saw yesterday: a researcher with good aspirations but harmful behavior) chose to enter the same cave as they were instead. I don’t know how that played out.

30 minutes. The first 15 minutes were spent on adjusting the sitting position due to muscle inflammation that I really don’t want to make worse. When I finally got it right, there was a subtle widening and deepening. I could feel the breath in my thighs and hands where they touched. It was expanding and contracting. Thoughts about what it would be like to develop the kind of sensory clarity that would make the breath tangible in my middle toes. Redirected focus back to sensory experiences of the breath. Thoughts about what to write here; there is some identity project going on here with vanity and perhaps inferiority complex. Redirected focus back to sensory experiences. Towards the end there was lightness, almost as if I could levitate.

If I were to have the experience of levitating, it would probably be interrupted by thoughts of describing it. At least the vain observer mental processes keep me from spacing out. I guess I kind of got what I asked for. Now could I please get rid of the vanity part? Oh well, I can always learn to observe the observer more diligently. That is something to explore. I guess I should also observe the mental processes that want to get rid of other mental processes rather than just observe them. That’s resistance. Ironically, it is also vanity. I guess striving for the end of striving is as inevitable as it is paradoxical.

Today during yoga class I temporarily sensed harsh vibrations in my throat and chest area just like I seem to do when in reobservation. Then they disappeared.

This evening I sat again for 20 minutes, noting. Within the first few minutes there was what I perceive as rapid cycling: intense rapture followed by vibrations that grew harsher and harsher and then suddenly disappeared into calmness. This happened three times in rapid succession. Then I sensed another spell of rapture developing, but this time I thought maybe I’m clinging to these strong sensations and decided to let it go. The rapture calmed down and gave way to a widening. There was calm. There were soft waves. There was more rapture, but in a calmer way. There was heightened peripheral awareness (or maybe covert attention, I don’t know). I checked to see if the center of my focus was blurred, but it wasn’t. No spacing out. Some distracting thoughts arose but I redirected my attention back to sensations.

30 minutes noting with breath sensations as default.

The first few minutes were distracted by thoughts, but I redirected focus back to breath sensations. I adjusted my position several times because I’m prone to inflammation.

No spacing out. I did however notice that the breath slid back into peripheral awareness as thoughts came up. It was as if some mental processes thought that I didn't need to focus on the breath so they could occupy the focus instead. When I redirected attention back to the breath, I could feel the breath in several parts of the body and the mind screen brightened up. There was sort of a faintly glowing red cloud with flourescent purple swirls in it. It is easy to feel the breath where the hands touch the thighs, but now I could also feel the breath all over my arms and torso.

There was some rapture that when it calmed down for a moment had the quality of vibrations. Are piti and the vibrations the same phenomenon?

There was a sense of things being out of synch with each other, like streams or winds colliding.

In the end I used pain in lower back as focus as it drew attention. It seemed fo increase concentration a bit. The mind screen deepened and there was a lot of movement.

I sat for another 34 minutes, focusing widely on breath sensations but noting distractions. There were sensations of the breath in the nose, in the sinuses, on the lips, on the forehead, in the throat, chest, diafragm, belly, thighs, fingertips, hands, arms, shoulders, and feet. There were some distractions - external sounds (my son was coughing a lot), my cat lying down next to me, thoughts mostly in the beginning - but I redirected attention back to breath sensations. There were seven instances of subtle dullness that made me forget to observe for a very brief moment. When I noted them, the mind screen brightened. Unconscious content came up during several or maybe all of these instances. There isn’t one integrated self, but lots of mental processes going on. There is no I that controls what comes up. There is no continuity either. When other mental processes than those intending to meditate take charge of the attention, sometimes there is no recollection of meditation as the ongoing activity. When mental processes intending to meditate redirect focus back to breath sensations, the agenda that just a moment ago was in charge is now forgotten. The mind is in constant conflict with itself, especially when in a reactive mode. Feeling good about noticing subtle dullness, rather than judging, seemed to cultivate more such noticings. I cannot recall what I was thinking or sensing for those seconds or half seconds that I forgot to observe. Different mental processes keep secrets from each other, or maybe it is more accurate to say that the internal communication isn’t very effective in this rather obscure and poorly managed organization that constitutes my mind. There is nobody in charge that has knowledge of all processes involved, and there are probably many conflicting goals and agendas. Different fractions take the steering wheel at different points in time. No wonder we keep moving in circles.

