I started meditating everyday maybe a week or two more than 50 days ago.
It's been an hour a day average, but I'm aiming for two hours a day minimum now.
I'm really suprised because I've never been able to put a consistent concerted effort towards anything for this long. 
My goal is to reach enlightenment so achieving things becomes possible.
I don't ever feel like I'm doing enough right now.

Today I did 20 min + 20 min + 40 min + 40 min
I've been able to sit still for two hours on my bed without moving, except my eyes and breathing.
I've only been able to manage the same for 1 hour on the concrete floor covered with a towel though,
the pain isn't much of a problem, though I get worried when I can't move one foot for 30 seconds afterwards.
Apparently, the average person should be able to sit for 4 hours though without nerve issues.

I've realized I can stop 90%+  of thoughts by releasing enough mental tension,
however a blank trance-like state doesn't really seem to be conducive to enlightenment.
I want a crisp clear vision of all things not a dull unconsciousness.

I still don't know how not to get swept away by thoughts as soon as they arise.
I usually catch myself after a second or two, some times longer but it's still a second or two that I get swept away for.
The object of meditation, if it's a mental repetition, ends up turning into a background process,
and continues as my attention gets swept away. 

When tired, I find it's hard to keep my concentration sharp enough to make things not dull.
When things are dull they become boring, and so my attention easily wanders.

Welcome to DhO

I congratulate you on consistently practicing for weeks.

What kind of practice are you doing? More insight or more centering/concentration?
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From your post I guess it is concentration practice, and if it is so, what do you use as your object of attention?

I guess it is breath sensations at the tip of the nose. And if it is so, I recommend you do 1 technique to not get confused, if you need a recommendation on a technique, use counting.

Count like this - In-Out-1, in-out-2, etc. In while you are breathing in and out while you are breathing out, count in between out breath and in breath.

If you want to know how to approach dullness to not get entranced, I recommend these investigative methods that have worked for me:

1. Count pulses of dullness, progressions and changes of dullness up to 10 and then repeat.

Soon you will notice dullness becoming weaker, having less entrancing quality, then you will notice it appearing less often, and then rarely will it appear. Though this might not happen in a single sit, but over time, over days and weeks.

2. If the above technique doesn't work, then seek alluring and entrancing parts of dullness and don't let them be without noticing.

3. Know different factors of dullness in real time - rigidness, flowiness, stableness, progressiveness, pointyness, depth, subtlety, thickness, stickyness.

The more you know in real time, the less dominating dullness will be.

Don't turn away from dullness, turn towards it and investigate it as much as you can, use it as a meditation object if its too sticky and strong. You will develop introspective awareness and concentration. You can spend whole sits investigating dullness for weeks.

If dullness is so strong that you can't do anything, stand up, walk, splash cold water on your face, do push ups, squats or something to energize the mind for a couple of minutes which will give you some leeway to be able to investigate dullness when it comes. Try any of these antidotes and see which ones work for you the best.

Also, watch how dullness changes over time when you investigate it or do something with your attention, this will give you a neuro feedback mechanism and inform you of what's working and when, as well as how effective the antidotes are.

Don't look at dullness as your enemy, or this will develop aversion which will make you turn away from dullness, then dullness will progress even more, then you will get frustrated because of lack of progress and eventually snowball into quitting.

​​​​​​​Look at dullness as an opportunity to strengthen introspective awareness and investigative ability. When you are aware of the factors of dullness or have it in awareness, it means your mind is not fully in trance and you are doing well.
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Thank you for your advice,

I'm practicing by observing physical sensations of touch.
Breath, pain, body scanning.

I've never really thought of dullness having those properties.
I'll try seeing whether I can find those properties in all things.

I guess I was unable to explain myself properly.
I don't really have a problem with dullness or trance states normally,
in fact hypnosis isn't very effective on me at all, I have to really concentrate on being unaware to feel the smallest effect.
I just realized that getting rid of thoughts is not the goal,
as I can get rid of them just by waiting for them to happen,
just like waiting for my arm to move, it doesn't move until tension is applied.
In this way, I release all mental tension, but also since I am waiting for thoughts to occur rather than observing anything,
much like in a waiting room, things are dull but peaceful.
I've tried observing the dullness of waiting, but then I'm not waiting but observing
as a result the dullness associated with waiting dissappears quite quickly.
Oh wait, I know what I could try, simultaneously waiting and observing.
But since I'm not having problems with dullness right now I want to continue observing physical sensations.

It's just tiredness which makes things dull since I have trouble concentrating as sharply when tired.
But I wonder if I can observe tiredness in the same way you described observing dullness.
I've tried catching myself from sleeping, just like I would catch myself from drifting into thoughts,
And when I catch myself just as I'm about to fall into a dream I'll hear an extremely loud sound for a second or two.
I don't know why this happens or if it's that the sounds around me are suddenly percieved as super loud or something else.

Did 2 hours total today
Pain was much less bearable, a part of me was like this is fine, but another part wanted it to end.
I was only able to sit still for 40 min, and after that only 20 min before giving in to adjusting myself.
I tried noting sensations and thoughts and found it made sensations that much more sharp
and I could see thoughts easier, like I wasn't be dragged along by them as much.
It also made it easier to handle pain.
I think I'll continue this way.

What is the reason thoughts sweep you away and not so much other sensations?
It seems that while I'm swept away by thoughts, there is no observer, just the thought.
The observing process doesn't seem to decide whether something is experienced or not
just whether you know that you experienced it.
Also what happens to cause me suddenly be able to observe the thoughts again.

I've realized, when I try to observe thoughts, they don't occur.
Then I end up waiting for them to happen, and they still don't occur.
Similar to if I wait for my arm to move on it's own it just doesn't happen.
So it seems like some sort of mental tension generates the content of the thought,
much like the tension of the muscle generates movement in the body.

When I have some sort of song stuck in the head I realized couple things I can do to make it go away.
I can
1. listen to the sound of the breath or other sounds instead
2. relax the mental tension until the song doesn't have enough tension to occur
3. repeat the start of a catchy bit which triggers the song over and over and watch how the tension of the mind triggers it over and over, eventually the mental sound goes away and I can just kinda watch a fluctuation,
and use the watching of the fluctuation as the object of the meditation.

noting sensations and thoughts is working really well so far.

