hey everyone - newcomer here and have little to no formal knowledge of things like the MCTB1 but thought this might be the best place to ask. 

Practice background: 

• new-ish meditator that started off with ~4 - 5 years of headspace / calm-style guided meditations for ~15 - 30 minutes a day
• this picked up 2 years ago after reading TMI - say 45m to an hour a day of meditation focusing on the breath
• attended 10-day goenka-style retreat earlier this year in february, since then have been meditating 2 hours a day, primarily in anapanasati and body-scanning
• just finished a 14-day mahasi-style retreat and have now switched technique fully to mahasi noting of the abdomen

Symptoms and issues: 

• around day 8 of the mahasi retreat, I noticed strong vibrations originating from the crown / deep inside the head and rippling down the spine and throughout the body. at this point, I reached a spot in my practice where I could consistently (by the end of a sit) see light, feel lightness and mental joy / space, and concentrate without effort on the object while maintaining strong preventative awareness of thoughts and feelings. 
• initially I had the wrong view that I needed to 'dispel' these vibrations to 'progress', and so would continue to focus on the sensations of the abdomen despite the overwhelming vibrations obscuring / making the abdominal movements difficult to parse or investigate
• the meditation teacher there advised that my primary issue was greed & striving (spot on, I didn't notice at first but I had a hidden expectation to get some sort of breakthrough insight experience on this retreat) and for me to note these expectations & feelings as they arose
• despite trying my best to notice, note & label these emotions, as well as switching from the object to attentional investigation of these vibrations (which are extremely difficult to track or penetrate because of their fast-changing nature), my sits are dominated by them, and they seem to amplify things like back pain which make sits difficult to complete without moving
• this leads often to frustration (either during or after the sit), a loss of motivation to continue, a sense of anxiety immediately before each sit
• strangely, these vibrations didn't seem to affect me as much in the early morning sits as they did later on in the day, peaking in the afternoon before settling in the evening sits
• i would find myself feeling exhausted and physically drained after each sit in which the vibrations were particularly present, adding to the frustration mentioned above
• a lot of pent up emotion released afterwards, throughout the day when not sitting - sadness or regret about life events, feeling poignancy of life, unnatural gratitude or almost 'out of nowhere' compassionate feelings towards people. I would cry almost every day after the afternoon sit where vibrations were particularly strong.

Questions for your advice: 

• What is this? I've seen some other posts here mentioning strong vibrations as part of imbalance between attention and awareness, or as being part of early DN symptoms, but I don't think I'm that progressed yet.
• How do I progress beyond this? It's starting to seriously affect my motivation to continue sitting and I'm trying to gear up for a 60-day later this year.

Thanks for reading and with much metta,

 Hi A.M., welcome to the forum and thanks for the detailed background. You're a dark night yogi, from what I'm hearing. I was in that territory for months before I realized it, even though I was familiar with the maps. The vibrations sound like kundalini: the harsh, electric rips that begin with the A&P and persist until around second path. The first dark night is a difficult and confusing time, so you've got my sympathy. 

You sound like you're burning out. Feeling exhausted after sitting and feeling averse to sitting are good signs of that. Kundalini is usually weird and unnerving, but not quite debilitating, so your difficulty with it may be the result of overefforting. 

When I was at your stage, I experienced a bunch of strange and unpleasant symptoms because I was corralling the mind too hard. I found myself grumpy, forceful, and at times unable to walk or talk. If you pour a bunch of energy into the mind, it leaks out in weird ways. This went away only after I relaxed the effort I applied in my technique. 

The good news is that the meditation is working. You've boarded the wild ride. While the A&P is responsive to intense effort and constant practice, each stage thereafter demands an increasingly gentle touch. The task is not to capture experience in a stranglehold, or to drill down to its core and excavate its secrets. Rather, the task is to let experience arise by itself, seeing that the mind is totally wild and uncontrollable, seeing that you are not responsible for behaving or perceiving or focusing or meditating… And then one day, you realize that that's actually not a task at all.

Meditation becomes scary, because it's no longer about demanding experience to be a certain way. It becomes about disempowerment, rather than empowerment. But really, it's the greatest relief in the world — who would ever want to be king? 

I recommend that you practice with an intent to accept every shape of mind that arises and that you find a way to ease up the effort in your practice. Accept thoughts, distraction, emotion, and vagueness. Consider foresaking the abdomen anchor and letting attention move where it wants to, which can help you realize that attention is not-self. Noting can serve you well in this territory, but you may want to experiment with a relaxation-type insight practice in response to your overefforting problem. Relaxation-type practices are just as powerful as effort-type practices; perhaps even moreso, depending on your personality. I'd consider asking yourself if you really want to go on your 60-day retreat, or if it's just going to burn you out. (I'm not assuming it will — it may be great, but this is just a good thing to ask your heart.) And if you do go, try to take it easy; this stuff is not a sprint, and not even a marathon, but a lifestyle. A way of being, rather than an exercise or drill. 
 