So... Today apparently there are strong chaotic vibrations off cushion. Still things to learn from the dukkha nanas then. Well, bring it on! Splinter off another layer!

Sat for twenty minutes, noting, breath sensations as default but with openness to other sensations.

Some restlessness in the beginning.

Rapture, harsh vibrations and tranquility took turns over and over again. Investigated three characteristics.

Thought: why investigate suffering in things like breath? Felt ungrateful. It is what it is, and it keeps the body alive. Why complain?

There was a shift where density decreased. Spaciousness, lightness, wideness. It was somewhat brighter. Awareness of breath in different parts of the body was immediate.

It felt as if the breath lived its own life.

Sat for 30 minutes, noting.

Started out with rough harsh vibrations in throat area. They turned into rapture and then there was calmness and wideness and lightness.

At some point there was a demarcated shift in gravity. I felt much lighter.

Towards the end more and more dullness. Each time I realized that and came back, the mind screen brightened.

I spaced out and lost myself in thoughts and dreamlike associations. I know that I had some dreamlike ”insights” about meditation that were probably rubbish; I can’t remember them now, and I suspect that’s for the best. Clearly there are mental processes that don’t agree that meditation is a real activity but assess that the attention is free from them to take into possession.

Sitting was very comfortable.

...

Today I have had harsh vibrations going on but I moved the identification point into something very calm and peaceful that was observing. I let the vibrations be. I felt no need to identify with them or avoid them. Eventually they subsided.

30 minutes, breath sensations as default, openness to whatever arose.

Piti was there from the beginning but soon calmed down.

There were some distracting thoughts with emotional charge. It was easy to see that the part of my mind that was occupied with these thoughts held on to ideas of a separate self which created suffering. That insight calmed down the thoughts,

Breath sensations were discernable on various places of the body including the ear lobes. There was a heightened sense of touch and a heightened awareness of the breath in my body.

More and more unconscious processing bubbled up and hijacked my attention. I brought back mindfulness several times. It is obvious that the mind consists of many different processes and that there is noone in charge and noone that has an overview.

Memories bubbled up from when I lived together with my ex-husband: looking out from our kitchen window. It was as if I was there. Some part of me objected that my current kitchen view doesn’t look like that, but it took som effort to remember what it really looks like. I had to shift not only the scenery but also the perspective because I now live on the bottom floor whereas back then I lived on the fourth floor. Remembering that made me come back to the here and now and regain mindfulness about doing meditation.

30 minutes, following instructions from my phone call with Michael Taft. I wanted to know what to do with the spaciousness I have come across lately. I was adviced to use it to investigate my sense of self. The sense of self was defined as emotional body sensations, mental images, and mental talk. Before I have mainly worked with physical body sensations and have experienced them dissolving into vibrations and disappear. Now I am to do the same thing with my sense of self. This was described with references to Shinzen Young’s sensory grid and what he calls ”focus in”. Since I’m very kinesthetic I needed to make some adjustments.

5 minutes touch out (physical sensations of touch):
It took me some time to settle in to focus only on touch sensations. I probably need to start with just sitting and kind of establishing where I am am and what distractions there are first. I was a bit distracted, but I redirected focus back to touch sensations. Sensations of sitting, breath, body parts touching each other, the texture of my clothes etc. Within this time frame I didn’t get to dissolve the sensations. They still appeared pretty solid.

5 minutes touch in (mental sensations of touch - thoughts that are kinesthetical, imagining touch; I include the chemical senses here too):
They appeared often. I do this quite a lot. For instance, my son has tics just like me and he cleared his throat quite a lot. I could feel that as if I was the one doing it. It was a bit confusing, though, because the sensation was located where my son was although my throat wasn’t there. When I investigated the sensation, it kind of flickered back and forth between my throat and my son. Sometimes there was also a wiff of my son’s smell accompanying the touch sensation. When I heard my cats there were often touch sensations as if I were petting them, but there were also touch sensations as if I were them. When Zeke was sharpening his claws on my chaisse lounge, I could feel my claws gripping the fabric and the resistance from the texture when I pulled then out. I could also feel the texture of the fabric as it would feel against my fingers, at the same time. Again, I had the distinct perception of this happening over there, not where my body was really located. It happened too quickly for me to be able to investigate it further. At this point, the ”touch out” sensations were no longer solid.

