Hi, JSN. Welcome!

If you don't mind my asking: How have you found making the shift from shikantaza to noting? What are the key differences you're finding? If you're not labeling when you note, are you just noting the stimuli with some sort of sound (i.e. "blip")?

Hi jsn, great ot read your post.

I also do Shikantaza, but sometimes noting arises, and i "just note" .  

It seems like this week I'm in the negative part of the cycle (for the umpteenth time). There's this slight but pervasive aversion to everything. I notice it a lot both when I sit and off the cushion. There's little piti in my sits. There is some vague tension, tightness. There's s stage in most of my sits lately when I feel a distinct urge to move, to stop doing this, to change posture, something (I don't do anything, just observe it). It's considerably more noticeable this week. I wonder what it is, aspects of Disgust, Desire for Deliverance? Then things get more relaxed and open.

I remember going through those cycles for the first time last summer, it was somewhat intense. It's nothing like that now -- I'm somewhat detached most of the time, and as soon as things start getting tight and intense, curiosity takes over, and the whole experience becomes rather interesting.

I notice some attempts to rationalize away the experience. In general, I think I'm having more practice thoughts, that's obviously related to having a public practice log. Hopefully this will return to baseline when the novelty wears off.

Narcolepsy is a bit annoying; about half of my sits this week I have to struggle with the drowsiness for about half of the time. On the positive side, my body seems to have adapted completely to the new sitting arrangements (a rolled-up towel on top of a yoga brick set on its side as cushion). There's just enough painful sensations to help with the narcolepsy thing, and I can sit the whole hour with no or almost no major posture adjustments.

The dark night aspects still quite noticeable. There seems to be some bleedthrough of dissolution-y stuff, can't bring myself to do any work beyond the bare minimum necessary, etc. Other than that though, things are manageable (not depressed, not even particularly anhedonic). The temptation to indulge in substance abuse is stronger than usual, though.

I notice a lot of striving during my sits, and it messes up the effort balance. For the last three days, something new keeps showing up: when I manage to dial the effort and striving back enough, every sensation I investigate turns into very fast, very fine vibrations. Those seem to be about twice as fast as the fastest I've seen before, maybe 40Hz, it's hard for me to gauge. While I can stay on this level, piti is easily available, and both anicca and anatta characteristics of everything are very obvious (and that also applies to the sensations of intentions, striving, effort, watcher, etc). The state itself is not very stable; paradoxically, I get kinda tired of maintaining the balance, and start to drift in and out of it.

Another thing that happened several times: while sitting in what feels like EQ, something like a light hypnagogic state arises, without any drowsiness / sleepiness, and seemingly without any loss of mindfulness. Then something like an (almost) unknowing event happens -- like a falling asleep nod, but without falling asleep or a nod -- and then the hypnagogy disappears completely, and I feel refreshed and clear. (Yeah, no, I don't think it could possibly be a Fruition ) Might be yet another narcolepsy trick, though, I don't know.

The lower part of the cycle seems to be behind me at the moment. Three days ago, to my surprise, during my sit I noticed that the striving has somehow disappeared completely (or at least decreased a lot), and it's been this way ever since. As usual, a lot of suffering dropped away with it. On a less positive side, my motivation for practice has decreased considerably; takes some additional effort to stay seated for an hour, and I seem to be a bit more prone to distractions. On the other hand, mindfulness seems to have improved; it's somehow easier to just notice what happens right here and now when you are not trying to get somewhere else.

The hypnagogic states lately either don't show up at all or show up with some drowsiness. When it happens, it's somewhat of an uphill battle against the drowsiness and the hypnagogic stream of weird images and ideations. It often ends with an "unknowing event" / a momentary sleep-like nod, and I immediately feel refreshed, tranquil and effortless afterwards (and till the end of the sit). I don't know, still looks like some narcolepsy stuff to me (but what can I do other than investigate further?).

While the striving seems to have disappeared, the resistance hasn't, not at all. It's quite noticeable now. It's not intense at all, but it seems to be everywhere, like everything has a slight aftertaste of dukkha. I don't have to buy into this, and when I remember not to, it can be interesting to observe (actually, come to think of it, that's how the Dark Night always seem to end: I manage to become interested in how the suffering happens, exactly. So that's how the cycle seems to work: you lose all hope for the progress -> you stop striving and relax -> some progress can happen because of that -> you get to a new and interesting place -> you hope to be there more often -> you're striving -> some regress happens because of that -> rewind and repeat. Interestingly, the intellectual knowledge of the above seems to do absolutely nothing to prevent or speed up the cycling).

I feel unusually (but subtly) light lately. Thoughts and emotions seems to be non-sticky, even when intense. Most of the time, when I'm not occupied by something requiring focus, I tend to space out a bit, but without getting lost -- not losing track of time or something, just very diffuse and calm, silent. When I do have to focus (e.g. because I need to do something), it often feels like I'm way more contracted than the task requires, like I could do all the same things while being much less contracted than usual.

