Previous log (late July 2025 - late August 2025) https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/38878974
Summary of previous log: In my previous log starting out, the quality of impermanence was at the forefront of my practice. Samatha Jhanas were flowing through very rapidly for my standards (usually J1-J4) and that was an interesting time. It became clearer and clearer over time that clinging, in the sense of wanting something to come into existence (such as concentration states) or wanting to hold on to such things once they did come into being, was irrational. I was also dealing with some lingering attachments to craving for Jhanas (especially "higher" ones), wanting them to be some kind of version of waking up and operating from a frame of a controller. I knew the idea of a controller was nonsense intellectual but functionally it was still there. 

I also want to note to anyone who reads that log (for whatever reason...) that I did not record the majority of my sits. I wanted to stop over-analyzing my sits so I generally just took brief notes of the morning sit unless something particularly interesting happened. On average I sat 3 times per day, usually 20-30 minutes on the "bonus sits" after the morning one.

In terms of practice changes, I was given a lot of tips which made a really huge difference. People here suggested the following changes:
Choiceless attention/awareness: Rather than "trying" to "hold" attention on an "object", just mindfully letting attention/awareness do whatever it wants. Please refer to other places for better descriptions; my goal here is not to teach but just point to what I did.

This practice really reduced the sense of "controller" and curiously seemed to either help or at least not hinder the concentration Jhanas. Hard to say as I started practicing more consistently during August so that may also account for the more frequent and deeper Jhanas during sits. I also found that this lead to reflecting on paradoxes about what controlling meant. There is a sense of reduced interference... but interference from what exactly? I don't need an answer to that question but it still comes up like a koan.

Noting: What may surprise some people is that in my 12ish years of practice, I did probably less than one hour of noting ever (honestly I think less than 10 minutes). The short version of why is that it seemed like noting practice was just another way for my analytical/judgemental mind to get involved in things and I knew that was a big problem pretty much from the start. I no longer have that opinion but I also think a few thousand hours of concentration practice made the transition to noting very smooth and painless for me. Who knows.

I am still very new to noting so I do not want to philosophise much here. What I do know is that I was very wrong about it. I had concerns that noting would disrupt my concentration/samatha/Jhana practice. In general, it doesn't. In small ways it supports that by generally reducing periods of unmindfulness. As mentioned by a few people, it also has started to increase daily informal mindfulness. I have more to say but I want to practice this more before giving "my takes" on it; one month is a very small amount in this game.

Question (no worries if people don't answer though): For the people who suggested choiceless practices (Chris M and Shargrol IIRC) and noting (I think mainly Papa Che Dusko), what about my posts made you think that might be a good idea for me? One of these days I would like to help people with their practice (after my own is further along) and would appreciate hearing if there were specific patterns.

Equanmity: About a week or two into August, two things started happening together. I started getting into what I think of as J4 (thanks to Shargrol for pointing that out) most sits. I also feel that towards the end of the month it tended to be a harder J4. Perhaps due to that, I have just been quite a lot more equanimous day to day. I was speaking to my partner about this recently and she noticed a huge difference. I am generally just more peaceful and that definitely is not just because my life was less stressful or dramatic during August (somewhat the opposite really). This makes me very happy as there are few things I aspire to more than just not letting my mental health negatively effect others. 

Apart from that, my conjecture is that spending longer and longer periods in J4 is actually starting to rewire my brain. Things just in general feel more spacious/less contracted, and it feels like the sort of conceptual boundaries of "in here" or "me" versus "out there" or "everything else" are slowly fading. I have had no big "AHA" moments or things like that. It is just slowly going away. As a result of just feeling more equanimous, my psychological suffering has been reduced quite substantially. I expect this is a result of the regular sitting and not so much that some big "shift" has occurred. In particular, my mind naturally tended to incline to thought proliferation (Papañca). I notice these days that at times, even outside of practice, it kind of prefers to be calm and open instead of stuck in the train of thought. That really is wonderful.

