| | Hi everyone !
I’ve benefited a lot from reading posts on this forum for a few months, and now I thought I’d come to participate a bit.
So, here is a description of the hour-long sit I just did.
I just decided to very gently investigate whatever would present itself (no verbal noting at all, no effort, no intentionally getting attention to be fast and sense everything that happens), as i’ve been having the impression that I’ve been “chasing states” and trying too hard to make sense of what was happening in my meditation lately. So, just sitting nicely, very quietly, in my room. As usual when I get in this kind of laid-back attitude, what happens is that I become very keenly aware of sounds. So, I’m just listening to sounds, gently staying with them, while trying to be clear about the difference between the sound perception itself, the mental echo, resonance or memory of it being created in real time in the mind, and the sort of background, mental visuo-kinesthetic sense of the room I’m in and of my body in it, which is also there.
Very nice, effortless, open awareness. Since I’m weary of not thinking about what’s happening and particularly, of any mapping taking place, I just note away thoughts like “this feels jhanic, might be in the AP with a 2nd shamatha jhana flavor.”
After a while (I do note when it feels like it makes sense to note), the way in which continuity and identity is being constructed mentally becomes more and more apparent : there are sensations, and at the same time, this seemingly all-encompassing mental construct, made in real-time based on these sensations, which, if I’m not careful, seems to be the same as them. This has been a central object of inquiry for me the past few weeks, and the fact that it has to be “seen through” again and again at each sit, that this obviously artificial sense of solidity and identity just reconstructs itself naturally however removed it might have become after an hour of meditation, has become a subject of frustration in my last few sits.
So this time, wishing to let go of aversion, in the same laid back fashion, I just quietly see what I see, and that’s that. A state shift happens after some time. At the beginning of the shift, there is this familiar sense of the hands disappearing and somehow pulling appart, and this just starts to pervade everything. The mental body-image itself, having been repeatedly seens as just a construct, has become very peripheral and insubstantial ; the body sense (perceptual) itself has changed dramatically : it feels like it has expended enormously, that its boundaries have somewhat disolved, and yet there’s a tremendous sense of weight across the whole field, almost unpleasantly so.Yet I still hear very clearly and distinctly, though sounds seem like they are farther away.
The sense of self is now very different, and it starts being investigated actively : no more does it appear like there’s an entity there, only sensory things happening, and as I look for the sense of watcher, things fade more and more. This has been a pattern for me : I get into this space where asking a certain question, like “where am I ?”, or “what is time ?”, just triggers this fading of perception, and at the same time means I’m able to see everything sort of happening at once. It always goes along with a pervading sense of anatta. I’ve wondered is this is “formations”, and I do think so, but it’s always happened after I start to investigate in a very broad and inclusive way for me, never through fast vibratory qualities.
I stay in that state(stage ?) almost until the end of the session ; what I do is to gently try to make the sense of identification dissolve by directly seeing that whatever is observed cannot be me. In the past, this has brought me to very interesting places, creating this crazy instantaneous loop where the act of “seeing such thing as not me” is being instantaneously seen as “not me either” starts to happen, also triggering an all encompassing sense of ... fading. This does happen here, though not as much as it could, and at some point, I get a little bit of fear, because the sense of self starts to unravel and it feels like disappearing completely is just a step away, but then I just note : fear, heart beating. The solidity/heaviness and (not really) boundarilessness does fade away near the end, and it kind of just feels like everything is normal. Then I question my identification with certain sets of sensations, which has formed itself again, and it kind of goes back into that different mode. And voilà, the alarm goes off (sounding quite distant), I emerge very calm, and upon seeing myself in the bathroom mirror, just start laughing thinking “this stuff is so weird man !”
Right now I feel very relaxed and almost giddy, with a mild sense of things appearing “unreal.” The last few sits (I’ve been doing 1h morning 1h evening since last Sunday, where I meditated for 8h. Otherwise, I try to do at least 1h a day…) had not been like that : rather, there was this frustration at not being able to reproduce the profound states of vastness and clear seeing of anatta that seemed so close from being “it”, and almost a sense of ill-will at this mental constructing of the sense of self ! Haha ! But this is very recent, and I think I’ve found a solution already.
I’m curious to hear your thoughts. I’ve had a sense that I’ve been in EQ for a while, though I’m not very sensitive to nanas, and only once had the sense of seeing each classic stage unfold in one session up to a very panoramic and bodiless anatta-flavored EQ. I now feel like I’m stagnating, or even regressing, and today just feel a bit confused. So, I’d greatly appreciate your input, and any advice.
Thank you,
Olivier |