Hey John: 

Thank you for your detailed response - I'm touched that you went into such elaboration. 

Indeed much of what you've said resonates with me. My initial thoughts (to your response): 

• I'm surprised by the label of 'dark night' - I would have thought that my mapping on the POI would have been far earlier, since on resources like this I haven't had the types of bold, rapturous experiences entailed by A&P
• I do indeed resonate with what you mention about overefforting - my conditioning is very achievement-oriented so I often find my default solution to meditation 'issues' (pain, dullness / tiredness, etc) to be to push through and double down on concentration

I'm going to give the techniques you've included a try, in addition to continuing Mahasi noting. I've heard many teachers discourage mixing techniques though - wondering if you or others have thoughts on whether that's advised (especially so early in my journey)?

Finally - I appreciate the concern about the 60-day retreat later this year. It's only in September so I have plenty of time to work on this transitionary period (if that is what it is) and see how I feel afterwards.

 With gratitude,

I should also mention that being back at home after 2 days, my practice has waned significantly - back down to 2 hours of sitting per day and the occasional mindful moments. The vibrations have almost totally stopped except for faint ones, and my concentrative power has also diluted - though I would say the other effects (like doubt in the practice, a decent amount of anxiety "why am I dedicating this year to meditating, I should just go get a job", etc) have persisted. 

The concern I have is more for the next retreat I go into as well as when/if this comes back again in my day-to-day practice.

Hi A.M.

I am a stranger on the internet who is responding to the things that I see you write here basis my own personal understanding of how stuff works in meditation. I write to frame your meditation experiences in paradigms and language that I understand in order to give you a sense of how you may consider these experiences and how you may want to give a direction and shape to your practice.

The map in terms of the Progress of Insight is a really good map and it works really well for a lot of people who practice in the Mahasi method or methods adjacent to it. But for many people even within the Mahasi or adjacent traditions it doesnt necessarily fit perfectly. The stages are best seen as representative of an average .... and absolutely nobody is precisely at that average.

A helpful way of framing how meditation can potentially progress is to categorize Insights with a capital 'I' in 5 categories:

1. Sunnata - the construct nature of experience and experiencing. Here we gain a direct experiential insight into how our experiences as well as the very process of experiencing is a construct. Its composed of multiple elements that come together, get assembled and falls apart. From experienced moment to experienced moment it is a sequence of assemblies or constructions with no inherent meaning. Meaning is just one more element that goes into the assembly of an experienced moment

2. Anicca - Our hearts are invested in experience being one way or the other. Upon learning that experience as well as experiencing is constructed - one more element used in the construction being how our hearts get shaped, we get Insight into how our 'affective bets' can never fructify into a reliable victory. We may win in the worldly sense when we expect failure ... or not, we may lose in the worldly sense when we expect success ... or not

3. Dukkha - We learn that the construct nature of experience (and experiencing) and the unreliable nature of experience (and experiencing) mean that the various  mental postures that our mind takes towards experience and experiencing are silly. When the mind sees this silliness it creates fear/misery/disgust/desperation. We believe that we feel miserable because we lost our jobs or had an accident, but here we learn that we feel miserable because we took mental postures that represent a search for reliability and ownership and when the mind sees these mental postures, when our native innate wisdom sees these mental postures it will rebel by generating these negative experiences. Dukkha as an Insight is not the experience of fear, misery, disgust, desperation. It is the Insight into the incompatible nature of unhealthy mental postures, incompatible with native wisdom. so as an Insight its a very positive thing, we learn over a period of time to correct these mental postures

4. Anatta - We learn that experience and experiencing both operate on their own like machines. We cannot own experience, experience does not own us, we cannot own experiencing, experiencing cannot own us

5. Specific conditionality - when this is ... that is enabled. When this is not ... that is not enabled. Here we learn that the construction that we spoke about earlier has a tower like structure. The foundation enables the ground floor, the ground floor enables the first floor and so on. Please not that this is not a chain of causation. The foundation does not cause the ground floor, the ground floor does not cause the first floor. But when there is no foundation, the ground floor cannot happen, when there is no ground floor the first floor cannot happen. the entire tower of construction can be dismantled by withdrawing the fuel that the construction process needs to survive

In meditation, aboslutely no Insight knowledge comes with a neon sign blazing on top of it saying hey! look! this is the Insight into sunnata or dukkha or whatever. The way I have explained these Insights are a bunch of words wrapped around abstract concepts that are attempting to point to direct personal experiential realization. Many people can get those realizations or Insight knowledges without having any idea of how to express them in words or without even having the interest or inclination to find the right words. But some people like talking about Insights ... and its good that they do

