Formal meditation 80 minutes, phenomenology similar to yesterday both on and off cushion.

Fractal cycling is getting more clear. In this reobservation-equanimity-A&P cycling loop, the dominating nana seems to be the subnana of A&P to the reobservation nana. What's that in numbers... 10.4? I recognize this from before SE, but I didn't identify the subnanas back then. It is frantic. Happy-happy but easily distracted and reactive and with lots of tics. If I ever were to develop mania, it would probably be in 10.4. This is why I developed the habit of reclining meditation. I sat for 50 minutes tonight and then lay down, not because I was uncomfortable but because my mind was going heywire. So f-ing hyper! Lying down helps with that. Lying down in my bed, jhanic factors showed up almost immediately. I think I was somewhere inbetween third vipassana jhana and third shamatha jhana. I could then see the subnanas develop. 10.5 was where it was most like shamatha jhana. In 10.6 there was a surge of adrenaline that pulled me up from that depth of still clear water and stirred it around. In 10.7 it was as if that sirring around had also stirred up some mud. In 10.8 there was energetic activity with more fierce vibrations. Then the bell rang. I'm expecting a partner arriving from Stockholm any minute now. I feel a bit guilty (but not that much) because I would really want to continue to meditate. 

After leaving the formal practice, it feels like 10.4 is the default nana again. It is an utterly unstable nana, though, so it fluctuates.

I think that before SE when I used to have severe pain in reobservation, this was during the 10.3. That explains why it was piti that took the pain away. The pain disappeared already in 10.4, not in equanimity as I thought. 

Crossposting for the sake of keeping track:

I had a stubborn spiritosomatic headache today. It seems to arise when I feel the urge to meditate more but choose to prioritize differently. I used to think of this as stagnated energy (Kundalini or whatever), which I think in one sense is true but also misleading if I associate that with some power separated from ”me” or within ”me” and yet different from the rest of ”me”. So I asked myself ”Do I really have a headache because energies stagnated as a consequence of not practicing more, or is it because I think I should have practiced more?” After all, energy is intentions and/or beliefs manifesting themselves through the attentional system, or something like that. Thus, the energetic pain is basically a mental blueball phenomenon. That’s just stupid.

I knew this and still couldn’t transcend the pain. That is, until a conversation triggered a memory of when a baby hare mistook one of my cats for its mum and clinged to him for food and comfort. At first he was confused and backed away, which looked very funny. However, later I found the little leveret torn to pieces in my patio. The thought that maybe it thought that it was its mum that did this to it... It breaks my heart. Thinking about this, I felt the kind of nausea that usually means that an insight needs to happen. It was like poisoned mud being stirred up and moving about. I know exactly what to do with that. I deal with it on a strict sensate level. There it is just bubbles arising and popping. So I did, and it dissolved. And what do you know - it took the headache too! Just like that. Just a moment before, the headache was very dense. I could feel the sore points very tangibly, and I could feel it radiating from other points that were stiff. After this dissolving, which took maybe a few seconds, there were no sore points and no stiff points there. It was as if there hadn’t even been any pain there to begin with. The nausea lingered a little while, moving about, and then dissolved too. Then there were lots of clickings and snappings and poppings in my head, making it easier to breath, and that gentle breeze.

It is all so illusory.

And yet one may need to resolve suffering with suffering, just like one needs to resolve a fatty stain with fat, because just letting go is too easy for it to feel possible.

I treated myself to a two hour long digital gong bath (praise the universe for youtube and headphones) and found that the body knew exactly what to do to dissolve tensions. I could feel it disentangling in a very physical way while also sleep-breathing. There were some dream visions, and each time I identified them as dreams there was this strong light. Tissues connecting muscles and bones relaxed and opened up. Muscle knots dissolved. My hands opened up; they usually close themselves when I think they are relaxed, but now it seems that whatever tissue it is that closes them is starting to relax. Now my left hand crackles when I move it and I feel that blood is flowing more freely. It is the tendon running to the fingers that are crackling. They stand out on the backs of both my hands in a way that I haven't seen before. I could feel that seeping along a line in my face, and when I centered my focus instead of attending to that particular side, the seeping spread. I could feel a similar seeping along my lower arms, and now there are lines there as well, on both arms. 

This morning I have practiced the five point position, focusing on stillness, dedication of merit, and the nine breathings of purification as taught by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. That tradition seems to be a reasonable framework for lucid sleep practices and illusory body practices, as well as for understanding my energetic exoeriences, and the Rinpoche seems very approachable and teaches online. If I practice the basics of his teachings, more advanced courses will then be available. I have listened to teachings by him for a while and tried out some of his methods. The symbolic language resonates fairly well with me. Visualization is not my strong suit, though. Thankfully, I think I may actually be feeling the energy channels, at least partly. I know that there are different versions of them, and I find that somewhat confusing, especially sine I also do yoga and some qigong. Mixing the frameworks can be tricky, but I choose to think of it as a reminder that they are all constructions and that all manifestations are illusory (basically magickal creations) - something that I believe applies to medical frameworks as well (those are widely consensual and therefore very solidified). One additional practical adavantage of this framework is that it fits pretty well with other Ribetan practices that I have taken an interest in, such as the teachings of Lama Lena (who talks in a way that I understand), Ken McLeod, Catherine McGee, and also with Michael Taft's nondual teachings, which in turn combine the nondual practice with both vipassana and shamatha.

