I lay down to just be for about an hour, letting sensations be sensations and mind movements be mind movements without identifying more with one or the other. There were some poppings, some of which seemed to entail electric surges like when electronic devises are turned on. The nada sound is really loud now, almost like the existence is buzzing.  

So I'm experimenting with asking the question "How can there be freedom right now?", and it does something. Sensory manifestations float around and come to life. Traffic sounds, birds chirping, children shouting, babies crying etc come together as a symphony with a vibrational quality reminding somewhat of a gong bath, and there's a lightness to it. 

I think I need to stay out of things that trigger me for a while, not to bypass them but for the sake of timing. This is not the time for setting off defences. 

If I'm getting this all wrong, or if you have any gentle pointers that you think might help, I'm willing to listen. I may not be able to explain myself very much right now as words are failing me. I feel insecure and question everything in some moments and feel like everything is exactly as it is supposed to be in other moments, and I don't think any of those versions are correct. 

I had another one of those space collapses today, that is, deconstructing depth vision. I was lying on the yoga mat before the class started and the rectangular pattern in the ceiling stood out, like it was a miniature ceiling hovering only 20 cm above me. After the class I did it intentionally. 

Today I have the goal of identifying and not giving into the airy avoidance mechanisms of "I'll just do this little thingie first". A chat with a wise friend made me remember the strategies that I have that actually work and inspired new ones. I'm going to beat this writer's block. 

When I lay down to sleep last night there were lots of white light sparkles that converged at the centre of the visual field to form a sphere. I asked to remember dreams, which I did. I asked for a lucid dream, which did not happen. 

Writing this was actually one of those little thingies to do first, so it starts from now on. That means that I'm NOT allowed to read new posts on this forum right now, because it's time to get to work. I'll be reading scientific papers in my hammock, nothing to have performance anxiety about really. Getting rid of that totally irrational performance anxiety was one of the effects of SE that unfortunately didn't last. 

I need to ask: Does the black parts of the iconic image of this podcast stand out in 3D or is my vision going heywire again?
https://anchor.fm/daniel-hill6/episodes/An-Interview-with-Daniel-Ingram-Part-One-ebvrtn/a-a1penf0

I'm on lunchbreak now, cooking food, so I'm allowed to listen to podcasts and write here. I'm working on my smage* skills, integrating dharma talks and mantra chanting with kitchen chores in order to make life as a householder practicioner function. I need to use my time effectively so that I have time both to practice and to make the world a better place (which ideally is what I do with my research). Also, it makes the kitchen chores not only bearable but even fun.

*) concept reluctantly coined by Daniel in "this fine audio recording" from the Bryngarth II fire kasina retreat. 

I just found out that I'll lose my employment at the University as a researcher from July 1st. My boss and colleagues want to keep me there and there is financing available and I have a book to write but the law won't allow for any more temporary employments and my department can't take the risk of offering me an employment with indefinite duration. I also got a call from the social services today because of my child's situation. We have done everything we can as parents to support our kid as much as is humanly possible in a situation where she has to wait several years for the care she needs, and because of that, they are now worried and are obliged by the law to check up on us. Thankfully the woman who called has children in a similar situation and she seemed nice, so maybe this won't have to be a bad thing.

At least I did write today. Life kind of sucks a bit but there is a sense of spaciousness and some jhanic factors.

I'm still going to write that book somehow. I don't know how, but I'll find a way. 

I just did a two hour session of fire kasina. I had set the alarm for half an hour but it just felt so good. There's a new taste to it that hasn't been there before, a lightness and a richness of subtle nuances. I had the Avalokiteshvara heart dhurini mantra playing in my inner hearing the whole time. It's a bit long for a concentration mantra, I think, but I didn't do it on purpose. It's just there, living its own life. All senses were involved. The dot was detailed and bright (except for when it was black) and vivid and longlasting. It changed colors and had halos in different colors. The shape varied somewhat. Sometimes there was 3D movement within the dot. Sometimes there was sort of an electric shimmer outside the dot and its layers of still halos. The shimmer had tiny dots of different colors arising and passing away in rapid succession and deminded of carbon dioxide in a fluid, sort of. There were phases when the happy chemicals just flooded. It felt like I was floating and I almost burst into laughter. There were also phases of deep calm and some sort of melancholy that had a beauty to it. Grief maybe. 