I've done 1 hour so far, will do other hour a little later.

Because you tend to identify more with thoughts than the other senses. You can imagine still being you without hearing or sight, or missing various body parts. But would you still be you without thoughts or memories?!!


That's a good way of looking at it. Can you locate that tension and relax it? (Similar to what you do with the earworm below - great technique )

Thanks for the advice, I've always just relaxed the entire mind of tension, but I'll see if I can locate and relax only the specific part of the mind for each thought that occurs.

I still don't understand exactly what is really happening when something is identified with.
I think I have an idea though, it's probably a sort of pavlovian conditioned memory recall reflex like an earworm is.
Like when we think of the the word "hat" it triggers all the memories of all the contextual situations
where the the sound of the word "hat" has been heard and then those memories trigger other memories which share a relationship with the visual form of a hat, this all happens unconsciously and is how the meaning of something is derived. This is all the content of thoughts consist of, memory fragments which trigger each other through various  mental associations. So when we say "I" it triggers all the specific memories which relate to that word, giving the word "I" meaning. But for most people when we disconnect the word I from these memories, it ceases to mean anything, and therefore they think they don't exist.

However, if I lost all memories and thoughts (not like there's actually a really big distinction between those two things) I would say my current personality would be different, or absent, but the fact that there's still the experience of something or that it is remembered by me would show me that I'm still there.

If I didn't exist I wouldn't know it, because I wouldn't exist to for me or anything else to know it, so how could I or anything else realize my own non-existence? Also the self cannot only be the identified thing, because it's you that's doing the identifying.

Even if I encountered the experience of "nothing", I'd know it's not actually nothing because actual nothing is impossible to experience since non-existence by definition doesn't exist. I would probably catagorize it as a formless blank canvas state. If it was actually nothing I wouldn't remember it.

I have considered that there is no distinction between experience and experiencer, that the experiencer doesn't exist and there is only experiences as themselves. So if I can't be those two, then I could still be the subtance that experiences arise within.

Speaking of which I have no clue how memories are segregated. I was thinking it might be possible that I could be everything at once simulataneously but just can't remember all those experiences collectively, just like how people forget dreams and think they were never dreaming. It also doesn't seem plausible that a person is their physical brain, because apart from the physical world being purely conceptual, how are signals which are quantitative and relative generating sensory experiences which are qualitative and absolute?

Okay 2 hours, 1 hour 3 sits of 20min, and 1 sit on the floor of 1 hour
It seems that this dullness or rather a lack of ability to focus is due to being uncomfortable in some way
Pain seems to do it, so does being tired. Being tired is more difficult to manage than observing pain.
At least pain drives off tiredness but tiredness seems to amplify pain.

George's advice turned out extremely useful,
I found a general "location" somewhere in between or behind the middle of the temples
where all the mental voices/images are being stimulated from.
I am able to release tension from this location and thoughts kind of disappear.
I also notice any and all sensory stimulus is causing this area to react and generate thoughts.

2 hours today
wasn't feeling too motivated today for whatever reason.

Right, so “you” are just the aggregate of experiences – seeing, hearing, feeling, thinking, tasting, smelling.


Selfing can be viewed as the process of clinging to experience (trying to hold on to pleasant experiences and avoid unpleasant experiences). It is inherently unsatisfactory because pleasant experiences always pass and unpleasant experiences can’t be avoided. Also, it is trying to create, or imagine there to be, some kind of permanent stable entity or centerpoint to experience, when all experience is manifestly unstable and transient.


There is a state called seventh jhana which is the pure experience of “nothingness”, and yes it is an experience which can be known & remembered and has certain characteristics (including the so-called “three characteristics” – the fact that it is impermanent, unsatisfactory and “not-self” (not a satisfactory locus of identification)).


You have to be careful here. It’s not that the experiencer doesn’t exist at all, it’s more like noticing that any sense of there being an experiencer is just another (transient & unsatisfactory) experience (usually thoughts & physical sensations). Suffering arises when we imagine and cling to the concept of there being a stable permanent experiencer outside of experience, because that certainly doesn’t exist. You also have to be careful about imagining there to be a substance or container which experiences arise within, because any such substance or container is of course just another experience (usually thoughts and some kind of diffuse physical sensations). This is another attempt to imagine or create a stable permanent “self” outside of experience, as when people imagine consciousness or awareness to be separate from experiences.


​​​​​​​Yes, there is a lot more going on in experience than we are normally aware of or remember. The rational/egoic mind acts like a filter on experience, which blocks awareness of everything which is deemed to be not important to our survival. The more you meditate and explore the mind, the more you realize just how much more there is to experience, stuff which baffles the rational/egoic mind (because it threatens its limited model of self). Also, strictly speaking, it doesn’t make sense to distinguish between collective experience and individual experience - since there is no ownership of experience, it’s all “just experience” (or you could say that (the concept of) collective experience is a facet of individual experience).

2 hours today,<br />I really want to boost concentration<br />I'll get tired conentrating that I'll pass into a somewhat less conentrated state<br />then I'll gain some more drive and push myself back to where I was before<br />this pattern seems to repeat even with thoughts.<br />I wonder if there's a good biofeedback loop concentration exercise that will propel me&nbsp; into super deep states of concentration.<br /> 

Yes there is - focussing on the breath! (anapanasati) It is amazingly powerful if you just keep returning to the breath very time you notice that you have become distracted. It's like a drug, every 10 breaths you can string together without distraction gets you into a deeper state of concentration, with more intense pleasure, bliss and eventually total calmness of mind.
 

Oh I never thought of using 10 breaths total focus in a row as a goal.
I never really understood why guides recommended counting breaths so I stopped doing it. lol
Will try this.

today I was kept really busy by my parents doing stuff, I was only able to get 40min in
but I did try counting and using 10 breaths as a goal for complete intense focus feeling the smallest sensations of breath I could feel,
and it really worked well, I started getting into this weird orgasmic state, I wonder how deep I can go if I'm not tired.
I play 太鼓の達人 and DTXMania, and I've noticed that they are much more enjoyable to play in a state of deep focus.

