I finally decided to start a practice log, mostly because of an experience I some 10 days ago, which makes me want to keep track of my daily mental state.

The experience was while laying down with eyes closed (resting), with attention on the breath. Suddenly I started noticing that after the sensation of the breath, another sensation came that gave the impression it was my breath that I just sensed. It is hard to describe and I'm not sure I can remember it exactly. It lasted for a few breaths(which seemed less constrained somehow, leaving me confused for a few days).
It made me happy to confirm with a DhO member it wasn't a mere hallucination, and I must say something seems slightly different since then, it's like a weight has been lifted from my mind, but just a really light weight, 1 or 2kg, but most importantly it seems consistent, but I can't be completely sure since it's not so obvious.
My reactions seem more still, and it's easier to appreciate life.

On fear:
Last friday my two housemates went to watch Paranormal Activity 4 together, and one of them have been trying to scare me several times since then.
The interesting thing is that I haven't really gotten scared at any attempt, just startled (one could argue it's fear at a lower level, but since my mind didn't seem scared, I would say it's probably just a normal mechanism of getting highly alert momentarily, others could argue he simply is not good at scaring people since all he does is try to appear unexpectedly while screaming "HA" or some variant, and doesn't do any scary face or use any costume).
The attempt that startled me the most was when I went to open a closet and he was inside. I inclined back (I don't think I even stepped back), my eyes opened as much as possible and I felt a little bit of some prickly/shivery tingling on my arms/legs, something I felt a lot when getting afraid in the past, but this time only in arms and legs, and it seemed more like getting startled than scared. (this happened after the experience described above)
Before I usually felt afraid if my boss get near me when I have procrastinated too much, I'm not feeling scared as before, but I do feel tense though.

I still procrastinate, but the pull seems a little weaker, there are a lot of stuff I have to work with though.

There are a lot of other little differences(as a result of my relatively consistent practice over months, not attributed to this little experience described before), for example how I don't get as anxious about progress, maybe I will describe other differences in posts to come.

Now my current practice:
I have been doing 10 minutes of following the breath(20 if I have plenty of time) directly followed by 20 minutes of body scan.
Try to pay attention to senses during the day, mainly body awareness.

Although I have not been so bad at body awareness, I haven't been meditating everyday as I should. Without doubt the biggest hindrance to my meditation practice is laziness, I have been working on that trying to cultivate ardency, even more so because the difference between a day I meditated in the morning and one I didn't can be quite big.
My body awareness slowly grows little by little, recently it's even been a little annoying yet funny since I can feel the hair in my legs getting into place after I wake up.

Now to close today's post: What happened today...
I went to sleep close to midnight, unexpectedly I woke up some minutes (around 15m I think) before the alarm(plays 7am) after having a wet dream(I do remember the dream, but I don't think it would be appropriate to describe it ), I still felt tired, I drank some water and went back to sleep to wake up close to 9am.
I felt like doing one surya namaskar and did it(only one side).
Then I meditated 10m following the breath + 20m body scan.
The 10m had a lot of thoughts as usual, but I had some good moments of relaxation. The body scan was okay, went from feet to head, scanning the skin and internal body feelings, and after "completing" the head, the mind tried to distract itself as usual, which it succeeded to some extent, but eventually I kept scanning some more, in a quicker rhythm and trying to feel the whole body sometimes.
I sat in the burmese position as usual, kechari level 1 only, hand mudra was hand on knees facing down with pointing finger on middle of thumb as I always do.
Went to tai chi "meet-up" (without a teacher since recently) around midday, learned the rest of the 24-form, but will have to review next week and refine it a lot. I am a complete beginner, but I like tai chi, tai chi is fun
Even though I did some useful things in the office, it wasn't the project, so, still procrastination :-(
I did have one or two moments of seeing the whole picture and seeing how beautiful the world is, the only I can remember now is when the bus was arriving.

Note to self: walk more, especially when doing mini-breaks, I find it easier to be mindful when walking.
Also, it may be useful to have shorter posts in days to come.