Possible deeper Jhana: On Aug 30th, a new state dropped. From what felt like a pretty hard J4, while almost slumped over, it felt like the conscious space became fully collected (Ekaggatā), that collected thing got very, very quiet, and from a spacial standpoint very different. It did feel like what was watching it had some kind of abstract distance from it (like looking through a paper towel tube) but space itself was not really clear. It neither felt boundless nor did it feel small. Mindfulness was still extremely clear and aware of the whole thing, and there was some sense of a duality between something watching the collected space and the space itself. But the thing watching did not have any apparent qualities to it and calling it a thing feels a bit weird.

Anyways, not a big deal but it was a new thing.

Plans firmly defined but loosely held for September:
New practice schedule: Having a baseline of sitting every morning for 30 minutes even if it is extremely inconvenient was great so I will keep doing that. I also plan to do the same style for that sit. Choiceless with whatever level of noting the thing feels like. 

One change I will introduce as part of my retreat prep is a two hour sit once per weekend. That sit will be light kasina (via sleep mask) and it is mainly to practice sitting for longer periods as well as practicing attention on a single object. I have a little bit of experience with longer sits (maybe a dozen 60-120 minute sits and one 3 hour sit) so I don't see this as a huge challenge.

I will also mainly just right down my morning sit unless something interesting happens in ones later in the day. I already spam this place enough.

Lastly, thank you to the people helping me. Apart from a phonecall with Daniel Ingram and a brief period on another forum which did not like my approach to practice, this all the direct help I have ever gotten. I realize that this has made a huge difference and have a lot of gratitude for that.
 

 Sept 1st

30 minute choiceless noting w/ sleep mask. Small sort of chakra/energetic release thing in the throat area but it was super intense. Towards the last few minutes of the sit, awareness was broad and fully covering the body space implying J4. Began to slowly pitch forward until basically collapsed, with sleep-like deep breathing occuring automatically. Fully awake and mindful though so this did not have the taste of a hindrance. Not sure though. I might look into this a bit more as Rob Burbea mentioned in a talk that some people can have this happen in J4.
 

Sept 2nd

30 minute choiceless noting w/ sleep mask. Lots of inexplicable smiling to note. Kept up with noting, some mild jhanic factors, and my old friend which is the center of my sternum came up to cause lots of somatic discomfort. For whatever reason, it has always been an area which I don't like touched physically, and even sensations like my chest hair touching a shirt or something like that can become very bothersome. No big deal though, it comes and goes.

Ryan --


On your previous topic, you said this:


​​​​​​​That led shargrol to comment on the value of letting go. 

I see, thanks Chris.

 Sept 3rd

10 minute treadmil choiceless fast noting. 

30 minute sit choiceless noting w/ sleep mask. Thankfully landed in a pretty hard J2 and eventually J3 which gave me some relief. 

Past 36ish hours were rough. I managed to upset a person repeatedly without intending to do so. Either by not reading situations, forgetting things, or sharing my own internal state instead of bottling it up. The hindrances which came up as a result of that were extremely thick and hard to uproot. I notice that there is substantially more proliferation and substantially less mindfulness; even during sits. 

Going to do a couple more sits today and also hit the gym. As wise philosopher Gorok once said: "Lift heavy stone, make sad head voice quiet."

Last point is that I find in general these periods can be tricky. There is a strong desire to supress my emotions using the meditation and to have my practice be a vehicle for that. For whatever reason, I have noticed in the past that it can be very difficult for me to functionally tell the difference between repression and letting go. Maybe out of this situation I can learn some things about that.
 

What about ending the sit by practicing "radical allowing" most literary letting all and any experience do as it does. Soak utterly into it. Misery or Disqust, or anger or lust ... just letting it all flow without using any "method" or "tool" at all! 

So you start the sit by intending to attain to full awakening for the benefit of all and practice 10 minutes of concentration/mantra 

Then 20 minutes freestyle noting. 

Then 10 minutes radical allowing. 

Then finish with an intent for this practice you just did to be of benefit to all beings above, bellow and all around. 

​​​​​​​How does this sound you? Of course ignore it if it makes no sense at this time or at all. 

Definitely sounds like something worth exploring for me. Do you typically time these things or sort of just go by feel regarding that timelines? 

I gave this a try during the portion of my morning sit and it was interesting. I did notice some kind of energetic knot like thing that came up in a totally new area. After some sad facial expressions came up while attention was resting on it, it kind of worked itself out.