I still feel like Michael Taft is my teacher, although it was only 10 lessons, so compatibilty with his teachings will probably continue to be a great plus. One of the many reasons I wanted to work with him was that he ties together many different traditions and methods. I want to be able to combine and modify methods in an eclectic way. I want to know what each method does and how it relates to the other ones so that I use every tool for its right purpose. I also want to be able to play with the tools, just not in a way that resembles using a screwdriver as a hammer. 

That energetic headache turns out to be a pretty helpful meditation object. It pops up now and then, and I tune into the sensate level of it. First  it becomes less solid, as the phenomenon of it is ungraspable. The story of sore spots have been stripped away. Instead there is the feeling that I have been calling nausea, which is more like filthy mud being stirred up. Then I strip away the stories about that, and the vedana. Then what is left is vibrations. Then a new story is often linked together about the pleasantness of vibrations, but that is just as much a construction.  There can be attachment to the pleasantness, and that can cause pain too. I try to let it come, let it be and let it go. There's a freedom in that. 

I don't believe the brain fog to be a bad thing anymore. It's just ignorance being stirred up so that it can be aware. 

Morning: nine breathings of purification.

Day: an hour of just resting, being in awareness. Head shook itself, hands moved and unclenched, mouth opened itself, and so forth. Lots of unclenching going on.

Evening: about an hour of zhine as taught by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, focusing on the stillness of the body. This feels broader than I usually picture shamatha, but the Rinpoche says that it is a form of shamatha. If so, I have been doing much more shamatha than I have realized. This is exactly what I have been doing all along as one of my default practices. Now that I have been doing some Dzogchen for a while (a beginner's version anyway), this feels very dense in comparison. Broad and dense at the same time. Coming out of it, I almost couldn't see. Focusing my eyes was impossible. During the session, there was a phase when I could not think verbally. There were thoughts going on that I could notice but I could not translate them into language. They were more like textures. I think they had sounds, like talk, but it wasn't recognizable as words. 

Throughout the day I have come back to inclining towards just allowing awareness to be aware of itself and to trying to approach everything as a dream. The latter is hard, though. I really do think that the mind is creating our reality just like in dreams, but there sure is more consensus about the daytime dreams so it feels much more solid. Still I know that it can be surprisingly unsolid. Very dense pain can go away just like that. This reminds me of that experiment I used to do as a child: if someone holds up a pencil in both ends, one can easily split it with one finger if one looks beyond it, to the floor. If one looks at the pencil, on the other hand, the pencil becomes solid and the finger can't go through it. 

This night lucidity has appeared now and then during the night sleep. It seems to be during phases of light sleep, because excitement about it tends to wake me up. In one of the instances I remember it happening after dreaming that I was meditating. Some screen is involved. The grainy one. The murk chrystallizes into pixels that then form a pattern of sacred geometry. So... hypnopomp lucidity? It has happened several times. Maybe the intention of maintaining lucidity interferes with my sleep.

Once again my eyes were so relaxed during an hour of Dzogchen-type meditation (Michal Taft) that I don't remember how to focus them. Everything is just a blur despite my new glasses. 

I decided to give earth kasina another try and to be less bothered by ideas about what a learning image should look like and what should happen. I sat for 30 minutes, alternating between looking at the clay tray and closing my eyes to focus on the after image. Then I lay down for 30 minutes to just pay attention to what happened in the visual field, bearing in mind that my mind does know how to visualize since it visualizes stuff everyday in the wakeful dream reality. I could rather easily smooth out the clay tray in my looking at it so that diverging details of the surface were sort of photoshopped away. The after image was beautiful, a blue or indogo-colored disk with a bright golden halo. It looked just like an eclipse. To my surprise it actually did transform into something that reminded of the claytray - a terracotta/apricot disc. It wasn't as distinct as I know the red dot of the fire kasina to be, and it never reached that richly detailed version that I have seen in fire kasina during jhana either, and it didn't last nearly as long. However, as I refreshed my gaze at the kasina, a black disc showed up. At least that trajectory was familiar. After the black disc the imagery was less distinct. It was shimmery and vague but at least the murk was alive. In the latter part of the session, when I was lying down, there were the usual flourescent violet swirls but with an overlay of apricot swirling. When that calmed down, I found that I could visualize the claytray pretty well without being disturbed by the murk. I was very relaxed and got into somewhat dreamy territory, and sometimes there was this flash of solidifying that is hard to explain. Like I could have reached out and touched the claytray hovering over me, even though I didn't see it that clearly. Kinesthetically I believed in it being there. 