Still feels like I'm through with the negative side of the cycle, for now. Not compulsively striving is actually quite nice, for a change. Dropping the effort seems like a very natural thing to do. I'm starting to understand (again) what they mean when they talk about practice doing itself. That's the funny thing about those cycles: now, when the compulsive striving is gone, this not-striving feels very "me", and it's almost impossible to imagine that it wasn't always like this; at the same time, I remember very clearly that when the striving was ever-present, it also felt like an inseparable part of "me", and like it was (and will be) always like that. (I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere about things appearing to be permanent and to be me).

Another funny thing keeps happening for the last couple days, both during my sits and off the cushion. Somewhere at the top of that dropping-the-effort hill, when it feels like the complete letting go, there is this subtle momentary feeling, like you want to sneeze but can't. It's very slightly unbearable, very slightly maddening and very slightly funny. And then there's that feeling that you just missed something, or you were perceiving something formless. Does that sound similar to what MCTB calls "near-misses in equanimity"? This happens a lot lately, and after several minutes of it the sucking void of anticipation / anxiety in my stomach becomes too intense, and then the mind goes to do something else.

Re hypnagogic states: yeah, apparently something's up with those. Firstly, there's no obvious correlation between the level of my sleep deprivation and the intensity of the hypnagogic states (or even their arising) in my sits. I mean, sometimes (like today) I'm rather sleepy all day, but there wasn't any drowsiness in my sit, and the hypnagogic state was quite short and quite light. Sometimes it's very heavy when I'm not sleepy at all (off the cushion). I'm currently testing the hypothesis that the drowsiness and the heaviness of those states is caused by my resistance. It looks promising (it seems much easier to handle when I'm not resisting), but, well, more research is needed.

Between my sleep cycle deteriorating completely because of reasons, and the health issues making it impossible to sit for 10 minutes without succumbing to a severe coughing fit, this week simply wasn't particularly conducive to smooth and nice practice.

The striving didn't return (yet?); come to think of it, even the resistance is apparently greatly diminished. In general, my sits seem very, eh, still and peaceful lately. Very little movement (that is when I'm not coughing), my spine well-balanced, my body relaxed, breath shallow, nothing gets tired, no body parts go to sleep. On the other hand, there's no bliss or rapture, things feel ordinary. It used to bother me, but it doesn't now (at least for now). There's clarity (at least unless the hypnagogic stuff hits hard, more on that later, maybe), but there's most of the time no clear single point of attention, things are diffuse and subtle.

A casina-like nimitta showed up in my sit for ~30 seconds a couple days ago -- a small solid red circle with a slowly rotating golden star inside of it. That's a first; it's about as much of a solid visual nimitta as I was able to get during my (very brief and shallow) encounter with the actual fire casina practice. Some irregular shapes of increasingly clear blue color have started to show up in my sits regularly when the concentration increases.

It seems like my mind is losing its interest in endlessly spinning those papanca wheels. I remember living in that almost 24/7, always thinking some stuff. Then, when my practice took off, I started to notice that a lot, and to make a conscious effort to disentangle myself from it every time. But now I don't have to do anything, any thought that arises just ends all by itself after a while, and the mind goes on to just observe what's happening now, diffuse wide-angle style.

On a side note, it's funny how the exact same things that seemed very problematic in e.g. chronic Dark Night can seem actually nice in EQ. I mean, I used to worry a lot that nothing fascinates me anymore, that nothing seems very attractive, that I can't get infatuated by anything, that I have to always face that terrible sucking void, the absence of meaning, etc. And now it actually does feel borderline nice -- to not obsess over anything, to not be infatuated, to step off the ever-spinning papanca wheel, to just be here and now, facing the calm spacious emptiness, without the burden of backstories, stakes, emotions or narratives. It's actually quite liberating.

No big changes, still feels like EQ (quite ordinary, relaxed, wide, diffuse, calm, low effort, no noticeable striving / resistance).

Almost no coughing lately. Strained my back a few days ago though, getting better now. Still interferes a bit with my sits / walks.

I might be backsliding a bit: less mindfulness through the day, energy vs concentration balance is skewed to "more energy" (which actually is unusual). The reason seems to be that I'm not used to not darknighting / being mildly anhedonic. So when the things suddenly stop being constantly dissolving, fearful, disgusting and miserable for a while, it's sometimes difficult not to get lost in chasing all those new-found small relative joys. Will try to be more mindful of that from now on.

Had to re-read the parts of MCTB about formless jhanas today. I never paid much attention to those parts before because my concentration is not great, I'm nowhere near hard jhanas, and probably won't be before SE anyway, so why even bother? However, a lot of stuff is showing up lately that I can only describe as formless, both on and off the cushion. Never as a solid stable state of absorption, just some bits and pieces, tens of seconds long max of what feels like boundless ones (j5 / j6), just repeated momentary impressions of what feels like nothingness (j7). Not even sure it makes sense, these things are hard to describe clearly (I understand that this is by design).

Nothing that could be described as "near-misses" or "things synchronizing", don't know what that means. Some moments / periods of what feels like being "out of sync with reality".