Something seems to have loosened up in my practice. Maybe the forced letting go of my dream job and lots of stuff that came with it at least does some good. The world seems more vibrational. 

I did a simple routine of basic Bön lineage practice: nine breathings of purification, guru yoga with chanting, visualizations and seed syllables (Taphiritsa), and inner refuge practice (the three doors, not the fruition doors but the other ones). Space opened up and there was brightness and lightness and a vibrational quality to the existence (words are failing me here). I dedicated that part of the practice. Then I chanted the SA LE Ö mantra. My chanting is full of overtones. That just happens automatically. At least that's how it sounds for me. I don't know how much is hearable for others. I dedicated the chanting. Then I lay down to do Michael Taft's lates SF Dharma Collective guided meditation, the Vimilakirti experience 3B. As long as I could still hear the content of what he was saying, my experience followed his instructions. After that I have no idea what he was talking about. It was just all light and soundwaves and vibrations floating around and morphing, and it was amazing. I hope I didn't miss something essential. 

Then I went to pick up the large Avalokiteshvara art print that I've had put into a frame (beautiful!). The visual field is at extreme wide angle again.

The nada sound is loud and I feel sort of lightheaded and yet grounded. I can see the vibrational quality of the visual field. There seem to be tingling nerve ends at my scalp. It feels pleasant, like energetic misty vapor seeping out in an intricate dance, but when I touch those many points, they are hot and tender. One of my partners is coming over tonight for the first time for quite some time now, but I kind of feel like meditating the rest of the day instead, and that doesn't seem fair to him.

1 h fire kasina

The dot is still vivid, bright, detailed and longlasting. The field around it had tiny points in different colors arosing and passing away very rapidly. The black disc appeared, with the dot and its halo/s/ blinking through it. There were color swirls, sometimes rapidly spiralling around a pitch black point. When the dot appeared again, it was less sharp in its contours and also less flat. The background stood out more. Tentacles came out from the dot when it was golden/yellow. They moved around a bit.  

There were phases when looking at the flame had gaps in the focus, blinked out, which made the image sort of choppy. There was a strain to it and a heavy feeling in the head. I realized that I was trapped trying to be a doer, using attention rather than trusting the vision to do its own thing. I eased back into a lighter approach. The strain went away, and so did the choppiness. The flame took on a somewhat different quality, an obviousness or self-evident-ness. I think this was when the dot turned into more 3D. It also made the experience more pleasant with more subtle nuances to it.

What in this is the murk, really? The color swirls? They don't seem that murky to me. More psychedelic. There were occasional constellations flashing by that might have been small sets of sharp teeth or something, or maybe some primitive organism. At one point I thought I saw a gently smiling woman's face, like a dakini image, but it disappeared as quickly as it arose. There were like strands of star-pearls beaded on strings for a while, shining so brightly that they looked like rifts in the darkness. 

Yesterday I went to sleep far too late after pretty intense social interaction, and jeeze, there were bright lights moving around everywhere. It seems like all the sensory impressions, including the thoughts and feelings, autoliberated and transformed into light. The restless whisps of bright light conjoined in the center and formed a sphere-shaped cluster that gradually came into stillness.

This partner is very intense. We can be very much in synch but I can't maintain it for long. Since I started my systematic meditation practice, my need for stillness has increased drastically. That's how I regenerate. There have been times when I have found it draining to get drawn into this vortex of thoughts and feelings and associations of his, perhaps especially since I have historically had sort of a disconnect between talking and experiencing (textbased communication has given me the space to connect with the communication more energetically and kinesthetically). Luckily I seem to have found a way to bridge that disconnect. I have heard Jeff Warren describe how Shinzen Young has explained to him about his favorite meditation: tuning into the vibrational of a person during social interaction and sort of get a massage from it. I found myself doing that yesterday. I'm sure it was nothing compared to Shinzen's experience, but for me it was revolutionary - and yet it felt very familiar. I recognize that I have managed to get into that mode before under special circumstances. Now I could just tune into it. It made the interaction so much less draining! (Just to clarify: he is totally amazing, but I am very introverted.)

