So I decided to stop practicing in the U Ba Khin tradition. At least as far as following the official instructions goes... This thread is to log some of the highlights of my current practice.

The practice is Anapanasati (mindfulness of breathing) focusing on the development of the jhanas with emphasis on impermanence of sensations in full body awareness.

It's an odd thing, but often I feel I have 2 quite distinct versions of the Dark Night -- one where there is headache and heart thumping and ugly sensations, sometimes quite deep in the background if my 3rd jhana is strong enough. And one where it's all fast and fine streaming vibrations but with a tense, edgy quality to them.

It's possible, even likely, that this last is not DN at all but Equanimity. I've heard others describing the higher end of this nana as being a bit scary. Maybe that's it. This stuff used to be really easy diagnose, but these days its all fuzzy and less well defined.

Today I've sat 2 x 1hr sits. The last dropped me into 4th jhana fairly quickly. I have begun to recognise the sinking / depth kind of feeling as the envelopment of 4th -- I didn't really understand what I was experiencing until I saw this rather excellent talk by Ayya Khema describing 4th as having the quality of depth. That's certainly what I experience. It's like lying on the bottom of a very deep, still lake.

After some fairly dreary minutes filled with pretty regular vibrations there was an awful lot of "zooming" in, as vibrations got faster and finer. But they came with some scariness, a kind of "im going to implode!" feeling, a feeling of not being able to take any more. I've learnt to relax into it and take more, and more. Im not sure if this is good or not, but it seems to be the right direction.

At times it seems like I can sense the vibrations / impermanence of my body slotting into the impermanence of sounds out of the street, of the feeling of the bed Im lying on, like although i know roughly where my body parts are, they are only held loosely together. And that I am only a twitch of perspective away from expanding into the whole room (or fading into it). I haven't quite managed this yet but it seems like it may morph toward the 5th jhana sometimes when this happens.

An odd thing started happening on my last retreat in November. It's still happening...

I have a general sense of "deliciousness" or perhaps sweetness in the body. I mostly notice it when I am walking. I notice the touch of air on skin, clothes on skin, footfalls, muscle exertion, breathing, and there's this mild, but very real pleasure in the body. It's delightful. Kind of like everything is just super sensitive, but super sensitive to pleasure.

What's even weirder, is there seems to be a centre point, or source for this feeling. It's right at the bottom of the spine. I feel it most strongly there, and it branches down both legs really strongly. On retreat, and for some weeks after coming back I would get this odd little quiver of pleasure down through the legs ever time I looked down at my feet. I thought for some time that this was a nerve being stretched (that's what it feels like) and counted myself lucky that it caused pleasure and not pain, but worried a bit about what it might mean. It's still there now, but it's much diminished.

And speaking of weird... This is the same pleasure that accompanies third jhana for me. I just spent 1hr40mins sitting and the majority of that time a very much increased version of this pleasure suffused the body. It seemed I had left the DN and was in EQ but somehow unable to drop the pleasure to transition to 4th. For the longest time I suspected i was in the DN but it was just being experienced in a very mild way, but this seems unlikely as the "stage" i was in seemed to go on forever in a fairly bland kind of way. Some small discomforts, and a very mild headache but then Mrs Bagpuss and I drank the best part of a bottle of mulled wine last night so I have only myself to blame

As I sit here typing, the deliciousness is quite dominant. It's definitely coming from the lower spine and felt strongest in the bottom and upper legs though I can feel it all over.

Can anyone relate to any of that?

Definitely. At one time for about two weeks I had this exact same phenomenon and then it passed never to return in quite the same way. Can't tell you much else, for me it corresponded with a period of strong mindfulness.

That's great to know Adam, thanks. Did this sensation seem to emanate from the base of the spine for you also?

Actually it seemed to originate at the top of the spine from reviewing the practice journal, also reviewing what I wrote at the time it seems it actually just lasted about 4 days (in the full-fledged intense continuous mode.

I seem to be developing a little more skill in my jhana practice...

Up until this week my jhanas have been very much of the "concentrated vipassana stage" variety. i.e. I transition to 2nd as I hit the A&P, 3rd in the DN, 4th in EQ. This no longer seems to be the case. two or three times now I've found myself dropping into 4th whilst clearly in the A&P. Well, I say "clearly", but I wrote a good long post yesterday about how I couldn't understand how my EQ had gotten so exciting/terrifying then ended in a headache before I realised it was really the A&P -> DN

The jhanas themselves also seem more clearly defined. More easily identified. 4th seems to no longer be the elusive holy grail it once was and to be quite easily achieved and maintained. The DN can throw me out of it, but mostly the DN is a breeze once more.

Currently the (minor) problem is not getting up to EQ till gone the hour mark most sits and then not having enough energy left in me to carry on much more. There have been a few good runs in EQ but they are few and far between currently. I am choosing to blame my rotten cold for this, as being under the weather always makes it harder!

As I mentioned in my recent thread on noting, I was pretty ill over xmas and my jhana/meditation/equanimity took a big hit. I seem to be back up to speed and tonights sit was very interesting indeed...

So to cut a long story short I spent a long time in 1st, whizzed through 2nd, spent a long time in 3rd (and somewhere in there decided not to note, but to keep with the full body awareness as things seemed that way inclined this evening), got into 4th -yay!

Bumpy stuff in low eq which lasted forever, then even/smooth/bland stuff in mid eq (disclaimer: until i complete this path these are just my best guesses!) then after an eternity I seemed to be in high eq -- zooming in, sharpening focus, speeding up of vibrations by astonishing degrees but in a gentle kind of way. Bit of excitement, anticipation, fear, avoidance (that one's well weird) etc. Tried noting mind states and other stuff (intention, fear, excitement, anticipation, determination, confusion) but it seemed to be the wrong thing at this time, so dropped it.

At it's height, the sense of looking out from behind my eyes seemed to dissolve all by itself. I started searching around trying to find where "I" had gone (<---quotations, sure sign of progress hah!) but there was just this vague-ish discomfort and curiosity/perplexity).

The bell went, i carried on but it kind of wound itself gently down for the next 20mins.

Interesting stuff.

I had an experience that looked remarkably like a "near miss" today. Hard to tell of course, but interesting noentheless..

After going quite cleanly through the jhanas into 4th-ish territory i went through what I now recognise as my "mini DN" bit. A ways into mid-EQ (after the low-eq stuff) when things look like they can only get better crappy sensations and tension arises. I can really feel the tension in the in and out breath at the chest, less so on the out breath but it's there. Nasty prickly-crawly-dn sensations at the nose/mouth, thumping heart. Eventually this cleared.

There was a short period where i "noticed' the vibrations and individual little sensations at a frantic rate. This was not very nice. I put that to one side and tried to deeply relax into seeing the vibrations in the whole body. By this point my ever present head tension was not important, and the speed of vibration was extremely fast. I can only guess, but maybe 40-50x a second.

Several times there was a build up of vibratory speed coupled with an slmost unbearable sweetness. Like going into a jhana but with no levelling out or stabilising. It would just get more and more and more until it was not so sweet! On one such occasion I emerged from a small eddy of thought to experience a "moment" of some kind and a split second later a rush of real pleasure through the body. A few seconds after, it "seemed" I was doing the A&P again, then DN, then EQ but I think in retrospect this is unlikely as the rest of the day has not led me to believe this was anything that special.

All interesting stuff though...