Aaand back into the dark night we go, apparently.

The peak state in my sits is still the same spacious equanimous peace, it arises several times during each sit, but it seems more unstable, less pronounced, and doesn't last as long. The drowsy hypnagogic states arise a lot, with murky consciousness and somewhat donut-shaped attention, with a very slight body tension with a half-pleasant / half-unpleasant feeling. Letting go of this body tension often brings clarity and equanimity (but after a while I drift back into the murky territory).

Off the cushion, doubts arise sometimes ("All the cool kids have no problems attaining SE, what's wrong with me?"), bringing practice thoughts and striving. However, the ReOb-y state (tight, tense, noisy, no way out) is quite mild and never lasts long -- it dissipates all by itself as soon as I get really curious about it (like all things do in the third vipassana jhana?).

Overall, the feeling tone off the cushion is quite neutral, with very slight tones of non-specific frustration. I noticed though that I'm considerably more irritable during the day (but the feeling of annoyance never lingers for long).

Judging by this log's entries, this cycle was more than a month long. That's new information, I thought it's generally faster.

Actually, I don't know in what part of the cycle I am in anymore. Thinking about it in terms of the longer cycle suddenly seems meaningless. It's like I'm given a light tour of various possible mental states which can all be met with equanimity. This is quite different from, eh, the state of equanimity; it's not necessarily peaceful and open and serene, the dynamic range is quite wide. But even though some of those states are very dukkha-nanas-like, instead of feeling trapped by them, I find myself genuinely interested in how they feel and how they work.

I find myself seeing my situation in terms of shargrol's "Problemness, No Problemness, and Elusiveness" [1] quite often. For now at least, all the three of those actually seem equally interesting. Also, it's somewhat mesmerizing how the transitions between those are happening all by itself, "I" seem to have nothing to do with it. Watching the acute problemness of ReOb very predictably change into complete no problemness, despite (or, actually, because) <<"I" really can't do it>> -- somehow never gets old (or at least not yet).

My sits seem easier, less deliberate, with less effort and more curiosity. I feel a lot less need to adjust posture or look at the timer. Besides my usual hour-long sit, I sometimes now add a second 40-60 minute sit in the evening.

It seems that my tendencies for addictive and numbing behaviour are diminishing. I watch fewer TV series and movies. I think I spend less time on social networks lately. There's a considerable reduction in my use of psychoactive substances, too. I guess I feel less need to self-medicate, and when I'm bored, another hour-long sit now seems more interesting than an hour of chemically induced altered state. That's all somewhat unusual.

My anhedonia still didn't return. It's still a bit confusing, not being uniformly averse to work, etc; I'm still adjusting.

[1] http://awakenetwork.org/magazine/shargrol/198

Overall, no big changes. The general feeling tone is neutral-positive and content, no gross striving, no sense of problemness. My dopamine response still seems to be way above what I'm used to, but I'm adjusting.

However, I may have a problem with the hypnagogic states. Those arise quite regularly in my sits now, and when they do, it feels like -- well, not exactly like an obstacle, since my practice doesn't feel so goal-oriented these days, but like a nuisance. I'm not sure what to do about it (besides just keep sitting with it when it happens).

Some days I'm more sleep-deprived, and on those days they are heavier and drowsier; some days I'm less sleep-deprived, and then they are more light. On my more energetic days, I go from the 1st or the 2nd vipassana jhana to the 4th in ~15-20 minutes, then get to stay in EQ for ~10-15 minutes, and then drift into the murky hypnagogic state. On my less energetic days, I go from the 1st to the 3rd in ~20 minutes, and then drift into the murky hypnagogic state as well. One way or another, I then spend ~20 minutes there, and then either I'm fed up with it and go into some recognizable 3rd vj (noting "worrying", "analyzing", "rationalizing", etc), and from there to low EQ, or sometimes just directly into EQ (and then the sit ends).

This week it happens most of the time during my mandatory more formal 1-hour mid-day sit, and almost never happens during my optional less formal untimed late evening sit.

What happens and why it feels problematic:

My mind goes into a murky, noisy, somewhat confused state. There's that growing opaque feeling, like a contraction of attention around some thought, except there's no discernible thought. And then some very bizarre thought or idea suddenly arises fully formed and with that feeling that it's all true and I always knew it.

For example, I might suddenly have a very strong, very visceral feeling that my old red leather jacket, the one I can visually remember lying on my round wooden table in our second floor dining room, is a very natural expression of my commitment to my crime-fighting vigilante career.

Now, obviously, I am not and have never been a crime-fighting vigilante; nor did I ever consider that. I don't have (or ever had) a red leather jacket, that's absolutely not my style. I have no round wooden tables, there's no second floor dining room in my apartment (actually, there's no second floor). And so on and so forth. It's all completely made up, very bizarre.