Answering your questions short essay as a reference point

Paraphrasing: What is this? and what should I do?

your ability to notice stuff has improved. Momentary concentration practice particularly with a TMI background like yours can lead to strong samadhi skills. Clarity of attention, stability of attention, ability of attention to lock on to phenomena and 'follow' them has increased. Lightness, mental joy, enthusiasm about meditation are all indicative of relatively deeper samadhi. The mind is like a cow that wants to graze in a particular grazing field and you are bringing in a certain discipline of pulling it oout of that grazing field. Let the mind now graze where it wants, bring attention back to the abdomen only if there is reduction in mindfulness and concentration. Do not do attentional investigation. Do simple tracking of objects, the mind wants to look at the vibrations then relax and let the mind engage with those vibrations, when the mind no longer wants to do the vibrational thingy, bring it back to the abdomen and wait till something else demands or pulls at attention. Try meditating lying down, a lot of the stress and friction oftrying toforce the mind or the body to do something that you or the technique demands needs to be put down and abandoned. Place only one demand on the mind. the mind needs to be ... mindful and concentrated enough to track whatever it is that is demanding attention.

I think that the mind is noticing sunnata, anicca, dukkha, anatta. In terms of map theory this is probably the sammasana nana. Or knowledge of the 3 (or in this case the 4 characteristics). The dukkha is the emotional pain that is arising from trying to control, own, seek reliability in experience. When you relax and put down the need to control own and seek reliability ... the dukkha will subside and if you are mindful and metacognitively observant then this is a Vipassana nana. If you are not mindful and metacognitively observant then the mind will move on to some other grazing ground and the Insight opportunity is lost ... for now ... till it comes again

So basically:
1. Relax the body - lie down on a yoga mat with a cushion under your head and meditate - try not to fall asleep
2. Relax the mind - reduce the demand adhere to a technique or the abdomen as an anchor and let the mind do its thing, then pull it back in like a kite when you feel mindfulness and concentration have been lost
3. Track the object that demands attention, dont 'investigate'. dont create assumptions regarding maps and insight stages and dont carry them into the meditation session. simply track with attention that which pulls at attention. Coming back to the anchhor only as needed to rejuvenate mindfulness and concentration
4. Try and find the joy inherent in letting go of control and ownership over the meditating mind - this will help in motivation

Hope you found something here useful. Best of luck.

It's nice to combine a relaxation-type insight practice and an effort-type insight practice, alternating depending on what the day calls for. Shinzen Young suggests this.

That said, switching practices mid-session can be a hindrance, since it can prevent you from getting settled in a technique, serve as a hiding place for clinging and aversion, and prevent he-who-switches-practices from getting deconstructed. But sometimes your heart calls out for another approach, and that's just fine. It's good to have multiple tools in the toolbox. 

Hi AM, I recommend you look up Dr. Pierce Salguero and his model of awakening. He calls it the threads of awakening and I found it very enlightening .  He describes 4 different areas, or threads, of awakening: Emptiness, Energetic, Oneness, and Psyche. Each "thread" is somewhere you can land, and it can be followed to its end. You sound like you "landed in the Energy thread", and there are specific practices and sects of buddhism that specialize in this thread. Such as Tibetan buddhism, Taoism, Qi Gong, etc. Pragmatic dharma is excellent at working on the Emptiness thread and so on. These threads can move and braid together, which he describes nicely. I felt that this model fit my path almost perfectly, and would have been very helpful if I had been exposed to it earlier on. Good luck.

Thanks, Adi, for such a detailed and thorough response. I'm just getting to reading all of it for the second time now - and this is the part that sticks out to me. I keep on thinking that the process of progression will feel stereotypically X way, when you're right to call out that nothing about this process is stereotypical (definitionally so). 



​​​​​​​Could you clarify here? My cursory understanding from what you're saying is that if I observe the fading away of the dukkha that comes with relinquishing the need for reliability in the experience, there might be an insight opportunity - but is that a general insight opportunity or the next proverbial step on the path? 

Just wanted to reiterate my gratitude to all - seems like the takeaway is to balance my effort-driven approach with some relaxation-oriented and passive observation techniques. I'll check out all the resources shared - Shinzen Young, Dr. Pierce Salguero, and any others that folks recommend. 

One last thought - as I mentioned above most of the vibrations have dissipated now that I'm not in a retreat setting anymore and my ability to concentrate (as expected when coming back to my noisy, busy life) has significantly waned. I'm a little afraid that mixing in a relaxation practice now will cause my attentional abilities to stagnate rather than balance them out, which felt more necessary at the peak of the retreat.

Is this silly thinking? As you can see, there is still some latent craving for that clearheaded, focused feeling I had before these vibrations so maybe I have to truly just do away with those expectations first. 

