It's time to start a new log again, because the last one was getting ridiculously long, again. This new log might be a boring read, because I seem to have entered a territory where the best results come from practices that don't investigate that much but rather just let awareness be aware of itself without putting it into words or even bothering to make distinctions. I seem to have a hard time trusting that, and yet, when I do it anyway, that's when space either opens up or collapses or both, so it seems to be what I need to do right now. 

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.  

Okay, so apparently it is quite possible to just lay attachment to subjectivity aside for some time when I don't have to interact. I know that it has also been possible in the midst of interaction. I love it when it happens. So maybe I should just trust it to be there. It can't hurt, I guess. Maybe I should just give my self a vacation now and then and allow me not to pop up in the foreground. I can do that. It's ethnography. That's what I do for a living. Less phenomenology, more ethnography. I actually love ethnography because it allows me to forget about myself while still having a full experience. That's a damn good reminder that might just help with my writer's block too. The book isn't about me. It's ethnography. I'm telling other people's stories, not mine. So why not just let those stories tell themselves. Yeah, why not? 

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. 

A new day, a new thread. Beautiful. Thank you again and still and always for your sharing here.

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. 

You're doing it just right, love.

Thank you! (We seriously do need a heart emoji or at least a namaste emoji here, if hearts are considered too distracting or something.)

---

In my reclining practice earlier today, something was going on with my vision. I use a blindfold, so I know that any lights that appear are mind-made, not emmanating from a physical light source. In the beginning of the session, there was some centered brightness, nothing out of the ordinary, very basic stuff. Then a very bright point popped into the screen from my right side, seemingly with an intention, and it sort of made a jump, and then settled and either faded or mixed with the ordinary brightness. Right after that, one of my cats jumped up on my chest from the right. I cuddled him for a moment and then returned to spaciousness, and he settled down and seemed to join me in meditation. He was leaning his head to the left side of my chest and stretching his front paws to that side to maintain balance while relaxing. A red shimmer appeared at the left side of my screen. It grew stronger and sort of stabilized. It had movements to it but the strength of it and its location and size (it was a field that didn't seem to have its borders on the left side within my screen but slightly outside it, and it took up maybe a fifth of my screen, which is a wide screen that curves outward) remained relatively intact for a long time. I estimate it to be close to an hour. It was glowing steadily and brightly and it was undeniably red with some pink features. Towards the end of the session, my cat moved a bit and placed himself in a more centered way on my chest. That made the red field move the same way. Afterwards, when my cat was no longer on my chest, the red field was gone. 

well, you call it a red glow, i call it a cat, i guess. or was it the other way around, or both, or yes? I get us confused sometimes.

Maybe it was my idea of that cat. Some cats are really good at "mindmelding". They seem to know how to let information get all merged and interactive. I think that first bright spark was his intention of jumping onto my chest as manifested in my mind when information interacted. Whether it was some synesthetic processing of very subtle hearing or of kinesthetic sensing of movements in the air or something else, I'll never know. That cat sometimes wakes me up in the middle of the night by being about to climb the fence and jump onto the window to signal that he wants to be let inside. I seem to wake up from his intention before he acts on it. 

And all this is before we even mention Shrodinger and that cat of his.

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. 

Beating writer's block is like stream entry, in that the only way to do it properly is to achieve and then maintain a decent spell of stabilized equanimity. You can't muscle through it, WB is a dukha nana par excellence. So i would advise that you treat writing as you would sitting meditation: set aside a time interval or intervals, very strict and formal, and just BE THERE during that appointment-with-writing time, complete and silent, waiting for what I think of as the "voice" to move or sound. You'll have your own very linda way of recognizing that impetus, and i'm pretty sure i don't have to belabor that, beyond saying that IT COMES AS A GIFT from being at peace, first, with silence. Leonard Cohen has a prayer of a song called, "If it Be Your Wiill," which goes in part:

If it be Your will, that i song no more,
that my voice be still, as it was before,
I will sing no more, i shall abide until
i am spoken for
if it be Your will.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR1m98xnl5c

(sweet version, duet with Jennifer Warnes)

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. 

