well, i just created an account here to ask for advice. i thought about the post, naturally, and i imagined i'd be making an exception. i rarely ask for advice (never) so it would be an exception. now i feel too ashamed about it. or, i felt ashamed about it. for a moment or so. now i'm just fine. at least there's a story to tell, to start the post. almost every day is a bit of a retreat for me. but there isn't really a difference between meditation and not-meditation for me. there's just types of meditation. i had some interesting experiences. in particular with psychic powers. very recently, almost every day, actually. it's fun to write stories about past experiences. especially weird ones. because they sound like fiction, but they're based on real life. i've had some financial experiences. one time, during a zen-like sit, i began to feel peak emotions. something like "better than anything ever felt before". and i had one of my investments go up, surprisingly. i've noticed a correlation between concentration, emotions and resulting experiences. not just this, but also how my perspective on things is. it's been a long time since my last fruition afaik. but probably less than a month. yesterday i just sat down naturally, relaxed naturally, and sat for about two hours. i wasn't able to fall asleep, but i wasn't trying to either. or was i? i don't know.
unfortunately, vipassana makes me more impulsive. not impulsive, that's not the right word. more sensitive? if i'm able to go through some vipassana practice (and it is associated with concentration practice) lots of good things start to happen. one time, i felt like everything came to me, on its own, for an hour or so. maybe just 30 minutes. that experience was a bit of a half-jhana. i don't see that kind of thing talked about anywhere. well, i'd call it a half-jhana. it was very similar to the first jhana, but without absorption, despite being "anchored" to breath.
vipassana is much easier and stronger for me than concentration. in fact, whenever i try to concentrate on something, it disappears. if it's a small object. i can look at a ball for a minute or so, and it disappears. sometimes even less than a minute. of course, after disappearing, things re-appear again. sometimes they can disappear for longer, but it's never "really long". i've had two experiences with disappearing that i would call psychic powers. one time, i was looking at a pillow. until it disappeared. and i practiced really hard, because there were lots of details on that pillow. so, later, it disappeared in "real life". someone took it away. the same thing happened when i tried to do this in public. i was sitting in front of a restaurant and staring at some thing, a small thing. i don't know the english name of it. i was concentrating on it, and this concentration was genuine this time. it was made out of glass, so it was harder to make it disappear. anyway, i came back the next day, and it was gone, which was very unusual. i'm a bit of an amateur, so i don't really know how to choose whether to make something appear or disappear. but, during one concentration practice, after enough disappearences, it began to slow down, and eventually i began to concentrate on the appearence of something. it was a ball. a tiny ball.
sometimes, i know what brain waves i'm having right now. it's mostly visual. when things are pulsating quickly, i imagine those are gamma or hyper-gamma waves. after relaxing deeply, it can be particularly fast. sometimes i can even see when my eyes are closed. it usually happens after deep relaxation, like sleep. and that seeing only last for a second or two. so, i can open my eyes, close my eyes, and see everything for another second or two. then i can blink again, and see it again. eventually that effect wears down.
my practice used to be mostly visual. it's moved on to a sound and my perception of sound is quite good also. again, i'm unable to really concentrate on sound. i don't have real access concentration to it. i do have some weak form of visual-sound synesthesia, so i can hear everything i type, without any effort. not while reading though. just typing. if i were to "concentrate" on sound, like a word, it would soon turn to a focus on disappearence, and i wouldn't notice much appearence of the sound anymore.
i don't have "real" problems anymore, although i still have preferences sometimes and they can get into a conflict sometimes. emotions are very fleeting for me, although i'm smiling most of the time, and i feel a light sense of joy, which often goes up. again, if i were to concentrate on them, they would disappear lol. occasionally there is a weak lurking depressive tendency. it can occur every now and then, but i always handle it calmly, and pay attention to positive things.
i have bad habits coming up very frequently, but each time they become weaker and weaker. it's been a long time (maybe over a month?) since i had my awful vipassana experiences. i've read about the 12 stages or something, was it 16? i thought 12 was fruition. anyway, it's never went in that exact order for me.
i'm also unable to access any jhanas, intentionally, other than just sitting and waiting for them, which could take anywhere from a minute to an hour.