Something that I like about the earth kasina is how grounding it is. I have had many periods in my life when I have been spaced out and needed to ground myself in different ways. In such periods, I haven't even been able to hug a friend in a swimming pool without my whole body floating up all by itself, and if I have been standing up, my body has become like boiled spaghetti. I have often found myself unable to lift my arms as there was no connection to the body. This has been accompanied by a special form of anxiety that is ungrounded in its nature. Now I'm thinking of this as a tendency to have the earth element dissolved. Grounding really helps, and interestingly enough, even if one buys into the psychiatric framework of dissociation (as I used to do with self-diagnosis), the therapy recommendations are filled with grounding exercises. I find that making it into a ritual, as in some homebaked magick, actually works even better. I don't find that very surprising. Thinking of oneself as dissociative really doesn't help with the grounding. Thinking of oneself as someone who can tune into and work with the earth element, on the other hand, has exactly the right connotations. Stable, firm, grounded, steady, solid, stoic even. It does wonders for my posture and balance. Also, I don't think there is much of a risk that regular sessions of earth kasina will make me too earthy, unless I go for an intense retreat. 

I haven't found many resources on earth kasina. Maybe Tina Rasmussen and Stephen Snyder describe it in their book? I should have a look. I assume that there may be descriptions in the old grimmoires as well, if one has the patience to read them. In the meantime, I'll just explore it empirically and hope that I don't dabble with it in any harmful way. 

Practice today:

Day: one hour of noticing with all senses.
Evening: 75 minutes of yoga asanas + one hour of pranayama and meditation in a restorative yoga position.

I have booked an 8 day meditation retreat in May here in Sweden but with teachers from Gaia House in England and registered myself as a student at Ligmincha International.

This morning before waking up I was convinced that I was doing energy work. It involved twisting the wrist of my left arm to remove energy blockages. When I woke up I remembered that I hadn't been able to do the same thing with my right wrist. Now, late afternoon, the same thing happened during meditation. There were lots of kriyas, including twisting my left wrist. It definitely felt like it took away a blockage. I tried to do the same thing intentionally with my right wrist, as it wouldn't happen on its own, but that didn't do the trick. Now my right wrist feels blocked. 

I have done the nine breathings of purification. I sure needed it. This has been a miserable day. I have been feeling completely worthless. It felt like nothing would ever help. I had been to a meeting with a children's psychologist who could no nothing to help my kid. It made me doubt  that meditation would ever do any good too. I wasn't motivated to even try. However, I recognized that as doubt, so I automatically started noting. Somehow, that cleared up the respiratory tract and made things literally click in my head. So I thought I might as well at least do that breathing exercise when I for once had all those feelings laid bare to work with. And so I did. It allowed for some peace to mix in with the remaining grief. Then I did 30 minutes of six different mini-slots. Then I lay down to relax and let the body unclench on its own and the energy body to do whatever it needed to do, which apparently involved lots of kriyas. They scared away one of my cats. 

Being interrupted 30 times or so while trying to meditate on a night when everything feels like shit sure sheds light on aversions. It wasn't hard to find stuff to note. I even got angry because noting worked. It was like the universe was telling me that my kid's wellbeing wasn't important. So then I noted clinging to anger. And anger anger anger. It kept giving me signs that it is working and part of me is still pissed off because of that. 

At least awareness's recognition of itself is accessible. 

I feel thoughts energetically before they have words. Every single one of them changes the energy field.

I'm darknighting hard (potentially PMDD-related). I woke up too early this morning in deep misery, and there was no relief in the dharma. Emptiness seemed empty in a bad way. I would have wanted to die if I had believed that there were relief in dying. A couple of hours later I managed to lay down to meditate. It was hazy and slow but with peripheral clarity. No kriyas. I was cold. It felt like lying on the bottom of a very muddy and sticky pond, sort of, for about one and a half hour. Then suddenly things changed. I can't wrap my head around exactly what happened as it doesn't seem to fit the map, or maybe I just didn't notice the gradual progression of dukkha nanas as it was all just an abyss. Anyway, suddenly there was clarity and phenomena seemed to synch up. I could see inummerable dots of light flashing by, and the body temperature rised so I had to take away blankets. Then it returned to normal-shitty non-pathological low. I don't know if there was a short bounce up into equanimity or down to A&P or if it was just the relief of coming out from the depth of misery and disgust that jump-started me a bit. 

45 minutes basically comprising of depressive mindwandering and nausea with a few odd showers of freezingly cold piti. Occasional observations of how the mind contracted around stuff and created points that thought they were centers. Instances of spaciousness here and there, accompanied of reality appearing in multisensorial chunks. 

Morning practice was rather dull. 30 minutes divided into sid slots. One observation was that when ideas pop up for me, they tend to do so in a non-discursive way, using a combination of kinesthetic and touch sensations, visuals and smells. A lot of my discursive thoughts are translations from sensorial ideas into discourse. 

I dreamt that I was meditating on the vibrational flow in all sense gates and then I woke up in a light fourth jhana which however faded away. I'm using conventional language with regard to sleep and wakefulness here although I don't really believe in those boundaries anymore. Apparently there are still unconscious thought patterns that believe in the difference, as there is such a difference with regard to what is accessble. Fourth jhana has been out of reach lately, but obviously the unconscious knows how to get there when some processes are asleep. 

Evening: two hours of shamatha, with varied quality. Second jhana is available again. The nada sound works as a nimitta again. It seems like timing is important. It doesn't work if I start with focusing on the sound. I need to start with the breath and then switch over to the sound when the concentration is strong enough for the sound to manifest as a nimitta rather than empty space. When the timing is right, vibrations in all sense gates synch up. That makes it easier for piti to turn into sound and for the sound to be distilled into light. It makes me think of alchemy. 