Okay only 1 hour and 20 minutes so far, I think I should just make a post each time I meditate rather than a day summary. Good that I named this thread "practice journal" and not "daily practice journal" lol. I am pretty sporadic, I find myself unable to stick to any schedule. The most I can do is make sure I meditate at least once between the time I wake up and go to sleep (a day), which so far I've been consistent with. 
Anyways I expanded on the meditation technique of using breath counting as a goal by further gamifying it.
Counting to 10 on each in and out breath with total focus all the way to 10 as a goal,
then every time I count to 10 with perfect focus I move up a level. 1-10 level 1 passed, 1-10 level 2 passed etc.
If I fail to count to 10 with perfect focus, I repeat the level until I get it right.
I got around level 100 when I started feeling odd, there was this kind of sick unsettled feeling inside my head, there was also a kind of impatience a wanting it to be over. There was also this involuntary bracing myself against any pleasure I felt from the exercise. I don't know how to break past this. I wonder if I can build up enough momentum and weight with lots of practice that it pushes me over the edge.

another hour there two hours and 20 minutes total
it seems when I'm tired thoughts seem to grab me quicker
I think thoughts that grab you are more just like impulsive reactions to the thoughts
you react to the thought with more thoughts which causes further impulsive reactions.
I think if you observe it then the experience loses it's power to cause a reaction,
because observing is not reacting, it's just the experience as it is without any baggage.
Yes this is odd why are some things observed and other things not?
This points to the idea of an observer, because there are things that you experience but don't observe.
This could also be a memory related issue experiencing but not remembering.

I was thinking the perception of time might be created by memory recall. 
I don't know how this might work though. Wait I have a guess.
I know that time is basically some movement held in relation to some other movement.
(for example, the movement of the hands of a clock in relation to one another)
But when there's unecessary internal movement by the recall of memories (thinking)
the movement outside appears slower in relation to that internal movement.
When there isn't too much going on inside, things appear much faster.
Suffering really makes things go slower, I guess it's because it's constantly triggering
stuff in your head.

But here's an interesting thought, heaven is indefinitely fast, whereas hell is indefinitely slow.
But when you think about it, there would be more far more stuff happening in hell.
If you were in heaven the suffering of hell would happen instantaneously and be unoticeable,
and if you were in hell the pleasures of heaven would take so long they might as well never occured.
So it seems that you can't really speak of faster or slower movement in the ordinary sense of things,
because everything is moving at the same speed, but if everything is moving at the same speed
nothing is really moving at all, because movement is a relative thing. It's an unmoved mover.

I guess I'm more impulsive when tired, the last 20 minutes were like thought after thought,
whereas when I was awake for an hour there was maybe only two thoughts I impulsively reacted to.
It seems doing this practice has been triggering thoughts of "when is this going to be over",
or like urges to do some other activity.
This isn't actually what I want though, it's like some sort of weird personality split.

The idea of an observer suggests (to me at least) an independent entity outside of experience who sort of reviews all available experience and decides which ones to observe or be aware of. The problem with this model is - everything is experience (sense data), so any thought/image/sensation attributed to an observer is just another experience under observation. Who observes the observer?

The way I see it, it’s more like we’ve developed these filters (defense mechanisms) which habitually tune out certain aspects of our experience. These filters actually require a lot of energy to maintain (constantly ignoring inconvenient noisy sensations). In meditation the filters/defenses start to relax and you become aware of all the stuff that you are normally blocking out. But again, there is no “master filterer” who decides what filters to put in place! They just developed naturally over time in response to threats which weren't able to be fully processed, and continue to operate long after the original threat has passed, causing dukkha.

I think you're on the right track with your investigation of the experience of time. There is no time without change, and no change without memory. So yes, experience and experiential speed of time is intimitately bound up with memory processing, which again takes energy and can cause stress. Obviously you need a certain amount of memory processing to function in a time bound world, but it's a lot less than one typically does. Regarding the apparent speed of time in different realms, here's a good article which talks about this phenomenon in more detail:

https://www.aroencyclopaedia.org/shared/text/r/realms_ar_eng.php

did two hours today total
the counting seems to be working well
odd sensations in my spine and head all the time.

Felt somewhat productive today as I fixed my 3d printer.
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20 min + 70 min + 60 min = 2 hours and 30 minutes
I use this timer: https://github.com/rlue/timer

I'm not really bothered by thoughts occuring because I know what they are
The conditioned impulsive behavior of recalling fragmented sensory experiences (memories) 
Being swept away by thoughts needs to be treated like a habit. 

now I'm just going to relax cross legged on my bed back resting against the wall counting the breath
and then when thoughts get randomly unconsciously triggered by idk what
I'll just attempt to notice this and then bring my focus back to the breath.
I'm not going to put super high amounts of effort into focus for now like I was the previous two days.
I just want to build up some sort of unconscious momentum.

Anyways turns out when I don't put much effort in, I am no longer constantly wondering when it's going to be over.
Maybe it doesn't seem as long because there's less mental activity going on.

I've noticed I can catch impulses to think before the thoughts occur and then refocus my attention
on the breath before any thoughts do occur, though this practice is effort intensive.
These impulses are really like some sort of physical reaction to some sort of stimulus, or something like a habit that has gained a sort of cycle.
I want to focus more on recovering from getting swept away in a train of thought until I no longer get swept away
rather than stopping all trains of thought.


I'm pretty certain I know exactly what thoughts are now, they have two parts:
1. content
The content of a thought is an assembly of fragments of recalled sensory experiences (memories).
The content of a thought derives its meaning from its contextual relationships to other memories.
 Take a word for example, it's the recalled sensory experience of a sound fragment, which derives its meaning from all the memory contexts it occurs in.
The sense of meaning you get from a particular word is the unconscious recall of all the memories it shares contextual relationships with.

2. impulsive reaction
This memory recall happens as  a reaction to some sort of internal tension, much like the tension of a muscle moves a limb,
a tension of the mind recalls memory fragments.
The mind will unconsciously condition itself to trigger certain memory fragments in response to certain sensory experiences.
Just like the response of Pavlov's dogs salivating to the ringing of a bell. This is what gives all our experiences meaning.
This is the process which creates "reality", for example the locations of sensations on the body have no location as they are experienced
directly without the baggage of memory, but they gain location from the memories which are unconsciously recalled along with the sensation.