Complement to October 23th
- went to mahayana buddhist meditation group(no teacher there, only between university students), had visualization-based meditation(I do like this kind of meditation, but for now I think body scan and shamatha are more beneficial for me)
- already was feeling energy, but felt more energy after meditation, heat and tingling sensations firing on my body, normal-paced rhythm, not too consistent, but more frequent than usual and happening without me doing anything especial (this kind of thing happened before, even more so on "active" days like these [tai-chi, meditation, etc])
- had trouble going to sleep, I can only speculate why I had such a bad night... Was it the coffee almost 8-10 hours before? Was it the energy buildup firing in my body? Was it the music from the other bedroom which I specifically asked to lower/turn off disturbing me? Was it the torrent of thoughts on my head simply? Was it a little bit of everything?

Log for October 24th:
- didn't sleep much, 5-6 hours I guess
- didn't recall dream
- after waking up, I didn't feel tired, it wasn't great, but it was okay, my face in the mirror seemed a little tired though
- quick surya namaskar to stretch a bit
- 20/20 minutes of meditation in the morning as usual, this time done with kechari mudra 2-3 (sometimes the tongue slips), I don't remember anything unusual happening(not like I'm expecting to, just to not keep repeating myself)
- during the morning and the rest of the day, I had lots of grandiose/arrogant and philosophical type thoughts
- because of meeting with the boss at 3pm, I went to work sooner and worked a lot, more intense than usual, couldn't be as mindful, had some snack for lunch and a 30min break, then went back to work, some signs of stress start appearing, like picking nose, biting nails and so
- after meeting, felt stressed, so did not work anymore, mostly internet browsing and reading and walked somewhere for a while to eat something
- went to latin dance class I usually have wednesdays, I felt happy and light overall there, but did not feel much aware of my body positions though
- before going to the dance class I used some AXE deodorant and one girl when dancing with me said "she loved the way I smelled", maybe those commercials are right after all... (just kidding, I just thought it was such a funny and unusual remark that I had to write it down somewhere)
- my housemate that tried to scare me the others days, suddenly screamed two or three times in my face, got startled on both times, more comments later on this post
- when going to sleep, there was music again in the other bedroom, this time I tried to use some sound-silencing inside-ear thingy, was good enough, didn't even need to ask to lower the music

Today, October 25th
- felt more "talkative" somehow, singed and talked during long shower,
- felt quite a bit "normal" today, but with my basic urges were a little higher than usual but way lower than my worst days
- did indulge in some urges, for example, I slept late and only went to the office after lunch
- signs of stress still present from yesterday, picking nose, scratching head, etc
- not much mindful today, probably because I didn't do my usual body scan... but it didn't seem too hard to relax and concentrate when intending to
- procrastinated at work, but not much, mostly because there was significantly less time at the office today maybe...
- at 5pm there was a guided "meditation" (around 15min I guess), one of the things that was asked was to visualize an energy ball between your hand, and my palms became a little warmer, they went back to normal temperature not long after though
- yesterday and today I'm still feeling some energy appearing sometimes "out of nowhere", really sparse, today less, and overall I'm a little different after that little peek into part of no-self indeed, but I will not keep attributing claims to this experience, since my current state is only the result of my practice in a whole, and it's not like I didn't already have differences before in various aspects.

More on fear
This saturday I will go to a halloween themed funfair, later I will report on how I react to the attractions then, I don't expect anything too interesting to happen though
But I was thinking today about what's the difference exactly between being startled and having fear.
To me having fear is like a tension about something that may happen, like some anxiety about the future, but not wanting it to happen. I'm not sure how to describe fear in relation to an immediate and unexpected reaction to something, but I think heart getting really fast and blood pressure becoming low would be one extreme...? Does having a specific type of tingling on arms/legs count as fear? I'm not sure, maybe.

________________________
I know I am perhaps being too detailed about the day, and this can become bothersome and make me not write, so I can almost guarantee the quality/quantity of detail can and will vary a lot on this practice log.,

Log for October 26th
- felt quite lazy this day
- it was really cold outside
- spent the day home
- indulged in senses
- meditated only at night before going to sleep, just to say I meditated
- meditation was really distracted, at some point I even decided to change the concentration meditation and then came back...