 Sep 4th

Morning sit 30 minues. Started with choiceless noting but did kind of just a choiceless accepting thing for last little while of it as suggested by Dusko. 
The thing felt like doing more Shinzen style noting instead of rapid noting today. So instead of going for speed, noting a thing, paying attention to it deeply (though not with strain), then moving on to the next thing after a few seconds.

Today was an atypical morning. The power went out at 5:30 am just as I was starting my morning sit so I had to stop and do my sit later on. If the power stays off into the afternoon, I will probably do a 2 hour light kasina sit mainly because I don't have much else to do.

Hindrances are mostly gone. The meditation does not feel as deep as it did in August but I have let go of most of my concerns about that and keep doing a few sits per day anyways.
 

Sept 5th

Morning sit, 30 minutes, choiceless noting. I cannot really tell whether the intention stream was prompting attention to bounce around objects less, or whether that was naturally the result, or whether or not there is any difference. 

It seems to be a bit of a paradox. Some days it feels very choiceless, with attention/awareness bouncing around all over the place to different objects (mostly with mindfulness; I am not talking about distraction). Some days it does not, and there are thoughts of "am I interfering and not being choiceless?" The paradox seems to be that the thought in the previous sentence implies ownserhip and control. So in the end, the thing will do what it does and there is no control there. Let go. 

Returning to one meditation object: Tomorrow, my plan is to do a two hour sit. I have not done more than an hour in maybe a year or so (perhaps two? time flies). I am not worried about the duration or inevitable pain from sitting that long but I do wonder about how it will be switching back to an approach where I am returning to a specific meditation object each time instead of the choiceless practice. I think the main thing will be finding a balance of attending the one object but not doing so with too much tension or force. The object is light kasina so thankfully it is very stable on one level (i.e. there's always something going on with it) yet on another level extremely instable (it changes rapidly and obviously). I am thinking to try slow noting to hopefully have some balance of samatha/vipassana factors to make the sit tolerable. 

 Sep 6th
Possible full insight cycle?
1 hour 50 minute sit, mostly w/ sleep mask, light kasina (not choiceless). Times are approximate until I checked my clock around 1hr 45 mins in.
30m: Pretty typical kind of sit. Thought I was worried about returning to practice where the mind redirects itself to an object instead of open/choiceless awareness, it's fine as long as there is not too much tension or straining. Was able to attend the object quite regularly and clearly. There were blips of losing mindfulness but they were short lived. Noting pace is roughly very second or heart beat.
45m: Quite a bit of stillness. Noting is let go of and switched to noticing. Attention/awareness shapes oscillate between broad and focused. Starting to get some out of phase and lack of mindfulness.
1h: Physical tension and pains were at a climax in the body and energy body. Certainly not unbearable, but there is dukkha. Visually, there are almost horror elements arising. Sort of nasty shapes and scary things. An emotion of despair (I think this is truly the word that closest describes it) is on the face on and off, sometimes for seconds, sometimes minutes, maybe because of noticing the dukkha? Also, a phrase is repeated a couple of times: "Let it die, let it die...". Not suicidal or anything wishing harm. It is reference something... more of a statement of letting go of something that is holding on. Give up. Surrender.
1h 10m: It is surmised that this might be dukkha nana territory, so an effort to return to noting and noticing comes again. 
1h 20m: The visual field with the light kasina object is "buzzy" or static. It always is, but there is a closer investigation of this shifting, static, buzzing quality. Gradually, awareness grows very broad (for my standards) and boundless. Each thing in it, sound of silence, physical touch, cat's water dispenser which constantly makes a dripping sound, vehicles outside, the visual field, in some sense the air or space in between these things, all sort of feels buzzy and insubstantial. Thoughts about "is this 5th Jhana coming up" and some kind of excitment, then intentions to just rest in this and keep paying attention.
1h 40: A blob in this broad space, which has some kind of narrrative/self like content is recognized. It feels contracted but at the same time it is floating around in the space. It dissolves, and with it, the body begins to feel light and laughter comes out. Like I was wearing a 45lbs (20kg) weight vest both physically and mentally and it just dissolved. Extremely cathartic and sort of an afterglow. I have experienced this kind of afterglow before but less than 5 times.
1h 45: The meditation feels like it is over. Alarm is set for two hours and I check the time at this point. I think about continuing to just sit but one of my cats noticed me stirring and came to get affection (smart cat, good timing). 

