I have long wanted to use noting as a sort of quick and dry diagnostic for mental health or insight staging in the same way a blood test is used. The only feasible way is to record notes via muscle memory since brain scan hardware is a decade behind machine learning software. (It's like learning to type on a keyboard, in this case with 6 keys. I use usually label see,hear,feel,mental image, think, and emotion).

Session #142: 20 min, open monitoring noting
- started with slow noting speed / higher than average negative emotion (best estimate around Dissolution)
- a minute or so broke through to equanimity stages and noting speed jumped up to normal ~4.3 / note sec (which seems to be comfortable upper limit for noting via muscle memory) and negative emotion gone
- no anomalies, nothing special

Session #143: 20 min, open monitoring noting

Went through a few "stages"

1 content analysis mode (contemplating intention, like how does thought affect it)
2 switched out of content analysis mode eg. In thinking, just thoughts. In thoughts, no thinker.
3 into the state "chop wood, carry water"
4 tired of samsara, hard to type, buzzing and very fast noting speed
5 luminous, shiny, piti
6 slower note, wide, more fuzzy

Just in case you are not familiar with Shinzen's work, he has a great way for analyzing thoughts and mental activity:


See Hear Feel: An Introduction

And

Auto Think: A Strategy for Fostering the Wisdom Function

Session #144: 20 min, open monitoring noting

- Either none or one "stage" change , around 11 min
- Started with things calm, luminous
- Around 11 min everything became a bit clearer, and had piti
- Around 13 min noticing depth perception empty "with that, I wouldn't know how far away is this"




I notice some cross-over of orange on the line chart



Orange = See. So it make sense, as when I felt a new "stage" is also when my depth perception started getting interesting.



It was just about the same speed the whole time, very oscillitaory / herzty around 5 note/sec

Awesome, thanks and I'll give them a read.

Around 5 years ago when I started noting with muscle memory it was with Shinzen's "label set" -- and it still is, just I've renamed "See In" to "Mental Image" etc. to reduce cognitive burden for onboarding. But I never was studious, I just liked the simplicity / breadth of the label set.

Very cool. This provides great quantitative data for research as well as for your own analysis. 

Session #145: 60 min, open monitoring noting

1. normal, luminous calm
2. "oops! no space between subject and objects" then wide field of view
3. sense organs as translators, annata as seal, other contemplation
5. very comfortable, not much difference between "internal" and "external" senses like See and Mental Image
6. piti, increase in clarity, change back to centered focus from wide
7. spontaneous, uncontrollable, will-of-universe type feelings





As a side note, it's interesting how meditation sessions that are productive normally seem to have more internal sensations over time. (like more 'mental image' than 'see' over time). 

Regarding quantitative data, I would like to take the time and paint the vision of this a little better. 

I believe sensations are our fabric. As in, we are nothing more. Most fundamentally our experience is composed of the 5-aggregates, but the summation of the agregates as sensory contact being discerned and recorded in this app is only one step abstracted. This abstraction adds some more context and makes it practical to collect.
 
Since the data is so fundamental, then any mental health issue ought to be derived from it. Or at least corraborated with in a meaningful way like by tagging EEG data. And that, this is the first time in history we are able to record this data, process, and analyze it. 
  
So now, not only you can see into the deepest part of my mind, but machines can as well. And let's be honest, AI diagnosticians already are outperforming humans in some fields -- so what will this mean for Buddhism and meditation teachers if there is no data? And what if there is data? 

Session #146: 20 min, open monitoring noting

• A lot of "negative" thought content like taxes, feels "dark" etc.
• 9:07: get through the content
• "Is this going to happen forever?" (samsara)
• "I do not carry burden, only sensations come and go"
• Wide, good feelings, reduced centering
• Depth/space no inherent existence contemplation
• Stronger good feelings / comfort and more clarity
• Even stronger good feelings / comfort / waves of tingling/goose bumps through the body

Session #147: 60 min, open monitoring noting

• Did this session before sleep.
• Not pleasant / not unpleasant the whole time

1. At one point I tried to look closely at the skhanda (aggregate) of Perception, and to recognize labels better
2. After only 2 or 3 seconds my ability to label seemed to go to sleep (can't figure out which label to give a sensation, remember where my fingers should go, would be a lot easier to just "chop wood, carry water" without knowing if it was wood or water for the current sensory object), and my notes per second dropped a lot
3. When note per second returned to normal I noticed dissociation (hands labeling notes, "not my hands", only sensations).
4. Later on it happened again, but without provocation -- my notes per second just dropped very low and there was nothing I could do to force them higher.