Morning: 75 minutes of Vinyasa yoga, 2 h of a combination between yin yoga and restorative yoga. During the shivasana of the first yoga class, there was a blip (impermanence door) right after I had let go of stubborn tics and opened up to the moment.

Afternoon: one hour of what started out as shamatha on the breath but turned into just opening up to the present moment. I forgot all about the breath as glimpses of awareness recognizing itself showed up in all their amazing simplicity. Layers of tensions dissolved. There was another blip. 

I had just accepted that I was going to be stuck in lower nanas for a while. I don't know what to think of this. 

These blips stand out very clearly because of the special sound in the coming back (it's an electronic beep) and the "What the f-uck?!" or disruptiveness of it all. They always come as a surprise. 

Did the five Tsa Lung Movements. The one that felt most clearing was the pervasive wind element wind, which wan't that much of a surprise as it is said to clear away blockages for success (I didn't see that until after doing it). I'm a chronic procrastinator with enormous performance anxiety. Seems like the perfect exercise for me. 

There are structures of bright light in various colors spinning around in my peripheral vision. It happens when I try to watch netflix so maybe it's from processing the light from the ipad screen.

My peripheral vision has improved again. Now I can see some details 180 degrees. 

Still too much sense of agency to be anywhere near what third path is supposed to be, though. I'll probably need hundreds of bug fixes before that happens. 

Edited to add: I don't even know what is normal vision. I'm pretty sure that I started out with an unusually narrow and limited visual field.

I have noticed that selfing is very much embodied (having Tourette makes this very tangible), and so I'm experimenting with relaxing the body so much that selfing can't occur. Interesting how complete stillness of the body also stills the mind. Also, it tends to get very bright. Lots of popping going on. 

I couldn't tell where my body ended and my cat's body began. 

My drastically improved balance was back to normal already today. I wasn't surprised. This doesn't feel like a review phase so I'll assume that those fruitions were from an earlier path. I have had a horrible headache today (due to eating a small amount of black pepper; this body is ridiculously sensitive) so my practice today mainly focused on that. I found that it really makes a difference when I manage not to contract around the pain. I also did a yoga class and a pranayama class. There were some tinglings at the crown chakra. I dwelled in the space of awareness recognizing itself. 

Something came up today that made me reflect on my cravings and aversions. A few days ago I realized that I had missed the opportunity of going to Iceland for a conference. I discovered that I had misunderstood when I would be notified about my submitted abstract. I was waiting for the notice in vain, and so I searched my inbox and noticed that I had received a message several weeks ago where they did not accept my abstract as part of the symposium I had intended to be part of. Instead they encouraged me to send in the abstract anew, for an individual presentation. I had totally missed that, and now it was too late. I discovered this very early in the morning and in the midst of the abyss of wanting-to-die-pms, and I was devastated, while at the same time being very aware that the suffering was caused by my wanting it to be different. Being aware of that didn't help as much as I would have wished (another set of cravings and aversions noted). A few days later, when the pms had ended, it wasn't that bad. I was saying to myself that I really need to focus on writing my book anyway, and that flying is bad for the environment. I was okay with it but still disappointed both with the crushed dream of finally getting to experience Iceland and with myself for making that stupid mistake.

Then today I was told that nobody in my research group will go to that conference, because that symposium was not accepted and everyone who had applied for an individual presentation were offered to do poster presentations only. I was so relieved. That doesn’t make sense at all. I was happy because I wouldn’t miss out on anything - but that isn’t true, as I still won’t go to Iceland. I was relieved because suddenly it wasn’t a mistake not to make that new application. Instead of missing it, I now spared myself unnecessary work. But it’s not like the history has really changed. And yet it has, because history is a story that we tell ourselves. It is so illusory. I even said out loud that I had felt so bad for nothing, which is kind of funny, because that is really suffering in its making. I couldn’t even just be happy now (which is silly too), but I felt bad for feeling bad earlier! That lasted only a few seconds, though, thankfully, because it was so obviously empty.

Thankfully my colleagues didn’t seem very sad. They all work fulltime and can afford to travel to Iceland for holidays. Still I feel a bit ashamed for being happy that my colleagues didn’t get to go to Iceland either, becuse that is the only ”fact” that has changed. I suppose that counts as ill will, even though it feels more like being spared from envying them, which would also be ill will. And my feeling ashamed doesn’t make anything better. That’s not a strong feeling, though. I think it falls into the category of being human. The crown of the creation, my ass.

I did some wakeful dream yoga exercises yesterday, imagining dreamsigns in the wakeful experience and planted the intention to remember dreams (seems like a reasonable first steps). I actually remember quite a lot from the dreams (too personal to post) and dream signs did appear in them. Maybe they would have become lucid if they had the chance, I don't know. There were cats insisting on getting in and getting out all the time, so I was constantly interrupted. Those who instruct that one should lie perfectly still for quite some after waking up obviously do not have a cat that scratches them in the face until they get up (ironically, he is named Morpheus). I did notice, however, that I tend to redirect stuff in dreams. I do that and still don't realize that it's a dream. I'll not that as a strong dream sign. 

My practice today involved two and a half hours of yoga, some dzogchen and some dream yoga. 