5 minutes feel (body sensations with an emotional component):
At this time there was mostly rest. Relaxation, neutral emotion, maybe some subtle sense of anxiety beneath the surface. Rootlessness, maybe. I had difficulties locating emotions in my body within this time span.

5 minutes image (mental images):
A lot of rest. When I heard sounds I could often imagine what the source of the sounds looked like. I didn’t see those images on any screen, but they were located geographically at the same places as in ”reality”. When I heard a car outside my window behind me, I saw the car driving by on the road outside of my patio behind the treas/bushes and fence that would block the view. Sometimes I saw zoomed in details, sometimes more zoomed out images. They were always located at their real geographical locations. Sometimes I also saw images of sounds. That kind of image tended to be more in front of me, I think. These images flashed by really quickly. They were abstract and matched the sound in their extension, sort of. I didn’t get very much detail. I didn’t have any conscious visual thoughts coming from ”inside” but I could sense some subconscious activity going on under the surface. (By this time, I had a heightened sense of touch and a sense of widening, but it was still rather dense.)

5 minutes talk (mental talk; I included mental ”vocalizations” of clearing throats as well):
This was a bit tricky because the talk wouldn’t come out when I focused on talk, but as soon as I let my garde down it sneaked out kind of behind my back. I repeated it in order to get a sense of its phenomenology. It was a mix of many different components. There was the physical sensations of forming the sounds in my mouth, vibrations in my throat and chest, sound, images of text, density and colour and texture of the words/letters/sounds (I’m synesthetic) and the kinesthetic sensations of making gestures and shifting body positions while talking. The talk commented on things, analyzed and searched for concepts that would suit an audience (often this forum, sometimes Michael Taft). Sometimes the talk seemed to come from ”over there”, sometimes from my body (throat, chest, posture). The latter involved more of a sense of self. The talk that came from somewhere else was still very much sensations from the throat and chest, but at the same time it came from another direction, which was a bit weird. These were the comments that just popped up out of the blue. The search for concepts and more elaborate analyses seemed to emanate from my body. When I investigated that kind of talk more closely things got kind of wobbly and swirling and pulsating, but I didn’t get any details.

5 minutes focus in (all the above except for touch out):
This is actually easier for me than trying to separate the sense gates, because different senses tend to come together for me. When I hear a sound during meditation I don’t really perceive it as a sound. I perceive a whole bunch of impressions immediately. Kinesthetics, images and often also smells are there immediately. In order to perceive it as a sound I have to use logic. I know that it must be sound because my eyes are closed and my physical body is not over there. I have learned to apply that kind of logic very rapidly, but it’s still logic.

At this point of the session emotional body sensations were much more accessible. Investigating mental talk drew me into spaciousness and that made pressure sensations arise around my heart (fear) and there was a sense of being drawn out (?) through solar plexus (nausea). Anxiety arose with prickly sensations all over my body and harsh vibrations in the throat, but as I focused on them they transformed into piti and rapture throughout my body accompanied by flourescent swirls shining very brightly.

...

I’ll work on this to refine my sensory clarity and investigate more diligently. I’ll try out different variations.

This was fun!

I did a twenty minutes sitting focusing solely on mental talk. It feels very tentative, I don’t know how to do this really. It was difficult to explore any mental talk more thoroughly. It seemed to come from different locations. It started with a voice singing ”feeling groovy”. It seemed to come from the right side of the brain. It was my own voice. It had an embodied feeling to it as well, as if it radiated out to the body. I could easily imagine the vibrations it would make if I were to sing it. The voice describing that, on the other hand, seemed to emanate from the left side of the brain. It was less embodied. It was possible to move into it, though, and sort of perceive things from that point. It didn’t really have much to say, though, which it said over and over again in different wordings (and empty gestures?) but with not that much of variation. Another voice was amused by that. ”That one didn’t have much to say”, it said sardonically. If it had had eye brows it would have raised one of them. It was located in the heart area. Someone said that was one judgemental bastard for a heart, which is ironical, but I couldn’t locate it. As it seemed that some voices were located at so called chakras (it could be scripted), I tried to listen to one of the lower chakras, but all I could hear was ”fuck”, so I backed away. They didn’t seem very talkative down there anyway. At one point the heart voice said ”Fuck!” too, or maybe it was the solar plexus. I don’t know. The heart was singing ”Feeling groovy” too, but it felt more like a statement this time. I tried to play some other tune to see from where it would come. Then a tune that my mum used to sing while cleaning the house came up. It’s a song about an old street where people used to live happily but the street is long gone and all the laughs are now silent. It came from the right side of the brain. It was my voice.