The process of insight practice as I see it,  is to sharpen the mind to a point where it can distinguish between and seperate these
recalled memories from the direct sensory experiences.
To get the mind quick enough to do this what is now commonly termed "flow state" is required,
the state that high performance athletes, rhythm game players, etc. get into
In this state, the mind becomes single pointed enough to disect each jumble of sensations.
With enough of this practice the mind is then conditioned in a new way and liberated so that it can see things as they really are.

The forum ate my reply because I hadn't updated the page fully
Thanks for the article, I did read the majority of it. Kinda made heaven and hell sound boring lol.

If the observer entity exists outside the realm of experience, by definition it's unexperienceable.
What you are experiencing is not the observer itself but the effects of the observer.
Much like you can't experience a physical object like a rigid sphere, instead you experience a billiard ball.
But you know the rigid sphere exists because otherwise instruments of measurement would pass through your experience of a billiard ball as if it were a hologram.

The duality I described above puzzles me, I don't know where it breaks down.
I know duality is a euphemism for logical contradiction. two cannot be one.
Dualities are only created when your conception misaligns with reality.
Eventually you find a "paradox" i.e. contradiction which shows you the limits of your mental model, exactly where it falls apart.
This is true for all concepts and mental models, as they all try to determine the non-limited.

How do these filters work? Through forgetting?

Speaking of memory creating time, I have no clue how stored experiences work.

only 1 hour today (._.)
I was kept busy the entire day chopping vegetables
I'm focusing on noticing when thoughts occur then redirecting total attention to the task at hand.
It seems like I'm not noticing thoughts until a few seconds later.
That's fine as long as I am noticing them, it will get better, so I need to make this a habit.

1 hour so far, I'm really tired, my mind is drifting for minutes at a time while sitting.
I'm going to take a nap and then meditate some more.

1 hour so far.
It's like I can't easily identify thinking anymore,
idk what's the problem. 
it feels like I'm starting over again with my meditation practice.

idk why but now I'm feeling really irritated,
making it really hard to meditate,
every sensation is irritating, I have a light headache as well.

How am I supposed to focus on anything when all this irritation is grabbing my attention.
idk maybe I'm getting sick. I can hardly sit straight for a few minutes.
I'm going to keep trying maybe in a different position.

Read up on dukkha nanas and re-observation:

https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-iv-insight/30-the-progress-of-insight/10-re-observation/​​​​​​​

For some reason, George S's link does not work. Here's another URL to the Reobservation section in MCTB2.

Thankyou,
What I'm experiencing definitely does not seem as intense as these descriptions of reobservation,
I highly doubt I'm past A&P.

I've noticed in my life that there's this cycle of a few months of a
strong drive to accomplish things together with a very clear and goal oriented mind
which is followed by a few months of complete lack of drive to do anything together with a very clouded and impulsive mind. 

Thanks

I was thinking this might have been possible light A&P 6 days ago: 'I started getting into this weird orgasmic state'

I cycled similar to you in my life in boom->bust cycles before starting to meditate. When I started noting and got more clarity, those cycles condensed onto the standard POI map (A&P->DN->EQ)

I didn't know light A&P was possible, makes sense though,
I guess the cycles start out lighter and get stronger and stronger,
so this would be a light reobservation as well.
So just focus on deepening the cycles I guess.

today I didn't count how long because I felt like I would be waiting for a timer to end
rather than focusing

Was reading mctb and read the part about feeling so many sensations a second,
I can see individual frames on 240hz (240 frames per sec) monitors if I'm focusing on it,
by no means can I count them that fast, but I can notice whether a refresh rate is faster or slower.
However I have never experienced any framerate in any sensory experience other than in strobing lights, pulsing sounds, etc.
Even if the sensation is pulsing very fast it seems like smooth pulses rather than sharply defined discontinuous ones.
I'll see if I can do the exercises that are described.

2 hours
It's weird I feel sick like I have the flu or something when I'm meditating.
I have a flu like headache. It goes away when I stop, very weird, I'm also very pain sensitive right now it seems.

UPDATE:
I think I might actually just be sick.

1 hour
it's really hard to focus  on the breath well when you have a really bad headache
I can't really get the same flow state buzz from it​​​​​​​
I was unable to fall asleep, so I just lay down with my eyes closed.

I'm going to try body scanning see if that works better

It seems that when the headache appears the breath sensation disappears for a split second and vice versa.
It seems like there's not full attention on the breath sensation, but the attention is continuously split between other sensations.
How to note all these distracting sensations, they happen far faster than the internal dialog of noting, it seems impossible now to maintain perfect focus on one sensation without other sensations appearing for microseconds. maybe I'll stick to recognizing thoughts instead of being swept away by them for now.

In the morning things looked slightly but noticably different, though I can't pinpoint what exactly,
it's like things look a little closer or more "3D" or something like that.
After a few hours it died down.

I also find myself noticing more sensations somehow.
But also it seems that thoughts replace unpleasant sensations.
Now having not eaten for three days so far but feeling sick, I was feeling conflicting sensations of hungry and not hungry at the same time.
So I had a small bowl of soup, but now when I meditated today it seemed like what was unnoticeable
becomes an moderately intense sick to the stomach feeling. I guess my body wasn't actually ready to eat.
Now I kindof regret eating.

This made it quite difficult to meditate today, all sorts of painful sensations abound in rapid succession.
I also feel I'm not making any progress if I don't achieve a significant enough change in an experiential state after meditation.
This is driven by a fear that I might be at this forever and never achieve anything.

I meditated for an hour but it didn't feel very productive.
I can really see now how some morality practices are necessary,
if you aren't moderate with things like food you are going to get digestive upsets which interfere with practice,
if you are creating any sort of conflict, it kinda repeats itself in the mind until it runs out of steam by becoming irrelevant or it's resolved through some other means.
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This is a normal result of heightened awareness of impermanence (Three Characteristics nana -> A&P). Switch from noting to noticing:



Mind & Body nana: Thoughts are just one of the six types of sensation (sights, sounds, physical sensations/feelings, thoughts, tastes, smells)

Cause & Effect nana: unpleasant or pleasant sensations generate thoughts when they are not clearly noticed and are resisted, clung to or ignored (and thoughts generate more sensations in a vicious circle of proliferation). When you note/notice every sensation precisely for what it is as it arises (sight, sound, physical sensations/feeling, thought, taste, smell) then you break the link of resistance/clinging/ignoring and thought proliferation naturally subsides.