When I listen to some teachings on youtube, for instance from Bhante Gunaratana and Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, I feel something happening at the crown of my head. Kind of a softening, a gentle breeze, a light...? Is that a sign of what is referred to as transmission? Or do I just have a very active imagination? 

I'm continuing with my online course from Ligmincha. It is a very basic level, but as it is a new tradition to me, there is much to learn. For some reason it resonates with me. It does something. From the framework I'm used to from before, it feels like it cultivates the Brahmaviharas and the formless realms. 

There were brief instances of lucid dreaming this morning, not from getting lucid from within the dreams but from falling back into sleep and into the same dreams while retaining lucidity for a while. Unfortunately I cannot recall what content drew me back into the illusion.

This afternoon I did some letting go of grasping meditation with a varied result. I fell into both ditches of restlessness and dullness. 

In the evening I practiced some basics of the Bön tradition, with dedication, the nine breathings of purification, Tsa Lung, and three doors practice. The Tsa Lung exercises were a bit overwhelming today. After the first three exercises I felt slightly nauseous, and after the fourth one    (the pervasive wind) there were intense piti and relief. The fifth one doesn't seem to affect me that much, but maybe it has a stabilizing effect. After those exercises, it is surprisingly easy to connect to the three doors (not the same ones as in MCTB2, but stillness of the body, silence, and spaciousness of the mind). There are instant purple swirls and spaciousness and bliss (even without the Tsa Lung exercises). It is probably helpful for my ADHD mind to frame the meditation so clearly. Whether or not this will lead me to transforming insights I cannot tell, but at times when the three poisons are particularly stubborn, I believe this may be a way to maintain both a steady practice and relative wellbeing. 

There are very bright dots flickering in my visual field now and then, off cushion and with eyes open. The sound of silence is getting loud again. I wonder if this is how tinnitus sounds. I don't mind it. I find it comforting. It reminds me that there is space. Listening to it opens up possibilities where the contracted mind can't see any. 

One dimension of depth vision just disappeared again. This time everything was horizontally flat. The time before it was vertically flat. It doesn't last long but I can repeat it, for now.

Practice has been interesting today. Challenging but interesting. I have often said that something I love about vipassana is that it is failproof, that it is impossible to fail because if one makes a mistake, noting it turns it into good vipassana, and if one fails to note it, then one notes that, and so forth. Yeah well, I still think it's a good principle, but it turns out that there are times when the chain of failings to note becomes too long and one completely forgets what one is doing. I don't really believe that there are solid layers to work with in the mind, okay, but it tends to manifest as if there were. The construction/manifestation of layer that I'm currently working on has "laid bare" some stuff that triggers such chains. it's an entanglement of the ego's fear of annihilation, defense mechanisms, and the relatively hard wiring (as it tends to manifest) of my neurodivergent brain. It all hooks on to each other. And of course it would be great if I could just note or notice this as it happens in any given now moment. The things is, I can't. However, there are ways to make it possible.

It is true that I have been rushing between teachings lately in a desperate attempt to make up for all the years that I have "missed out on" the dharma, as the grasping thinks of it. It is also true that this grasping is something that I need to work on, because otherwise I will stay asleep. It is also true that the tech I'm currently learning (beginner exercises from Bön lineage with Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche) works - not as a replacement for vipassana, but as an enabler for vipassana. Part of it is how it keeps the avoidant mind busy with details that don't horrify the ego, just like many theravadan techs also do. Part of it is that it works with intentions and with dedications for the benefit of all sentient beings - hardly unique for this tech, but it adds to the toolbox of how to do it. I think I will cherrypick some of it. Part of it is that the Brahmaviharas are integrated in all sessions, and in a way that uses all senses and that doesn't feel false or sleezy and doesn't trigger old patterns of guilt and shame. For me this feels like genuine compassion and it cultivates The same in me. That cuts through my defenses, in a good way (I figured out that this is also why Malcolm's pointers always seems to work when little else does, and it is probably also how guru yoga works when it works - the genuine compassion together with my trust cuts through my defenses). In addition, it adds a symbolic language that seems to resonate with my unconscious, and movements that have a similar effect to the yoga I'm already used to - all in one package. And the teacher seems decent and approachable and is altruistic enough to offer a lot of his teachings for free. Also, his age isn't super high and he looks healthy so there is actually at least statistically a chance that I may get to see him before he dies, especially since he travels around and comes to Europe. 

So - after nine breathings of purification, dedication, a few minutes of shinei, five Tsa Lung exercises, guru yoga with transmission (not worshipping any living guru, but opening up to one's own Buddha nature by way of a ritualized practice that involves symbolism and Brahmaviharas and all senses, at least for me), and a guided meditation geared towards the three doors of body (stillness), speech (silence) and mind (spaciousness) and towards the trikayas, I was finally able to do vipassana. And I have always done vipassana the way it works for me, varying the levels (concept, phenomenon, vibrational, and awareness) according to what I feel is needed. I don't care whether it is Theravadan or Mahayana, as long as it works. 