Thankyou Tim! Yes, I definitely see the similarities and I know that what you are suggesting works, as this isn't the first time I have to cut through this. Unlike stream entry, I find that I need to do it over and over again. I deeply appreciate your input. You and others on this forum are what inspires me to get through this. I have had enormously helpful chats with spatial, and Shargrol's advice to Mike yesterday (?) as well as your determination to gradually lock in a baseline for your practice are helpful.

No, the black arc is a definite drop off into the void for me too, pure three D, possibly even without going in with your suggestion biasing my take on it.

will do kitchen chores cheerfully for explanation, as i am only into the intro so far of this fine audio recording  from the Bryngarth II fire kasina retreat. 

Oh, I see it the other way around, as standing out. I can see that it's typically the kind of illusion that can be perceived both ways, so the 3D effect is intentional. It's just that all sorts of things have had similar effects for me lately, so that's why I was wondering. 

Great that my vagueness inspired to some dharma listening. 

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'm so sorry!

You will find a way !

Yup.

Thanks, all of you!

My conditioning kind of sucks, because this will require a lot of executive functioning that I don't really have: organizing, prioritizing, decisionmaking, structuring, making contacts, planning, administration, remembering important things that need to be taken care of, actually taking care of those things in time... and where the hell shall I put all those books and papers and stuff?! It is urgent to find a legal way to maintain access to my research data. At the same time I will have to search for a new job, one that won't make me want to die. This is going to be overwhelming and there isn't much I can do about that.

But it is a beautiful warm spring day today, with cherry blossoms, violets and wood anemones etc in full bloom, and there is that golden evening light that I love, and nobody can take that away from me, because it is just there where it is. 

I'm really sorry to hear about this Linda. I hope you can find something else soon.

Really sorry to hear this.    You will definitely find a way to achieve your goals.

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. 

I love the word "poignancy," that sweetest of heartaches. And grief, accepted, has that quality.

Thankyou, Malcolm and Aggie! 

The feeling I have right now is that I'm done with the career thing. I want calm in my life. I'm done with the constant worry about fundings and having to compare myself with others and be top notch. I want a job that does minimal harm and that somehow makes the world a better place and that doesn't involve constant performance anxiety. If the only job I can find that lives up to that is at some second hand shop like most autistic people in this town, then I can probably live with that. That's not plan A, though. I think I could contribute more than that. If only someone would be willing to employ me for it, I could lead support groups or something. 

Maybe that's the best translation for the Swedish word "vemod" that came to my mind, a word that I love. Thankyou!

Deleted double post (there’s a bug in the code that messes with the time stamp if a post is deleted so I edit instead).

för all del!

(de nada.)

(edit) i just went to slip in a simple response to a "thank you," and you had time to (not)-delete a double post and re-write it as an edit, with your eye on the time stamp integrity! You terrify me, you super-real creature of wonder and joy.

I think you mean "Det var så lite så". 

Too bad I can't make a living on that.   You really have a talent for compliments. 

What i really meant was, "de nada," which has a particular tone, with a touch of "Of course! Don't mention it." I was also leaning toward ingen orsak. "

Det var så lite så," is simple polite standard response, right? I wanted the casual affectionate no-big-deal, anything-for-a-friend note.

That's what I would say in that case. That's colloquial Swedish.

Det var så lite så?

Yes. With a warm smile. That says it all. 

I am trying to post a solution here for this emoji problem, but I am getting an error saying "Message Boards is temporarily unavailable."!

Sorry for spamming, I am writing this to see if it's because of emojis in that post that I get this error or not.

Edit:
Below was the solution, but when emojis are included in the post, it raises the above error, and it seems that is not working.

