I'll give it a try to write an understandable log. May it help me improve my attitude and sitting quality.

08/20/23:

Sit, 55 minutes:

I began by settling in on the breath. It felt quite comfortable to do that. Quickly it became softer and softer and at some point it felt like it goes from the nostrils into the eyes. The mind seemed to expand a bit. After a while I began to feel a bit dull and moody, and I saw hovering blue star-like impressions. Eventually I became very tearful, as if the world collapsed down on me. Then I had the insight that the mind can only identify with one sensation at a time. But then the identification process began to feel very smooth, seamless, and "1 thing at a time" couldn't really apply anymore. Conclusion: there is no "one thing at a time" in reality.
Then I began to feel a bit dull and away. There was a split moment, when the mind felt very wide, in which there was a sort of gap and reset. I could notice the reset effect because the visual field began to blink very quickly.
After that the mind began to calm down, stuff had a specific softness, and it became hard to distinguish between what is space and what is sensations. The view became very panaromic. There was a sense sort of effort accompanying it.
 
Then I basically tried to sit with everything until I spaced out.

Remarks:

1. thinking about it, in a way, the ego seems to need objects to identify with. If there is no object, fro what I get from the sitting experiene, it seems that it can still identify with seamless flow.
2. Panoramicity appears more and more often. The mind is really eager to experience it. It's very satisfying. The sense of effort may just be a sort of untangling effort to get there. 

My overall sense is that the spiritual world and the conventional world are beginning to merge for me. It's almost a visceral experience. I am beginning to see Jhanas as the concentration states they are. I also begin to see POI stages as a series of insight packages, based on normal human processing of experience. What was I thinking?
I guess I somehow thought that Jhanas exist somewhere apart from the earthly domain and insight stages are something other than usual processing of experience. A dualistic distinction. In fancy speak, you could say that I thought that they are "inherently real", i.e., existing as separate entities. But how can that be? The meditator sits and calms and after some time "enters" jhana. "Enter" here is already a misleading term. Better to say a jhanic way of perception develops. It's a bit hard to swallow the truth of that, but there is no such thing/entity as "a jhana". That also explains why there is so much debate about what is and what isn't jhana. It's very similar with the POI stages. They are empty. Still, it's a helpful convention to make it tangible to talk about it. We will never be really talking about „it“, only aspects of experience, but so what?
 
So, in short: I don't separate as much anymore.

I couldn’t help but being poetic about it:

Like a tree gives birth to apples, Nirvana gives birth to Samsara. And as the apples rot, the seeds grow into a new tree, so is Nirvana born out of Samsara.

Or,

As Samsara rises out of Nirvana, but Nirvana is reached by means of Samsara, they are not two.

I'll also mention that experiencing non-separation brings up an unknown sense of love with it. The big-mind experience can be very forgiving and caring. And extraordinary ordinary! I think it depends a bit on where you come from whether you have a kind of pleasant, understanding neutrality or more loving and caring qualities. All this energy happens when there is a sense of a gap closing.

Maybe the most important thing here is that it still totally makes sense to speak of me being a person. I mean it’s not obvious when you have seen that much emptiness. In a way I speculate that this realization is a sign that an overall 4th Jhana is developing. I think, in hindsight things were „too empty“, vague, confusing for some time, but now, in a way, I sense a development towards clarity, and ordinary.

I also get more evidence that the degree to which I can smoothly transition into emptiness and back is a matter of clinging. When I cling to the self view I feel stuck after a while - something wants to move. When I cling to the emptiness view (take it as too real/want to keep it) it feels too detached after a while.

08/21/23

Constantly having "om mani padme hum" as an ear worm...

Sit, 57 minutes

Didn't really feel like doing it. Just sat. Had a lot of planning thoughts.  Watched the mind go up from first Jhana (narrow attention with a sense of effort) to stumbling around in formless realms (for me, at that point, mystical, confusing, weird). It felt unsatisfying and I became drowsy.  Took a toilet break. 
Then I asked myself what I want here in this sit. A lot of thoughts about ambition came up. Ambition being a sad thing, an ego clinging... I felt like in the mindstate of ambition, things become less enjoyable. I mean like exactly the same thing can be enjoyed when there is less ambition. I reflected on things that I might not have done without ambition. Then I thought ambition is OK, as long as it's not an identity. Because that's somewhat sad and fear driven. I tried to ask myself what fear it is that drives ambition. I didn't get a concrete answer. Instead I began to wonder why I am so often referring to what I will write into this log. I began to see that it's a kind of reflection, a checking in with my conscience. I really began to enjoy that insight, and I jokingly called it "taking my log as guru." I went a step ahead, finding that eventually I can take any experience as guru. In a way, it seemed like this is what has always happened in my life. I was being guided by my experience without knowing it. So, guiding happens.

Comments:

1. After the sit I remembered Daniel saying that "it's all about inclusion" and it seemed obvious to me that inclusion must indeed be the opposite of ignorance. As in what we don't include gets co-opted by the ego and that causes suffering.
 
2. It seems to me that questions like "what do I want here? " or "what am I avoiding" can be powerful, as they seem to re-center the mind.

08/22/23

Sit, 1 hour

Went from A&P into Dissolution. Didn't really feel like engaging.
 
