Back at it! The last year has seen some sporadic practice, but it's been mostly non-existent. My life has been busy and complicated, and more than ever it feels like the adage (badly paraphrased from memory) 'If you don't have time to meditate twenty minutes, you should meditate for an hour' applies.

Today's sit I looked at the breath, and noticed some general contraction in the upper body and neck, and then tried to generally feel the sensation of breathing in that area. Quite a bit of distraction, but basically what I'd expect being out of practice. I haven't totally decided what direction feels right to go in with the meditation yet, though the idea of getting access concentration established again is appealing and probably will make everything work better.

Welcome back, best of luck with it !!

Thanks! Feels good to be starting up an intentional practice again.

20 minute sit. Following the breath with broad awareness, generally trying to notice the sensations in the body and how they react to the breathing. A couple instances of tensing-up intensity followed by clarity. The contrast help reveal some dullness, and tried to see that dullness.

45 minute sit. Lots of distraction, my mind really wanted to run off and solve problems. I ended up just falling back to basics - just attention on the sensation of the breath at the tip of the nose. Some moments of rushing of intensity.

30 minute sit. Attention on the breath at the tip of the nose. Lots of distraction, some jhanic stuff, mostly the joyful feedback sensation in the upper chest I associate with second jhana. More muscle tension spasm intensity moments. For the last 10 minutes or so tried to note the breath at the tip of the nose as quickly as possible, maybe 8 times a second or so. This was high effort but did result in less distraction.

20 minute sit. Focused on the breath at the tip of the nose. Lots of distractions, these tapered off into dullness. More periodic rapturey muscle-tensing stuff.

1.5 hour sit. Attention on the sensation of the breath at the tip of the nose for the first 30 minutes or so. Some distraction, but also some moments of calmer clear seeing. Got lost in thought briefly about something with my work, and noticed some anxiety about whether it would work, be a waste of time, etcetera. Realized I could stabilize those feelings of anxiety in a similar way to how I would stabilize the sensations of a jhana, and just looked at the sensations of anxiety for quite a while, trying to let them just be and accept them to the extent that I could.

1.5 hour sit yesterday. Started with breath at the nose. Lots of distraction. Started looking at what it felt like to be pulled away just before a distraction, noticed there were some sensations I associate with first jhana, this sort of top of the head urgent feeling, which lead into cultivating first jhana. Then went into second for a while, then third. Not very hard jhana.

45 minute sit today. Jhanas have been happening, so I figured I'd just go right to that. Cultivated a pretty unstable first jhana, then went to second, then went back to first and got it much more intense and stable, then went back to second for the remainder of the sit.

45 minute sit. Some irritating administrative problems cropped up in life recent, and just sat looking at the sensations my body is making around that. Asked 'What would it be like for these to be just sensations and totally ok?' Started getting some slightly dissasociative body distorting/boundary blurring stuff. Some second jhana factors present throughout.

20 minute sit today, pretty distracted. A bit of jhanic stuff going on a couple waves of intensity. Generally just looking at sensations of discomfort and noticing that they aren't self.

2 hour sit today. Lots of distraction, noticing a lot of physical discomfort in awareness, especially around the head and neck area. Spent the early time building up a little more concetration with jhanas, then switched to noting the suffering characteristic of the physical discomfort. Eventually there was less distraction, but more dullness and some daydreamyness.

1.5 hour sit today. Looking at discomfort in awareness, trying to let it be what it is. Got a little process going eventually that felt good, echoes some of what I recall of the TWIM method, where I would, upon noting a feeling of contraction in the body, first accept that was what was going on, generally coax it to relax a little, then expand awareness like blowing up a balloon, then smile. The sit tended to oscillate between daydreamyness and ok clarity.

1.5 hour sit today. Looking at some of the physical discomfort in awareness, trying to accept those sensations. Early in the sit not too many distractions, though some daydreamyness and dullness. Later in the sit less daydreamyness but more distraction. A general feeling of the body's boundaries as more diffuse and less solid arose several times during the sit. Some waves of intensity. Not very jhanic today.

 "Not very jhanic today."

Fantastic!  
​​​​​​​Best wishes! 