Your measure of progress should be your ability to sit with painful sensations (without injuring yourself!) If you are serious about meditation and awakening then you will likely be meditating for the rest of your life. Ironically, as you develop equanimity towards painful sensations then meditation becomes much pleasurable (so long as you remain equanimous towards that as well!) You find liberation from attachment to changes in experiential state.


​​​​​​​Yes, gauging the effect of your "morality" on your practice is a good yardstick. It also prevents you from going too far in either direction. If you overeat then you will feel sluggish, but also if you undereat then you will get fatigued eventually (or find it hard to get into jhana if there is some covert ill will/self-punishment going on).

Thanks I found this motivational.
I don't think the distance between me and the sensations or practice noting is great enough to start rapidly noticing.

It doesn't feel like I have even begun to realize the three characteristics yet.
In terms of impermanence I do not experience sensations as discontinuous grains each of which occurs and ceases at the exact same time.
In terms of dissatisfaction, every single sensation doesn't feel empty, unfullfilled, deflated, unsatisfactory.
In terms of no self, perspective still exists, feeling of being centered somewhere behind the camera still exists.

I only meditated one hour today, 
was busy with other things even though still sick,
much better though, nearly recovered.
​​​​​​​
I need to get more serious about this and sit for longer. (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧

idk I feel sick in a different way this is really not helping me concentrating deeper.
It's like every time put effort into concentrating I try I feel sick to my stomach.
I guess I'll just sit instead. It seems I just kinda autofocused on the breath by habit.
I didn't really keep time how long today

After meditating very many times throughout the day.
finally able to concentrate properly today.
I feel disoriented and unsettled after meditating now.
there are also these annoying dull aches as well but I think that's just from me still being somewhat sick. 
​​​​​​​I've definitely done at least two hours today

1 hour today
It seems I stay in this easy but deep state for about 40 min then start getting very sleepy.

3 hours today
I found I could bring this sort of focus to other things like memorizing words+kanji
I wonder if I can make a sort of permanent focus that doesn't go away.

1 hour today
​​​​​​​meditation was strangely pleasureable today

1 hour and 20 min
mind was super busy for some reason I couldn't calm it down
only until the end did it calm down somewhat.

2 hours today

2 hours today as well
I think I should do more body scanning.
Body scanning is really difficult, I always lose my place,
or find sensations that aren't connected to other body sensations so I can't move anywhere.

1 hour today after a certain point I found I could control the almost involuntary thought reaction for a while. It seems there's a thought reaction to that uncomfortable "nothing but the breath" that occurs. 

​​​​​​​did another 40 min.

sat still on the floor for 1 hour 30 min
longest I've sat still on the floor for, 
My goal for sitting on the floor, which gets pretty painful is 4 hours straight.
I don't like when the nerves or circulation gets cut off and I can't move my legs anymore
however I've seen that after an hour an 30 min the circulation cut off gets pretty bad and then improves for some reason.
I think I will first try to go for 2 hours allowing movement in my upper body, so that I can avoid back muscle pain/soreness that can last days afterwards.
Clearly back muscle pain/soreness is a sign of improper posture. I've found I can periodically lean forward and then restraighten and this realigns everything.

2 hours today
1 hour and a half seems to be a barrier or something.
after about 30 min I get all these urges to get up or fall asleep or get more comfortable.
​​​​​​​

I was really busy today so I only was able to meditate for one hour
​​​​​​​This time I felt very still while meditating.

only 1 hour today as well, (
I've started slipping into a super focused state spontaneously
I wonder if a super deep hyper focus on everything can be constant.

1 hour and 30 min today

2 hours and 30 min today
I beat my previous record sitting still cross legged on the floor by 10 min so 1 hour and 40 min
This time I was able to see impermanence pretty clearly, sensations of pain disappeared as soon as they arose.
I could pretty much make all the sharp sensations of pain dissappear by observing quickly and then make some of the duller sensations of pain dissappear.
This took a lot of effort though so whenever my mind wandered even slightly the pain got really intense, and eventually I got tired.
I can now see every single frame quite clearly even when things are moving fairly slow on 165hz monitors.
recently I'm feeling far less centered in the head.

with body scanning I try to do what FDM 3d printers do in tracing my body sensations, and I just can't do it.
It's very hard to evenly scan, I'm constantly jumping too far or losing my place.
I'm going to try really hard at this now.

only an hour today
I dislike when it feels like some insect is trying to crawl/fly into your ear.
or a mosquito is trying to bite your face. If it's just a sensation I'm fine with it,
but I don't want insects to damage my hearing I don't want mosquito bites on my face,
I like have to move to prevent this from happening.
I should probably get some ear plugs so I can be sure that insects aren't entering my ears.

2 hours today
it's weird I couldn't focus at all like I couldn't even tell if I was having thinking or not,
it's like I've gone backwards for some reason
I couldn't keep very still either, I would like lose balance or something when I tried to force myself.
it was like I was just sitting doing nothing.

yknow a lot more cool things happened when I spent 4 hours praying 15 decades of the rosary each day for 2 months
I need to find a way to go more hardcore

2 hours is great when you are in the dukkha nanas  Definitely
read the dark night section in MCTB if you haven't already.

Things you could investigate:

- not being able to focus: you were aware of this, so awareness is independent of focus!

- gone backwards: only possible if you have an idea of "forwards", somewhere other than where you are in the moment!

- losing balance when you try to force yourself to keep still: sometimes the body needs to move or sway a little when it is releasing tension, it's counterproductive to resist this.

- just sitting doing nothing: what's wrong with that? Lots of cool things can happen in meditation, but clinging to them is how we create dukkha for ourselves (and plenty more cool stuff will happen if you stop fighting your experience ...)