Session #148: 20 min, open monitoring noting

• Feels like a similar state of mind as previous session -- not pleasant but also not unpleasant... very neutral
• No anomalies, no stage changes

I didn't look too closely at the charts, but this seems very interesting to me.

I think we are constantly bleeding data, as much as we like to pretend we're not. Everything we do is a direct result of our perceptions moment-to-moment. We can decode some of this on an intuitive level, some of it with more practice, and I'm really curious to know what the possibilities are in terms of machine analysis. (Restricting this to the diagnosis of mental health issues seems to me to be somewhat limited in imagination...)

Maybe most of all I want to find quantifiable markers of progress, for example stages of insight.
It may also be beneficial sometimes to predict the next sensation you will have, before you have it, and interrupt it before it arises.
Comparing sensations between people could result in a new, fundamental, and useful "personality test".

Maybe the right ratio of sensations could indicate peak performance before a competition?

I'm curious if you have any ideas for how sensation data could be used outside of mental health issues? I'm eager for any idea to add to the brainstorm.

Application of data analysis -

Subjects wear a portable EEG as much as possible, synced to a timing device that allows the wearer to record mood, attention level, emotions, at specific times. Collect the data over many subjects for a long period of time (months, if possible). Apply various descriptive analytics techniques to discover relationships in and among the data. Develop working hypotheses for further testing using Baysian and selected other testing methods. Repeat using other data collection techniques. This develops a baseline for the subjects that cam then be used when they develop a meditation practice and have these data collection and analysis techniques applied over another testing period, with control groups, too.

Just a thought engendered from reading this topic.

I am a pianist who spends a lot of time observing how classical music is taught to aspiring professionals (mainly opera singers). Basically, it's all kinds of messed up. People are generally entirely unaware of their bodies and their emotions, and yet this is an activity requiring such an incredibly high level of precision in terms of movement. Paying attention to my own experience has caused me to develop a rather astonishing level of physical empathy when I observe others. So I know the information is out there, floating through the ether.

I don't know how exactly this would look, but I'm just imagining somehow that the computer could prescribe an exercise to the student based on the student's perceived sensations. This would be instead of the teacher prescribing an exercise based on the teacher's subjective body-image and divorced from the student's actual experience.

Session #149: 20 min, open monitoring noting

• Started pleasant, intensity quickly increased
• 13:40: thought arise that "narrative paradigm theory" and annata concepts are closely linked
• Look at link between sensations helps dissolve it, experience of color like black becomes truely black
• Think "absurd that sensations would be linked in the first place"
• Continue in state with subject and object duality reduced for remainer of session (still takes a lot of effort)

Thanks Chris. I agree with the spirit of hardware, but today's EEG has some limits with skull, hair, muscle noise, and generally the type of data it collects and the answers that you can get from it. I think the consumer hardware is a decade away from being practical for this, or maybe an implant or a different technology might ultimately be more suitable.

That's why for now I'm exploring the data collected by muscle memory and also by verbal commands since we already have smartphones.

Very interesting.

I am also oriented in the direction of AI-prescribed excercises (tweaking session duration, interval times, "guided" sensations, amount of focus vs. discernment, sense objects to focus on, and so on can all be personalized). For example with Piano I could image something like:

• Open monitoring noting for 5 min to establish baseline sensation ratio
• If one sensation is abnormal, for example too little body or emotion then prescribe excercise focusing on those sensations / constraining the label set.
• Later, go back to #1 and see if sensation ratio is more balanced.

If you wanted to try a mini experiment like this will fully support it. 

I don't want to take this off-topic too far but...