1.5 hour sit. Sat watching for distracting thoughts coming in. This was pretty effective - much less gross distraction today. Tried to see the sensations that would lead to a distracting thought arriving. Towards the middle of the sit there started to be some dullness. I tried to see what was happening with it, and over time it seemed like at least part of what I think of as dullness is sort of an active thing I'm doing, as opposed to insufficient energy put into maintaining awareness. I realized it's possible to accept and relax away part of the dullness. It seems like there is an extent to which some effort is required to avoid totally shutting down, but it's maybe less than I'd thought once I stop the active part of the dullness. The active dullness almost seems like a defense mechanism, like a hedgehog curling up. When the alarm went off I wasn't at all startled by it, which is a nice sign that I was not too taken over by dullness. There were some moments of raptureous intensity, but mostly the sit had a quiet, ordinary feel to it - just seeing sensations.

Haha thanks! It's in some ways a bit of a relief, sometimes the jhanic stuff can give the sit a bit of an edge to it unless I actively channel that into going deeper into the jhanas.

Nice! Try investigate what arises during such non-Jhana sits. Some gold can be found in all that. 

Nice. 

Just seeing sensation. Seeing is a sensation. 
Knowing (the sensation) is a sensation. 
Mind image (of the sensation) is a sensation 

... 

Keep it up!  

1.5 hour sit. Looking at dullness, seeing how it's something I do and could stop doing rather than something to fight against. Like rather than thinking about dullness as this rock on one side of the scales so that I have to push down on the other side to get to balanced clarity, realizing the dullness is actually me pushing down on the other side of the scale, and I could just stop doing that and find effortless balance. Interestingly, as I got more and more able to do this, I had more and more distraction to contend with. It's like the dullness is a way for the mind to protect itself against the stream of thoughts or something. It's an interesting balancing act to try to see both and just not interfere. Towards the end of this sit, it started looking like much of what I think of as aversive feelings in awareness can be attributed substantially to the sense of dullness plus muscle tension living in the throat and face.

Yeah for sure - there's been some good stuff to investigate. Feels nicely simple in some ways, going back to basics when I was just learning to meditate at all, following the breath at the nose and trying to not get distracted.

What if dullness is just that "dullness" and nothing more? Or less.

EDIT to add;
I would be more interested in investigating the "aboutism" side of the dullness experience. What is this that "knows" this dullness, and why is this "knowing" feeling so personal, as in "me the knower of this"?

1.5 hour sit today. Just looking at sensations arising in awarness. Did some ammount of seeing the breath arise in awareness. Noticed that the center is pretty fragile - if i try to get too pointed looking at things, I dissolve into dullness/distraction. Seemed to be best to keep awareness wide, and be alert for signs of dullness or distraction. Some rapturey moments.

Haha good reminder not to get caught up in thinking too much about this stuff - thanks! I played around with a little investigation of the knower and such today, but realized that any too pointed investigation was pretty brittle today. Seems broad diffuse awareness is the way to keep things from going totally off the rails right now.

Did another 1hr 20 min meditation today. Noticed that the center continued to be difficult to focus on, just looked at sensation in the periphery. A distinct feeling of the center and periphery being misaligned plus some distinct dukkha nana vibes gave me the sense that I'm in the dark night territory right now. Would make sense, given the difficulty I've had getting back to good concentration. I think I did a run through the dukkha nanas up through reobvservation into low equanimity, but it was all pretty hazy and difficult, and in the past that's been more some fractal sub-nana type stuff, so just going to keep going with it and see what happens without getting too worried about what exactly is going on. Pushing the attention to the periphery seems to have gotten things moving at least, which is nice.

"without getting too worried about what exactly is going on"

Even Ingram is suggesting not to get lost in "mapping" and instead do 99% noting matter of fact experience and only 1% reflecting on the path as per the insight map stuff. 

Get into that periphery, see what can be found there! All details are important no matter how tiny and insignificant they seem to be. It seems hard to know exactly what is going on in the realm of the hazy and nebulous but there still is some sort of clear knowing there. "uncertain" is a good mind state to note. "unable to focus" is another good one. "unpleasant" feeling is a good one to note. "doubtufull" etc ... Dont forget the body sensations of the tactile nature! What happens to body sensations ... That periphery is full of interesting stuff.