Thank you, I think just "doing nothing" as in staying with difficult experiences is probably what I should do.

the reason I'm worried about doing nothing is I can lay down and do nothing except get lost in thought for 4 hours
but it's not really like I'm actively doing or thinking about things. I think I should be more conscious of things, rather than just drifting.
I'll try doing "nothing" as in staying with the experiences as they are, noticing them as well as reactions towards them.


it seems like awareness is like the ability to see contrasts whereas focus is like magnifying something

you can have a concept of backwards without one of forwards, just compare the current state to how it was a while ago.
imagine forgetting how to ride a bike, and then when you try it's like your ability has gone back to how it was before.
everything doesn't need an opposite in order to exist, only a contrast. 

the XSS parser on this site is kinda broken

1 and a half hours today,
I was able to sit very still for an hour today for some reason
I focused on being still, pinpoint concentration became easy again
it scares me when I cannot move my foot for a while after sitting for so long

Congratulations on your focus and determination! That's awesome.

Just make sure to let your body have enough blood circulation and lymph circulation inbetween sits. 

You're right, I didn't express the backwards thing very well. What I meant to say was, cycling is inevitable so most of the time I would feel that I'm below my peak if I looked at it that way.

Staying with difficult experiences is definitely the way to go. In one sense it is "doing nothing", but it's actually incredibly hard because we've conditioned  ourselves to avoid this stuff. If you want hardcore then this practice can get as hardcore as you can handle. Just look for the biggest area of tension or discomfort in your body and completely feel into it, breathing into it, relaxing and letting it do whatever it wants to do ...

only an hour today

1 hour today as well,
I've noticed that most of the foot pain hardly even bothers me,
today it got really intense but when you just watch it, it isn't that bad,
but I moved towards the end of the hour because I got worried that my feet will be damaged or something.

1 hour,
​​​​​​​I shouldn't put off meditating next time

the feeling of being tired is the hardest for me
far more difficult than painful sensations.
You can't relax, it's hard to keep your eyes closed.

I was busy all day
finally I meditated for 1 hour
today during meditation the content of my thoughts didn't really seem to be mine,
it started out with weird earworms of music and songs I've never even heard before,
I just kinda let them play without trying to interfere and they kinda began to feel like just a radio
playing in the background. Then I would notice that I would stop noticing things
for just a little bit before every thought I feel originates from me.
How I noticed this is that there's a very small memory gap just before every time thoughts which I see as coming from me happens,
it feels like I've disappeared for a split second.
Then I started having thoughts while I was noticing and those thoughts did not seem like they originate from me,
and it was just like talking by itself. It felt like a sort of mental feedback loop, that I feed stuff into by reacting to it.
I'm not exactly sure what's happening when I react to something but it seems that I go unconscious when this happens.
I don't know why I would see myself as controlling something if I seem to fall unconscious while doing it.

Nice insights!

1 hour today was pretty busy 

another hour
I've really gotta put meditation first so I'm not so tired while doing it.

Gotten considerably better at DTXmania for some reason.
But I've noticed I get quite sleepy when concentrating on reading complex note arrangements really fast.
I've experience the same thing with neurobiofeedback.
I've also noticed the more silent the mind is the better I perform, I'll notice I'll miss when thoughts suddenly intrude. Perhaps fast inefficient mental activity makes the brain tired.
It seems any small sensation is enough to trigger a thought,
I wonder why sometimes after meditation things just aren't as reactive. 
I meditated after playing DTXmania and kept on trying to catch myself before I start dreaming.
I sat still for an hour but I kept on falling asleep and dreaming over and over,
though I would catch myself after a second or two.
Even the pain of sitting didn't keep me consistently awake.
With dreaming it's like there's no doer anymore and random reactive mental chatter garbage becomes more vivid.
But it's not just no doer there's something else missing, perhaps logic is missing, the ability to compare and contrast between things. Yeah things aren't interpreted so much as definite objects and are just a more a wash of happenings.
Wait I think you also don't realize you are dreaming, whatever this means. I do think that this ties into the distinguishing faculty though. If you can't distinguish anything how do you distinguish whether you are dreaming or not. Also I've noticed things are quickly and easily forgotten in dreams.

I think I should switch the order, meditation before anything else that way I can bring that level of silence and focus to other activities.

Thank you,
I'm not sure how correct they are though.

Thank you, I'm not sure I have to worry about blood circulation when it's usually only 1 or 2 hours a day.

okay 1 hour 
I really stuck to the do nothing principle today
by trying to notice when I do something.
I actually seem to really identify as the doer.
It became really clear that thoughts that I had which I would typically think of as something I am creating
were reactions to things that I was able to just listen to.
It's increasingly more clear that when I stop noticing i.e. distinguishing between different sensations,
the illusion that I am creating thoughts appears.
After a while I was able to just watch my stream of thoughts just like watching the breath.
Afterwards to a degree even my body movements are starting to feel like reactions.
I just need to sit and pay attention to things more often.

1 hour today

sat very still for one hour
I notce that I can't help but keep my eyes open,
If I close them I get very disoriented and uncomfortable
object in my vision felt super close up this time, my field of vision started feeling less confined, far larger with less boundaries. 

I need to get over this one hour sit block 
tomorrow I will sit for four hours 
I don't care about being perfectly still right now, I will move when I think it's necessary to avoid injury or extreme discomfort.
I'll just make sure I'm always sitting upright and not leaning on anything to avoid a sleepy unaware state.
I'll just continue to sit until the times up, no matter how unfocused I get.
I just got to start sitting longer that's it, and overcome desires to end the sit.