Log for October 27th
- went on bus trip to halloween-themed funfair
- I kind of meditated on bus when going there, a little bit of body scan and concentration
- it was a good day overall, relaxation and happiness were nice, felt quite "contemplative"
- quite cold
- due to circumstances, had to spend most of my time alone in the funfair, although the mind did wander sometimes, I felt good overall and enjoyed a lot
- when on roller-coasters and all, I tried to enjoy the scenario and everything, even forgot to look down
- if I relaxed too much on roller-coaster I felt like a jelly being moved around hahaha, it wasn't nice...

Log for October 28th
- indulged a bit on senses, but the day was not so bad, was relatively balanced
- I meditated the usual routine, concentration was not so good, felt like changing technique again mid-meditation, but didn't
- I think I remembered the dream when I woke up, not sure right now

Today, October 29th
- woke up around 6:30am with alarm, but went back to sleep until 8am
- took a bath first, then meditated
- felt quite good in the morning, after lunch I felt lazy but I still worked and did my stuff in the same rhythm, it was a nice day overall :-)
- after thinking about it for a while, I came to the conclusion I still have a long way to go to understand anatta

General observations
- lately mind going philosophical/grandiose on every opportunity, but not too much
- have a feeling practice stagnated this past week a bit... must have right effort
- I have been eating too much candy for a good while now... having halloween nearby doesn't help on that
- I still say that days that I move more(like walking) I end up being more productive and mindful, the reason for that is that I find it way easier to be mindful of things like walking, and this helps create a momentum

More on fear:
- I came to the conclusion I still have fear, although it has been greatly reduced, in a few attractions for example I felt scared when going to high altitudes; also in a roller-coaster some cylinders were relatively close and it felt like it was going to hit my head, even though I knew it wouldn't, but I still hid my head several times there; also in a haunted house I did get a litttlllle bit scared when some guy with some really good makeup appeared suddenly. Even though it was the second day in my life I rode roller-coasters I barely had any problem with fear.
- by the way, you know when an attraction goes straight down and you feel a chill in the spine? I'm quite confident that's because of the pressure on the spine rather than fear.
- I'm satisfied with my investigation of fear for now, I think getting startled is good, and internally my experience of fear is quite sane.

Hi!

Just wanted to say this: your main problem, as I understand, is laziness. You might want to stop meditation entirely and just putting all the conscious effort you can in developing a strong determination (adhitthana, one of the ten perfections).

What I want to point put is that insight practice doesn't have to be your main practice necessarily; since you report that you have problems with laziness and procastination, it makes a lot of sense to me to put all of the conscious effort you can in developing this thing so that, after some months, you will have much more discipline, and every single meditative thing will come much easier (not to talk about the daily life benefits)...

I mean that, basically, you can decide to take the practice of resolutions as your main practice.

It's just that... it's not bad to start from the first training; in many (most?) cases, it seems to me to be one of the best ways to begin a successful spiritual journey...

However, I wish you the best luck... bye!

1 Edit

Hi Mario,
Thanks for the input.

I have read the article you linked, but I didn't understand your suggestion to stop meditation practice to do only that.
To me sometimes meditation can be like a fuel to living a mindful and sane day, is it related to that?

I have tried many times in the past, but never had much luck with resolutions, the only new thing I saw in the article was making resolutions at the night before regarding the next day.
I have had many good momentum going on the past, but all of them stopped eventually. Some of them were before knowing about the maps, in which I would reach equanimity and feel like I don't need meditation anymore for a while. But nowadays it mostly happens due to a lack of routine since I moved to another country, which before I relied on, and although it's not so hard to establish, from time to time something happens which forces me to change my routine for a while. In fact, I have annotated some insights I kept stumbling upon trying to gain momentum so I wouldn't need to go through them again, and read them almost every day, which helped a little.