1.5 hour sit, broad awareness. Looking at the impermanence of sensations that arose. Strong sense that the center/periphery were disjoint or out of phase. Distictly went though fear, misery, disgust, desire for deliverance, reobservation. Limited distraction during this time, though some numbing daydreamyness between waves. Things got more unified and panoramic after that, though a sense of discontinuity remained throughout. Daydreamyness early on, moving into more distraction. Eventually got to something that felt pretty ordinary, but with an edge to it still.

1.5 hour sit today. Pretty intense. Started off by noting sensations in the periphery, and in particular noticing a dissonance between the periphery and the center. Some fairly intense physical discomfort in the face/jaw area. Some neutral-feeling rapturey moments of muscle tension. Noticed that what I consider the periphery vs the center has grown over the years - the 'center' is a pretty broad internal field, rather than the point of attention, and the periphery is more diffuse and seems to extent far outside of what I might consider my body.

As I was looking at the dissonance between the periphery and the center, sort of enjoying it in a discordant way, it started to look like the sense that there's some unified periphery and some unified center for there to be discord between might not be quite right, and that actually these things are not big blobs of unified awareness and instead actually are full of the same sense of discord internally if I don't force an illusion of coherence.

This fairly rapidly got intense. Sensations came faster and faster, and the perihperal ones got much more obvious. Interestingly in abandoning this sense of coherence in awareness, I arrived at a chaotic but more unified awareness - an awareness unified in just being a chaos of undifferentiated sensations. This got into weird territory that was reminiscent of hard jhana or something - like I was just getting blasted by this deluge of raw sensations. It reminded me of my A&P experience early on, but where that was drilling super-concentrated and pointed as close to sensations as possible, this was a super broad torrent of sensations. Same kind of manic energy though. I still feel buzzy from it. Towards the end the muscle-shaking super intensity of it tapered off and it got a little dissolved feeling.

1.5 hour sit. Started off with high energy, fair bit of distraction, looking around in awareness. Lots of sensations coming quickly. Sense of sepparation between center of attention and periphery seems mostly broken  up and less meaningful still, just sensations. Spent a while picking at this and not really feeling like I was getting anywhere, kept getting distracted. Then started noticing that there was a similar inside/outside dissonant sense of sepparation and started looking at that. It seems like I percieve awareness as this shell around 'me'. That sense of 'me' no longer seems to be a point, but it does still seem to be an 'inside' more generally. Started looking at that boundary. Neutral rapturey stuff, less distraction. Had some similar feeling to yesterday of sort of enjoying the dissonance. It seemed to become less permanant throughout the sit. Even now, I seem to have much less of a sense of a shell of awareness.

1.5 hour sit. Investigating the difference between 'inside' and 'outside' awareness. Seemed to be significantly attenuated by the investigation. Lots of sensation, but a bit calmer. Some distraction early on, some daydreamyness later. Interesting to note body tension that is experienced as anxiety tends to be counted as an 'inside sensation' while body tension/soreness that just feels like normal exercise life stuff is counted as 'outside' sensation.

1.5 hour sit. Looking at what distinguishes 'inside' sensations that I take personally, vs 'outside' sensations that seem to be basically fine. The actual inside/outside spatial sense seems to be almost gone at this point, and what's left is more to do with some feelings having negative feeling tone and others being neutral or good. I noticed however that some kinds of soreness or other discomfort didn't really register in the same personal way as the general anxious tension - like they have negative feeling tone if I really look at them, but they just don't really pop up in awareness in the same way. Tried distinguishing the actual barest starting sensations from the feeling tone, and had some success - noticed that even the anxious chest/throat tension sensations are just sensations. But then there is a negative feeling tone that arises from that, and then a rejection of that arises in awareness. I noticed that if I leaned hard into the back of my chair so that the top bit into my back a little, the 'rejection' feeling transfered over to those sensations. It seems like the main thing about the negative feeing tone of the anxious tension is just that it's what seems most urgent in the mind, and there are habitual thoughts that try to do something about it (unsuccessfully). Is the sense of suffering just these habitual thoughts that try to solve it?

1.5 hour sit today. Pretty distracted - I've been in the process of coffee, and dropped down to just decaf today. Focus was not super strong. Looked at aversion in awareness. Observed that much of it seems to be tied to not wanting to experience more aversion in the future. Just this anticipated domino-run of aversion that self-perpetuates itself. Kept looking for any kind of self that could actually reject the sensation to create the aversion, or not want the aversion. It all seems a bit silly. A bit of rapturey stuff, reasonably bright awareness, fairly calm.