Finally sat for 4 hours
I shifted position several times
One thing that became very apparent is my thoughts appeared very much like reactions
and the illusion of thought control pretty much completely dissolved.
Every time I would try to control a thought it would just appear to be another reaction to something else.
There's only one thing that is keeping me from thinking I don't have any choice at all
and that is that I can still seem to choose whether to react or not react.
Not reacting isn't really controlling anything same with reacting.
And not reacting is by definition not a reaction to anything,
so there seems to still be a choice between reacting and not reacting.

only one hour today was doing things all day

two hours today
after which I got excessively tired for some reason and fell asleep

I meditated today for one hour, it's hard to focus on anything again during meditation, but today spontaneously I got this intense feeling that I was floating and everything looked quite detailed.

meditated for one hour today I'll try another 4 hours tomorrow.

super dizzy and sleepy today for some reason,
I pushed past the sleepyness and meditated for one hour,
the hour went by suprisingly fast, I put on a blind fold so I wouldn't be opening my eyes to look at the time.
I noticed I could see visuals when I closed my eyes far better than I ever have,
but nowhere as clear as day to day life,
though I ended up exploring some imaginary buildings with my eyes closed,
first time I've done something like this.
I wonder if I could get these visuals as good as irl or better and do some sort of VR RPG game in my mind.
idk why I am so sleepy I'll sleep early and do the 4 hours tomorrow.

2 hours and 30 minutes today
I need more determination

I figured out I could sit in "butterfly" position (soles of feet touching each other, feet as close as possible to the body)
and this provided a source of constant discomfort and mild pain to feel into and bring equanimity to.
I was able to sit in this position for an hour.
at two hours and 30 minutes I got pretty sleepy feeling, so I lay in bed and the mental images were even better than yesterday.

I think I should try calisthenics like I would a walking meditation.
Maybe this will get rid of most sleepiness.

I find I am easily getting into what feels like quite deep flow states when playing rhythm games such as DTXmania.
Like usually I will get intrusive thoughts and emotions when playing, but now they are happening quite seldom,
and all  actions just automatically happen, there's not really even a trying to focus, trying to focus often gets in the way.
Also the standard 29-30fps of most videos and movies is starting to appear quite jerky to me. 

1 hour sitting yesterday
I spent most of the time just trying to stay awake

though throughout the day it felt like I was falling into my field of vision,
I guess it's because there's less of a sense of I'm right here that's all out there.

1 hour today
30 min through I changed to butterfly position
I put something against the wall behind my lower back so I could sit up straight in this position.
this position is quite challenging, just a constant stretch pain especially when sitting up straight. I just breath into the pain and mentally stay with it for as long as possible. There's this "standing on the edge of a cliff" feeling when I do get really deep into the pain, like I'm going to fall apart or something.

2 hours today
it felt successful
much deeper focus throughout the day with everything.

wow I've just noticed now all videos at ~30fps are really stuttery to me all the time, 60 fps is a bit better but still not super smooth.
I find there's two elements that add to the stutter being visible,
1. is the frame rate 2. is the degree of the change, how much do the colors change per frame, more subtle change is less noticeable.

I've also been getting intense feelings of joy from playing DTXMania,
spontaneous laughter and even tears/choking up. Pretty strange.

I finally know kind of what jhanas are now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCLT64SLYZk
I literally had no clue until I watched this video. 
I can feel pleasant sensations all over my body,
and I've achieved sexual orgasms by
releasing body tension and breathing deeply,
so I don't think it should be that hard for me to enter the first jhana.

constant deep concentration happened throughout the entire day
I had like this insane pleasure orgasm sort of thing on the bus when focusing on pleasurable sensations,
it was focused in the head and came in waves. I don't know how long I was meditating on the bus for so I don't count this as part of meditation today.
I found I could tune into and lock in a certain concentrated state of mind where I can hit a constant stream of random notes decently fast without missing. Just like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3kIIXwygu4
Thinking for even a split second will mess you up as will trying to consciously recognize the note patterns, you just have to tune into a state where it just happens automatically, and focus on staying in that state.

I did one hour meditation after I got home from the arcade.

only an hour today

I find using a timer distracting because I always end up wondering when the timer will go off,
this creates unwanted mental tension.
what I do now is I make a note of the time before I start and after I start,
and I change the goal from a set time to just focusing on finding sensations pleasurable.

2 hours

At some point I saw everything in front of me in my room very clearly for a good deal of time what felt like 5 min with my eyes closed,
it was a somewhat dreamy state, so I'm not sure if it was "real" or just a replica, but I was able to stay aware
and focused on the breath in that state. But there was still something unclear about the state,
even though the visuals and focus was clear, thoughts, feelings, and emotions were completely absent,
because I didn't get suprised, excited, or think anything of it at all.
Only in retrospect did it seem worth mentioning.

Later on I was able to feel a decent amount pleasure within painful sensations,
but I wasn't able to focus enough for the pleasurable sensations to become very intense.
As soon as focus was dropped the pain would suddenly start intensely hurting rather than feeling mostly pleasurable.
I wonder if this a good practice or will turn me into some sort of masochist lol.
Because before I was just focusing on staying with the pain as it is, rather than looking for pleasure within it.
I'm not sure this is good because it seems I'm not being equanimous, not suffering to pain, I'm just finding pleasurable sensations within it.

meditated for 2 hours today
It was so hot I found it hard to concentrate
​​​​​​​

forgot to write something yesterday I meditated at least an hour yesterday
​​​​​​​I also meditated an hour today

I sat for an hour yesterday it was very hot,
it felt like I was sleeping sitting up rather than meditating.
​​​​​​​

I sat and focused on doing nothing for 2 hours
actually this turns out to be difficult
there will be a desire to get up and do something every so often
I'll just sit and do nothing from now on, noticing when I try to do something.
attempting to do things like concentrate on this or that just wears me out.

I've finally realized why I can't accomplish things.
When it comes to doing/controlling things I throw as much willpower energy as violently and forcefully as possible
at the task or activity I want to accomplish, to force my body/brain to behave like some sort of machine,
my energy level drops to zero and then I get discouraged when I can't make progress.
But this works in combination with my extreme aversion to doing anything I don't desire.
And desire seems to be the fuel which I rapidly burn to force myself to do things, after which I don't desire anything.

Anyways my plan was to do meditation to remove aversion to things like various sorts of pain,
so I could accomplish things without any personal limitations. 
Though now I think if I did end up accomplishing this I would be no better than the transhumanists.

It seems that control and desire are closely linked.
I think the solution here is to just do nothing so there isn't any control or following desires.
When I just sit and do nothing it feels like this desire or that desire are trying to make me move.

