Hello one and all,

A couple of questions for you.

The default practice that I appear to be settling on is one of a broad spatial awareness. Within this my attention either zips around noting stuff or settles in to a more central position to which sensations appear to "present" themselves for inspection.

The latter is more relaxed and inclusive and requires much less effort. It is often accompanied my mild feelings of euphoria, satisfaction and a light buzzyness. However, I think I am straying into soft Jhana territory here. Because, often, if I close my eyes in this state I get strobeing, contracting rings of alternating light and dark red colour that contract to a point and disappear. Sometimes a stable red blob will emerge, sometimes flashing some times surrounded by a black halo or a diffuse black cloud. Also, I'm often "spaced out" after, two days ago was it was so intense that I was unable to have a simple conversation with a shop assistant.

My question is: I'm not so much interested in Jhana practice, amazed though I am to hear myself admit to it, I want to get to stream entry as quickly as possible. Is this second, more relaxed mode of noting skilful? It feels fast, probably faster than the first, more zippy mode, as this zippy mode involves more mental movement than the latter more relaxed mode. Both "run" them selves to some extent. I don't want the second, relaxed mode to run itself into pure concentration territory and leave me sidetracked.

Any thoughts?

I've also taken to exploring this spaciousness of late. Sound sensations are vexing me at the moment. Sounds that I notice, have a physical sensate component, and are directional. For instance traffic noise comes from my right from where I sit. I feel it as tingling sensations that are mildly unsettling, a bit like how anxiety feels. I get this on my right arm and right side of my torso and they "wash through" my body to my solar plexus, heart and the pit of my stomach.

My question is: Is this phenomenon biological or conceptual? The physical sensations are very similar to those accompanying emotions. Emotions are, I assume, on some level hormonal/physiological. But they also appear to have a mental/conceptual component, i.e. stuff that bothers me may not bother you. But I'm talking about neutral sensations here. Traffic noise, the sound of the central heating ect. Nothing complex or ambiguous.

I am aware that this may be a pointless question. During practice I just notice, investigate the sensate detail, move on. This treatment will probably remain the same no matter what answers I get. But I am intrigued to hear what people think.


Thanks

Howard

In previous post, the emboldened paragraph about emotion was less than illuminating. It was written in a hurry and I apologise. What I meant to say was this.


So this is how mild aversion to noise feels to me, an odd, mildly unpleasant physical sensation facing the source of the noise, nothing special you might say. But my point is that this is a component of the sense of spaciousness that I experience. It informs how I feel about my environment in a visceral way. It gives me extra data about sounds that I hear and makes me feel more "connected" to my environment as a result. The trouble is that it has to be false. I can't believe that my skin can "hear" in such a complex and subtle way, or that my intestines can transmit the sensation of "noise" to my belly chakra. It has to be my brain telling the relevant body part to feel certain sensations. In other words the feeling of spaciousness I feel is to some extent a fabrication.

The same reservations exist for the sense of sight. In meditation I can observe the edge of my vision quite clearly. What I mean is if you look straight ahead but shift your awareness to the peripheral vision, you can see a surprising amount of detail, right up until it stops fairly abruptly. Beyond the circular boundary, there is a small area of indistinct shapes and shades. But if one observes this periphery for long enough one sees flashes of what one knows to be there. What one sees are memories dovetailed with actual sense data. As a result our sight appears to be much more panoramic than it actually is. It's a composite and partly fabricated. In normal life sight appears to feather out gently, but in reality it stops at an abrupt boundary and the mind fills in the gaps.

So I’m not so enamoured of any of the elevated mind states that I pop in and out of any more. I shall be looking very closely for the cracks in the camouflage.

What do you think? Crazy right?