Hi everyone,

Can I get your opinion and advice on some recent experiences?

I am basically riding jhana as far as I can, usually through the A&P/DN into EQ. I do not know if I am in 4th jhana or not most of the time, but it does not seem to matter much. There are very few thoughts, easily seen, easily seen to pass away. I am settling into full body awareness, occasionally sweeping though the body IF I think it's needed. All the while my focus is on "how can i calm this down even more", "what can i drop", letting go...

The experience is generally of varying degrees of vibrations in the body. Sometimes following a line of experience that seems to lead to higher vibrations but usually peters out to nothing very much. I have begun to put these little joy rides to one side as they seem like dead ends.

What really interests me right now is this: Forever I have had this "head tension" in the forehead. In the DN it has, historically at least (currently I zip over the DN fairly quickly) been a horrendous, ohmygodmyheadisexploding! experience but in EQ it is just this sensation that occasionally changes a little. Just recently I have seen it start to vibrate with a comparable (but not the same) frequency to the rest of the body. I have found that I can focus on it (gently) without it causing more pain/solidity. It kind of squirms about when I do this, sometimes thinning out across the top of the head or face, sometimes tightening up to a smaller spot like right at the top of the bridge of the nose. The last couple of sits I have been investigating this sensation(s) when I feel I am pretty far into EQ. It seems promising, and I have this "intuition" that the sensations are my sense of self. Where I feel "i" am centred/located. Particularly as when the vibrations in this region of the body seem to start matching the rest of the body progress seems very apparent. (excitement/fear in the body, heart thumping while "I" watch calmly) <--this last bit is odd. It's strange how the "body gets excited" but "i" am unaffected --i digress....

Anyway.. what do you think? Is that my sense of self?

I had the same thing since before stream entry. Personally I think you are (and I was) semi-consciously causing the muscles in your head to contract... in other words, it's a way to cause yourself a Tension Headache. I would not recommend making having a tension headache the norm of your day-to-day experience. It was mine for more than a year and it sucked!

That being said, if what you want is more concentration (as in the 2nd training), then a persistent, on-going tension headache might indeed be very helpful. It's a very obvious sensation that you can notice whenever (and you can get to the point where you induce it whenever you try to pay attention in a meditative way), and it is a physical thing that hurts so it provides a lot of distaste for the world, along with a desire to end pain by withdrawing from said world. Both of those lead to concentration, as concentration seems like a way 'out' of the pain/unpleasantness... never mind that you are the one inducing the tension in the first place.

You might be interested in this thread:
http://dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/3218934

I would not do as boeman is advising as it seems to just lead to more unpleasantness and fabricating a very narrow approch to concentration, setting yourself up for developing the habit to narrow focus constantly. I would realise how much one's focus is jumping on such sensations giving them mental weight, shape and the unpleasant tag. The actual anapanasati instructions call for a fullbodied approach to concentration. Try seeing if ignoring the sensations in the head works while shifting focus elsewhere (this will probably show how the mind's habit of lunging on an aspect of experience and giving it special status and shape is firmly in place) and/or widening perception to juxtapose those sensations in the head with the rest of the whole body, and/or seeing how the periphery of vision is a softer relaxd focus compared to the centre of vision amd allowing the periphery to inform how the centre is perceived visually thus taking in the periphery and centre at the same time. When this is mastered, it can then be applied to any and all sense doors. Experiment with 'peripheralising' those centre sensations in the head, includng the perphery of the physically sensed universe i.e. the entire field of the body i.e. full bodied. Experiment with getting 'concentrated' or rather calm and collected soone can then see how craving and aversion works (hint: they need the mind focused on and thus creating a mental object with shape and weight, such as the 'shitty sensations' in the head.)Experiment with ways of ceasing such a fabrication by playing around with how such fabrications are given mental weight, shape and label.

Doing such a practice may well help synch things up in the 11th nana as any 'object' the mind gets fixated on even subtly, segregates and ignores the rest of the field of experience, and in the 11th nana, it becomes more inclusive or at least leads one to take more in i.e. sensations of here & there, me & other, observer & observed, at once , mashed and mixed up in one borderless mass of phenomena. The peripheralisation of the entrie field of experience.....and then relax and let that go too.

My current subject to change 2 cents.

Nick

I agree, I don't advise doing what I wrote. I don't advise meditating at all, but that's off-topic; however, if you're gonna meditate, then really try to do it without involving the head tension. While it might have been effective in some ways for my goals at the time, ultimately it was rather painful.