1 hour today
was working outside all day
idk but the heat makes it really difficult to sit still and upright.
​​​​​​​

 yesterday did one hour fell asleep after.
idk how to focus in the heat, I can't even sit upright.

sat another hour,
Instead of it seeming like I was focusing on the breath,
it seemed that he focus element and breath element would
synchronize and then fall out of synchronization.
so now it's like keeping two things in alignment with each other,
rather than looking at something.

2 hours morning today
​​​​​​​I'll try another 2 in the evening.

1 hour before bed
state of spontaneous focus throughout the day.
lots of energetic sensations in the spine during meditation.
I need to do both in morning and before sleeping.
It's easy for me to do it before bed, but in the morning it's more difficult.
I should probably make goals that are close to effortless,
rather than something I think is going to require some consistent effort.
Whenever I put in huge amounts of effort, it takes me a long time to recover.
So now I'll try meditating any amount of time in every morning, it doesn't have to be very long.

1 hour again

Meditating was difficult today, it just felt uncomfortable.
I made sure I meditated earlier in the day, and later in the day, 1 hour 15 min total
I started using a stopwatch instead of timer to track my meditation
so now every time I notice that I've completely drifted off somewhere I press a button
and it logs a time on the stopwatch. This way I can see personal progress
much easier, and there's no waiting for it to be over, it's more like lets see how long I can go.

I've been finding any hour 2 hour guided meditation far too distracting.
Like I'll get really focused and then the voice will come in and divert my attention
lowering my focus level. 
I've found timers to induce waiting for the time to end rather than actually doing nothing.
So I'll try with a stop watch now.
I'll record the times I get distracted and post them here.

1 hour
​​​​​​​got caught up in studying stuff
totally forgot about meditation until the end of the day
I got distracted at these times
T 001:00:20.869
T 000:51:53.978
T 000:40:00.072
T 000:27:11.501

2 hours morning, I want two hours for evening as well.
yes finally a good morning meditation
times I completely drifted off:
T 002:00:15.861
T 001:49:24.074
T 001:43:02.653
T 001:29:40.571
T 001:19:27.767
T 001:04:59.806
T 000:58:17.227
T 000:49:39.935
T 000:34:42.213
T 000:30:21.144
T 000:26:46.323
T 000:21:03.134
T 000:12:50.554
T 000:06:08.141

too tired now to meditate very long
only 20 min evening,
​​​​​​​my goal is to build up a habit of meditation during mornings and evenings.
T 000:23:57.771
T 000:20:23.982
T 000:14:28.713
T 000:11:38.275

today evening 1 hour
I just observed thoughts because there were lots of thoughts that were just kindof uncontrolled mental chatter
I found that it's not the thoughts that sweep me away, I find it can happen with any sort of action whatsoever.
and when you think you are controlling something there's like mini being swept aways.
I don't even think it's being swept away, what's actually happening? 
is it that whatever happens in that moment is stored in memory, but you aren't there to experience it at the moment
so instead you only experience the memory of it? Because it seems when I am swept away by thoughts, I am not experiencing things fully.
T 001:00:27.763
T 000:47:30.497

Just when I think meditation isn't accomplishing much,
suddenly everything turned into something I can just listen to,
it was really weird because I would listen really closely to my mental voice as I would attempt to control it
and it was like I'm not controlling it even though I feel like I'm doing something.
T 001:01:49.873
T 000:42:32.352
T 000:25:27.190
T 000:13:40.698

meditation feels different than usual
today it felt like I was some puppet, like my limbs felt clunky and uncontrolled,
there was also an experience of spaciousness
I need to find a way to deal with tiredness
T 001:00:09.761
T 000:49:37.265
T 000:41:31.771

1 hour
T 001:15:18.537
T 000:53:57.849
T 000:46:37.921
T 000:43:24.129
T 000:41:23.657
T 000:39:40.977
T 000:37:30.417
T 000:36:02.297
T 000:32:50.090
L 000:25:59.172
T 000:07:41.013

Recently, all the times I find convenient to meditate are late at night, but often it's so late I'm tired.
Any work I engage in throughout the day requires too much decision making. It's easy to meditate to a repetitive unthinking task, but especially when I have to make many calculated decisions meditation to the task seems impossible. Meditating while trying to communicate seems impossible as well.
I'll try seeing if I can overcome tiredness by attempting to stay conscious falling asleep.
T 001:01:05.999
T 000:45:49.823
T 000:38:05.023
T 000:32:02.479
T 000:27:31.455
T 000:08:36.063

at least I've been doing an hour every day...
it's always when I do more than an hour that I notice some change in consciousness. 
T 001:01:05.999
T 000:45:49.823
T 000:38:05.023
T 000:32:02.479
T 000:27:31.455
T 000:08:36.063

This was from yesterday
T 000:53:19.361
T 000:29:04.952

this morning I meditated but didn't time it.

T 001:39:39.868
I was body scanning and didn't really get distracted.
But idk it's really hard to be systematic, I find I can't move my attention from one area to another in a point like way.
it was really hot today I can' t sit up

another hour
​​​​​​​

1 hour
​​​​​​​T 001:01:17.817
this time I during while I did nothing I got another weird spacious feeling
I think I would need to do a lot more nothing than a single hour a day.

000:21:34.694
only 20 minutes today it's way too late and I want to fix sleep schedule
I'll make up for this tommorrow

It's really difficult to meditate now for some reason.
I made to meditate in the morning
and a bit in the evening I think I did 40 min total.

okay I won't be timing meditation anymore,
I don't want a specific time to be a goal,
because the goal is not to sit for a certain period of time,
the goal is to reach a deep level of concentration and non-resistance/ignorance.
The goal is also to develop consistency in practice so morning and evening should be the goal.
Anyways I did morning and evening today.

meditated in the morning.

meditated in the afternoon
​​​​​​​

meditated in the evening yesterday
and today I meditated in the morning.
​​​​​​​

1 hour focusing on the pleasure derived from the beauty of an image

1 hour today total
20 min in early morning
40 min in the evening

meditated in the morning didn't time it
I find attempting to visualize really gets me into deep concentration states.
it sucks that I can't visualize that well though, only for fractions of a second between seconds will the image I want appear.
well I am using a complex image, but something like a simple shape or color is much easier to maintain although quite boring.
​​​​​​​