cessation occurs for a ball when the afterimage and the actual ball align. i think that has to do with my eyes being correctly focused on it.
sometimes things turn into something weird. visually. i can't really say much about them, other than what their shape is, based on the environment. it's a state that comes shortly before the cessation of something.
my awareness is very very expansive. i can see the vibration of almost anything. it's more difficult with a screen, or a light bulb (which i'd rather not stare at directly), but i can see the edges of the screen vibrating. it's always the edges. things disappear much more easily when i notice the edges. they sort of fade into the environment. not always though. sometimes they're just black and sometimes they're completely gone, replaced by the environment. i had multiple 12 hour sits and one 11 hour sit, with many sessions being many hours long. but recently i've found anything body-related very very difficult. especially breath meditation, concentrating on the breath. it's been getting easier in the past few days, but it's not very stable. one time, after my first 12 hour sit, i couldn't sleep for 3 days. i just had lots of energy. it was a very difficult sit and took "will-power" lol. there were many cycles of pain growing and growing, and then falling down into strong peace and relaxation. i've had one such cycle a few weeks ago, during a vipassana practice, and afterwards my life felt great, and something good happened to me. writing is one of the few ways to semi-concentrate. i used to practice trataka, mostly. with a dot. not a candle. my first (visual) dissolution happened in a dream and it had a beautiful build-up that i tried to prevent in my dream, but it kept growing and growing, until the whole visual field had disappeared and i woke up. sometimes, i wish for the rain to be gone, and it just goes away. especially when i want to go for a walk. it's a great experience.
my early intentional visual-cessation practices were more interesting. i had colors disappear, so objects became white/black. i've also had details disappear. i've had multiple fruitions, which were not intentional. one of my early cessations happened in my sleep, and i woke up to witness a nightmare in real life. there's something weird about fruitions. or cessations.
one time, after i was tired, i decided to expand my awareness, and my tiredness disappeared. in fact, i had a manic energy. i stayed awake a bit too long, and i had a sudden energy burst, and i was very active during that day, physically. i also took the bus and felt a bit careless. i felt as if all my negative tendencies disappeared. deep ones, like social anxiety.
i wrote quite a bit here, but i write most things in private. i've manifested a girlfriend before, accidentally. later, i've manifested a strange cyber-stalker girlfriend. intentionally. i've reconsidered my relationship-preferences afterwards... i've met lots of unusual people before, and for some time i was even paranoid when leaving my home. i've had people harassing me, in real life, and online. one of my ex-girlfriends, and some friend of hers. perhaps i shouldn't be writing about that. when i write about something, i remember it. when i remember these things, my life often takes a dip, depending on how much attention i pay to them. but it never lasts longer than a day, and my life gets much better very quickly. magic experiences are lots of fun.
i've learned an interesting thing about freedom. there is an interesting balance. when you are free, you can choose to be stuck. i'm also a bit of a scientist, so there is another interesting thing i like about freedom, although i didn't get to the first interesting thing yet. the second intersting thing is the battle between direct knowing and indirect knowing. complete cessation, i would consider that a direct knowing of all reality (theoretically, you can say that you wouldn't know what it's like to not know something, to lack knowledge). otherwise, you only know the present moment. anyway, the first interesting thing is that freedom and choice are kind of polar opposites, and they balance each other out. when you reach cessation, and you have freedom, you have no awareness, but you choose this next moment. when i have freedom, that usually results in choice. maybe i can choose not to choose, in some scenarios, but i would consider that to simply choose a different thing. the "moments" between choices, those are the freedoms. true freedom can not be known directly, afaik. or that would be choice. it would probably help to clarify what i mean by these two things, choice and freedom. will sound a bit like quantum physics. when there is choice, there is certainty, there is one thing, the one thing you chose. when there is freedom, you have not chosen yet, you have multiple options. it might be a, or b, or c, or something else entirely. it can help to assign probabilities to each of those, statistically.
now my mind is kinda blank. not really blank, just somewhat lower energy levels, regarding the writing. not sure whether i want to focus on writing more, or do something else, perhaps going for a walk.