I worked at a software start-up with an AI researcher/founder from Stanford who was a perfectionist and we used to say to him all the time, "The best is the enemy of the good." It is in that spirit that I offer up the notion that basic consumer-grade devices are getting better and better all the time, but that there's a wide range of devices that might be worthy of use:

https://imotions.com/blog/eeg-headset-prices/

Just a thought...  

Thank you. We did some preliminary work with EEG and monks in Thailand with an Emotiv product a couple of years ago. At the end hardware limitation and adoptions were factors for me to pursue smartphone. I do think noting sensation with muscle memory is an interesting way to tag EEG data though if you can make some hardware that records the timing accurately enough.

Anton, have you published any results of your work? Anyway, I wish you the best of luck in your pursuits!

No, in the end it was a taking too long to go through all the regulators so we only got as far as taking the preliminary measurements. I'd be happy to PM you some photos or the research proposal if you'd like though.

I'd love to read the proposal - thanks!

Session #150: 60 min, open monitoring noting, then fire kasina

- Closed eyes, before sleep
- Tried 'Fire Kasina' around half-way through and it was wild and intense, saw a very early memory from childhood from when I first saw "thoughts as thoughts" and its implications
-  zooming into high concentration states a couple times



Session #151: 20 min, open monitoring noting

- nothing so notable, not pleasant or unpleasant
- sensations are quite spontaneous and uncontrollable

Session #152: 20 min, open monitoring noting

- woke up already in state-of-mind / stage as yesterday's session
- strong desire to understand better "annata is seal not stage" and "non-arising" 

• Contemplate "Whatever has arisen in dependence, has in truth, not arisen at all"
• Think "what is changing" and impermenence having no inherent existence, object is not changing, background is not a stream
• All senses as translating devices, emptiness an equal playing field between all senses

Session #153: 20 min, open monitoring noting

• probably equinimity state since some feelings of hunger and pain came but they were wholly pleasant as part of the human experience
• Recalling two concepts 'Non-arising' and 'Time is existence' during session. For some reason this makes 'impermanence' take a backseat as a useful but in this context no-so-useful concept. As in "Sure, each sensation is "different", but so what?"
• Insight from yesterday object not being a changing stream is sticking. As in now I'm not hunting for object but settled in with the contact point of sensation, not splitting into subject and object. 
• Previous insight into 12 dependent link was forward and back, but now my mind wants to look closely at sense contact up, and sense contact down which I had no interest in before.
• Towards end maybe stage change some contemplation on boundless space / consciousness and one sensation seemed very luminous

Session #154: 40 min, open monitoring noting

- not much happened, felt quite good sometimes, other times neutral
- was mostly just focused on bare sensations unfolding
- some contemplation on 12 links from sensory contact up and down / path is ground / suffering etc.

This is really interesting. I had a crack at making a See-Hear-Feel noting app which would use keyboard keys or touchscreen buttons to record notes - but I lacked the statistical knowledge to make any reporting like this. Would you be interesting in developing this into an app everyone can use, or is it locked behind academic processes?

It will be always free and anyone can use it. Data will be shared with users/researchers for free. 

The alpha version I made open-source on GitHub ~5 years ago but had no luck finding contributors. Since no one else would take up this project, I have committed to releasing a mass market version in 2020. This is a hobby project, I spend a couple hours a day on and a good chunk of my salary.

If you're on Android, let me know I'd love to invite you test Google Play (or anyone else) to contribute their feedback and data. 

Session #155: 20 min, open monitoring noting

Have been thinking about non-dual and sense contact a lot lately. Best description I've found:

- Some content / thought about Buddha but broke through as in "oh just a character in story"
- not apparant where/if duality still in space. not searching for 'object'... Settled but no self grounding in "embrace" metaphor for sense contact. staying here doesn't take effort like before
- 18:03 - "oh, that's why thought is a sense!" as in some electric signal produce this "object" for consciousness to contact, in the same way my fridge is buzzing and my ears translate it. not difference for my experience.