Visually there were swirls moving about, and it felt kind of... thin-aired. Oh yeah, thin-aired was the feeling (hm...) that I found at the third eye towards the end of the last session.

30 minutes late at night, close to midnight

Touch out:
Heightened sense of touch instantly. Felt subtle vibrations in face with clarity. Easier to breath. Widening of passages from nostrils. Knees were breathing.

Touch in:
This one is a favourite. This focus makes the world more vivid and alive. It comes very naturally when I allow this sense gate to be open, although the touch sensations do not come alone. They come with a package of sensations. Images come easier this way, piggybacking on the kinesthetic sensations. It’s kind of a relief to open this gate. It’s strange, though... I get kinesthetic sensations that I shouldn’t be able to have, such as the sensations between the car wheels and the ground, as if I knew what that felt like. I have sensations for texture and density that differ from how the actual surfaces feel normally. I don’t even know if texture and density are the right words. It’s like I feel how things occupy space or something. Emotional body sensations arose here before the bell rang. My heart was racing. Parts of me were scared. I kept redirecting my attention to mental touch sensations. There were things going on in my sinuses and in my forehead. Don’t remember the details. So many things happen; maybe I should do voice recordings, and maybe I should try letting the process unfold itself and shift focus when needed instead of waiting for the bell to ring.

Feel:
Now that it was time to focus on emotional body sensations, they were less active than before. Instead I saw the mind screen kind of crackle into a net of fine lines. There was an intensity, though, under the surface. I felt activation in the visual field. Hard to explain.

Image:
Here I felt auditory activation instead. Apparently the processes developed faster than I had planned. The processes live their own lives. They seem to know the drill, though, and the order.

Talk:
There was both visual and auditory activation but the content and forms didn’t come up to the surface. There was an intense flickering of attention interfering and distorting.

Focus in:
I vaguely remember that something actually was dissolved into vibrations but I don’t remember what. A lot of dreamlike content came up and hijacked my attention.

I sat for about 90 minutes and was mindful all the time. I tried to record it (was talking) but only 28-29 minutes were recorded. Haven’t listened to it. I’m cold now. One knee hurts just a little bit but my body is fine. I focused on body sensations, mental kinesthetics, feelings, mental images and mental talk, or that was the idea, but since I talked out loud I didn’t bother with focusing on mental talk.

There were a lot of sensations of pressure and vacuum. Pressure in the forehead behind the third eye, vaccum as if something ws being sucked out of there, a sucking feeling in solar plexus (nausea). A lot of piti, often accompanied by a red dot (once or twice a blue dot) that then was replaced by a red cloud that dissolved. Sometimes I felt lightness, sometimes I felt really heavy (head, arms, whole body). Coldness, piti that turned into vibrations. Sometimes the piti was overwhelming. It often followed fear with heartbeating. Sometimes the sensory clarity was very strong. I could feal my heart expand and contract, and I felt that one part of it was expanding while another was contracting. The fear was accompanied by rapidly flicking flourescent swirls. There was visual motion, sometimes rotating, sometimes layers rotating, sometimes zooming in, sometimes zooming out. A lot of visual figure-ground shifts. There were gravity shifts and changes of density in space. I felt awareness of cars moving outside, as if I was the car. That led to a small seizure turning into overwhelming piti that then calmed down. For a while I vaguely saw an eye, I think, but I may have just imagined it. I remember feeling spread out. There were lots of fear and nausea and anxiety that turned into piti/vibrations and was followed by calm spaciousness. Instances of vertigo.

Everything was in constant flux.

Afterwards it took a while for the floor to feel solid again. After I had opened my eyes, I saw a faint bright un-dense dot in front of me that took a while to disappear.

This was weird. Not very pleasant. I guess it’s something that needs to be worked through.

Huh, I just noticed a weird thing that the mind does with sensations. I was watching one of Daniel’s vimeos, the one where he talks about Vipassana and the sense doors and three characteristics, and I was wearing headphones. Then I went away from the the table where my ipad was located, so I couldn’t watch the video of Daniel speaking, but I was still listening. That’s where the sound moved into the headphones, as if it wasn’t there before. The sound shifted its quality in a very tangible way, and I realized that when I was watching Daniel speak on the video, I didn’t hear him from my headphones like that. He wasn’t separated into image and sound from different sources, but was integrated (haha). What the h is that? Which one of these modes of perceptions is the mind trick? Or are they both? And how does it work? Now I can’t seem to get back that fully integrated version, which is annoying, because it made the experience so much more vivid.