I wonder if that was an insight cycle or part of one? I do not think I typically sit long enough for those to occur but it had echoes of what I have read in MCTB regarding that kind of thing. 
 

Sorry for late reply! 

Yes I would use Insight Timer app and time the entire session 10 min, bell, 20 min , bell, 10 min , bell, 5 min, final bell. 

​​​​​​​Fantastic app! 

No worries; thanks for the tip!

 Sept 7th

2hr sit w/ sleep mask, light kasina. Less eventful than yesterday. I think the after glow thing I had from yesterday made it difficult for me to sleep last night, so I was somewhat sleepy this sit. A fair amount of head nodding during the first hour. Around the hour mark, the despair stuffed kicked in briefly. Also, distinct fear came up which was neat, like a horror movie! The remainder of the sit felt pretty samatha oriented and had intermittent non-lucid periods. I think by about 1hr 50m I just gave up with investigation and just enjoyed the peace. 

Post sit, peaceful but a bit buzzy; especially the nada/sound of silence thing. 

Tomorrow I am back to work so I'll carry on with a few 30 minute sits per day.  

Work is great! I'm back to work tomorrow as well! Actually, I also work Sundays as well!

 Sept 8th

30 minute choiceless noting w/ sleep mask. Not much to report; some cool visual kasina stuff coming in including arcs, solid (like filled in) but morphing shapes, lots of lines. Colours range from light blue to royal blue which look very nice against the dark background.

Meditation yesterday and today was a bit different. It is like there's less general caring about what happens during the sit but probably in a good way. Less of a sense of participating and more a sense of things just arising and passing. Sort of this interesting dichotomy between less suffering even with meditation that would have felt a month ago like it was going poorly.  

Sept 8th again

During/after my second sit today, I seem to be in some energized state which I am not sure what to make of. Everything is buzzy and frenetic. It seemed to start with investigating the light kasina and noticing it's very rapid and dynamic changingness on display more vividly than usual. The feeling extends to the conscious space now (body, emotions, thoughts, nada/ringing thing, sounds, my partner explaining the plotline of a K-Drama). It feels like the space is the buzzy whirlwind of change. Vedana-wise, things are fine, and there is still pretty deep equanimity somewhere in this whirlwind, but it also feels quite manic. This is the EDIT: most un-samatha oriented sit I have ever had haha. 

In reviewing some stuff, it looks liket his is possibly Vipassana Jhana 2. I might have to be a bit careful with my insight practice moving forward. This was fine over the weekend when I could sit for as long as I wanted, but during week days my sitting time is generally limited to 30 minute sessions or a bit shorter. I could see this kind of state or perhaps Vipassana Jhana 3 not being very skillful for work.

Tried to get an AI to represent what the conscious space feels like... didn't have too much luck but it feels a bit like this right now:

​​​​​​​

By chance have you gone through the A&P before?

 I would say I very likely have crossed the A&P a fair number of times since about 2019. I was lucky to have the chance to chat with Daniel briefly two years ago and described something that I thought sounded vaguely like stream entry. He thought it was an A&P event and I am inclined to agree.

I don't have a clear map for progress of insight stuff but I generally think of A&P as these big energetic pulses in the spine that build up and kind of explode outward over the course of maybe 2-5 seconds. 
 

Sound good. Just wanted to make sure. 

If you ever see anything in my models that sounds inaccurate, please let me know!

I kind of info dump but my goal with that is to share the models so that other people can give their perspective. 

Nothing particular to say about your models... Honestly, at home practice doesn't lend itself to modelling the way a residential multi-day retreat does, so it rarely pays to try to map things out in detail. Some people can be super-precise about where they are, but I never had that ability early in my practice

That said:

It definitely is possible to rise up and down through the nanas in a single sit (what you were calling cycling, but typically cycling is used as a term after SE). When the mind has really digested the nanas and becomes more at home in EQ, it can often start going through the nanas fairly effortlessly up to SE and then back down again, and even repeating this 2 or 3 times in a hour long sit. No big deal, as always, your job as a meditator is to simply experience and notice the texture of experience, whatever it is.