An idea like that arises suddenly, out of nowhere; there's no thinking, no dreaming, there's no backstory, no narrative, nothing. One moment I just sit there feeling like I know something, but can't say what; next moment the idea like the above arises fully formed, and seems very obvious. It may linger in my mind feeling like some obvious truth for a moment or two; then the acute feeling of "WTF??" arises and scares it all away. Then, in a minute or two, the cycle repeats. Some of them are less bizarre, some more.

When I'm more sleep-deprived, there might be an almost-head-drop during that; when I'm more energetic, there's nothing, not even my thumbs leaving the cosmic mudra position.

I mean, it's kinda creepy; complex bizarre ideas arising fully formed and feeling like completely obvious truths. Not sure what to do about it.

I'm trying to use it to investigate my craving for stable clarity (since those states are the opposite of clarity), but so far it's inconclusive.

There's nothing to write about, actually. My sits are mostly quiet, I basically do nothing, and nothing much happens, nor is there any feeling that something should be happening. Sometimes I do a bit of self-inquiry / "where am I?". I sit for an hour every day, plus additional ~40 minutes before going to bed ~3-4 times a week. Subtle striving comes and goes, light hypnagogic states come and go, some small insight makes me chuckle now and then. Gross agitation and anticipation are mostly gone, subtle ones come and go. My previous tours in EQ were always pleasant, at least to some degree -- this one actually doesn't seem to be. Or maybe it is sometimes, but in a subtle and non-sticky way, I don't know.

I have basically given up on landing the path, at least for now. I don't feel like I'm close to something like that or even that I'm moving in that direction. Nor that I should be, actually. The desire to give up the formal sits completely is very discernible for several minutes during about half of my sits, and seems very "real", even though I already know that it will dissipate without any trace in a few minutes. On the other hand, I sometimes think that a retreat would be nice at this point.

My dopamine pathways seem to be stabilizing; I feel motivated enough to be productive at work, but not so much as to obsess over it.

The quiet, the calm, the clarity -- it's all gone now. I'm distracted a lot during the day. Sits feel somewhat wrong -- though I'm not lost in thoughts, there are a lot of them now, much more than before, mostly about unrelated everyday stuff. Some striving / resistance, too. The sits are slightly more painful, sometimes there's drowsiness (manifesting as hypnagogic states, as usual with narcolepsy). Of the 3C, dukkha is the most obvious during my sits.

I noticed that I'm quite irritable, even volatile, lately -- very reactive. Avoiding the bleed-through of all this into everyday life is surprisingly hard, but not, as one would expect, because of overwhelming drama, but because of precisely the opposite. Somehow it's like "okay, the mind and the body are reacting with anger, no big deal". I have to remind myself that I have to keep my hands on the metaphorical steering wheel.

As always in DN, it's easy to forget that it is important to experience the problemness when it arises. I can see now that there's no real reason not to, but the old habit is just so deeply rooted.

Despite some aversion to practice and diminishing motivation, my format sits schedule is still about the same (1 hour every day + 30-40 min in the evening about half of the days). I'm considerably less mindful when off the cushion, though.

Apparently it's been two weeks since my last update. Somehow the Dark Night-like states don't stick for very long lately. After that, the feeling of everything being very ordinary returned. It is increasingly difficult to write anything in this log; nothing really happens, nothing bothers me much, I'm not having any big insights or experiences, only small ones. This feeling of everything being ordinary is actually anything but: I can't remember feeling so ordinary for so long before.

It's nice not to suffer much from striving and resistance, though. It still seems somewhat unusual that this doesn't feel boring at all.

There's one new thing, though: I think I'm getting a hold of this bizarre hypnagogic drowsiness thing. It still happens in some of my mid-day sits, especially when I didn't sleep well the night before (which is about a half of my days). Apparently, the trick is to capitulate, to give in to it, to stop clinging to the vanishing clarity, to let my mind to become filled completely with those nonsensical thoughts and images. It feels very much like if I let it happen I'll fall asleep, but that, for some reason, doesn't happen. Instead, I get several seconds of the complete loss of clarity, like a delirium state, and then it all drops away by itself, the clarity returns, and the drowsiness is gone.

It's really nice to be able to have a good sit even when sleep-deprived.

Did a half-day home retreat today -- spent 7 hours alternating between sitting and walking meditation. I had to fit in a 20 minute nap in the middle, though -- although I can sit through a narcolepsy attack, it doesn't seem very productive.

This was my third attempt at home retreat, I think -- the last one was sometime last winter. Previous attempts were somehow very exhausting and frustrating. This time I went with a very light effort and tried to be especially mindful of striving, and it seems to work much better. It sure gets very quiet and peaceful after a few hours of doing this. I hope I'm on the right track, will try again in a few days.

Walking meditation is a bit difficult for me, perhaps it takes some getting used to. I only did it before in high-effort mode; light effort mode seems quite different. The fact that I have to use the city streets for that probably doesn't help.

Sitting became quite painful by the end of it. My neck's gonna be sore for a few days, I think.

Did another half-day home "retreat" a few days ago -- more or less the same, 7 hours of sitting and walking. I added half an hour of "dharma readings time" ("The seven factors of awakening" chapter of MCTB\) in the middle. That was quite helpful actually.