30 minutes, 5 minutes per subheading.

Touch out (physical sensations):
Breath sensations throughout my body, much of it anyway. Not in specific toes or internal organs. Focusing like this made a faint red dot appear on a regular basis and then turn into a red cloud that faded away, over and over again.

Touch in (kinesthetic thoughts or whatever it is; maybe sometimes direct perception of formations):
It took a while to get there, but after a while I could tune into more and more kinesthetic experiences of things that I could realistically only perceive as sounds. In the beginning it was the cool air outside as I heard sounds from outside. Then the birds chirping had this weird quality to them where I heard every sound twice because the mental perception lagged behind of what was already in awareness. I felt weird tensions in my head when these double noticings bounced around. The first one in all these pairs had more of a kinesthetic quality to it and some kind of visual imprint as well. It was a more immediate impression and not distinguishable as merely a sound. Then the impressions tended to have more density and texture to them and to come together as a package of more than one sense.

Feel (emotional body sensations):
I tried to notice what I felt, but that mostly resulted in weird tensions moving around. When I tried to investigate the tension, the tension moved somewhere else. For a while if felt like my heart was trying to paddle its way upstreams, if that makes any sense. I came to think of what you people so often talk about, that there is no doer and so on, and I thought maybe it’s easier to just sort zoom in to any feelings where they are without trying to watch them. The tension decreased. Then these horrible drilling noices from another apartment started again (they are renovating). I usually think of them as horrible, so I though great, now a tangible feeling will arise. I felt it in my head, fiercely vibrating. I thought it would by irritation and despair, but it was only this loud sound and intense vibrations that turned into piti. I had lots of piti coming from that noice which I normally hate, because it was so intense and so... not me. In the hearing was only hearing, and that actually made the suffering temporarily go away. Weird.

Image (mental images):
I tried to focus on whatever mental images would arise, and as before, this resulted in weird tensions. Just before the last subsession ended there had been some visual aspect integrated in the hearing so I tried to tune into that, but it wasn’t accessible like that, separate. Instead I tuned into visual aspects of sounds in the present. It was somewhat easier, as none of the sounds are pure sounds anyway. Then after a while I noticed that my surroundings were there kind of by themselves. No need to look for images in thoughts about something alse than the present. There is a sense of the room that is around me and it has clear visual components regardless of whether or not I physically look at it.

I’m not sure I’m doing this right. I was supposed to see the images dissolve, but there are no images there to dissolve. My mind screen is dark with swirls on it just like it always is while there is also a simultaneous knowing of what is around me that has visual components but they cannot be watched. What am I supposed to do with this? I’m not a very visual person. I know what things look like but I don’t see them before me. I just know that they are there, where they are, and how they look being there. Wouldn’t it be more logical to just dissolve this ”I” who cannot even see the things because they are too far away?

Talk (mental talk):
It’s hard to have mental talk come up while I try to investigate it. A few formulations came up, though, and they seemed to come from about the same different directions that I mentioned before. The noting seemed to come from a position behind my throat or something like that. I have a hard time investigating the sound quality. It’s not that clear. I think that mental talk often comes up as a mix of kinesthetic sensations of vocalizing and making gestures, sound, and written text. I don’t see the text being written. It’s all at once but I think that I only focus on one keyword or something like that, so the rest of the text might as well be gibberish as it normally is in my dreams, if readable at all. It doesn’t transform into vibrations (apart from the vibrations they are already making in my throat and chest because that’s what sounds do) and dissolve. It’s just there and then it’s not. These discursive thoughts are so fast. How does one go about to investigate them phenomenologically? Please do tell!

Focus in (all of the above except for physical sensations that are not vibratory):
There was mostly a lot of pity during this subsession. Phenomena appeared in my consciousness not as separate sense impressions but as packages. It was a relief to just let them do that. It’s hard to focus on one sense at a time. It’s a bit like reading one letter at a time instead of just perceiving the whole word or phrase as it is there immediately.

20 minutes focusing on watching the watcher.

Started with a sense of things flickering. It seemed like the visual field was flickering although it didn’t really look like it. Maybe it was attention moving in and out from the visual field.