Complement for yesterday (October 29th)
- went to yoga, couldn't relax because of upset stomach probably because of coffee
- felt like energy started to come when I relaxed, but stomach made me feel bad
- smartphone stopped working
- ate a lot on dinner

Log for October 30th
- woke up around 4am due to eating a heavy dinner the night before... had trouble going back to sleep
- since I woke up, I took some galantamine+chlorine capsule, I remember having a good number of dreams, but only remembered one in the morning, and due to a trigger (the smartphone dream below after seeing it)of it
- after smartphone fully charged overnight, came to the unfortunate conclusion, that it indeed wouldn't fully turn on
- clearly upset due to the smartphone, but I think it would be worse normally
- in fact, I had a dream where the charger melted, but I wasn't as upsetting as dreams in the past where my electronics broke
- didn't go to tuesday's tai chi, didn't happen and also got late because of no smartphone(clock/alarm)
- realized there were some things I depended on the smartphone, mostly timing of tasks and portable calendar and notes and clock
- didn't even meditate due to no timer, because of that I decided that from now on I will be mindful on the bus instead of reading the newspaper
- couldn't go to repair smartphone due to too much work at office

Log for October 31th
- didn't meditate, but tried to be mindful on the bus, was relatively distracted
- went to repair smartphone, in some few hours it was fixed, felt like some energy came back to me
- like yesterday, I didn't have much problem with procrastination

Log for today, November 1st
- today for some reason I am more mindful of the body than normally
- when seeing some pictures of myself with some friends, I noticed some habits I usually am not aware of
- mindfulness on the bus was better than yesterday, still have plenty to work though
- for some reason it seems easier to see details today
- today I am fasting from waking up to 7pm due to some university's event

The idea is that the ability to do what you resolve is something that can be very much improved, like any other skill.
If you decide that your goal is to develop this ability, there is no doubt that after it meditation will become incredibly easier.
If you want to do that, something that you can do is, for example, to make constantly resolutions during the day. So, for example, you wake up and you say "I resolve to get up now", and then you will probably get up immediatly. After it you will say "now I resolve to "Wash myself, go to the toilette, and then preparing breakfast". After you made breakfast you resolve what you are going to do immediatly after that, and you follow it. The point is that you develop the habit to mantain thoose promises you make; once you are able to cast many simple resolutions during the day, you will find that just because of having done it you ability to follow the resolutions has increased dramatically. Whan you feel confident you can make harder resolutions.

Goes by itself that if you spend your day making mini-resolutions all the time you will obviously end up living in a much more concentrated and mindful state, with all the benefits that come from that...

By the way, you can coultivate this thing in a very meditative way; for example, if you are sitting, you can resolve "Now I will mantain my attention to the breath for one minute"; after that, you resolve "Now, for one minute, I will mantain my attention only on the sensations of my feets", or "For one minute I will sustain this visualization"... It's incredible how well this works: even if you made resolutions in relation to your attention, this will still improve you daily life resolutions in a very strong way.
Then you can also use resolution in a more magickal way: "Now I will experience happiness" "Now I will experience metta" "Now I will breathe in a relaxed way"... By the way, here you can see Jack (main character of the tv show Lost) using resolutions...

Goes by itself that you can use them in an incredible amount of ways, many many funny variations can be made, combining magickal effect in relation to mind states, actions, time limit of the resolution, resolutions about moral conduct (the precepts in the end are just resolutions), resolutions that are active at the same time and eventually interacts, resolutions about making resolutions, and reactions, and content of thoughts... your imagination is the limit.

I did this sort of thing a while ago and not even as hard as I described, but just after a few days of doing it I stopped because I got quite scared: eventually, completely crazy resolutions would arise in my mind (i.e. now I will do in t-shirt half an hour of walking meditation outside, while it was completely freezing). Also, while in the beginning it feels very much like you need to make an effort to mantain them, after a while they have the tendency to take a life by their own, and you feel kind of like you cannot possibly break them; so, I once resolved to stay for one hour in meditation, and at one point things got really, really ugly, and I wanted so badly to stop, but I felt like I just couldn't, I was kind of trapped by the resolution against every bit of my will that was screaming "get up!"... the body just wouldn't move. That was quite horrible... and this happened after very short time, wich means that their power can build up very very rapidly... (however, I'm pretty sure that I got stream entry, wich can in part explain why I got this degree of intensity...)