J1 has a bit of effort to it, feeling centered by focusing on an object
J2 is pleasurable
A&P is buzzy-pleasurable
J3 is more numb and blissy
Dark Night is wobbly, off balance, and has a vague "hard-to-grasp" feeling... or even a kind of "this is yucky" feeling
Vipassina-Jhana3 is a combination of feeling off balance yet sorta numb and blissy
Reobservation is turbulant
EQ feels spaceous and calm
J4 feels spaceous and calm

Mastering EQ can often involve the mind going back to earlier nanas and re-experiencing them with your newfound equanimity. Sort of like reviewing and mastering all the nanas before trying to go beyond EQ.

So this is why we shouldn't be judging where we are based on the nanas we hit after we have a solid practice going. The mind will go where it needs to go. Our job is to closely pay attention to this guided tour of the mind. On one hand, how easy! On the other time, we always want to make our mind do what we want. So sitting practice is a time to get used to being led by our mind. As always, accept the experience and relax within it, and when things get challenging or awkward or "hard-to-grasp" simply label one aspect of the experience with a word/label at a rate of one note on each outbreath... and sit for the designated length of time.

Sit every day, it's like trying to swim upstream during practice and getting flushed downstream when you rest. The trick is to find a consistent daily level of practice that allows for progress over time. Rest is important too otherwise you'll be too tired to swim. So one or two good quality sits per day every day is what is needed to make progress. Simple and straightforward. Straight ahead!
 
Retreats are great, but they also aren't sustainable for most people. Daily practice is also sort of like learning to jog and getting stronger day by day of jogging. Retreats are like climbing a mountain. You can gain new heights but the level of effort is too much and if you try to live that way, there eventually won't be enough rest/recovery. And some people push too hard in the mountains and get hurt. So it's also important to learn pacing on retreat. Less effort is needed and it's more important to be sensitive and pay attention to "pushing too hard".

​​​​​​​Hope this helps, disregard what isn't helpful!
Daily practice plus occasional retreats is the high-probablity way to make progress.

The odd thing about meditation, as shargrol often reminds me, is that it's really about creating this space, practice, setup where the mind can start to heal itself. Often mapping is a result of our trying to game that process and in many cases isn't super important. The really important and interesting thing, that the saavy meditator notices is not, how am I progressing, but, what is this experience actually like, because this experience is what the mind needs, this one right here, this is what the mind needs to get to know, to understand, to explore.

... So that it can heal itself.

Just this. 

Of course, as we get to know things we come to recognize repeating patterns and so some light mapping may become obvious for you, but mapping can be learned intuitively, you can learn it and see it unfold by accident as a consequence of bringing the bodymind back into meditative states. 

Thanks, it does help!

I take your point about not worrying too much about mapping. It is definitely a compulsion for me with most things in life but I have gotten better over time at not letting it interfere with the actual sits (better, not perfect). Doing the choiceless practice has helped a lot on that end.
For the Vipassana stuff, it feels like new territory for me. I am sure I have experienced elements of these things during my "samatha" (not to get carried away or pretend that sits are only one or the other) but I do notice the more insight oriented practice I do is a different ballgame in distinct ways. The narrative blob in the conscious space dissolving on Saturday or the creepy horror movie moment on Sunday were new/interesting and such things always seems to make me geek out.

 This is definitely something I have had to work with since the start of my practice: The idea of trying to "game the process" via my maps/models. The last time my practice totally crashed and burned for a few months was in 2023, when I was trying to follow a very rigid and orthodox map from a particular tradition.

I think I am getting better with it but I was born with a very obsessive mapper process. Lately I notice it is most problematic with new experiences; really tends to get going there.
 

 Sept 9th

30 minute sit choiceless noting. I was a bit sleepy and skipped cardio, so I didn't wear the sleep mask for a change. This was a pretty samatha feeling sit which was a nice constrast to yesterday. Not much to note except that the visual sense seems to be where something in the mind which goes "that, that, that" or "object, object, object" operates in a pretty distinct way. 