Walking meditation seems much easier this time, perhaps I've got more used to it? Somehow neither other people in the streets nor the city noises bother me much anymore. The trick is (as usual) to note everything, including the anxiety, the irritation, the agitation, everything.

On the other hand, going through POI stages while walking is quite weird. Spent whole 5 minutes very stressed out, thinking something like "it's not working, nothing is working, why do I try to spend my precious time literally walking in circles doing nothing, I must go be productive instead somehow, etc, etc". It all seemed very real and serious -- in fact, that's how I knew I should investigate it; I mean, me freaking out *so much* about wasting half a day of my time -- nah, that's definitely not normal.

It seems that if your practice is in some way unbalanced, it gets amplified by an order of magnitude in solo retreat. Obviously, if sitting hurts a little after an hour, it will hurt a lot more after the whole day. Likewise, if you are expecting something from a sit, and get a little frustrated by the end of it, you'll be a lot more frustrated by the end of a retreat day. The same seems to apply to too much effort and other stuff. Apparently it's easy for me to ignore those things when sitting for just 1 hour per day, but they all become serious issues when doing even an 1 day retreat.

Actually, that seems to be the main benefit of these so-called retreats for me at the moment: I get to work on balancing things. And, come to think about it, the 7 factors of awakening seems actually to be a very good framework for those balancing works. For the last few days, I try to keep two questions in mind when meditating: 1) where am I on the 7 factors scale right now?, and 2) am I doing anything right now that I couldn't keep up for many hours / whole day / etc? I like the effect so far.

Another period of what feels like stagnation or even backsliding a bit. Adjusting the sitting posture has proved to be *very* problematic. The newly found position does make the neck pain go away almost completely, but it also changes the body balance in some way, so now my buttocks hurt like hell by the end of an 1-hour sit. I thought initially that it'll buff out -- after all, that's muscles, not bones/joints like my neck pain, and muscles should be able to adjust given time -- but no, it's been three weeks or so now, and it only seems to get worse. I guess I'll go back to my previous posture, or try to find some middle ground or something. Tried that today, seems to work.

MCTB recommends -- or at least that's how I read it -- that we get stream entry first, integrate later. That message (or, again, my interpretation thereof) resonates very deeply with some part of me. Alas, that part of me does not seem to actually be in charge. Instead, my mind seems endlessly fascinated with observing what (the quality of) equanimity does to my mind's landscape, how it works its way, slowly and quietly, yet steadily and methodically, through the seemingly load-bearing, almost foundational constructs of my psyche, weighs them on the scales, and finds them wanting. It's not that my neurosis suddenly disappeared completely -- not at all, much of it is still there, but apparently that's not me, never was me (despite what I believed for all those years) and it's somehow very liberating, in a quiet and non-explosive way. Pleasure is still pleasing and attractive, pain is still painful and repulsive, reactivity is still there, reacting, death is still terrifying, etc -- it's just somehow I see now that there's absolutely no need to get all worked up and neurotic about it. You still can, and sometimes you do, but it kinda seems unnecessary.

Phenomenology-wise: the center of tension behind my eyes draws my attention during the sits lately. There is always some level of tension there when I'm not paying attention. When I am, I can relax it for a while, and it has a funny effect: firstly, there's a noticeable change in vibrations (phase? frequency?), and there's also a shift in spacial perception, like the universe feels concave before the shift (like a sphere around me) and then it feels convex after the shift (like I'm looking at that sphere from aside, but not quite, hard to describe). The shift itself is very short and somewhat disorienting, out of focus and a bit dizzy.

So apparently I just lost my ability to sit on a cushion for one hour without moving, out of the blue, a month ago. Well, technically I still can do that, but for the last 20 minutes I'll be sweating a lot, breathing fast, and mostly noting "pain, pain, tense, tense". That seems counter-productive, so I don't do that. Instead, I take 1-2 15-second breaks after 30 minute mark (raising my butt a bit above the cushion to restore the circulation).

I tried many variations of the posture lately, different shapes of the cushion / the roll under my coccyx, etc. Nothing seems to make any difference, the pain in the muscles above and/or around the sitting bones becomes severe after 30-40 minutes. I've been doing 1-hour sits for more than a year, and it's been many months since I last had any such problems, and I did not expect them to return at all.

I'm out of ideas as to why it happens. My first hypothesis was posture changes (cf. my previous post), but it doesn't seem to be the case, changing the posture back (or in any way I tried, actually) doesn't seem to do anything. It doesn't look like any kind of long-lasting damage, the pain goes away completely as soon as the circulation restores, there's some soreness in the affected areas, but it's quite light and it also goes away after a few hours. It doesn't seem to be the stage of insight, too; I remember Re-Ob can bring all kinds of discomfort into the sits, but this time I don't have that Re-Oby tight/trapped/desperate feeling even when in pain on the cushion, let alone off the cushion. Everything (including the sits, even despite the pain) seems okay, actually.