Still I found myself wired-up this morning. It was great to have a yoga class to get more in tune with my body. 

I'm squeezing in this time to reflect on my way home from the yoga class. I won't be able to read much on the forum this weekend. This partner of mine gets drained by every shift in focus. Focus shifts are generally very draining for me too, but shifting into stillness is the opposite for me. For him it is just as draining as any other shift. There isn't much he can do about that, as it is due to brain damage (he is very open about this on a variety of online forums so this is not sensitive information). I'm taking the time for yoga and meditation and some other stuff that I must do. Cutting up our time together more than that gets abusive for him. 

Waves of Kundalini. I was just about to take my medicines and they were all over me.

50 minutes of fire kasina. The dot was still readily there but wasn't entirely in focus and was flickering in and out of existence from start. The black disc appeared fairly soon, and the murk was murky. 

I woke up all dissolutiony and brain foggy. The fog soon not so much dispersed as revealed itself not to be fog. It really is the falling away of phenomena before I had a chance to see them arise. There were flickerings, waves and vortexes where there "should" be bathroom walls and confusion where there "should" be thoughts and feelings. Confusion is just the flickerings, waves and vortexes of mental sensations. 

I took a yoga class and made sure to be careful with my shoulders, because there is an excess of histamines in my body right now. I have finally found how to use whatever the muscles are called that go from the triceps down to the hips, on the outside of the core, on the back side.That's a whole new stability. Lately I'm also finding that there is always much more relaxation available in the body than the mind tends to believe. That frees up resources. It's a very tangible liberation, like "Do I really have to put that much strain in my breath right now? Uhm... actually no! Do I really have to tense my entire body when I really slowly sink down into shavasana from sitting upright? No, I really don't." I'm learning precision and finding that it's all insight.

I think that if I were to do one of those meditative rants that Spatial mentions in a recent thread, it would be about the practicioners that think of themselves as doing socratic teaching in questioning other practicioners in areas where questioning isn't wanted and totally out of the blue. I'm talking about the kind that jumps onto you from behind and takes a bite and then just won't let go. They think that they are doing delivery work, but in reality they are shoving their own baby down someone else's throat, and when you choke on it, they take credit for it. When you spit it out, they either get butthurt or generously let you know that they are above taking offense when pigs like you don't appreciate their pearls. They think that they are doing the right thing in attacking everything that you hold dear, but they fail to see how fiercely they are clinging to their own identity or non-identity as a socratic nobody who is beyond mundane matters such as identity work, or socializing for that matter. 

I spent quite some time in the afternoon (a couple of hours?) just letting the mind be aware of itself. It did a lot of vaporizing. Now I did 30 minutes of fire kasina. It didn't do anything special. The dot became more alive towards the end of the session. More time would have been great. I'll make up for it.

Fire kasina, didn't time the session. The dot was longlasting, vivid and detailed again, with the area around it full of colored dots arising and passing away in rapid succession. There was movement inside the dot, similar to the movements of fire. The dot often had yellow as its predominant color. Before it eventually turned black, it had a black halo with petals on it. 

After the sit, I lay down in the dark. The dot continued to morph around a bit, more in color than in shape. Then it was dark. Stars lit up. They danced around a bit. I felt a jhanic pull and the stars started to form into patterns. It didn't quite get there. I was at the threshold to fourth jhana but didn't get in. I could feel the taste of it but was too exhausted to keep it up, and maybe too emotional to get into full equanimity.

I'm exploring the vibrational level and the wave level of feelings. It's a whole new world opening up. 

Need to sleep. Please remind me to reply to Steph if I forget!