This may not apply to everyone, but in my case what brought about SE was that I finally gave up trying to see or find or identify anything in particular. I was relaxed, but perfectly alert, totally content observing sensations and my "awareness" of those sensations. It was just how/what the world was. Then, when I least expected it, I found out about the true nature of that "awareness."

Thanks for all the thoughtful responses guys. Let me take it point by point..



In daily life this tension is not really an issue. Sometimes trying to sleep it will come on strong but I just touch my forehead lightly and it goes. When I first read your reply I thought we were talking about 2 different things. Or perhaps the same thing, but with an added bit in my case. After a few sits it seems that I cannot find this "solidity" inside the skull. It is indeed just muscle tension. This is surprising to me, but good stuff. Thanks!

I should also point out that in EQ it is not often unpleasant. Just there. In regard to sensations to concentrate on, I'm with Nick (and you! heh..), this is not a good option. I have such strong vibrations in the body whenever Im still anyway. I usually watch those, or if Im moving, the breath and/or grosser sensations in the body.



Got it open, will read. Thanks!



Though I think it's a bit of an academic point, I must mention for the sake of clarity that the sensations across the forehead is not unpleasant. It can get that way for sure, but most of the time it is just "sensation" whilst in EQ.



This is really interesting stuff Nick. My practice is pretty much full bodied awareness - using the whole body as wide focus point. This means "whole body full of pleasure", "wholebody full of sensations", "sensation soup"... and the head tension is always present to a lesser or greater degree. I do not see my mind darting to the tension, or averting from it. (though this could well be happening of course) It's just part of the whole thing, though apart in that it vibrates at a different rate and has a sense of solidity where the rest of the body feels like a vague gaseous mass of sensations.

I've tried focusing on the periphery as you said. I need a few more sits but initially it seems very promising indeed. My natural centre point is from behind the eyes so when I try this it either does not affect the head tension, or even increases it (though it could of course be just increasing on it's own). However, "looking" straight but paying attention to the edge brought some interesting shifts in perspective that I need to explore more thoroughly.

The really promising thing was when i moved my attention to the chest, but kept full body awareness (it seems impossible to drop that anyway) AND paid attention to the periphery again. The tension lessened quite a bit and I had similarly interesting shifts in perspective as I sat. Way to early to say this works, but I will work with it over the next few days when I reach EQ and see where it leads!



Right now i find it hard to even imagine peripheralising hearing for example, but just doing it with the body seemed hard the first sit, but the second one got easier and there's a kind of knack to it that I am starting to grasp. So I will read this paragraph again a few times and try to really understand it



Yessir! On it.



God i hope that works for me too! Seems that when i start trying to figure things out it just gets me unconcentrated and feels all wrong. When it's good in EQ i just keep following the vibrations. Every time they speed up a notch Im left wondering just how deep can this can go? Sometimes it seems it will never end, and yet the body/mind feels it cannot go any further. Then after a while theres a shift and things speed up / change once more and the boundaries change again! Intuitively I have been trying to just let go into that, trying not to manipulate it, or cling to it. Does that make sense to you Dauphin?

Honestly I'm not sure I'm understanding exactly what you are saying, but I agree that trying to figure things out (during meditation) is not the way to go. It seems that your main focus is on trying to resolve everything faster and faster, which is a good thing, up to a point. At some point, though, I just settled into a rhythm, not worrying anymore about how many little sensations I was missing in between those I was noticing. Keep in mind there are Mahasi teachers who suggest noting about once per second or once every two seconds. The idea is not necessarily to be really fast. You can never note faster than reality happens, or even quite as fast as it happens, but that's not necessary for SE either. That said, SE came for me after I had become comfortable noticing sensations at a rate of maybe 10 or 20 per second, much faster than I would have been able to formally note.

The head tension seems to be getting worse if anything...

Now I feel it almost the moment I start to meditate. A tightening of the forehead that seems to intensify with deepening concentration. Eventually it seems to be there but not to matter when Im deep into EQ but it is *really* there most of the time.

I cannot figure out what to do. Periphalising does not seem to help (though the technique in general remains interesting at certain times) and neither does focusing on other body parts.

On the bright side, for a few minutes I thought I'd gotten SE today.. a near miss? perhaps... I'll mention it in my practice thread..