When you right click here on the editor, sometimes it opens browser' paste popup, and sometimes DhO' paste popup (I don't know its logic). If it's browser' popup, it may have a Emoji & Symbols menu item. If it didn't have, just click DhO popup' paste item, and in the next dialog, right click, and there you'll get browser' popup. For me, Chrome on Mac, browser' popup has this Emoji & Symbol item, that if you click it, it opens another dialog containing many more emoji and symbols and you can choose or type the word you want, like thanks or love, and select from results. But I don't know all browsers and in all platforms have that option or not.


And sorry about your job. You'll be fine.

This is what my emoji Master Papa Che would call, a very good practice log entry, in noting emoji practice technique.

Yeah!

It didn't work. Liferay' editor doesn't recognize symbols it seems, and it only recognize text, and for its own emojis, it has textual representation for each one. Legacy system problems! Sorry Linda, again.

Ask Chris Marti about this tech stuff, it's way beyond my pay grade.

It is very polite of you, gracious and sensitive to apologize to Linda for this besmirchment of her practice log. She is perfectly capable, as i well know, of telling both of us to take it to another bar. So i will hide behind you, dear Siavash, for the time being, as you are so much nicer. That woman scares the shit out of me, to tell you the truth.

Ska vi så prata på Svenska her? Hur seger man dependent origination så? I dem åtta år i Sverige har inte rigtigt lert mig at skriver gott. Men Lagom er et bra ord i sammanheng med Dharma = middle way. I like it!  

Yes, Linda is capable of course!
But don't worry, we will end this emoji thing here, and Linda will be kind and won't say anything this time

Oh, I tried that sollution ages ago.  I'm not a programmer, but I'm meddling. 

Linda, about messing up your thread here and lowering the general DhO vibe with a bunch of crap, i just want to . . .

tell you it was Siavash, it was all Siavash!! He made me do it!!

(sorry, Siavash, this isn't about friendship anymore, this is just survival. Do you truly understand the extent of the powers this person "Linda" has available to her, should she care to use them for the purposes of, say, lightning strikes or something? Run for cover, man, it's everyone for themself at this point.)

I don't have a clue. I'm doing all my dharma reading in English. Yeah, "lagom" is a great word that is surprisingly hard to come across in other languages. 

I was just using the word jinx in a different conversation with a friend on messenger and was reminded of the fact that I actually believed for a while that I was a jinx. At the time it really seemed like I was a magnet for chaos. As soon as I felt happy for a little while, someone around me died or something. It was total chaos wherever I went, like a portable chaos field. It sounds like a really weird thing to believe, but I’m still immensely happy that it’s not like that anymore and that it probably wasn’t me. I was scared of me. At that time I adopted the alias Tintomara from a book by C.J.L. Almqvist. Tintomara was a non-binary being who was always at the centre of others' tragedy, and although innocent, was eventually sentenced to death for it. 

Being harmless is quite the relief. 

"beroende ursprung" is the phrase you're looking for here, i think, Papa Che.

That's a good one, "harmless." You stick to that story and i'll have your back all the way. I might occasionally giggle when you say it, but am becoming the Master of My Face, and soon will never even crack a smile at the Cosmic Joke itself.

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.

That sounds awfully stilted, to be honest, but then again, translations often do. I don’t have any better suggestion.

Hey there, when I warned you that my energies might be risky business after all, you didn’t believe it.

Waiter, I'll have what non-binary over there is having, please, thank you.


I'm sure he/she understands that if s/he can't stand the Linda heat, s/he should stay out of the Polly Ester kitchen.

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. 

text-based communication has always been the living thread from my impossibly-diferent-seeming inner to trying to find a language in the outer that is true to both.



"Luckily. . ."

Jesus Fucking Christ, Linda.

I also said it was revolutionary, didn't I? 

It's like planting a vineyard, working your ass off for five or ten years to get all the grape plants trained and rooted and supported, going through another five years of harvests and tinkering with the wine-making process, and then saying, "Luckily, this glass of wine tasted really good."