Remarks:

In the light of conventional and unconventional not being two:
In this sit “being in Dissolution" seemed to be just the same thing as spacing out and beginning to wonder about things. Likewise, later Dark Night  is about saying no to everything, going towards extremes, finally accepting that I cannot escape my experience and let go. Here I can meet my shadows and demons - if I want and I am ready. Until then it might be ok to treat it as „just some magical weird state I am in“.

08/23/23

Sit, 1 hour

Interesting sit.

I started with breath meditation, going „up the jhanic arc“:
1. I watch the breath with some effort, go towards the breath
2. The breath comes towards me
3. The breath coming towards me is a known phenomenon
4. A sense of integration
I stop labelling here because I’m, not exactly sure
- Breath is space
- Breath, space. and me are the same
- breath has no source.
Then basically confusion, noise, flicker.
After that ride there was a strong sense of uncertainty. I tried to merge with that sense of uncertainty. What came up was „breath, space, me, and knowing are all the same“.
___

I can’t help but  that there is some sort of merging going on. Maybe merging with uncertainty is what leads to unity. Maybe „merging with uncertainty“ is spiritual bypassing. Maybe when I say „merging with uncertainty“ I mean „being with uncertainty“.

08/24/23

Sit, 20 minutes.

I let the body-mind settle and didn’t pay attention to anything in particular. It seemed to be a wild ride going on in the background. I chose a sort of holy disinterest attitude, just being the container.

08/28/23

I am experiencing more and more panoramicity and non-duality.
There seems to be a shift towards „this one and only possible perspective“, which isn't actually a perspctive, that in the past has been taken as "my perspective", „my viewpoint". And it still has a sense of a first person perspective to some degree, but it’s a different kind of knowing than the dual „I knows this“ perspective. It’s much more visceral, integrated, naturally intelligent, and wise.
 I like to investigate how it seems to come with a set of qualitites, coming more or less to the foreground: friendliness, lovingness, kindness, redemption, distinctness, „just right“.
I have the visceral impression that seeing non-duality of internal experience leads to the mind opening up into panorama. It can feel like a cleansing. A few clean-ups in (relation to) thoughts and then the mind lifts off.
It can also feel like this panorama is always available and it’s just a matter of veiling that we don’t perceive that way.

I am falling back into a just for fun attitude. Not sure if I'll continue here.

I feel like I have to excuse myself. It's not that a just for fun attitude is the problem, but that I have been irresponsible. Actually, what I meant by "just for fun" was "careless".
I guess I wanted too much and ended up pretending to understand and making claims about things I didn't.

Maybe "wanting too much" is a hint here. Maybe "shaming and blaming myself" is another hint. Edit: And what do I want to say here? It's vagueness again. Vagueness with a hint of conceit. You see, I am slowly learning. Realistically, I guess I produced some inaccuracies because I needed to have the sense of competence.

And, in the end, if we are really honest, it might be that we are not so much afraid of having confused other people, but to admit that we were confused ourselves.

Hey, 

It's ok not to know  

It's ok to be confused

It's ok to have fun

It's ok to fail, it's ok to succeed and sure as hell ok to find some type of middle way

Look how it's thinking it has fun. 

Look how it's thinking it has good times. 

Look how it feels shamed. 

Look how it's walking. 

(got this from Kenneth Folk). 

Or ... 

You lovingly say "ok friend" each time you notice it's experiencing stuff. 
It feels it needs to practice this or that or needs to change its attitude or else, and you say lovingly "ok friend". 
I do this now throughout the everyday experiences. "Ok friend" as in "I hear you". 
(got this from shargrol, which is also part of Radical Allowing for stuff to just arise-pass as is without resistance) . 

or 

if you feel like it do some Tonglen. 
Shargrol's method is what I did and was of help at times when I felt stuck. If interested I will write up the instructions or we can ask shargrol to do it or even Pepe as I'm sure he put those into that shargrol blog. 

​​​​​​​Best wishes! 

P.s. Disregard if of no interest. 

There seems to be a pattern, certainly for me, but it sounds like this is also true for many of us, in which insights and shifts are really consistently beneficial and life is great, interspersed patches in which life is messy and the progress seems to have vanished, or needs to be understood again. This pattern is actually standard for non-meditators, as well, but they may not notice it as clearly. As Bahiya and Papa have said, that's OK. Steve Armstong used to have this gentle refrain: This is how it is, for now. Seeing suffering, seeing the unreliability of the mind, seeing uncertainly and the desire for clarity sounds like good work, to me. 

I second that. I am always going through those kinds of cycles and some of them can really kick my ass. Some of it's the progress of insight, some of it's just life. 

​​​​​​​

Hey,

 how did you practice taking and sending? For how long and how often? I mean, I have the book "wake up to your life" with the instructions, but I'm not sure what is an effective/usueful amount of practice.

For this kind of practice I personally would recommend just feeling into your body and exploring the emotionality of it, the sensation of the breath in the body. Just explore and see how it feels to release, to let go, to breath deep. Get to know the practice over a few weeks, instead of worrying so much about how much of it you need to do now. 

Ok, yeah, thanks. That's actually my intuition, too, but there is this part of me that wants to get it right, you know... I guess I have to honour that part (like "ok, friend"), but that doesn't mean I can't just follow my intuition.