So it's a bit of a mystery. The only hypothesis I didn't test is that that is caused by the heat (June was really hot this year, and it's 36C outside right now) which did something to my blood circulation or something. Perhaps I should try to leave the fan working while I sit sometime.

The weather has been less scorching lately, and, coincidentally, my ability to sit without moving seems to be improving.

Off the cushion, the last few days brought a small but noticeable increase in practice thoughts, general anxiety, and aversive reactivity. I see nothing that could've possibly triggered that increase outside of practice. There seems to be a pattern to that reactivity: it's mostly anger triggered by seeing someone behaving inconsiderately (there's obviously no increase in inconsiderate behavior around me, I just react to it more, no idea why). It's surprisingly non-sticky: when it happens, I don't feel much of an urge to lash out, and a few minutes later the anger just disappears completely by itself. It's unusual; I remember I used to fume about things like that for days sometimes in the past.

On the cushion, there's this quiet state relatively late into the sit when the gaps between the sensations become quite intriguing. Not just temporal gaps, but also spacial ones (like all the sensations are happening in their respective locations, and there's space between those locations?). And it's like the gaps are becoming both more noticeable and more quiet.

Okay, this now definitely looks like the Dark Night again. Sits are painful, with periods of confusion and drowsiness, there are practice thoughts ("this is going nowhere"), frustration, striving (all noted). Off-cushion, there's some aversion and frustration, anxiety, feeling of inferiority, general irritability, sometimes a bit of anger. No material bleed-through so far (except I don't look exactly happy most of the time). Substance use gone up, cushion time down (to mandatory 1 hour per day).

Interestingly, my mind seems to be now less prone to constructing narratives to support those unpleasant emotions. I still feel shitty, of course, but I don't have to blame this or that person or this or that circumstance for that. It's like learning not to scratch an itch, even when it itches a lot.

Today's sit was like this: the first ~3 minutes just letting the body settle into the posture, scanning periodically for body tensions, relaxing, paying attention to physical sensations. Then, bringing the focus gradually to the abdominal area, finding the breathing sensations, noting "in, in, out, out, sitting". Almost immediately (1-2 minutes), the inner quiet comes (M&B?), sensations become clearer, finer, richer, it's time to drop the labels, but keep the pressure. Then, in a few minutes, the attention becomes a bit less localized, everything pulsates quickly with increasing intensity, it feels like the beginning of the next sensation pushes out the previous sensation before I can quite "get" it. Everything feels tense, crowded, unstable, somewhat unbearable and unpleasant, hard to get a grip on (3C?).

Very soon (another couple minutes?) after that, the pressure (effort) starts to feel unnecessary and starts to dial back. For a little while, it feels like the things are just happening all by themselves. It's still a bit too intense, but doesn't feel crowded or dangerously unstable or unbearable anymore. This is when the clarity and the intensity start to drop away, and it takes some effort to maintain mindfulness and not to space out (dissolution?).

By now it's what, 10, 15 minutes into the sit? The overture is over, it's time for the main dish. The next ~30 minutes are rather unpleasant. My posture feels unnatural, I start to lean forward (striving?), I correct myself, legs and buttocks hurt, legs get tense, shoulders get tense (defensive against unpleasant sensations), trying to relax again, etc. Jaw's tense, the face around the eyes is tense, relaxing is hard, and then the tension returns very soon. The attention is mostly wide, except when it gets overwhelmed and gets narrow trying to hold on to something /stable/ for a change, but nothing's stable. I'm noticing pain, frustration, striving, heat, sweating, tension, confusion, feelings of being trapped and lack of control. Amazingly, reminding myself that "this is what I'm here for" actually helps -- to cope and observe, not to get out it, of course. There seems to be no way out of it for now other than through exhaustion. After ~25-30 minutes of this, the mind seems to finally get the idea that this is all pointless, so it might as well just stop resisting for now. Things immediately start to wind down, slow down and relax a bit -- but only a bit: at this point, distracting thoughts and narratives about what is going on start to arise a lot, and it's hard for me not to get carried away by it.

Obviously, all of the above shows clearly that I'm mapping a lot these days; that in itself is, of course, a strong symptom of the Dark Night for me . Also, today's sit looks like a very typical Dark Night sit to me, and that's why I decided to write it down. Haven't had much of those in quite a while.

Actually, if you have the stomach for it, the Dark Night can be quite amazing. It shows you up and close, in high resolution and in intricate details, all the really important things: the suffering and the origin of suffering. And these are actually the first two Noble Truths -- not the joy of absorptions, not the brightness of A&P, not the comfort of the equanimity state, but this. You have to really get the suffering and the origin of suffering, that's kinda the point, the goal, there's no way around it.

I used to see the Dark Night as a trap, an undesirable place you fall into if you're not watching your steps carefully on your way to "awakening". That is ridiculously wrong. Later, I used to see the Dark Night as a punishment for not practicing well enough. The point is, it doesn't have to be. Once you can muster a little acceptance or curiosity to look closely, to investigate what's happening, it can be quite fascinating and very insightful, and it is indeed literally what you came here for.