I think I have had my first depersonalization experience now, or rather, I think this was the first time I recognized it as such. After a rather weird night with basically no sleep and some freaking strong piti (not the pain kind) and some vaporizing into thin air, and a really tough beginning of the day, I was having a zoom job seminar and realized that it didn't feel like me participating. I saw my face in zoom and it wasn't mine. Experiences didn't feel like mine. I didn't even look like this mammal usually does. No ADHD or ticcing visible even for a trained eye. I was perfectly still and looked so relaxed, and the eye balls felt like they were pressed back into their sockets, and my eyes looked like they so often do on meditation teachers. Empty. They weren't trying to catch up and process everything all the time. I investigated the sensory level of the experience and recognized it as spaciousness. It was basically the same experience I've been having for some time now. I just never recognized it as depersonalization before, but more like a widening. A slight fear reaction was there, with rapid heartbeating. I have had that before without understanding why. I couldn't see why it would be threatening to have a widening of the experience. Now I think I know why: the widening is a shift in focus not only with regard to an assumed object. It goes deeper than that. The widening is the experiences knowing themselves, which I already knew, AND it means that the I that processes experiences, or thinks that it does, is bypassad as irrelevant. I somehow didn't quite see that bypassing before. 

Okay, so that's what it is? Is it? Then what's all the fuzz about? It felt somewhat creepy for a little while, but it was mainly a relief. There has been so much excess processing of stuff over here that I welcome the change. It is simpler and much less draining, and yet so much more nuanced. It's like someone finally opened the good bottle of wine, from a bottle that just keeps refilling because there are no boundaries between inside and outside the bottle, and the more you drink from it, the less intoxication and hangover you get (yeah, I overdid that analogy and mixed it so it doesn't quite make sense, but maybe you get the picture anyway). 

I can imagine that it might take some time getting used to this in all kinds of situations. I still don't quite understand how investigation is possible in the midst of this. Maybe that is like a back and forth movement between assumed perspectives, a comparing of references that takes place as part of the universe unfolding. 

I had experiences of this in the review after stream entry. I think I called it feeling unsolid, like I was vaporizing. Now it was clear that the awareness of sensate experiences tangibly "moved out" from the sense organs and the brain, with the exception of those experiences that actually belong to those parts. I have had experiences of that since before stream entry, but it always felt like they were still attached to the sense organs, with or rubber band or something, and were drawn back to it. Now it's rubber band free. There never was a rubber band. There was always just the inferior echo. 

This feels somewhat anticlimactic. 

Before I went to bed last night I did a short fire kasina sit. I was so tired that I could barely keep my eyes open, but I remember that the dot had long thin moving tentacles at some point.

I woke up with brain fog but as I let the fog be aware of itself, it was soon clear that it wasn't fog. It was just the enfolding of experience that my exhausted brain couldn't catch up with, and it didn't have to.

There is rapid cycling off cushion. I just came home from an Ashtanga yoga class. In the beginning of the class, while seated in a position where thumb and index finger were touching on each hand, the two fingers touching exercise did itself. Arisings and passings were equally clear. Body control was excellent. Then somewhere down the line, dissolution took over and I had to adjust and be more careful. That passed, and some energy returned (fear), and then there was another dip in energy (misery). There was a brief phase of edginess of the body (disgust), but there was space, and the body was self-aware and relaxed into stillness, and the mind was self-aware and relaxed into open spaciousness. Walking home, I made plans for a long sit (desire for deliverance). Tourette ticking impulses then indicated reobservation. However, they didn't feel like they were mine. They had nothing to do with anything else. Spaciousness opened up. The nada sound is loud (like many crickets chirping on a summer evening). I think I may be in low equanimity now, or on the threshold between reobservation and equanimity. Some irritation remains among the ticcing impulses. Here come the many subtle sweet nuances of silence. Irritation gone. Yeah, this is equanimity allright. I think I'll just savor the taste for a while.

I aced nonreactivity and skillful means in two critical situations today.

First of all, I forgot to mention earlier that when I was out in the nature yesterday and the day before yesterday, I noticed that there was a huge widening of the awareness. I guess that could be referred to as centerlessness. It's basically the same experience that I have had out in the nature many times before, though. I have always thought of it as the woods communicating with me. It's normal for me to feel the ground not just under my feet but all around me as well, and to feel like waves in the air of information. A lot of it is smell, but not all of it. It's like there are tentacles and networks all over the place.

