(EDIT: Cleaning up some of these early posts as they were done on ipad, which these boards don't seem to like.)
History: Got into meditation about 3-4 years ago through Sam Harris podcast, after a couple of decades of being a staunch atheist. Messed around with the 10 and 20 minute sessions for therapeutic reasons. BECAUSE SCIENCE SAID IT WAS GOOD.
but I guess we all have to start somewhere. I didn't get anywhere, but I guess it started laying the foundation.
In March of 2017 I took a deeper dive and did some longer session working on, I guess concentration (listening to a looping melody) with some vipassana (without noting). I didn't really know what I was doing (still don't) but did I bunch of 8-12 hour sessions over the course of 3 or so weeks.
This is where I had the seeing through eyes experience as well as the falling through bed experience.
Dark Night: From April 2017 to June 2019. Basically pretty disenchanted, doing ten minutes perfunctorily, and it clearly wasn't doing shit. But to be honest I've been in DN for my whole entire adult life and have manufactured a shitty, illusory self, that could use some unravelling.At some point: ran into Daniel on Buddhist Geeks and thought he was complete loony tunes (probably during DN).
Read MCTB which led to my new practices starting in June 2019.
June: consisted of sitting in a walmart and staring at objects and candles, badly, for two hours, then trying to do Mahasi noting as much as I could stand, which was about only an hour as I found it difficult at the time. Mostly I think I just fucked around and the quality of meditations was low.
Powers experience?!!?: Concentration work on a windy day. Staring through a metal loop on the top of a grocery cart (yes, walmart parking lot, in my truck) and suddenly the wind gusted and three carts were "pushed" away from my truck with a force and a random customer had to hustle to stop one from hitting a shiny Suburban. At the time the atheist said coincidence. Today, well, I'll reserve comment...
Late June: Mostly backburnered concentration aside from doing 30-60 minutes here and there. Did read into the concentration jhanas much, just stared a rock or a hole in a rock wall, or candle flame. Previous entry said I could stare at a object without blinking for an hour, but that's probably not true. With blinking, yes. (I have no idea whether that is good or not.) I did however check out the 1st jhana and saw the red dot with multicolored swirling fractals in one attempt and my bullshit detector, at the time, said, "hmm, let's switch to vipassana".
And so, I cracked down on insight training (mahasi noting) and the quality of those sits and things started to take off.
July 1st: was the first big A&P since the stuff in 2017. The electrified spine deal for 8-10 seconds and followed by lesser ones for the rest of the sit. Afterglow for a couple days.
Read MCTB2: and still think Daniel's a little out there (for the record). I'll save commenting on the 4000 page disclaimer about the powers, for now.
Daily practice: consists of maybe 20 minutes of concentration workthen two, 2 hour insight sessions and sometimes a third. one sitting, one layingNo full cessation, from what i can tell, many brownouts and just a lot of a&p junk, buzzes on and off cushion.