God, just by talking about them it makes me want to try again...lol

However, this was to say that when you develop them they can become quite problematic, and the more you made them powerful the more they will be able to harm; probably some wisdom is required to deal with them skillfully...

Complement for November 1st
- couldn't work much, but I think it's safe to assume it was because of the fasting
- since usually I don't eat breakfast, I only started to feel light-headed around 2-3pm
- ate a lot at dinner, hahaha

Log for November 2nd
- I don't remember if I meditated or not, but I think I did in the morning
- was feeling weird, it was like a low quality equanimity
- did not work much because of a somewhat indifferent attitude
- ate a lot of candies and so

Log for November 3rd
- was still feeling a little weird like yesterday
- I think I meditated for 40 minutes following the breath
- felt a little bit sick a few times probably due to the candy indulgence from yesterday

Log for November 4th
- felt more "normal"
- had a genius idea, now to guarantee I read my practice notes almost every morning, I am putting my keys in front of it (it was in the bedroom's door, but somedays I wouldn't see it), it still doesn't guarantee on days that I don't leave home though haha
- meditated 1 hour body scan, 30 minutes walking, 20/20 minutes following the breath and body scan, also I meditated around 30min before going to sleep, but I don't remember the style, I think it was just noticing sensations from the 6 senses
- I had some progress in my posture, putting my spine in a way that allows me to relax my legs completely, preventing them from becoming numb, I do have the impression the spine isn't completely straight yet

Log for Today, November 5th
- meditated the usual 20/20
- when doing the 20min following the breath, I decided I should go back to counting to 10, and had a reasonably good success rate, I think I will keep doing this for this week to see if I can go pretty much the whole 20 minutes without getting distracted
- I am feeling a bit weird today, my emotions seem a little colder, but I am a little relaxed and all, just a little unconfortable

Thanks for the tip, Mario.
I tried putting it to practice and got mixed results, it was especially helpful for short tasks like getting out of bed (which is hard some days), but not as much for longer tasks, even though it did help a little bit(if I think of not completing the task, the resolution usually comes to mind).
I will keep experimenting with it.

Log for Nov 6th
- woke up after around 8 hours of sleep, a little bit before alarm, still felt a little tired, got out from bed and made 2 basic suryanamaskar to try to be more alert
- did some alternate nostril breathing, but it wasn't easy, one of the nostril was partially blocked
- did 1 hour of meditation, 30min following the breath counting to 10, other 30min doing body scan; concentration was worse than yesterday
- went to tai chi class, had to focus more on learning technique, so I couldn't practice much in the proper way (relaxed and focused)
- when reading texts on DhO and KFD, they seemed more confusing than inspiring
- am feeling quite mindful today, body feels heavier, and I have been taking special care of my posture
- felt many urges to procrastinate, resisted some, others not, what matters is that I actually did a reasonable amount of work
- mindfulness felt a littttle bit weaker in the afternoon
- went to diamond way
- expected some energy rising in body, not so much, but in the end the energy practices were not so intense today

- I should note that I indeed started just noticing sensations in the bus since mentioned in this post, usually I keep an open awareness, informal practice


Log for Nov 7th
- didn't meditate in the morning, went to sleep late and had to sleep more, and had to go to work earlier, maybe I should have anyway, I procrastinated a little in the morning, wasting the time I gained by coming earlier
- remembered dream, made me have an night release
- today I noticed some signs of stress, but I worked a lot to be fair
- I feel nice, almost like everything is alright
- since yesterday I actually am enjoying my job, I think that's a HUGE step forward for me
- usual weekly meeting didn't happen, I didn't know my boss wasn't here, I was a little tired and didn't try to be much productive for the rest of the day

