I sit and do my letting go practice. Eventually I reach a place that is quite still, in retrospect I see that I was not aware of any sensory information. Moment-to-moment awareness seemed strong at the time, but in retrospect there might have been some dullness. Although I might describe the whole ordeal as 'sinking' deeper and deeper, there is no sensation of 'falling' or 'sinking'.

I'm having trouble remembering exactly what happened. Maybe that is indicative of something. But what I do remember is that after a certain point I kept... blipping? Over and over and over again. Maybe 30 times in the manner of maybe 10 minutes.

The blipping itself is remarkably like falling asleep, yet also very different. The haze and progressive unconsciousness that precedes falling asleep doesn't happen prior to this 'blip'. There is a tiny lead-up, where it seems that consciousness is unplugging, which is inherently hard to describe (one's not really conscious of it). Then the blip happens, or maybe it doesn't quite: every time it felt somehow incomplete. Like I was nodding off, but not quite nodding off because the body starts falling and to prevent face-planting onto the floor, I'm snapped back to regain balance.

Another thing that clearly sets this blipping apart from simply nodding off is the clarity right after the blip. Not that the clarity increases after the blip, but I didn't feel drowsy or have any sensations that I would connect with having just woken up from a nap/nodding off. It's right back to the calm, semi-bright (see previous mention of dullness) awareness: "wow! there it happened again".

Are these micro-sleeps? 30 of them? Are these wanna-be fruitions? 8th jhana?

Another thing to note is that the 'nodding off'-body-movement wasn't necessarily tilting forwards, like what would would be the case if you were nodding off on a buss. Most of the time it seemed like the spine wanted to straighten up, tilting the body backwards.

So after a while I get kind off annoyed with the feeling of incomplete blips, seemingly caused by not being able to relax 110% (which would send my body crashing into the floor), so I lay down, and in doing so loose some concentration (sensory information start intruding, etc.), but work my way up again. Now I'm lying still, attentively watching. In retrospect it seems like I was quite dull, and maybe that is true to a certain degree, but I think it mostly seems that way because I was paying attention to a very, very limited scope of phenomena.

Moving from the sitting position to lying down and the loss of concentration that followed, lead to a certain striving that would grow and eventually make me properly doze off and have a 30 minute nap. But not before getting some seemingly complete blips (as opposed to the previous almost-there-blips) and on 2, 3 maybe 4 occasions a bliss-wave would follow the blip.

Anyone care to share their thoughts about this? I think what I should be focusing on is to familiarize myself with this process and most of all work on the brightness of awareness (aka. mindfulness? introspective awareness? etc...). Do you experience blips? How do you experience blips? Fruitions? Dozing/nodding off? How would you describe them - both in and out of formal meditation.

Could be fruitions. Do you notice patterns in experiences that arise before the blip? And after it? Did this just happen for the first time? If so, do you notice a difference in overall mood? I have had experiecnes very similar to yours of repeated 'blips' one aftert the other. They were fruitions (cessations). How blissy is the blisswave? Expalin the blisswave? to what degree is the 'bliss'? Are they happening after accessing the 7th jhana?

I'm not sure I understand what you mean with this, but I will have a go. Continually letting go of progressively subtler phenomena. Moving towards a certain brightness. Then:


What I have emphasized in the above quote is what I meant by:



*


It is not the first time it has happened.

I did notice mild, but clear, positive differences in overall mood afterwards. This is what motivated me to sit yesterday - a 'desire for deliverance' - and this desire was gone after the sit.

I have had, in certain periods, occasional blips like this. Once or twice in a sitting. At one point I had a similar experience as described in this post, a 'blip fit'.

On two occasions I have had much more pronounced blips (single ones). One of those times lead to a 2-3 day long uplifting of mood, with a constant "something's different"-feel. My guess, that was a path-fruition. On another occasion, following what was probably a dukkha-door fruition (was deeply relaxed, then a someone-hitting-me-on-the-head-with-a-newspaper startle), I had a my-eyes-looking-at-the-hand-moving-without-any-feeling-of-agency kind of thing.


"Dip fits", am I right?


Hmm... Not as blissy as previously experienced after what was probably a path-fruition. If this was fruitions, then I don't think any of them were path-fruitions. Bliss-feeling was mostly piti (the tingling kind, vibrations all over) and some sukkha (deeper well-being), nothing overwhelming, but definitely 'releasing' (as in releasing pressure).


I do not have any grip on the jhanas, meaning I might well be accessing them, but I wouldn't know if I did.

(I suggest you remove the full quote of my post; your post follows immediately after mine, so it is redundant )

Interesting.... I´ve had the exact same thing happen to me, a couple of weeks ago (I´ve stopped meditating since).
Same sequence, too: very relaxed, concentrated (TWIM style) attention, then I got lost in a thought about something mundane and suddenly my head snaps forward as if waking from a nap. This happened a couple of times and if I remember correctly on multiple sits. I´ve written in my practice journal about some changes in clarity and peacefulness but didn´t attribute it to one single thing although I did suspect that something had shifted....