Then I could actually both note and notice my reaction chains. I had become vulnerable and somewhat defenseless, but also confident enough to face the challenges. There are a lot of fear responses, but it is managable. It may take some time to break through all of the defenses. That's okay. I feel compassion for the fear responses. They aren't the enemy, just misguided. I know how to work with that. I have done it before. Hopefully it will take less effort to cut through the strongest defenses eventually, so that I can cut down on the rituals. 

I noticed that some of the movement/dance I have been sensing in the stillness, in some synesthetic mix of senses (visually, kinesthetically and auditorily), is actually my heartbeat as experienced at a vibrational level. Cool!

Now, after a dinner break (I ate while writing), I will get back to meditation again. Vipassana, reclining, after all this sitting practice.

Damn energetic pain! I need to sleep! It's close to four o'clock in the morning and I haven't been able to sleep yet. 

Seems to involve some glands or something. Groups of tiny lumps that form a cluster of lump groups. The lumps move around when I put pressure on them with a finger.

And now the nada sound is loud again and it feels like static electricity around my head. My body has that kind of vibrations that I for so many years thought was some kind of pathological tremor. 

It turns out that I seem to have heart chakra pain. How about that? Heartopening yoga exercises seem to be a potential cure. I felt that very clearly at the yoga class this morning. I guess things are going on with that nerve bundle. My unconscious seemed to know, hence the meditation experience of being about to give birth through the heart and the dream about my torso opening up to give birth. The nerves from the heart chakra are connected to many muscles that I tend to have pain in. Energetic practices seem to actually deal with that stuff in a constructive way. The pain is probably connected to the phenomenology of feeling contracted, and to resisting that. Spiritosomatic pain, oh yay. Interesting how symbolic it all is. 

My mind is calmer today. That's a relief. I'm tired as f-uck and almost missed my favorite yoga class this morning after this wired-up night, but I actually feel good. Not in a wow transformation way, but as if in equanimity, or maybe I'm just down in mind and body again. I don't know how it works with these fruitions from former paths, what they do to the cycling. It stopped the mind from racing, anyway, and that was well needed.  For now I'm content with that. 

It's weird how much emotions are tied up in body tissues. Just lying on my back on a bolster, stretching muscles in shoulders, chest and back, gives emotional responses. It opens up fear and nausea and vulnerability, but also relief. Sorry for spamming with so many brief reports. It's a lifeline for me. I'll probably go through similar stuff again as it all seems to be spiralling, and it helps to backtrack and check what was helpful the last time. 

How do people manage to go through with meditation without yoga or something similar? Maybe they don't somatize as much and therefore don't need it. 

Ugh, I feel dizzy now. Maybe detox isn't just a hoax. I don't know what to believe about anything anymore. 

Meh... I was getting close to fourth vipassana jhana yesterday at night, but then I fell asleep. Sure, I was sleep deprived, but it wasn't that urgent.

Hypothesis for investigation: piti is the vibrational quality of samsara. It feels good because it is impermanent. It isn't the bubbles themselves that feel good, but the bursting of them. 

Crossposting to keep track of the impermanence of views:

I have the personal belief that it is liberating to work on different levels and different domains, to both deepen and broaden one's awakening. Not too much at once, of course, as I have a tendency to do, but in the long run. Exactly in which tradition one does it is of lesser importance, I think, as long as one doesn't confuse the levels and/or the domains. For some it is easier to work from one direction in a given domain, for others it is easier to work from the opposite direction. Another way to go may be to go back and forth between levels, hermeneutically. The same goes for domains. 

Regardless of where one starts, I think there is a risk of skipping some levels or some domains because one beliefs that they are less important. 

I think there's a great risk in assuming hierarchies of levels and domains. 

I don't think there are any shortcuts if one aspires to buddhahood. 

This is the product of a racing mind that has only started to see glimpses, so it could of course be total bullshit, but there are parts of this minds that thinks it has a pretty darn good intuition. Obviously those parts have hubris, but hey... even paranoid people occasionally have stalkers. 

Note to (not)self: I see that you are looking for validation now, responses that tell you that you are on the right track. That's just counterproductive. All validation that is needed for insight comes from the practice. Pointers are another thing. Those can come from the "outside". But do I need one right now? No. I already have the pointers I need right now, so let's just work with them instead of chasing validation, okay?

There's that ticking noice from the paranasal cavities, which actually maps quite well to the energy channels. The ticking noice is a clearing of the energy channels. Ah. Okay, that's my validation for this particular post. 

Note to aspiring teachers: Please don't poke too much on what you think need to be poked on, if you notice resistance, because I somatize what I'm working with. Too much samsara stirred up hurts like hell, physically, and even makes me ill. Malcolm, you are totally innocent in this (not that I blame anyone - it's just how it is). Your gentle nudging works perfectly. I'm doing most of the poking myself, because I'm impatient. But sometimes wellmeaning teachers-to-be interfere persistently with my own poking because they don't see why I need to take that detour, and that adds to the already painful process. Gentle pointers, on the other hand, work miracles. 

I think this is rather unusual, but it might be good to know in case any of you come across a student who somatizes spiritual work just like I do. 

Fun fact - science supports my experience of "destilling" sound into light. Apparently there is something called sonoluminesence which is the process whereby a loud sound generates an emission of light. I thought I was clever, but there's a shrimp - the mantis shrimp - that can do the same thing in a way that is visible for others as well. 