I was trying to investigate feelings. There was a tension around my heart and that feeling of things being out of synch and as if the heart was trying to paddel upstreams.

There was an annoying sound outside, but as I was about to zoom in on the bodily sensations of it, the sound was gone. I found myself being annoyed that the cause for being annoyed was gone. I realized the irony in that, but as soon as I did, the feeling was gone. After that, the sound came back many times, but it wasn’t annoying anymore.

I talked out loud because I was trying to record this, but the recording failed. Anyway, sometimes discursive thoughts came up that I did not say out loud. For instance there were fragments of sentences, meaningless on their own. They manifested as a mix of kinesthetic sensations of vocalizing, inages of text, and sound. The written word ”maybe” slided down the bottom of an imaginary circle, and it had qualities of sound an kinesthetic sensations of vocalizing embedded in it. It’s strange how I can see that and yet not see that. I’m very aware of seeing the back of my eyelids and the visual swirls going on there. Those I actually see. Other visual aspects are not visual to the same extent. Maybe the ”self” is fixated on trying to see things with its actual eyes?

When my cat sneezed there were discursive thoughts regarding how I should maybe call the veterinary and start him on that medication again. These thoughts were in English, oddly enough. It seems that this forum and other English-speaking feedback channels are the audience for my thoughts during meditation even though they concern mundane matters that I usually speak about in Swedish. The ”watcher” seems to be concerned about audiences.

I’m having weird dreams about doing things (and people... uhm...) I would never normally do. I think parts of my unconscious have started to accept the idea of deconstructing my sense of self. At least I hope that’s what they are doing.

Meditated for 15 minutes at my desk at work, focusing in.

There was some minor agitation due to work-related performance anxiety (which is why I took a break to meditate). I tried to investigate the body sensations that it involved. They were subtle. There was a subjective experience of pressure around my heart and increased awareness of heart beats, and there was activation of muscles as of I was ready to take some action (fight or flight?). Apart from that I couldn’t really find much. The anxiety seemed to be more of a narrative than actual physical sensations. There was no pain. The heart beats seemed normal per se; it was just the awareness of them that had increased. After this, my body relaxed. I felt a movement where my hands touched my thighs and where my feet touched the floor. I know from before that this ”movement” turns into binary and discontinuous arisings and passings of pressure sensations at one point at a time when studied closely, but physical sensations were not the focus of my investigation right now. Instead I noticed that my mind-state had reached a certain level of concentration and clarity and that peripheral awareness was in place. I turned that inward.

I think I may have some kind of un-intentional embryo of a nimitta thing going on in my practice. It’s just something that I have noticed. When a certain flavor of concentration sets in, a colored spot appears. Color and shape varies. Most of the time it’s not very condensed. Anyway, I have started to notice some patterns. Therefore, when the spot appeared, it generated mental talk.

Mental talk usually starts out in my conscious awareness as semi-discursive. There’s an idea and there are sort of key concepts that have texture, color and density to them but the rest is fluff.* Then the thought appears again, with more actual words, and behaves as if it was new. There is an annoying bouncing going on there. It’s like one of those really annoying guys who rephrases what you just said and gets all the credit for it, and he does this all the time. Once I noticed this, the bouncing around was intense and frustrating. I noticed that this also happened with the noice from a solar cell driven cute plastic bear that wiggles its body on my book shelf (or did... I took it away from the light now, because ugh...). Just bouncing, bouncing, bouncing back and forth in my head (or perhaps rather between the actual occurance and a location in my head, but it felt like it was bouncing between the walls of my skull). I think the eye muscles were maybe involved in the conceptualizing, which may have added to the sensations of bouncing.

The bouncing reminded of when you are talking on the phone to someone who stands next to you and you notice that there is a constant delay, like an echo. I tried to make the delay go away by means of increasing the attention to minimize the time between the first knowing and the conceptual knowing. It was possible to decrease the delay to a minimum, but the bouncing remained. The bouncing was spatial.

A somewhat more condensed red dot appeared here, and then that familiar flickering sound in my right ear that feels like rapidly changing pressure. That sound is like an auditory version of the bouncing.

The bouncing in my mind was exhausting, so after a while I tried to just let impressions arise on their own. For a moment there was a richness of impressions coming from outside my window without effort. I was a bit surprised as to how vivid they were.

Then the session came to its end.

...

