| The things that are important to note in reobservation are the things that tend to convey "I am having a hard time during this stage known as reobservation and I want to either get through it quickly or quit practicing". What sorts of things in our experience make reobservation known as reobservation?
(Remember that the dark night stages are not simply called dissolution, fear, misery, disgust, desire for deliverance, reobservation --- but rather "knowledge of dissolution" "knowledge of fear" etc. In other words, to really "get" a stage you need to do more than simply experience it, you need to have the knowledge of it, the knowing of how these stages are created by mind. You need get "meta" and understand both objective experience and how the subjective experience is created. So the urges, emotions, and thoughts are almost more important than the sensations after you have developed a foundation of mindfulness. Many people stay on just sensations, so they remain trapped by urges, emotions, and thoughts.)
If it was me, here's what I would be probably be noting:
itching, hearing, seeing, resistance, avoidance, frustration, mapping thought, desire for deliverance thought, anquish, hoping, anticipating, struggling, exhaustion, worry, waiting, looking, searching, emptiness, loss, frustration, anger, annoyance, mapping thoughts, practice thoughts, confusion, futility, annoyance, turbulance, buzzing, mapping thought, dark humor, shaking, determination, power, strength, hopenessness, determination, weakness, giving up, hopelessness, pain, tingling, quitting thought, breathing, sitting, sitting, remembering thought, pressure, crying, crying, crying, release, relaxing, pleasure, calm, sobbing, mapping thought, light humor, joy, calm, calm, mild sorrow, bittersweet, mapping thought, practice thought...
and if it was reobservation with high "centering/concentration", then it would not really be noted, but rather I would ride out (in other words, "be with") all the wierd vibrations and turbulance and flow of partial thoughts and weird pseudo-emotions that flowed by, almost like an annoying crappy massage of the body and mind...
those are the kinds of notes I make, but make your own. The important thing is to note sensations, urges, emotions, and categories of thoughts.Usually people overlook urges, emotions, and categories of thought in the midst of reobservation because we feel like "I am resisting" "I am avoiding" "I am frustrated" --- so we overlook noting those as _experiences_ because we are identified with them.
For all of the stages of insight, especially the dark night nanas, we need to make a study of the mind and see how sensations, urges, emotions, and types of thoughts combine to create the apparent solidity of the stages.
The things we tend to overlook are the things "on the periphery" or "in the background" or "on this side" -- because those are the things that we identify with as self, even though they are actually just sensations, urges, emotions, and thoughts that are not (normally) in the center of attention. |