Thanks for the feedback you all!

I have maybe one question. I recently started "silent noting" if that makes sense. I just do the same as before but skip the labels. Daniel also mentioned it in his book. Is this fine as a default or is it generally better to "note out loud"?

Thanks in advance
Flo

In the limited way that I've experienced it, awakening isn't desirable per se because it involves seeing one's experience "just as it is" - without the craving for it to be different - even the acknowledgement that it can't be any different from the way it is. In my opinion, if your experience is nice/crappy before awakening then it will still be nice/crappy after awakening, you will just feel less inclined to judge it as desirable/undesirable.

Having a better experience of life is a function of purification (morality etc.), which may or may not make awakening more likely. So yeah it's an important judgement call to what extent you want to focus on feeling better and helping others (purification) vs awakening (truth seeking). The sensible advice is to focus on purification and let awakening take care of itself, although it seems that some people ignore that - possibly because they are impatient and so impure that they know they won't awaken fast enough if they focus too much on purification first! Also they may feel that purification will be easier "after awakening", but I think that's an open question.

There's also the whole question of whether you actually have any control over this process and could even make any kind of meaningful decision about it. For me, awakening violated my sense of autonomy and control in a pretty fundamental way. I could see that in some sense I was "already awakened" and it was just a question of getting to a place (through practice) where I could allow myself to see that. I don't like using that kind of language because it makes it sound like awakening is a personal attainment (like jhana or NS which definitely require some work), whereas for me awakening was much more like "reality recognizing itself" in an impersonal way. A more accurate description would be something like 'when you recognize that the present moment is all there ever is then you also see that this was always the case, even when you thought it wasn't'. Awakening also violated my sense of personal time, so the concepts of before & after awakening also cease to make sense.

I think it's natural to have some doubts and all you can do is meditate on those doubts and follow your natural inclination, taking into account the wide range of perspectives you will get on here. But I wouldn't call myself fully awakened by any stretch of imagination - maybe I'm just delusional! Hopefully someone else will offer a more constructive perspective ...

Hi Flo, This is what I think of as "Where's the beef?" territory (a sort of joke on an old US commercial, played for hamburger comedy there, but deadly serious in this sense). It's the heart of practice, and if you don't find an answer that makes the heart beat, you roll up the mat. The very good thing about asking it whole-heartedly is that you find that your tolerance for bullshit and fluff and sugar-coating and glibness will be very low. This is your life, and you're asking why you should be all in on a path. I ask it myself pretty much every day. There are a couple of broad approaches to allowing the question its full and authentic scope, and the first one I think of is: what got you started on your path in the first place? In your case, it was quite clear: your father's illness, and death. It's the same thing that got Siddhartha going, when he left his palace one day, a happily married prince with a wife and child, and on his way along the road his eyes opened to the godawful reality of a sick man, an aging man, and finally a dead man. So Gautama, the awakened one, found his first awakening, awakening to the first noble truth, samsara dukkha, to the relentless reality of suffering pervading mortal human life. And then he saw a guy in orange robes, a yogi on the way, a rumor of solving that dilemma of relentless inevitable suffering, and he went off seeking the beef. And again, the rumor is that he found it, and everyone who has followed in his footsteps on the path has faced the question of whether that rumor has anything to it, and what that beef of nirvana could actually be. There are as many answers as there are people who consider the question, but the only answer that really matters is the one that rings true enough to you to motivate you to walk the path "toward" it. And at this point you've seen enough to know how difficult the path is, and to get a sense of how long and hard it may be, even if the rumors are true.

And you're at a point where your previous sense of the beef has been lost, through practice, partly, paradoxically enough: you've let go of some previous answers, and rumors you're hearing now sound sort of lame. I really do think, as a veteran of the high mortality rate of every rumor of "attainment" that had me chasing its truth, and every framing and image of the carrot that had me running after it as it dangled from the stick, always out of reach, that this is all to the good. What is the truth of the three characteristics, of transience, the incredible disappearing self, and the dukkha born of wrong desire? Let the 3 Cs take every rumor, there's fire test number one. Nothing is going to hold up, pretty literally: we see the emptiness of the formulations of the beef. But you've also got the deep, visceral, gut-and-heart corrective to bullshit beef: you know why you started, you know the unanswerable reality of deep and genuine grief. That's fire test number two: any rumor of beef that doesn't hold up at a loved one's funeral is not going to do it. This isn't an intellectual exercise, this is your life, and you've got to get out of bed every day and raise your child and love your girlfriend and everything else the duties of love require. What does meditation practice bring to that? 

The thing is, I suspect that you're fucked, at this point. Can you really imagine "going back"? Is there really some stable place of satisfactory existential eden somewhere behind you that you could possibly be satisfied with at this point in your life? If you rolled up the map, is there enough beef in your life for you to live it out without further desire for an answer to the questions that got you started in the first place in meditation? You're a deeply authentic person, that comes through strong here. You need to be honest here, ruthlessly honest, while your bullshit detector is on its high setting, it's a blessed window of that universal solvent doubt, and you should trust the scream of that bullshit detector. It may look like nihilism, letting the fire take all the rumors, all the supposed motivators, all the reasons and good things to attain and good things to be. It may feel like despair: emptiness and meaninglessness are less than a breath apart, in practice. But again, I suspect it's too late for you, you're not going to settle for hand-me-down bullshit now. I'd say sit with it. Sit with it like your life depends on it, and you don't know, and really obviously can't possibly know, what "it" is or could be or whether it's worth all the fuss and labor. And see what comes of that. Let "where's the beef?" be your koan, and let all the answers crap out. That's a daily practice I find I can live with. Seems like you're at a place where you could give it a try, lol.

"All the concentration states and nirodha etc. sound very nice, but the insight part sounds mainly like a burden."

You also mention Ayya Khema seems to me you lean towards Jhana/Shamatha path so why not embrace that instead. See what comes out it. But really do have faith in the practice and give it at least 6 months or longer even, as these things need to develop. 

See for yourself what absorption states are. Learn them well, enjoy them, see them for what they truly are. See if they are subject to the 3 characteristics or not. 

You can use breathing as object or another body sensation or Kasina of sorts. Stick with it, do it daily. See what comes out of it. 

Best wishes to you  

EDIT; let me say that this Path might not be a one of "attainments" but of "reduction" as in we don't know what we "get" at the end. We only ever know what we have "dropped away" developed dispassion for hence let go off. What is left at "the end" once all has dropped away?