It doesn't feel like my doing, though. With regard to these experiences, there is no subjective agency. 

just like you, to get right to the pointless point. I bow at your lotus feet.

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

I hope you're riding them better than i'm handling mine. I'm walking with a fucking stick at the moment. Mama Shakti wants my back alignment different, and She gonna get it done, too.

Sorry to hear. Yes, I lay down and surrendered to it, rode some delicate waves (fierce at first, then gradually more subtle), and then it tipped over into dissolution with lucid dreamless light sleep (basically my body slept and I listened to it snoring).

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. 

Good thing you passed on doing a meditative rant!! But if you ever do one, use this.

Yeah, it's a non-rant about non-persons. 

well, that non-person pit bull tore a big chunk out of nobody's ass.

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.

Hi Linda, I'm glad to hear that something has loosened up in your practice. How is the nada sound? I have had tinnitus since I was 20. It used to bother me terribly but mostly I can ignore it now. However I'm wondering if it might have been premature awakening phenomenon. Mine is like a constant steam train hiss combined with high pitched whistle.

I don't know of there is a difference between nada sound and tinnitus apart from the approach to it. For me the sound varies depending on how I listen to it. It can whirl like the wind or sound like crickets. It can sound like white noise if I zoom out. I can zoom in on different tones. A dharma friend once asked me to try to zoom in some tone from the right side. The location is of course only a construction, but it can be done.  I noticed that when I did that for quite some time, discursive thoughts fell away. When I shifted back to discursive thoughts to report on it, I could only hear the tones from the left. I mentioned this to her, and it turned out she had the same experience. She had been working with this on retreats and arrived at a deeper version of it. I used a centered tone as concentration object to get into fourth jhana a while back, and that made the tone eventually distill into bright white light. It kept drawing me in and taking me through 4th-8th jhana and then fruition over and over again until I felt that I had to make it stop. It was the suffering door and quite intense and I had to get at least a couple of hours sleep before an early job meeting or teaching or whatever it was that I had to be alert for. Sometimes in dissolution the nada sound slows down to a wobble rather than sound. During a very strong Kundalini awakening a decade ago, there was like an electrical buzzing and sometimes loud tones. It wouldn't surprise me at all if what you are hearing is the nada sound, since the Kundalini force is strong with you.

I actually really like the sound. It's like a biofeedback system and reminder in one. I use it as a reminder to focus on the stillness and the space of open possibilities. 

If there is a sharp tone, what would happen if you try to zoom out? 

Have you checked out the so called exploding head syndrome? I suspect that is just the biomedicine trying to make sense of Kundalini symptoms. 

---

I just came home from a class of traditional yoga. I seem to be back in A&P again. I don't think I have ever had this much body control. The nada sound is loud, like a lot of crickets. Everything is buzzing and bubbling and clarity is warped up. If this is going to be a longer period of strong A&P, I may need to stay grounded, but I think it may also be wise to build concentration, because what comes up must come down, and I would prefer to deal with a macho version of the dukkha nanas with strong concentration if I can. 

Now grounding, taking a shower and cooking dinner, and then meditating. Where did this day go?

Interesting.. I just posted about playing with the nada sound in Tim's thread about music & arpeggios. I was basically saying that it can be fun to put in some earplugs to filter out "external" sounds and play around with the rhtyhm of nada sound, heart beat, and breath. The nada sound for me is really high pitched and gets much louder when I have plugs in. I haven't been using it as a practice object for long at all, so I haven't parsed much difference in how it sounds other than its volume seeming to change. For some reason I also get kind of a conceptual visual of the nada sound.. like it's a bunch of microscopic multi-colored dots going in a stream between the ears. 

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!

Thanks for the nada sound ideas Linda and Steph. I will play around with it a bit. I think I just have a base of anxeity/fears associated with it because it started before I had any meditation practice to deconstruct it. Something to work with ... thanks again.