Last night I experimented with sort of a tandem-version of astral projection together with someone close to me. I haven't had much experiences like that before. I have been outside my body but the only time that lasted for more than a moment it was when my dad came to say goodbye after killing himself. I have just assumed that I don't have the drive and imagination required for that kind of exploration. The opportunity came up to get some guidance in getting started with it. In the very beginning there was a minor bump in the road as we discovered that I process things differently than what he was used to. I couldn't just leave my body behind that fast, and I felt that there was a barrier in my lack of visual imagination. My guide was very sensitive to my experiences, though. He asked some questions about it and took it from there. I could still feel my body but it was floating, so I was instructed to think of that as my astral body and go with the sensory experiences. I had said that I wanted to go into space but that upward movement just didn't happen. After some alternative suggestions, we settled for the ocean instead. I still couldn't visualize, but we focused on the tactile and kinesthetical sensations of movement in the water and the coolening of the water as we sank deeper. We sank deep deep into stillness and just remained there for a while. None of us had any drive to do anything. It felt safe there in the deep stillness.

Then there was a sense of movement. I think it was some synesthetic mix between tactile and visual imagery. I was instructed to just go with that, and from here I took the lead. I was swirling around there in the depth, spiraling, being swept by undercurrents, looping around... Then there was a loud outer sound that went all vibrational and sort of projected me upwards, and suddenly I was in space. Before that, I had been feeling the water around me, soft and smooth and cohesive, and the pressure from it. Now the pressure was gone and that cohesiveness was gone. Instead it was spacious and zero gravity. Then there was air, enabling me to move. I was moving fast. As I slowed down, there was a shift with gravity coming back and a feeling of increased density around me. Then I found that I was in a lake or sea, rising up to the surface. I could see the surface approaching and then the skye above me. When I moved my gaze I could see water around me and a beach and trees and a lawn. I don't remember if there were people on the beach. 

From here my memory is a bit vague. Maybe I sank down into the water again. Yeah, I think that was it. And I was drawn out by undercurrents, and then I was moving with the waves until I felt the sea bed. The tide waves were withdrawing, leaving me behind in the fluted sand, water splashing over me for a while until it was ebb. I lay there in the firm sand, my body heavy. Then after a while, I started to sink down in the sand. Soon I was covered by sand. I still felt completely safe. I just surrendered to sinking, descending. Then the firmness was gone. I was empty space. I asked my guide where he was. He replied "I'm here". Then there was that sense of being drawn into being again. It was overwhelming, in a pleasant way. I had to breathe heavily, almost like a newborn gasping for air.The intensity increased. Stars were exploding all around me for quite some time, and I was exploding with them. It was absolute euphoria. I don't know what happy chemicals were involved, but I was high as a kite. 

After a while the intensity calmed down, and I was completely serene, albeit still high. There were lights swirling around me. I was in the ocean again, appraching land. I stood on the seabed, watching the land. It was barren, with low conifer plants and little more. I could feel my body both there and in my bed. I think I got lost in some fantasy or dream, because when I suddenly heard the voice of my guide I was startled. 

In retrospect I realized that I had made a tour through all the elements.

I was still flooded with happy chemicals of different sorts, so I barely slept. When I closed my eyes, brights lights were swirling around and my body felt light. I was still high as a kite when I woke up in the morning, throughout breakfast and walking to my yoga class, and in the beginning of the yoga class. The asanas were challenging and my body was tired so during the practice that I didn't feel high anymore. However, at the end of the class, in shavasana, I was floating among multicolored swirls. Walking from the class, I suddenly felt first really exhausted and then shaky. I thought I might end up in a fetal position due to withdrawal symptoms because my body had depleted its supply of happy chemicals (been there before). I decided to sit down in a park under a tree to write up this report and get grounded, and so I did. Now I feel almost normal, but I'm starving. I also think I may need to digest my experiences in silence for a while. It was all good (more than good, obviously), but I may need to integrate it.

Tonight I'm going into an online Dzogchen retreat (zoom) with Lama Lena. 

I did about 45-60 minutes of shiné without an object to regenerate and wait for everything to stop swirling. I went into a vibrational state with little distinction. Now it feels like I surfaced from that too early. The nada sound is freakishly loud and my body is full of champagne bubbles.