Happy new year all. May it bestow gifts of clarity and good work of the heart.
My first DhO practice log, covering about 2 years of practice, including... :
*probable SE at home (end of june 2019) after which I experienced many cessation like events over a month, which stopped with things coalescing again at around the end of july. Left with the main change being much less sticky emotions and what I would call the end of rumination, something which has not budged a bit since then and has been accompanied by further perceptive shifts.
*a 10-day long dzogchen retreat led by Doug Veenhof, student of Alan B. Wallace, during which I had what has variously been desribed as A glimpse of Rigpa / A non conceptual experience / the natural state / recognizing the nature of mind / the luminosity shift / the entrance of the winds in the central channel, as well as, before that, hypothetical second path (august 2019). This left me with an extremely unsubtle, noticeable at all times clarity of perception, as if some filter had been taken off of perception. The week after the retreat, fast daily cycling was experiened, and it manifested most clearly as shifts in visual luminosity of objects, which for a few months, were actually glowing like mad, although ti tended to dilute back down after a while. Nowadays this has settled, but the clarity of perception has remained, and occasionally the mad luminosity will reoccur.
*subsequent month-long Mahasi noting retreat in Panditarama Lumbini, during which I experienced many cessation-like experiences, usually following the classical review sequence and offering much clearer "door moments" over a few weeks, before and all through the beginning of retreat, for a total time of experience fruition-type events of about three weeks (september/octobre 2019)
*following practice confusion during a few months and deep questioning about the western consumerist lifestyle and its viability in the short/mid-term.......... See Chris' "Uncharted territory thread" for a lot more on this !
*mahamudra retreat lasting several days during which I found my way back to rigpa-like experiences which were much less saturated than the previously described opening (february 2020)
*subsequent developments, including easier access to the "natural state", deeper and lighter perception and recognition of the unfindability, non-locatibility, non-separation, interpenetration/just hanging there-ness of phenomena and self during a few months
*a tiny, subtle but profoundly effectful realization that I had been, all my life, basically, looking for a "pure" phenomenal experience, and understanding that this was just an illusion, as experience always manifests as what manifests and is none other than what manifests as it does, ie, symbols are what experience is too, are part of it too. This was the end of a more than a decade long, unconscious quest for the "true" reality "underneath" my conceptual experiences - a kind of quest for something glimpsed at "beyond" normal familiar reality, btw, which one can read about in detail in JP Sartre's book
Nausea.
*Immediately following that, a deep "refamiliarization with the world", indeed a very deep, simple and funny sense of coming home. Not that I felt estranged much, but even after all the meditative work and such, it still felt like there was "something" that was supposed to be found/seen. Seeing/trusting that this was not the case, that the familiar everyday reality was as deep as it gets, changed something. During the next few months, and in fact until now, my mood has been 95% of the time quite joyful and cheery, and very resilient without much intention having to be exerted for this to be so. This has stood the test of sustained time with family, lockdowns in small spaces with girlfriend, other life events

...A burgeoning sense that the act of looking for something in meditation was the main source of the remaining resistance I would experience in meditation. In fact, perceiving that almost tactile-ly, if that makes sense. As in : "What is preventing this from being perfect right now ?" Answer : a slight tension that is a kind of mind-body intention manifesting as both a knot in space and an emotional dissatisfaction/intellectual curiosity, messing up the completeness, introducing contraction in the whole thing.
*a two-week self retreat in (october 2020), during which I practiced 4 days of shamatha/brahmaviharas, 4 days of a structured scaffolded hierarchy of practice devolving from just seeing things as they are, noticing attraction/repulsion/neutralness, etc. down dependent origination and down the levels of practice from just sitting to straight vipassana noting of sensations, urges, emotions, thoughts, 4 days of following the instructions in Clarifying the natural state. This all lead to interesting realizations, about the nature of mind and the nature of seeking, and how these relate to the higher fetters, how desire and looking and ignorance are connected one with the other. How meditation methods are part of experience which is realization. This was seen with profound clarity, and at the "right time", and seeing this would be understood, accepted and trusted wholeheartedly ; it seemed to me like there wasn't much to see beyond that. And indeed, this has seemed to put a kind of end to my quest - although that, according to our shargrol, is "the surest sign of third path". Since this retreat, during which I also read profusely, classical texts and others, which provided a lot of confirmation to what I seemed to have grasped, I basically stopped meditating.
*However, I'm sitting again these days, and I'm about to do a four day home retreat with my gf, focusing on heart practices.
*poems.
...can be found here :
Opinions welcomeClosing this first log, I want to sincerely thank all those who participated, benevolently or otherwise, helpuflly or not, and give a particular shout out to our main guys shargrol and chris marti. This has been a vivid part of my journey, sometimes bringing confusion, sometimes clarification, but vitally so throughout.
And this brings us to this new log, a new log for a new year, which I will start by quoting a wonderful poem by Rilke, which I want to thank Tim for - it's an excerpt from Rilke's "Turning point" :
Work of the eyes is done, nowgo and do heart-workon all the images imprisoned within you; for youoverpowered them: but even now you don’t know them.Learn, inner man, to look on your inner woman,the one attained from a thousandnatures, the merely attained butnot yet beloved form.