Session #156: 40 min, open monitoring noting

- Overall still quite focused on quote

- a lot of first half was thought and cutting through content
- a thought bubbled up about the Tibetan metaphor for contact (phassa) being lovers embracing. For some reason I had a PG version in my head of two people hugging, but at one point the thought bubbled up about this metaphor having some duality. Then I thought 'Oh! lovers embracing... non-dual... birth and death... this is rated R well contained analogy'

And sure enough after checking the Tibetan depiction of 'Phassa' it is indeed containing non-dual aspects :


- When contemplate 'non-arising' former disociation with body 'contacts' turn into embracing instead of dissociation 
- My mind is noticing, drifting towards noticing where suffering originates (going down the 12 links, to sensation and clinging) more and more. For a moment noticing why ignorance is at the top.
- Towards the end a certain sound was very intense, cutting through experience like lightning/strong buzzing. After that my noting speed dropped substantially. A few min after this (min 38) I hit a sensation and piti start pouring out, and noting speed started increasing a bit again.

I'm intrigued by this as well. You've said
Can you say more about this? I get that youi're using a smartphone, and presumably tapping on a screen button for each noting event. At 5 notes/second you must be pretty much drumming your fingers for the entirety of the session. Even on the same buttons that would be challenging. Noting and moving finger(s) to the appropriate button while maintaining attention seems superhuman. What does the pattern of labels look like? Is it See-see-see for seconds at a time, or do you find 5 notes in a second all on different labels? Or have I completely misunderstood?

In any case I'd be keen to have a look at the app if you're willing for me to have a link to the stoe. Thanks!

Session #159: 60 min, open monitoring noting

I've been travelling for a few days so did not upload.

4:30 - 5: fear > disgust > misery > desire
5:45: break through story / narrative

• Wide/slow, then extreme simplicity "just sensations

16:00 - Suddenly very light, floaty
31:00 - Strong sense of "Dream in a dream"
45:00 All senses empty, translating "jello", a few minutes later no space between stuff

It's a lot more common to have 5 different than 5 of the same sensations during this open monitoring style of noting. 

What's interesting with muscle memory is -- my thumbs have already been trained so I don't pay them any mind. By the time discernment occurs, the moment labeled as "this sensation" or "that sensation" has already passed away. In this way my fingers are always catching up, as it is with labeling by verbal thought alike. 

It took about 15 minutes until I no longer had to look at the buttons and several more days until it became as effortless or easier than labeling by verbal thought.

I'll DM you the link to try it out.

Edit: I can't find a way to private message you -- your name isn't showing up on the autocomplete thingy. If you could, try sending me one and I can reply to it?

Session #160: 45 min, open monitoring noting

• Real intense note speed in the beginning, had to put phone down for 10 min and just observe
• Min 24: No space between stuff mindstate from yesterday, continued in this until the end. Dreamy / no space / empty senses / very simple flattened type experience

Session #161: 40 min, open monitoring noting

4:00 - Into the no-space zone. 
9:32 - Looking for centering, selfing, it's not where it used to be but probably still around
21:00 - Girlfriend brought me food , pause and eat
35:00 - "Yikes! That's how self first constructed" thought. Contemplate first link between sensations, no-self, and "seal not stage" Not full understanding of "seal not stage" but an 'Aha' and some deep rumblings after experiencing a bit of it. Have found where self is hiding.

Session #162: 45 min, open monitoring noting

I think I cycled through a few stages. Around min 20 go to equinimity I think.

5:00 - Thinking about thoughts like "does consciousness normally cease/diminish during absorption/focus into thoughts? are thoughts mini dreams in that context?" etc.
10:20 - clarity, crispness, then maybe 1 min of dark knight type feels
12:00 - "do until I die?" (desire for deliverance type thought I think) 
18:00 - feels like breaking through the content / equinimity, a min later get some non-arising contemplation thoughts
41:00 - contemplate non-arising, "seal not a stage" when bring in no-self to the mix get a taste of total annhilation (novel feeling)




I think the notes per second chart is picking up on a 'phase change' into equinimity but I'm not sure



Theres a little corroboration with note type ratios. Usually pretty steady across a session but some more 'Hears' start in the middle.