I decided to start to a practice log to be more aware of the meditation related progress I am making. Meanwhile staying in contact with a community that has similar interests in meditation. I am really looking forward to the communit's insight and advice. To help with that I am going to clarify my goals and current meditation technique.

My first goal ist to attain "access concentration", being able to stay focused on an object without loosing concentration by interfering distractions. I try to achieve that level of concentration by staying with the breath as long as possible and perceiving the sourrounding sensations.

My second goal (long term) is to discover consciousness and the underlying nature of reality by meditating.

Current technique:
- Vipassana from the Goenka tradition.
- I try to meditate up to 30 minutes a day in the morning

In the past two to three weeks I focused on the first goal and layed my usual meditation practise (Vipassana) by side and focused only on the breath. I found out that I made to apparent improvements in the level of concentration. It seems to me that I have difficulties maintaining my concentration throughout my meditation session.

I decided to register for another 10-Day Vipassana course in early August. My first and last course was one year ago. The following was my experience which I posted in another threat.
"I knew how the schedule on the retreat is going to look like. Therefore I tried to meditate every day up to an hour before going to the retreat. Hence I didn't have any problems with meditating the whole day and I could follow all the meditation instructions. What I had problems with, was a lot of pain in the knees and the back and negative thoughts (worries, ...) sourrounding people that are close to me. It seemed like I used the retreat as a medium to process build up worries. On the last day and the day afterwards I felt really peaceful without any problems. But I didn't have any profound experiences or insights. In the weeks after the retreat I felt in a kind of hole. I rarely did anything productive. The reasons could also have been that I had, right before the retreat, a few really importat exams, for which I had to learn a lot. It could be that I wasn't motivated to do anything afterwards because all the workload fell away."
@aeon @jimsmith

​​​​​​​I would love to hear about your experiences and insights on concentration.
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Meditation can destroy your ambition.

I used to go to the Zen center to hear talks and for group meditation sessions. Many of the talks were by members who said they left well paying jobs to spend more time pursuing spiritual development. I thought they were crazy ... until I did it too.

11.05.23: 
I didn't really practice yesterday, because I had a bad day and felt that I don't have the energy for a meditation session. I felt kind of drained without any motivation and ernergy. However these feelings where accompanied by a feeling of spaciousness. My body and my perspective felt loose and not as solide as usually. Later on in the day the feeling faded away.

12.05.23:
Today I decided to meditate for an hour, focusing only on my breath (that is triple the time I usually do). In the first 10 minutes of the session I was easly distracted by thoughts, after that I could maintain concentration with less effort. Around the 30 minute mark I completely strayed away from the object and got really sleepy and occupied with my thoughts. After staying in that phase for a few minutes I "regained consciousness" and focused on my breath again. In the last part of the session a feeling of peace, happiness and calmness accompanied by vibrations spread throughout my body starting in the chest. To clarify I should say that I cannot stay focused on my breath longer than 30 seconds without being interrupted by distractions (mainly thoughts). After the session I felt really good and calm. It tried to maintain that feeling but only managed to do that to some degree for a few minutes.