Cool. That's a whole symphony with some disco lights, then. I suspect that the nada sound and the kinesthetic vibrations and the statics or colored dots are basically the same thing: the mind's processing of stuff at a vibrational level. What do you think?

edit: I just saw that you had already written at least what your husband thinks:

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. 

that's what i hear too.

That's the happy hour special at the Bar of Last Resort this week! Eeerie, we haven't even put that on the board yet.

You witch.

my kind of non-binary neuro-alternative witchlock!

love, tim

You can't see the bypassing, that's why you had to be absent for the bypassing to be seen!


I can empathize with that but in reality there's nothing to get used to - this is just the way things are. You might reappear and decide that you need to get used to this in different situations, but that's just the dream restarting.


Investigation is not necessary if experiences are knowing themselves and there's no processor there to do the investigating.


I think that's right. The seeker expects fireworks at the end of the show!

It sounds like you are handling it well, due to good preparation. I am happy for you.

I agree with all that. It's just that in this case, investigation is still ongoing so the switch isn't permanently flipped. I'm not saying that investigation is necessarily required, just that it is subjectively happening, and I'm describing how that subjectively happens. The flip will happen, and I'm not worried about how that will happen. I'm just describing the phenomenology. I actually don't think I'm in that much of a hurry. I don't mind taking some time to integrate it. I think that may be why I'm not particularly scared or in pain now. Instead of the incredibly fast and painful way, I'm taking the fast and pleasant way. That sounds cocky, but the truth is that there has been so much suffering in this life already. I don't need to make this processing a suffering too. 

I think that makes a lot of sense. What is happening is just what is happening. Thanks

Thank you. And by the way, I'm happy for this mammal too. I think it will be taken care of in a better way from now on. 

Funny thing: in writing it I was thinking that it would fit perfectly on the menu for the Bar of Last Resort.



That’s a new one. I like that description. Witchlock - perfect!

Selfing noted. And that’s okay. I’m pretty sure this mammal and the experiences intersecting with it like to keep a personality.

oh yeah, try this latest concotion for the appetizer dishes at the Bar of Last Resort, courtesy of Steph. Just nibble at first, a little bit goes a long way---

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbieq_x7zuI

Sounds like non-dual experiences. A long time ago Nick (Nikolai) and some others found that you can kind of ride the edge of the very beginning of sensations as they arise, and expand attention outwards, to slip more easily into a non-dual state (I say state because it's just a temporary state when the full permanent realization of non-duality hasn't been reached). I've found it's easiest to do this with sensations of the 5 physical sense doors. Like if you can catch the very beginning of a sensation and not try to stabilize it or do much of anything, the "self" will slip away. It almost feels like something is getting peeled backward and that a door or portal is being walked through.

Detroit techno & electro are always welcome additions to any menu. 

Yes, that's a great description. It seems like it's easiest for me to do it with feelings, though, maybe because that's what I started with long before I started any systematic meditation practice. It doesn't even have to be my feelings. 

Jefferson Ave!

I'm more into Marillion (the early version with Fish as the singer) and Mission UK, and I have found that I tend to like basically everything that goes under the label of progressive rock. 

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.

physical exhaustion is its own very real bardo, in a lot of ways. My back has been so godawful, i've got my heat turned up to the setting "cozy and pampered," am moving at a snail's pace without sound (too much activity of late that involved using the growling siddhi just to get it done), and avoiding that meth-amphetamine-like vipassana shit like it would kill me, which apparently it could, in moments. I'm a member now of VA (Vipassanaholics Anonymous) and if i could move, would be attending my meetings religiously. I took so many drugs last night, just to get my body lying down with its eyes closed for a while, the last of my loving neighbor Dan's opiate stash that he bestowed upon me in Good Samaritan fashion, that a therapist friend marveled that i did not OD. I said, yeah, but it was my best shot, and now they're gone, gate gate gate, no more drugs, another opportunity missed.