Log for Nov 8th
- I remembered having some dreams, but don't remember them now
- since yesterday I didn't do any formal meditation, I decided to meditate more and spent the morning home
- some suryanamaskar to "warm up"
- 30min following the breath counting 1..10, concentration wasn't so good, in the end it was quite bad
- followed by 30min body scan
- 20min slow walking meditation
- 20min normal speed walking meditation
- while walking I would pay attention to the senses as much as I could, concentration was still weak
- 1 hour trying to concentrate and go to first jhana, didn't work, concentration overall was a bit worse than normal, I did feel some piti, but it was hard to take it as an object, when ending the meditation, I had some feeling I hit equanimity, but I'm not sure
- one thing that contributed to a worse concentration was browsing the web for a while (less than a hour) before going to meditate
- another thing that might have made it worse was that I drank some vitamin c drink (emergenc) and my stomach felt irritated, this didn't seem to affect me much though
- after all that meditation, I laid down some minutes in corpse pose and then defeated pose, usually I don't do this, but it came very naturally to me and was very restorative
- I think I probably have not perfected my posture, I do feel some lower back pain after all, but at least my legs don't go numb anymore unless when there is some obvious reason for it(something blocking circulation)

Log for Nov 9th
- meditated for one hour, 30min counting following the breath, 30min body scan
- concentration was terrible, lustful thoughts a lot of the time

Log for 10th
- woke up early and went to usher for a football game
- couldn't be so mindful during most of the day, I was exposed to sunlight all the time in the ushering, and it was kind of uncomfortable and hard to pay attention.
- felt a little weird (in a good way) after so much sun, I think this must be the "tanning high" some talk about
- when going back home by bus, saw a man in front of me that seemed high(marijuana perhaps?), he attempted to lit a cigarette twice inside the bus, I was able to stop him the first time, but not the second, he was kicked out of the bus by the driver; Later in the night I remembered how disoriented he was, how he was trying to get home and didn't even understand why he couldn't smoke on the bus because he was so high, I cried a little because of his misery, later I was reading some zen stories and other things and cried a little other times, for some reason it was really easy to cry, but it wasn't a sorrowful crying and each time I cried it did not last long

Log for 11th
- tried to meditate 30/30 as usual, concentration was terrible and I stopped early due to a pinched nerve in the leg
- for some reason my awareness of my mental state and other things was higher than usual, it varied a bit during the day
- at some point I was laying down paying attention to the belly, and when I exhaled my belly would become really hot, my intestines felt a little uncomfortable so I stopped that
- found it a little hard to go to sleep due to low energetic phenomena firing in the body

Log for 12th (today)
- 30/30 as usual, concentration was not so good, but better than yesterday
- did not feel so good today, was more lazy, procrastinated more, I think I started losing momentum, tomorrow will be different I promise haha (starting now!)

I had some problems, that's why I didn't post anymore, I even had some days logged here to-be-posted, but forget about them, I will make a quick review of what happened and go back to logging starting tomorrow.

Around 2 weeks ago I started experiencing some pain in my large intestine when focusing there, in the same week my concentration got probably the strongest I ever experienced during 2 or 3 days, it was far from 24/7, but still the reality felt more immersible when concentrated and sometimes I would simply touch somewhere in my body with my hand and feel low energetic phenomena (even if by accident, as long as I was concentrated or relaxed). Due to the pain(which was not great, but was worrying) I decided trying some things and backed off practice since energetic phenomena seemed to make it worse.
It eventually got better, I'm still not sure what it was and I think it can come back, but my little theory is that I have parasites in my intestine, which caused some bad reaction when being heated(it all started when focusing there and the belly getting really hot).
Result now is: I lost all my momentum, but have a little stronger concentration than when I started the last attempt.

I don't think I specified exactly what I mean by low energetic phenomena, so let me describe:
It can be two things:
1 - Simply piloerection(that I understand is what people mean by tingling, gooseflesh, ecstatic something, some say it's bliss, etc). This can vary a lot in location, intensity, quantity, etc
2 - Heat sensations. Usually it's just some spots that arise and pass away without moving in the body, that can vary in intensity, location and size. Some instances have really big spots. Also it can be felt moving in the body, especially in days I feel more energetically charged when going to sleep, but more often they are not.

I remember there were some days in the past in which I had a great momentum and my body awareness was good and I could feel temperature variations in the body more constantly, I think my body awareness baseline stagnated for a while, though it can get really nice when in a momentum.