I googled "sound turns into light". 

I was reflecting on my hypothesis/conclusion that piti is the vibrational level of samsara, and how that relates to other jhanic factors and other forms of vibrations than the kinesthetic ones, and came to think of the experiment I did with destilling the nada sound into light in shamatha. It totally makes sense. The transition from kinesthetic vibrations to sound as detectable by a human ear leaves grosser (lower frequency) vibrations behind, and the transition from sound to light leaves the lower amplitudes behind. Thus we filter out more and more samsara while climbing the jhanic arch. The jhanas are physics! And new age spiritualism really is on to something in all the talk about raising the frequency, but it turns out that amplitude is involved as well. 

I had dharma-related dreams:

I was flying and knew that it was a meditation-related experience, that it had to do with what I thought of as possible. It happened in a bedroom with someone (not sure who, could be several persons merged into one) sleeping next to me, so on some level I knew that it was a dream, only it wasn't any bedroom I recognize. Then there was clinging to the experience and to conditions that the dream-me thought was enabling the experience.

I was in my bathroom, looking at the reflection of myself in the mirror. My face was looking back at me but it wasn't attached to any physical body. I liked it. Then I realized that if this imagery could appear, then horror images could appear as well. And so they did. It was a bit scary but I kept looking and reminded myself that it was all a mirage anyway. The imagery shifted back and forth many times. It couldn't hurt me. I didn't believe in it. Nor did I believe in the regular image. 

There were also lots of photography during some kind of journey, grasping to all the experiences on the journey, capturing them, using my ipad (the one I use to write my reports here; in the dream the ipad camera was merged with my better camera). During a particularly picturesque part of the terrain, near a waterfall, the ipad was dropped on a radiator, which for some reason was next to the waterfall, and exposed to heat. Radiators are called "element" in Swedish. The ipad partly melted and the memory card may have been damaged. I was devastated about losing all those pictures that had captured the journey and did everything I could to restore it. The dukkha waw obvious. I woke up with the thought that it was all a dream, nothing to hold on to, and how absurd it was that I was clinging so fiercely to something that was merely a dream, a figment of imagination. 

Last night I planned to start a new log and frame it very clearly with the following as the starting post:


Note to readers of this log: 

• Please don't poke too much on what you think needs to be poked on, if you notice resistance, because I somatize what I'm working with. Too much samsara stirred up hurts like hell, physically, and even makes me ill sometimes. Gentle pointers, on the other hand, work miracles. I tend to do most of the poking myself, and I know fairly well how much I can take and when poking is needed.
  
• Sometimes I need to ”squeeze the ball” very stubbornly and hard before I’m ready to let go of something. Please don’t engage me in a tug of war about that, if you notice resistance, for the above reasons. I’m not kidding - my chakras hurt. Painkillers don’t work. It’s a symbolic language for processing stuff that keeps shouting until I have cleared something up, and that has real physical consequences if taken too far. 
  
• Gentle pointers, from genuine compassion, are highly appreciated.
  
• Information is highly appreciated.
  
• Sharing of relevant personal experiences is highly appreciated.
  
• Sharing of tips and tricks and hacks is highly appreciated.
  

As I woke up this morning and was about to report on those dharma-related dreams, I decided to put that new beginning off, as it felt like this could be a very temporary view solidified by the culmination of some ongoing process. Who knows if this even feels true tomorrow? I seem to be almost ridiculously sensitive to symbolic associations right now, which makes me think that unconscious processing is driving this whole thing. I just walked into the shower feeling rigid and solid in my body, and the contact with the flowing water made my body feel fluid. The stiffness was gone, just like that. Then there was magickal thinking: "Water element! Can it be that easy? I have cut down on showers lately, after all. Maybe daily showers will take away the pain?!" Jeeze! Well, placebo works. It works like magick... Laughing is okay. 

Around lunchtime I continued my practice in the Tibetan Bön lineage: nine breathings of purification, stillness, dedication, and guru yoga. I'm really taking a liking to this. My take on the lineage system, apart from it being some sort of relative quality assurance, is that it is the opposite to person cult. That includes the guru yoga whereby one prays to the root lama (which is dead, by the way, and not profiting from any of it). It is symbolic and I can feel kinesthetically that it softens the hooks of me and mine. I felt this particularly with regard to the hooks of how I express myself. Through the guru yoga I receive the blessings of speech from Master Taperitsa. Thus the speech isn't mine. Even the more primitive subconscious processes can understand that simple logic. It is their language. I felt the relief of it. That ticking sound from the energy channels clearing, or from the paranasal cavities opening up, appeared.

I think I'm at risk of being one of those stereotypical practicioners who go on and on about rigpa. I get what it is. I have resisted using that term for quite some time now, but yeah... rigpa is the shit. Gotta admit it. 

Going through old logs I see how the process spirals. I no longer feel stuck, and I can't even find places where I have actually been stuck. The development was there the whole time. It seems like over and over again I discover things anew that I knew all along, but it all falls into place. The overall picture becomes clearer. Obscurations dissipate. 

I can see now that since what may or may not have been second path moment, I have gone through a similar development as I did between SE and that moment. Relishing in the stronger concentration while I could. Despairing about loss of both concentration and clarity. Finding ways to get around that, involving discipline, purification, and a softer touch from another angle, and then combining all resources to power up the investigation. I have been on a track the whole time without having much of a clue about what I was doing. 