Sleep, bubba, sleep. Rest, bubbakins, rest. Slow down, child, slow down. Pamper yourself NOW.

Tim, forgive me for introducing vipassana to you. Bad move, bad result. I'm really sorry.

That's okay, bubba, i'm forever grateful. Vipassana and I will kiss and make up, and possibly just plain get it on, as soon as i fall off the wagon.

you had me at "dukha," honey.

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.

I still have the problem. Really weird.

Maybe I should just take the hint from the universe. I did sound manic in that post.

Interesting. Maybe later. I ruled out the characters, so a keyword could be it.

First part:

Just to keep track (useless reading for others; sorry):

Yesterday evening I did some guru yoga and inner refuge practice and some mantra chanting and a short session of sziné without an object (still not sure how to spell that thing, but I know how to (not-)do it, and that's what matters). Given the significant amount of turbulence in my life right now, for good and for bad, I'd say it was a pretty good session. There were distractive thoughts, but there were also moments of some high quality tawa.

I also had the opportunity, eventually, to observe the process of falling asleep after some severe sleep deprivation, which was interesting. I'm too tired to find words for it, but I remember the tastes involved.

Second part:


As for losing my job after almost twenty years as a researcher (and being too autistic to want to start over at another department with new tasks), I feel surprisingly free. The thing that I have been fearing for such a long time has already happened now, and what do you know, the world actually didn't end. Also, there are some thinking outside the box things left to check out that I'm not going to miss out on. I have the ace up my sleeve that I really don't care about career or prestige or salary apart from the most basic level, and also I don't believe in boxes. If anyone is going to hack the impossible task of finding the hidden portals at the intersection between two helplessly rigid Swedish national authorities systems, it's going to be me. Thankfully, my life is full of people who actually appreciate and support that kind of craziness.

None of the parts was the problem that made posting impossible. They just didn't fit together for some very strange reason.

Thing is busted for me, too...

If this even posts. 

That widely reported sonic boom across the nation this morning has actually been me swearing at this piece of shit.

There is something that was changed overnight and I'm having issues, too. The problems seem to be centered around posting but my subscriptions to all the threads are gone, too.

I think it is God's punishment on me for posting so much. The Big Guy shut me down. So sorry abuut His collateral damage, but that Guy just doesn't seem to give a Shit about the innocent much.

All the universe's big guys are like that.

I observed a limit of about 1010 characters on a post. Beyond that I would click preview and it would be empty. Being an occasional programmer, I was hoping it was exactly 1024 characters which would be a more logical bug (maybe there are some hidden characters?)

Oh no, are you the jinx now? I have contact mania and you have contaxt jinxness. This tapping into energies thing seems volatile. 

My guess is that the Wetpaint code has a MAX_POST_LEN variable which is set to some really big number, but there is some sequence of characters which should never occur in any natural language which can reset it to 2^10. However TFF somehow managed to trigger it with his uniquely creative use of the english language.

That's some sophisticated highly specific jinxness. It's a story too good not to be true. So the forum code has safe words? Really? Whose bad idea was that? 

Yeah, I don't think it was a bad idea though. I mean the existence of TFF is a theoretical impossibility. It might be  a heisenbug, in which case the only way it can be debugged is to place TFF in a state of quantum indeterminacy with a keyboard and wait to see what happens ...

It posted one in my log. It seems that there is not problem with short texts, but for that post, I had clicked reply to open the editor, and after clicking publish, it showed "Send new message" page, and I clicked the back button above its form, and it said the message could not be found. But the next time, instead of Reply, I used Quick Reply, and it got published with no problem.

You're over-indulging your conceptual minds 

What typically causes these occasional crap-fests is the non-act of not-doing general database maintenance - reindexing, etc. I've been told that has been done today, so please watch for better or worse conditions.