*) I have tried to investigate this before, how my thoughts appear, without thinking of it as meditation. I work with words and concepts - I’m a researcher and I write papers based on empirical research. Yet I have found that my ideas about what to focus on are not originally verbal. They are not visual either, but they sort of have a texture and density and an extension in space. I think maybe I have been aware of my thoughts at a preconscious level. I knew that they were there but I could not tease out what they were yet. I just knew that they were coming. When these kinds of complex thoughts are born, the labor is usually protracted, so to speak, so there is plenty of opportunity to notice them at this stage.

Today’s yoga class was explorative yoga, which is new to me. It was my favourite teacher, the one who usually gets me into a mode that makes it easier to concentrate. I noticed that the red dot that had started to appear more frequently now was replaced by a limegreenish yellow dot with and without blue contours. The yellow dot was visible even with eyes open and for longer time periods than the red dot. When the blue contours were there, the dot was stronger. In the resting in the end (shavasana), the dot disappeared. When we sat up again to finish class, a less condensed purple spot appeared.

This appears more clearly during yoga than in meditation. I think yoga has turned into some kind of concentration practice for me. That wasn’t the intention, originally. I did yoga because it improves my health. I suffered from chronic fatigue. That’s gone now.

First I did 30 minutes sitting. Then I set the alarm for another 30 minutes in immediate succession. I was improvising, trying to be with whatever showed up.

Lots of noice in the background due to renovation in the building. Despite of that, very soon the red dot appeared, I think maybe just a minute in to the session. I don’t know. While meditating, the noice didn’t bother me (now it’s unbearable, so I’m getting out of here; I’m autistic and very sensitive to sounds, although less so now that I meditate on a daily basis).

I heard mental music in the background, a tune by Saga. I heard their voices although I could only distinguish those words in the lyrics that I can remember (”...in so many ways, but there’s only one way to give up”). Weird that I can still hear the voices singing although I don’t know the words.

Could notice beginnings and endings of breath even when there was no pause inbetween, except now I noticed that there was a pause there, for a fraction of a second. I sort of had a mental image of the breath turning. It was a flowing movement from side to side that left golden trails in the space.

The bouncing (echo/delay) is still there, although it’s not as clear as yesterday. It was there when I conceptualized thoughts, and it was there when I focused my closed eyes to see the swirls and dots that I had already seen. I tried to stop, but then I remembered that I should accept whatever arose, so I let it be while also allowing myself to let go, or at least that was my attention.

I noticed clinging to the nimitta embryo (?) that appeared. I tried to let go of it. Then I realized that I was forcing it, craving for the present to be different. Instead I accepted the fact that I was clinging. That made the nimitta brighter.

There was craving for the clarity I experienced yesterday. I remembered to be in the moment instead and tried to take in as much of it as I could, with every imperfection, as it was. I took joy in that. There was rapture. I didn’t hold on to it, let it come and pass. Maybe I didn’t fully let it be, I don’t know.

At one point the red dot had blue contours. Sometimes the red dot was large and glowing brightly. For a moment I could se detailed texture on its threedimensional surface. Then purple swirls moved past it, and then it was once again twodimensional and lacked the detailed texture.

After the first 30 minutes I wanted to do more. I had tilted forward with a lot of weight on my legs so my right leg fell asleep. By that time I was silently (inwardly) chanting the mantra ”let it come - let it be - let it go” to remind myself of the intention for the session (I think I started either in the dealing with clinging to nimitta or in the trying to deal with my eyes trying to focus and my gaze moving around), so instead of regretting that I needed to wake up my leg, I just did and then I stood up for a standing meditation.

At some point in the internal chanting (don’t remember if it was before or after I stood up), the chanting sounded like speaking in toungs. I had tried to not subvocalize it and then tried to just let it be as it was, whether it was subvocalizing or not. I had also tried to focus on the intention rather than the words. Focusing on the words as words had turned the ninitta stronger and I did not want to make this into some kind of halfmeasure concentration practice. After all, the intention was to let whatever arose arise, be, and pass away, on its own.

Standing

For a short moment there was bright space all around me, and it was breathing. I realized this was what I was seeing when I panicked before. It’s nothing to be afraid of. Unfortunately these discursive thoughts took me away from there.

I was shaking, or maybe it was kinesthetic sensations of the noice from the drilling machine.