Hey, I can visualize. Who would have thought that? It isn't even hard. I'm making it simple. Taperitsa is basically made of light, so he can be blurry, that's allright, especially since he is in a rainbow circle. I mean, rainbows appear when sun shines through mist, and he is in the midst of all that. Whatever parts are hard to imagine can just be shrouded in mist. Perfect! That's a reason to appreciate Taperitsa right there. And much of the stuff that happens in the guru yoga, as well as in the nine breathings of purification, are things that I already felt kinesthetically. Now suddenly I have symbolic meaning to connect to them, and that helps in getting all subconscious processes on board. There were a few aha moments there. One reason that I felt the pain wash away with the shower today may have been that the guru yoga involves a sequence of a purifying shower. 

The construct of how to work with the breath with regard to energy in the nine breathings of purification suits me much better than most takes on it that I have heard before. At yoga classes we are often told to imagine breathing in energy to the whole body at the inbreath, but I have always felt that the energy reaches its intended destination at the outbreath. In this exercise the outbreath in the last three breathings (through both nostrils) centers the energy in the central channel and brings it to the crown chakra and then out through it. That's more like it. That's what I'm feeling. And I can both smell and taste the greed, desire and attachment as I breath it out in the second round when I breathe in from the right nostril and out through the left nostril, clearing the left energy channel. It is very tangible for me. 

Concentration has increased. I lay down to practice, because that makes it easier to just drop everything. Thoughts dropped themselves. After dropping down from second jhana (some mix betwen vipassana jhana and shamatha jhana?), there was a period of dullness that may have been related to some lingering idea that clarity has to do with the tug of the senses which prevented awareness from manifesting as clear as it is. Somehow that delusion was dropped (well, temporarily, I suspect). Clarity arose, not the agitated kind, but the still kind. There was some movement back and forth between third vipassana jhana and third shamatha jhana. I realized that I recognize that movement but I haven't understood it for what it is before. There was sort of a dance in slow motion when the tearing movements of third vipassana jhana came to stillness. Then it didn't seem like those two versions of third jhana are so different anymore. It was just that the vibrations had transformed from kinesthetical to loud nada sound and a relative brightness (still weak) at such a high frequency that they were more energy than form, or something like that. I could feel that my attachment to the kinesthetic massage was loosening. However, the two versions were both heavy and dense and still not fully clear. I noticed a craving for fourth jhana - the vipassana version or the shamatha version - to arise. I wanted chrystal clear visuals or pure brightness. I noticed how that was keeping me from fully exploring the hooks of third jhana. That's something to work on. After spending quite some time with this, neck pain gradually cut its way through the dissipating jhana. It dawned on me that it can actually be a good thing to get up and let the body move around. Sometimes pain isn't more complicated than that. The unconscious has stopped screaming and my body seems to function more normally. 

Hypothesis: I can't get into jhanas with ADHD medication. It really seems like it, as I tend to get into jhanas at night when the medicine is out of the system. That says something interesting about concentration. 

That wider vision is back again. It is even wider than 180 degrees. That is the fourth screen at play (dream vision). Time to go for fruitions. I knew it was coming up.

I came to think of something with regard to attention and awareness. As a child and growing up, I knew how to get around my attention deficit (I had no diagnosis at the time). I knew that if I tried to keep count of something, I would loose it. Awareness kept track, though. I used that together with my Tourette-related symmetry obsession and my ability to see meta-levels - and vedana. I had a system for counting retrospectively. It was based on metalevels of fours. 4 felt good. It was symmetric. 16 felt good too, because it was four fours. 64 felt good because it was four sixteens. Awareness kept track of that, and it kept track of what was needed to get that pleasant vedana again. This came in very handy when I was playing the flute in an orchestra. We were two people playing the flute and we often had long pauses. Those pauses were often based on fours as well, and even on fours of fours. The older man that played second flute used to whisper amazingly funny stories during our pauses. I could listen to them with my attention while awareness kept track on where we were. 

Experiment: I will try microdosing my ADHD medication, just enough to make it easier to remember not to engage with irrelevant stuff but not enough to boost attention to manifest as a doer. 

I missed the window due to grasping. Can't say I'm surprised. 

Back to unclenching. Had new experiences of that. Hard to explain. I was stretching the fascia around the heart chakra while meditating in a reclining position. It hurt, but as I relaxed into it, something burst into vibrations in a new way. That happened a few times. Maybe my synesthetic processing was just triggered by thinking about that shrimp earlier, the kind that can turn vibrations into sound that turns into light. The best way I can describe it is that it was like chains of bubbles bursting in water, creating light. Like I was under water and the bubbles were moving upwards before bursting.

Gosh, this must sound like jumbo mumbo jumbo. 

Visuals patterns are accessible, not the chrystal clear kind. 

It is possible that I'm back in dissolution again. Hard to tell, as I don't experience it as the brain fog I was used to anymore. The tells are changing. I think I may be in the phase of the path when I'm cycling the darknight over and over again in a spiralling way, with more and more concentration. 

There's that rhythmical ticking from the paranasal cavities again.