I feel lucky to have a partner who trusts me and understands the meditation stuff I do; along with the length explanations and descriptions of potential personality/mood changes a person can go through via MTCB and podcasts with Daniel. We have both been noticing pretty profound changes from very deep unreactive equanimity to sort of manic and activated. On the bright side of things, it seems like there is a pretty deep well of equanimity that has developed, so that seems to help stop me from getting carried away. But yeah... I get why people unprepared for insight stuff can run into trouble. It is just not what I would normally associate with "meditation" practice.
 

 Sept 10th

30 minute choiceless noting w/ sleep mask. I got an email this morning about details of my retreat so there was quite a bit of thought proliferation. Mostly kept on track by noting though. Light kasina was very alive and beautiful this morning. 
 

 Sept 11th

20 minute treadmill w/ fast noting. At one point, while noting the visual field, there was three distinct aspects or focuses of it that kept coming to the foreground of attention. There was a distant point past the window I was looking out, the reflection of myself in the window, and then the outline of the eye sockets and the sides of my big nose. That, combined with a lack of a sense of a controller selecting each of these aspects, brought up reflections about sensations being aware of themselves. For whatever reason, it reminded me of the Publisher-Subscriber pattern in software architecture. Rather than a central controlling software entity asking/calling other entities for data, each of the other entities is given a way to "Publish" data to whatever is listening. But that is where the analogy breaks down. Who/where is the subscriber listening to the sensations as they publish themselves? Not important to answer this question; just kind of a koan thing that came up.

30 minute slow noting w/ sleep mask then eventually faster noting. First 25 minutes was not eventful but space got quite broad toward the end. There was a few minutes of all sensations feeling on equal playing field in some way. Sounds, touch, thoughts, pressure, tension, in particular all felt like vibratory things. They did have distinct qualities but at the same time there was something common amongst them that felt like different aspects of what is fundamentally the same thing. 

Last rambly point: Now and again I reflect on something I think I heard from Shinzen (IIRC he was quoting a Zen master but I am not sure). "I don't meditate to become enlightened, I meditate because I am enlightened." This has come up recently as I have begun to see the benefits of more regular and a bit deeper practice; though not necessarily heroic efforts. Half hour as a baseline works well lately but preferably several of those a day if I can manage. Adding in some longer sits on weekends also seems to be doing something to my brain. 

This is not my claim to stream entry or arhatship, just that I really see the benefits of regular practice. There's much less clinging even though there is plenty of craving and thinking. I probably sound like a broken record, but the background is equanimity even amongst everything that arises. There is a sense that this is there because of the practice and not because the work is done. 

 Sept 12

30 minute choiceless noting w/ sleep mask. Some desire coming up around wanted Jhana to happen today. Was able to note it and just keep being happy with choiceless noting/whatever was going on. I think it is coming from wanting to get back to some of the states I had from my longer sits last weekend. 

I am very happy with my practice though when I reflect on it. I have not missed a day since August 1st. Much of that is from just accepting the meditation for whatever it is and not resisting it. If the Jhanas want to go crazy, fine. If the mind is wandering lots, fine. If it wants to quit, fine. If it wants to meditate longer, fine. 
 

"wanted Jhana to happen today. Was able to note it"

Very nice!  

Sept 12 again

I did a 60 minute Do Nothing sit, as in actually trying to relax any movement of mind instead of just letting it do what it wants with mindfulness. I could not tell you what that means though. It doesn't feel like trying at all.

That was a trip. By the end it was sort of like I was just being. Kind of dream like yet super aware. 

A bit after the meditation, my phone fell out of my pocket and landed on my pinky toe. The mind went from registering pain, to psychological pain (w/ pain face), to letting that go (neutral face) within about one second. Suffering gone almost instantly.

I wish I could hit you with a Kyosaku NOW!!!

And hit you HARD! 

XD

 

 Sept 13th

2 hour sit light kasina w/ sleep mask (though I laid down during the last 15 minutes). This sit was very good practice for dealing with boredom and discomfort, as the majority of the sit was mildly boring and uncomfortable. The mind did not seem to be in a meditation mode much at all. It neither felt much like samatha nor vipassana was happening. But I kept returning to the object with varying levels of noting and effort. 

I expect there will be plenty of sits like this on retreat so I am actually happy to get a chance sit through that and get a feel for it. 
 