There's this subtle, elusive but still discernible layer of consciousness where the "micro-cravings" happens. It's like a subtle identification with an urge. It's a subtle, fast feeling of contraction, like the mind (attention? awareness?) contracts around something "over there" while simultaneously ignoring something "over here" -- and this is how the suffering is created. This tension / contraction has the very same taste as the convulsive tight vendana that is associated in my mind with peak Re-Observation -- but is much more subtle and much more pervasive, my mind does it constantly in everyday life without even noticing it. Dropping the urge stops that, but it seems to be a slightly wrong thing to do: it just leads to a paralysis, to spacing out. There seems to be a more skillful thing to do here: dropping just the contraction, but not the urge. That seems to lead to an open, relaxed engagement with the object, not "craving"-tight, but with a lot of perceived space.

I've been playing with that all day, and I'm very fascinated by it at the moment.

Sits are still painful, but that somehow is much less of a problem. Perhaps one reason for that is that the sits are now considerably more intense and interesting. I feel like I can now truly look into feelings / emotions / urges, and it makes a lot of difference. I see now that almost every moment of my waking existence is colored by a very subtle, very vague tone of suffering, shaped as non-specific fear or anxiety, or misery, or disgust. It's actually a bit hard to see, because my mind immediately reacts to it by looking away, by contracting around something else. The easier variant of that reaction is chasing after something that is not here-and-now -- as in "let's have a snack / check facebook / stretch a bit / hum a tune / ponder this or that / etc". This is obvious gross distraction, and it's very easy to catch and handle in formal practice -- but apparently not so easy in mundane life. So that's one more thing I'm being mindful of during my day now. The more difficult variant of the same aversive reaction is zooming in on something right here and now, like a physical sensation, or the perception of space, or whatever. This one is harder to notice and compensate for, even on the cushion (especially in choiceless awareness?), but it's really interesting: on the one hand, it's so viscerally "me" and "self" (which is an interesting feeling in and of itself), and on the other hand, it's so obviously mechanical, primitive and, erm, unnecessary, that it obviously can't be "me" or "self".

Edit: actually, forgot to mention the third variant of the reaction: attempting to rationalize away the experience. It's somewhat of a bait-and-switch: it may seem you're still attending to the same experience while in fact you are instead pondering a mental model / a simile / a verbal description of it -- which, of course, is very attractive: it's more abstract, more removed from "you", more dry, infinitely more clean, clear and "permanent". On the one hand, it's obviously deep inside of the realm of discursive thought and therefore can't be in and of itself an insight practice, right? On the other hand, it obviously has at least some uses for the necessary integration of the insight.

It's been a long time since my last log entry. It feels like there's nothing going on big enough to require a log entry. Paradoxically though, the practice is interesting.

I think I understand now why they say that equanimity is concentration territory. It didn't make much sense to me before. Apparently it's the same idea as what e.g. shargrol often talks about, about relaxing and letting the mind do what it already tends to do well all by itself. The way I see it now, if you get to the point, medium-term, where the mental dust has largely settled (tranquility?) and where it's easy to not stir it back up much, to let it stay settled (concentration?) -- after a certain point, the inner space becomes sufficiently calm and clear to make the remaining chunks of unrest, suffering and reactivity to just naturally stand out all by themselves. "You" don't have to look for it or do anything about it, it's just there isn't much else there besides that to draw your attention and genuine interest. So you just sit down, let the residual inner chatter die down naturally, and then just watch subtle instances of dukkha revealing themselves and their nature, all by itself.

I've added an explicit "do nothing" element to my daily practice (funny, I know). When I notice during a sit that I'm trying or doing something, I say to myself "You don't have to do this". It's really interesting.

Some of the states arising during my sits lately seem to be close to what I imagine jhanas are, mostly formed, sometimes seemingly less so. This is also new. It's all very soft and fleeting (tens of seconds, outside world not disappearing, etc). It's not very easy to stop myself from immediately trying to investigate it when it happens.

I think I'm catching glimpses of the chain of reactions. If you squint just right, it seems that not accepting any particular subtle instance of dukkha causes desire for deliverance (you want to get away from it); then not accepting that desire causes disgust (experiencing something you keep wanting to get away from is disgusting); then not accepting the disgust makes you miserable, and then you try to get away from all that by getting distracted. So that's what the dukkha nanas are, in a sense: walking back this reaction chain. When dissolution breaks your ability to automatically distract yourself, dukkha presents itself and it's scary. If you can keep walking towards your fear, you do get miserable. If you can be miserable and still not run way, your prize is disgust, then the desire for deliverance, and then, finally, the root of the reaction chain, the "primary" dukkha. I find it endlessly amusing how minuscule this "primary" dukkha, "the first arrow", sometimes is, comparing to the force of reactions triggered by it.

I don't know where I am on the POI map. It seems like EQ with pieces of dukkha nanas (like raisins buns, dough makes them comfortable and nutritious, raisins make them interesting).

Huh, it's been two months since my last update, guess I'll better write something.