I'm not a devout Shin-head, I just pointed to him as an example.  



This raises an interesting question: what is the mechanism of meditation progress? There are multiple good answers. After first reading MCTB, my answer was that precise sensory clarity was the mechanism. But these days, I prefer to say that it's about relaxing clinging. And you can relax clinging through both effort and relaxation.

If you are watching the mind, your intent is to expend effort to keep track of experience, following the mind where it naturally goes. You dedicate yourself to your watchfulness at the expense of every other way of controlling experience. By doing this for a long while, all day long, you surrender the thousand ways in which you manage your experience, thus exchanging your usual management for the simple act of watching. In this way, you are relaxing clinging. You see that the mind and body move on their own without your input, and you lose your typical sense of control. And control is clinging.

The same is true of noting practice. With every note, you are dis-embedding yourself from experience. By noting for long enough, you realize that experience arrives fully-formed, and there's no way to influence or manage it. And thus clinging becomes pointless, like pulling on a string attached to air. With every note, you are relaxing clinging. At times, each note can feel like a visceral relaxation, like a burden laid down.

And, of course, the same is true of relaxation-type practices. These practices allow you to see the tension of clinging congeal in real time and manually relax it. Life is no longer the thousand maneuvers you once executed throughout the day, but solely one maneuver: relaxing clinging. Surrender.

With this framing, the importance shifts away from catching every fleeting detail of sensation or staying doggedly on a meditation object. It becomes more directly about cultivating the fruit of the practice: a mind liberated from painful illusions of self-management. You'll find that when the tension is relaxed, beautiful sensory clarity lies underneath it, available for free. I stressed myself out trying to catch every facet and minutae of experience, when really it was already there, obscured by the stress. The fleeting details notice themselves.

So, to answer your question, relaxation-type insight practices are as good as any at cultivating clarity and liberation. I quite like them. Be warned that this is my particular way of talking about these things, born from my experience. Trust your own instincts and your own sense of what's right for you.

Edit: If you feel like it, I suggest starting a meditation log on here, especially if you don't have a teacher. It allows people to drop in with advice, helps future meditators following in your footsteps, and is fun to look back on when you inevitably forget the details of your journey. Little is actually known about the territory you're in, so writing things down will help diminish our collective ignorance a little. 

I've been mulling on this - and I think you're right. At the end of the day, concentration-driven techniques are just a tool, not the end in and of themselves. If I reflect honestly, I've been intimidated by how central the Mahasi school and others make out samadhi to be as part of the path, so much so that it's created a clinging in and of itself in me - a clinging to capture every cross-section of experience,  maintain concentration for as long as possible, and reach peace & clarity through force of will. 

I'm going to incorporate some relaxation techniques for the next couple weeks or so and will take your advice to report back in a log of sorts. I'm fortunate to have a teacher to go to here, but this process of soliciting feedback has been so tremendously helpful to me. Thank you again.

 Also remember that Buddha's biggest hint about how to practice was: the middle path.

In the same way that an athlete needs to try hard yet not be tense, a meditator needs to actively pay attention yet relax and let things happen. The words sound like a contradition, but what we're talking about isn't a "word" thing, it's a "doing" thing. Sometimes we think about this stuff too much and forget that the ONLY way to learn this stuff is through gentle experimentation.

This is absolutely impossible to "teach" (because it isn't about the words or concepts), but it can be "learned" (because it is about doing it).

Basically the only way is through gentle consistent daily practice sessions where we do our best, make mistakes, and learn as we go.

And when we do things like go on retreats, that's another new set of situations where we need to learn how to adjust our practice. In general, even LESS effort is appropriate on retreat because just the continuity of practice provides all the intensity needed. 

The mind itself is figuring out the mind when we practice. There really isn't much that "I" can do to make it go faster or better. Really all we can do is find that balance of effort and acceptance were we are interested in practicing but not obsessing about making progress. 

Middle path, middle path, middle path.

And if someone needs more than that... then I've found the idea of the 6 Realms very very helpful as a way to diagnosis how I'm framing my practice session (or life situation)..

Am I a prideful "heavenly god" that is smugly satisfied and just wants to isolate itself in heaven?
Am I a jealous "powerful god" that wants to achieve even more?
Am I a desirous human? GREAT!! But are we desiring wisdom and awakening... or something else?
Am I a burdened "animal" that just endures my situation?
Am I a greedy "hungry ghost" that is addicted to seeking trivial/addicting momentary comforts?
Am I a hateful "hell being" that just wants to lash out to hurt what hurts them?

All of these realms show up in practice and they are a great framework to judge what kind of effort we're choosing to apply to practice.

The way out of the mess is the middle path, being a desirous human, but desiring to see the nature of harmful desires and thus become wise/awake!

​​​​​​​Best wishes!!