Sitting again

The noice from the drilling machine filled me. I had body sensations corresponding with it. The sound kind of filled up my sinuses. I noticed them expanding when the sound began, staying filled while the sound was still there, and contracting/relaxing when the sound vanished. The sound vibrated in my body.

Don’t know when:

At some point I asked myself what it was that I still clinged to as self. I thought that it was my position in time and space. A wish to give that up. Hesitation - my body is bound to time and space. Thought: I’m not my body. Maybe that was when I was drawn into that bright space that was breathing.

A some point I think I dreamt about people but I’m not sure. Maybe that was yesterday.

I noticed that I could sort of see my nose with my eyes closed. Not as it actually looks, but in flourescent colors occyping space in a threedimensional way where my nose was. The nose had one color at a time (mostly purple) but sometimes there were two layers of aura around it, in other colors. The contours were very distinct. It looked pretty much like the images from an infra red camera.

30 minutes at my office, focusing in after first grounding myself in the present through the senses.

That high clarity and speed is not there, although I can still notice the flickering and bouncing. It’s more vague. I get that it says something about impermanence and it surely is nonsatisfactory, and it does challenge the idea of one separate and integrated self. Unfortunately the resolution is poor. At this point I don’t know how it is possible to notice this for everything that arises as it arises. There are so many things arising, and I can’t catch it all, and I don’t know how to let go of the sense of a doer/watcher. I understand in theory that there is no need for a watcher, and I have seen glimpses of it, but it’s not accessible for ”me” more than as glimpses. I didn’t get there in this session.

I keep getting distracted by the colored dots. I should probably use those distractions as a means to look at the sense of self, but I get caught up in the content of what I see. As soon as I closed my eyes there was a faint but clearly visible red dot. Dots in different colors appeared and dissolved. At one point there was a brightly shining blue dot.

I felt dull and kept getting into dreams although I wasn’t sleepy. Dreamlike stories just kept popping up. There were people there, unfamiliar to me, and actions. In one case there was a person (I think it was the subjective ”I” in the happening, but if I remember correctly I both saw this from the outside and experienced it from the inside) who jumped up from the ground to catch some kind of small air plane, I don’t know if it was an unreasonably big model plane or an exceptionally small sailplane, but I think I was trying to climb into it while it was flying. There was somebody else on the ground, a man I think. I’m not sure why I was (literally) cathching the plane. Maybe it was a metaphore, maybe it had to do with letting go of being a doer and just glide, or letting the formations appear on their own and just be there for the ride, or maybe it reflected a sense of urgency to make it in time and catch the opportunity, or maybe it was just nonsense. There was a sense of urgency in reaching up to catch that glider, though, and I think as a metaphor it kind of catches the paradox in striving and making a huge effort to reach up to something that is all about gliding.

Many times I sort of woke up to being aware of doing meditation. All those times the images disappeared and the mindscreen was there and it was lit up. At one time that ”screen” looked as if it was knitted for a brief moment. I didn’t catch the exact breaching point between images disappearing and mindscreen appearing, so I can’t tell what it looked loke. Maybe I have seen that before? Maybe that’s when the whole vision field turns into something that sort of resembles tiny bright champagne bubbles (one example would be yesterday, when I was in a bright space that was breathing)? Or is that something else? Hm... It makes sense, though, that the ”screen” would collapse at some point, because there cannot be a screen without the separation between watcher and object, inside and outside. Knitted... Constructed, man-made, blocking the way but not dense. Breakable. Maybe I should bring a pair of mental scissors and cut my way through it.

I tried something different tonight, namely this guided meditation https://youtu.be/gl36Ir91hfA after listening to a couple of his dharma talks. It seemed to help with the balance between concentration and anergy (he talks about agitation and dullness in his dharma talks, and I guess that refers to the very same field of tension). I liked it. Tears were running, though, and my nose was dripping. It is really hard to steady one’s gaze. It took a lot of my consciousness just trying to do that. The points where my thums gently touched each other were hurting. It felt like needles were stinging me over and over again. I was surprised when the session ended. It went so fast. I thought it had just started.

In today’s yoga class (hatha yoga), there was a colored dot there in front of my eyes a lot of the time when I was concentrating on the asanas. It kept changing color. While resting in the end, I checked if I could affect its color by forming the intention to see another color. I could. Sometimes it happened fast, sometimes it required a lot of patience. Yellow was a difficult one. Purple is my default color on the regular swirls, but red is what appears most easily as a centered dot.