November 1, Tuesday
S3 - Do Nothing (30m)
Was dull for the whole sit, lurched about 2 dozen or more times, had hypnagogic thoughts.
November 8, Tuesday
S5 - T&I (45m)
Dullness became present after about 15 minutes an stayed for the whole sit. Tried to deconstruct it till it broke up but didn't happen. I could go for an hour long sit or an hour and a half to see how long it takes for dullness to disappear. Dullness was progressive and led to brief losses of consciousness and awareness. Dullness stayed after the sit.
I don't like the TMI way of overcoming dullness which is very hard and frustrating. TMI leads to over efforting quickly and a lot of resistance to starting a session is developed. I don't think it is necessary to practice this way and it leads to hating the process. I'd rather go slower and smoother by simply noting the hindrances until they disappear or until I am not curious to explore them anymore. So instead of defining practice as tranquility or insight, I will have a more fluid way to go about this as I see fit.
S6 - T&I (33m)
Intensely focusing on the hands (not full arms), helped with overcoming dullness temporarily. When dullness expanded and contracted fluidly, I would intensify my focus on perceiving pleasant sensations in the hands and when it contracted I would ease up and become aware of the pleasant sensations in the hands. This helped but stopped working after a while.
In terms of stability of attention, a lot of gross distractions arose and didn't intend to be aware of potential distractions, just noted them and redirected attention on the objects of attention.
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I still decided to practice the TMI style, but the way I prefer and like, not too systematic and blindly following suggestions in the book. Doing the Do Nothing technique feels pointless now and my mind is more geared towards making direct progress.
I feel ok with doing tranquility practice, if I become resistant to it, I can switch to the Do Nothing technique temporarily until I want to practice tranquility and insight again. Or... I can shorten the duration of practice and quantity of the sessions per day. Last time illness threw me off and I quit consistent TMI practice for 3 months, instead doing the Do Nothing technique (inconsistently) and sometimes TMI. Wasted so much time... In these 3 months, I could have mastered at least the 5th stage. But aversion towards practice was too much.
What prevents me from doing the practice are the activities I use to escape - engaging, browsing or collecting: Manga, books, novels, anime, courses, PMO, educational videos, YouTube. If I don't do these, resistance to practice isn't that high and I tend to develop natural interest and pull towards practice. Posting on Dharma Overground consistently also helped me many times do the session and not break the chain.
Things that help: consistent and good sleep habits as Andrew Huberman suggests, eating clean, not over eating and eating at the same times every day, going to the library to avoid toxicity.
Also, on Sundays, reviewing the week and setting goals for the next one. This type of approach works better for me rather than planning for projects that I can't accomplish anyway. It is much better to approach practice by developing consistent habits rather than being too obsessive about it and trying to do more than 6 hours a day (Which I can't seem to pull off, especially for TMI practice).
Thinking of doing 20m sits 6 times a day and increasing the duration of every session by 10 minutes every month. Or I could increase the duration of the first session by 15m every month. Consistency is what I should focus on not high performance in a short time. Writing also helps so much...