Things continue to be interesting, and yet there seems to be nothing to report. Sits are rather pleasant (even though after ~45 minutes I feel pain and have to move a bit). I think I spent these two months in vj4 (EQ with occasional touches of Re-Ob for a day or two).

It's interesting to watch how the mind keeps trying to reify the emptiness that is experienced through practice: to formulate verbal descriptions, clear (and profoundly sounding, perhaps) rules of reality, something, anything that can be written down, memorized, be made constant, clear, solid, safe, dependable -- even though it would be an obvious contradiction of terms. So that's how I ended up not posting for two months: all my reifications fall apart before I can write them down.

Phenomenology, on the other hand, while definitely not my strong suit, is perfectly verbalizeable. So, several things come to mind:

• I noticed lately (weeks?) that my sits now start with an immediate phase shift. Basically, I complete the preparations, make cosmic mudra, close my eyes and breath out -- and that's it, there's an immediate phase shift into some very familiar state. Inclining my mind in a tiniest way then leads to things starting to dissolve, and off we go. I only sit once a day, I do not make any noticeable specific effort during my day to keep the momentum going, and my e.g. work life is sometimes pretty busy these days. Despite all that, I can usually just sit down, anytime, and immediately switch into it.
• I noticed lately (days?) that during my sits I seem to be cycling. 2-4 times during an 1-hour sit. It goes through a very mild and non-neurotic version of vj3, then reaches what feels like vj4, and stays there, getting increasingly quiet, subtle and interesting. Occasionally that somehow goes away, there's a return to some kind of a baseline. Then it repeats.
• Phenomena now routinely appear with increasing concentration that are, in my understanding, often associated with jhanas. Strangely pleasant cool or warm skin, audial nimitta (? a distinctly pleasant higher-pitched tinnitus-like thing). Visually -- nothing much, though, only some clear pure color blue dots in chaotic formations.

In fact, something like that happens during each cycle to some extent, I think. It's easy to lean into it a bit and make it more pronounced.

Also, I do feel like the perception shift that happened some time ago is permanent, that there is a fundamental reduction in suffering, I do feel that my attitude towards the first 3 fetters has changed radically, etc etc. Well, it's easy to see where this is going...

However, I do not have any Fruitions. I see plenty of unknowing moments, perhaps too many, even, but I can't say any of them look quite like what MCTB describes as Fruitions. I can't discern anything like the 3 doors around those. I don't get waves of bliss. Well, I do get some bliss at some points of the cycle, but it doesn't feel connected to a particular unknowing moment before that, or something, and it might be just some jhanic thing. I still don't feel like I get any particularly profound insight from any particular unknowing moment (on the other hand, those unknowing moments combined definitely bring with them a valuable insight about e.g. continuity of self etc).

So, what gives? Daniel Ingram would perhaps say that since I'm not sure, it's probably not it, and since I don't get Fruitions, that's not it. On the other hand, that's what Daniel Ingram does

And yes, of course, I understand very clearly that it doesn't really matter, in the grand scheme of things. The practice is what matters.

Edit: Almost forgot: I've been on intermittent fasting regime (16/8) for over a month, and on keto diet for two weeks. This is relevant because, among other things, apparently it does something to narcolepsy. It doesn't make it go away, of course, you still get sleepy during the day. But, firstly, the attacks seems to be milder and perhaps shorter? And secondly, and more importantly, it's normal people "yawn a nap would be nice" kind of sleepy, not narcolepsy "brain fog bizarre ideas involuntary REM-sleep" kind of sleepy. And it makes a world of difference. I mean, good luck trying to sit through dissolution while on narcolepsy kind of sleepy; I had a success rate of 30% maybe, with a lot of trying. With normal kind of sleepiness, it's a freaking breeze. And usually I now don't even have to fight it, because the drowsiness attacks are more localized, more predictable and often go away by themselves soon.

So, yay.

Well, it's been almost half a year since my last update.

I sit every day, for an hour at least, rarely more than once. "A day" is somewhat a fuzzy concept with narcolepsy sometimes, so once every 24 hours then.

I'm largely in a place when the practice does itself, and have been for I don't remember how long now. Perhaps I'd like it to do itself a bit faster sometimes, but, well, what you're gonna do. "Surrender to the experience" seems to be the name of the game. It still surprises me that if you do nothing -- especially if you do nothing, in fact -- you'll get to some interesting place during your sit; but it somehow keeps happening almost every time.

There were some phases and flavors during those months, I don't really remember all of them, though.

There was a phase, during the fall, when I was following the advice about "no pressure / sitting just to keep the cushion warm" with zeal. It really helped me with striving and worrying. When those arise, you just have to remind yourself why are you really here: to keep the cushion warm. And if you're still doing your reasonable best to keep it warm -- well, relax then, you're doing fine.

There was a phase, during the winter, when, all of sudden, I was seeing everything as compassion (e.g. every emotion that arises, every urge, every thought, everything is a form of compassionate action, an attempt to eliminate some instance of suffering).

And as for now -- well, it seems to be mostly about surrender.