 Sept 14th

30 minute choiceless noting w/ sleep mask. Mind was very distractable and Jhanic factors pretty absent. Very not secluded from hindrances. Got it done though.

I don't like to change things too often since daily practice fluctuates so often. However, I think I might Change it up for the last half of this month. Firstly, I have not done and cultivation of metta and feel like that could be skillful to do before my retreat; both for my benefit and for others. I also like the idea people have suggested here on doing different practices within one session (i.e. 10 minutes samatha, 10 minutes vipassana, 10 minutes allowing). 
 

​​​​​​​
Yeah, and just as true for pleasurable things. In fact all “things.” This is where it becomes easier to open your whole life to the practice. All “things” and experiences are just that, experiences. And upon examination become concepts. This is good, that is bad. This I like, that I don’t like. This thing is different from those “other things”, it is “special.” This thing is “true knowledge” and that thing is “false knowledge,” etc etc. every experience is the same as any other experience. All of them arise and pass. I guess that’s impermanence, yeah? lol.I like the do-nothing meditation. At a certain point it’s the only thing that makes sense. This thing gets so broad and inclusive, that it’s the only thing you can really do. Breath, sense gates, music in headphones, wind on your skin, sounds outside your headphones, tinnitus, and the movement of thought, all at the same time. And in between the movement, the other sense, samadhi or whatever. It breaks the limits of the mind. The brain can’t keep up. It can only do one thing at a time. It chases around until it figures out it can’t keep up. It doesn’t get tired, it sees the truth. It can’t keep up, it can’t contain this. It will never be able to. It wasn’t designed for this. Maybe it grieves, or mourns its loss, but that too becomes part of the whole experience, until it is no longer what anyone could call an experience. It’s too broad, too full, too complex, infinite, to map or explain, or to catch ahold of. Anyway, that’s just a long winded: awesome work! Keep going! 

 Sept 15th

10m metta, 10m noting, 10m Do Nothing.

I tried out the Insight Timer app as suggested by Dusko. It is a solid app. Onboarding screens were a bit in your face but once you get past that, the timer was easy to set up and use. 

Couple things of note:
- The narrative/self blob dissolution phenomena came up for the second time. While noting, probably in samatha J3ish territory, there was this distinct blob in the conscious space that awareness took up. It sort of feels like a region where selfing/narrating exists or is coming from. It has this quality of being separate (though not truly so; it has edges and sort of shape but the separation is more like a blob drawn on paper with a sharpie... it is still the same paper) and it has proliferation of thought (papanca). Once awareness deliniates it, it dissolves over a few seconds and then things get very nice and peaceful. Not an intense afterglow like last time but it feels great to have that thing pass away.
- While noting, it was noticed that the left ear area is biased when investigating the sound of silence/nada. The mind then investigated the right ear and that sort of brightened that area of the conscious space. In other words, it feels like my nervous system was biasing the one area and by bringing attention to the right side, it turned up the brightness so to speak.  

The narrative/self blob: Would love to know if anyone else has any opinions on what that is. My best guess at this point is that this is what it feels like to let go of clinging but from a more diffused and panoramic awareness. I have a fair sense of what it feels like to be caught in clinging from my baseline attention/awareness shape which is very not panoramic; sort of tunnel like. It is as if the tunnels contracts around the train of thought/papanca and the periphery of the tunnel becomes dark. When mindfulness attends to it, the contraction dissolves and things become brighter again. So perhaps this is the same phenomena except that awareness is not in that tunnel-like mode of operating. 
 

I suspect your blob is what I call the mindstream, but which Pepe renamed the thought stream, which I like much better. So the thoughtstream seems to be an area vaguely within the skull where internal narrative thinking is "heard". J3 often emphasizes the periphery rather than the center, so maybe it's easier to notice the "backgroundness" of the thoughtstream in this state.

Finding it is unreliable, but in general if you are centered enough that you can "hear" the sound of thinking and just gently put your attention there, it seems possible to kinda follow it "upstream" to where the sounds "are". Of course, as you as you start thinking about how to do this you're identified with thinking again -- so it is just something that you need to get instinctually used to doing. Just like learning how to balance on one foot, you balance a little, fall, and repeat... and if you start "trying" to balance your balance gets even worse.   So just take your time and gently explore without expectations about performance.