the main point of writing this was to talk about how my vipassana practice makes samatha practice difficult. concentrating on my body is a bit of a strange thing. i have multiple "anchor" points, places which i've concentrated on. for example, hands, elbows, shoulders. sometimes, when relaxing, i can feel my body heating up. if i watched an episode of star trek. lol. i love star trek. M5 was awful. but i can barely concentrate on my breath. it can take multiple hours to get a kind of solid "feeling" for it. when breathing, i notice the sound of my breathing more than the movements of my body. the soft moving of the air.
sometimes i can get into a very intuitive state. when solving sudoku, the numbers just come to me, easily. sometimes. one time, i've speeded through 50 sudokus in a day. another time, i had a very difficult sudoku. i tried lots of different things, concentration, relaxation, vipassana. it took a very long time, but eventually i got a conceptual insight, for how to think differently about sudokus, and how to solve them differently.
i can already notice my screen vibrating a bit more, changing in brightness, pulsating. that usually means that i'm getting more relaxed, and i can use it as a rest signal. if i spend a long time being creative to exhaust my deliberate energy, it can get very fast. i can also notice it more strongly when i look at the wall. i can perceive a lot of details, visually. up to the very small. but i'm not that great at remembering them - yet. that probably requires better concentration.
one time, while practicing vipassana, i've noticed that i saw afterimages which prevented the disappearing of the object. later i've learned that i have to make them align, having the afterimage on top of the actual thing. then they both cease. perhaps this "copying", afterimage, was a form of concentration. but i'm not very good at concentration. i've had illnesses appearing and disappearing. after waking up, i could sometimes notice my body being ill, literally. later, i would go to sleep and wake up to a much healthier body. it has to do with emotions... lol.
another time, i practiced vipassana in public. just sitting, relaxing, enjoying nature, and casually trying to make all of reality disappear. when i got to sound, i quickly noticed more subtle sounds (that's easy for me) and then a man decided to speak to me. he said very little, but he just came there and spoke to me. that spooked me out a bit and i felt anxiety spiking up. then i wanted to be alone, and he decided to go away soon. soon i left too, and went for a walk to reflect on myself. practicing vipassana is much safer in isolation, when you're alone, at home. and bad stuff is more likely when vipassana is done without an anchor. i've started out with my breath as an anchor, as stated in Practical Insight Meditation by Mahasi Sayadaw. later, i've tried a different approach, to just perform vipassana without any anchor. this is how i got here, and it's difficult to get back. at least there is no suffering. lol. it's very difficult to re-gain an anchor.
my life used to be very unstable. my main habit was to avoid having habits. now, i've managed to get into a routine, especially a sleep routine. that's a huge success for me. for the first time in over the past 10 years, i'm having stable sleep. from this instability, i've developed very good self-regulation, to sort of... restrict myself? there's a different word that i can't remember right now. it will probably come to me soon. anyway, there it is. restraining. i'm good at keeping myself restrained. vipassana makes that very difficult though. sometimes, it can feel as if it frees me. other times, it can feel as if it makes bad habits more likely. my life has always moved in this way. get worse, then get better. this has been a consistent cycle in my life. one of the few consistent things. always a dip, and then things get better. another dip, and again better. really like "collapsing" and recovering to become stronger. having a routine feels kind of great. and i'm doing well at holding onto it. it's become kind of "difficult" in the past few days. instead of sleeping, i've been meditating, and only then sleeping. i've had bad experiences with my fundamental urges/wants/needs. sexual, thirst, hunger, social, and so on. even with my breathing, i had a few asthma-like experiences, but those are very rare. the only "bad" things happen when my physical needs spike up. i've gotten to the point at which i feel a lurking sense of hunger, light hunger, but i don't eat anytime soon, because i'm more consistent with my eating. i wake up early, and sometimes i can feel hungry, but i won't eat until later in the morning. i used to over-eat, and i've lost over 50kg compared to my worst dips in life. with food, i've had many occurrences of bad habits coming up, but they always got weaker and weaker over time. all the bad things seem to disappear, gradually, over and over. eventually, i hope, there will only be good things.
