I noticed that my earlier thread had turned into more of a practice log, so I've started one. The old message thread is here: https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/12152178
Sleep not so great again, with similar experiences as the last few days. Was able to stay equanimous. Not sure if it is lingering drug withdrawals, or cycling / energetic phenomena... It went like this:
Some minor piti twitches during the days meditation. When trying to sleep, became more twitchy, kind of like my restless legs syndrome problem. Tried applying a heat pillow on my belly to help with digestive problems, seemed to help. Eventually, the urge to twitch limbs became more intense, twitching a lot. After a while felt a wave of tiredness, and the twitching subsided. This seemed like a good time to set intention to sleep, but I remained awake.
Next there was a sense of being cold, despite wearing a hoodie over my night clothes, and turning up the thermostat a bit higher than normal. This continued through the night, not much sleep happening. Perhaps my lack of sleep is a normal consequence of increasing the amount that I meditate. I am not in hardcore retreat-mode, maybe about 2-4 hours meditation during the day, and more at night, due to lack of sleep.
On the subject of controlling the breath, I am sometimes able to let go of the sense of controlling. I spent some time working with that, while reading. Often, I could just read, while a sense of breathing seemed to occur in the background. Not sure if there was subtle alternating of attention going on or not.
In my powerful jhana experience last night, I wasn't panicing about the breath, but it was annoying that breath was persisting as an alternating object of attention. I was probably attempting to control the breath about once per second, and as a result, the sense of breathing did not fade from attention.