"much of it seems to be tied to not wanting to experience more aversion in the future"

Nice! The role of the future can be really helpful in untangling the knot. 

1.5 hour sit. First sit with totally no caffeine - pretty low focus. Distracted and daydreamy. Just tried to keep wide awarness mostly for the first half of the sit. Then started looking at feeling of aversion in awareness, the sense that there's some problem that needs to be fixed. Really, the present seems totally fine other than this aversion, which seems mostly to be worried that there will be more aversion in the future. Kind of dumb. Later on, rather than just noticing that, I switched to looking for who was feeling the aversion, or who was feeling harmed by the aversion.

It seems at least intellectually a good thread to pull on! So far not huge success in viscerally believing it though it seems haha. In some ways it feels like the answer is to just relax about it and let it be just fine, etcetera, though I've thought I was doing that in the past and instead was at least partially just ignoring it, as the knot of tension in question has been very reccurring.

20 minute sit today, following the breath. Low focus, lots of daydreamy sleepiness. Some high-resolution daydreamyness.

1.5 hour sit today. Started off very distracted, moved to pretty daydreamy. Just kept going back to awareness. Towards the end of the sit started seeing aversion in awareness, seeing something closer to the bare sensations and then how there is a reaction to them, and how aversion is tangled up in that reaction. It was interesting that when I was looking at it in this way, the looking sort of replaced the reaction locally, resulting in just the sensations without much of the way in negative response. This was a bit of a game of whack-a-mole, where the sensations somewhere else in awarness would still arise and provoke a reaction.

In my experience, intellectual stuff can be a distraction so I have a policy of sticking mostly to the stuff that is visceral. If something makes theoretical sense but it doesn't feel that way, I leave it as something to maybe come back to later. Really seeing/knowing/grooking/feeling is where the action is. 

1.5 hour sit. Low focus generally. Eventually started looking at the feeling of 'low focus' and after doing that for a while, I realized I was looking at this mass of doubt and uncertainty about life generally, like this sense that I should be doing something different, that there's something to go find or get or do that would fix everything. Interestingly though this was a visceral sense, it didn't really live in a focused place - it was more all-pervading in awareness. Looked at that feeling for the rest of the sit, watched it generate thoughts about how to make things better, or thoughts about how things are not good enough.

That's a good policy - thanks! Feels like a nudge in the right direction.

Another 45 minutes, more clear now but still some focus trouble. Kept looking at the sense of an attitude of worry or doubt about my place in the world or something like that - a general dissatisfaction or aversion. I wonder if this is something like the 'worldviews' stuff I've seen other people reference on this forum. Some moments of intensity, center a little dim, but periphery brighter. Definitely some daydreamyness and distraction still.

1.5 hour sit. Looking at the sense of doubt or uncertainty or dissatisfaction about the world. Some distraction and daydreamyness, including moments of high-resolution daydreamyness. At first looked at whether this doubting feeling is permanent. Concetrated on relaxing focused attention and really digging into the periphery. Eventually noticed that this doubt is highly dependent on a 'me' to be dissatisfied, and started looking around for that.

45 minute sit. Looking at the sense of dissatisfaction in awareness, trying to see who is dissatisfied. Noticing the the sensations of 'tired, too hard, worrying' etc. as sort of peripheral tension. Just trying to see the underlying sensations and who is having a hard time with them. Later in the sit did some experiments of thinking about something difficult in life and then watching a certain peripheral tone take over to see the sensations more clearly. Some daydreamyness, some distraction. Some waves of intensity. Some dullness.

1.5 hour sit. Looking at peripheral dissatisfaction. Did some neck stretches to try to see more clearly the relationship between muscle tension and the dissatisfaction. Definitely seem correlated. I appear to have such a habit of holding tension in my head and neck that it develops a positive feedback loop of being more likely to experience aversion because the tense feeling are already there, which then manifests as more tension, an so on.

Later in the sit really looked hard for the one experiencing all of this as a problem. This got intense for a while, lots of rapturey stuff, then got pretty daydreamy, some high resolution imagery. Also end up with more equanimity toward it all. Some vague sense of being a mirror or something.

Physio issues can be common at certain points in the path. Just more arising phenomena, take a breath. Investigating subtle aspects of experience can be useful at certain points in the path. Just more arising phenomena, take a breath.