Before I was usually doing 20&20min or 30&30min counting breaths and then doing body scan, some few days ago I stopped counting and am now trying to follow the instructions in the Kayagata-sati Sutta instead:

Log for 26/Nov
- had two "insights moments"
- I was walking to Taco Bell to eat something, and then two visually impaired guys asked me to point the direction to a certain street, I did and it was the same direction I was going. By seeing them go there, it made me remember when I first arrived at this city and everything was new and big and I was always lost, by remembering this I noticed my lack of attention to where I am
- when watching some anime I was eating some fruits and chocolate, the chocolate was really fancy and tasty so I decided to pause the video to pay more attention to its taste, then I realized how I was giving more value to the chocolate even though the fruit was also rich in flavor were I to pay more attention, I remembered the following zen story, with more understanding than before(but not complete understanding yet)


Log for 27/Nov
- dark night certainly, laziness, procrastination, periods of emotional instability, was able to catch myself many times, and worked a little, but fell back
- ate maybe too much junk food (woke up today feeling bad, need to desintoxicate...)
- didn't meditate in the morning, started meditating with the timer for 2 hours, but was interrupted after around 70 minutes to see an internet problem and then stopped there, but concentration was relatively good
- I feel like I need to go to a chiropractor, some days ago I spent almost all day in a bad posture on my bed and felt a little crack close to the base of the spine(some dislocation probably), it felt a little more uncomfortable than normal to stay upright without support that long I think

Log for 28/Nov
- am feeling more physical energy than yesterday(in the sense of being invigourated)
- awareness a little better than normal, I'm picking up momentum...
- meditation 20/20 following the breath(going to be using the instructions mentioned in the previous post for a while) and body scan, concentration was so-so
- still on dark night, considerably better than yesterday, but still feeling somewhat uninspired

Log for 29/Nov
- didn't meditate in the morning, was lazy again just like in 27 nov
- felt a little unsure, uninspired, but I feel like now I can see "through" the mood more than in the past, but cannot overcome it much, at least I don't completely identify with it
- for some reason I don't remember if I meditated or now, even though I'm writing this only one day after, sometimes the days seem really long and one week feels like maybe months ago, but still, time goes unimpeded, one second is still one second, I still age and get closer to death

Log for 30/Nov
- started meditating for 30 min following the breath and then did 5min of body scan(scanned quickly from feet to head) and cut short the meditation and went to the restroom because I needed to(ate too much chocolate the night before), didn't resume it afterwards
- still feeling lazy and probably in the dark night, but the worst days this week in terms of laziness were today and tuesday, both times I drank coffee the day before... Even though I have a considerable amount of coffee and black tea I bought, I cannot help but be bothered by the drawback of caffeine and not drink it
- certainly still in the dukkha nanas, since now I have been more able to discern my mood, maybe I should review and study the map, **just gave a quick read, I'm sure I was in Fear and Misery at tuesday(27nov), now I'm probably in Re-observation
- lately I have been thinking a little bit more about death, and after reading most of this, I think maybe I should start thinking in terms of rebirth, it really can be more beneficial psychologically, of course this won't happen overnight though
- today something funny happened when I was laying in bed in the morning: around 2 times when I had an erection I felt some little heat pricklings(little versions of the heat sensation I described in a previous post) in the thigh close to the scrotum, almost as if there was some aura from the erection ahuuhauhauhauha, then I brought some energy from there to my head each time and the little prickling stopped happening.

about first jhana:
not sure I ever got it, can get to weak rapture without problem, but can't take pleasure as object or fill body with pleasure, maybe concentration isn't strong enough after all... I'm not sure

I think I may be transitioning into Equanimity, during lunch I was talking with some people and almost felt like I was emanating some kind of peace in a subtle way, tomorrow I will be able to say for sure whether or not, but some symptoms of re-observation disappeared, I could have went down again since sunday I didn't practice and am just in a temporary peace. I certainly am not feeling so questioning and unsure as before, but am not feeling deeply peaceful right now.

when in re-observation, I started organizing my office and my bedroom and observing my behavior and state in the last weeks, I am almost convinced that indeed some moderate restraint on the senses is really helpful, if not necessary, to this path.

Now I am resolving to get stream entry in this cycle, this will be the last cycle I will go through before getting Path for the first time.
It will happen in this month, I will start a new year as a stream-entrant.