And yeah, the mind brightening when it isn't contracted on thinking is very interesting. This often happens when people move in and out of EQ. I remember walking through an airport during this stage of my practice and I literally thought someone was dimming and undimming the lights. But then I could see: contracted yet unclear center in dark night/reobservation = dim; "mindful" balance of contraction and panoramic = EQ = bright. If the airport was lit on a 10 on a scale from one to ten, the dimming was about a 7 or 8. Noticible enough but subtle. 

Hope this helps. 

oooh, a teaser P.S.: I was meditating on the thoughtstream when I experienced SE. A few months earlier I was dumb and fried myself on ~15 day retreat at IMS by trying to note too hard and too fast. Nothing super horrible, compared to some people, but it was definitely no good for me. Consistency and curiousity, not heroics, is definitely the answer. After I recoverred, I resolved to be gentle with myself and just maintain my daily sitting practice. I also started working with a teacher. He was the one that pointed out "EQ is a state" to me; which was very helpful to not identify/idealize that state, and a month or so later he also predicted SE soon which made me all self-conscious and so it took another month. The sit was a very relaxed, centered and mindful, about 30 minutes into it I traced back the sound of thinking, following the stream of thoughts "upstream" to this bubbly "thoughtstream" source. I just sort of rested my attention there, but it's not quite so dualistic as that; you could also say, I just tried to "be" there. When your mind can rest there, the "thoughts" are more like proto-thoughts, verbal noise but without full words, vaguely almost meaning something but nothing specific. Obviously it's hard to describe but it's a very basic thing, nothing complicated ultimately, no big deal. 

This seems to track. When I am doing (hah) Do Nothing practice, it sort of feels like the primary aspect of that is placing attention somewhere around the head area as if it is looking at the thought stream. Then there sort of this combination of watching it and releasing tension whenever it starts spewing thoughts out. This is to me what distinguishes it from just being choiceless. This is just my own way of thinking about it though of course.

This phenomenon I describe seems mainly different in terms of perspective. Normally the thought stream (if it is the same thing you describe) feels like it is maybe somewhere between my forehead and the top of my head. That places it sort of above the normal sense of origin of perspective being roughly behind the eyes or whatever. With this phenomenon, the perspective is from behind all of that (vaguely... not to get carried away with notions of space). I guess another way of saying is that that thought stream becomes the foreground in a way it just isn't normally.
Sounds good. I intuitively get the sense that this is not something that lends itself to trying/doing for me. Both times it just sort of happened during periods where some level of investigation was complementing some level of spacious awareness. 

This sort of thing loops quite a bit for me most of the time. I do not have it very well mapped out (which is fine), but during some sits, every couple of minutes things go in and out of dark/contracted or just dark in general into bright/spacious. However, the last longer sit I did was basically just dark contracted and dark spacious the whole time. Boy, that was an exercise in patience. Really drove home the point about duration/intensity not necessarily being good goals in and of themselves. I should say, it doesn't loop much outside of formal practice though.


This is totally tracks here! The content within the blob or whatever clearly has words (among other abstract thought stuff) with some kind of narrative going on, but once awareness sort of goes "behind" the blob and starts to delineate it, the blob and the narrative content first lose meaning, then kind of slow down/sputtering and eventually dissolve. Also, as soon as it delineates, there is absolutely no sense of self there. Pure anatta; no more self than the monitor I am looking at as I type.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and stories!
 

 Sept 16th

10m metta/10m noting/10m do nothing. Again, I notice these moments where there's narrative (usually in the form of words), then they slowly sputter out and dissolve. This seems to usually mark some kind of shift into some kind of stillness/equanimity. There is also this more general sense of awareness being behind that narrative content, which gives the narrative content more of an impersonal (anatta) vibe. Today these sort of thought stream dissolution events were quite subtle in comparison to previous times though. 

So far this has been a good mix of practices.  

 Sept 17th

10m metta/5 m noting/15m dealing with weird chest issue thing. Some weird old somatic/energetic/obsessive issue came back with a vengence today. Still dealing with it as I write this. In brief, there's this place between my collar bone and solar plexus which has bothered me since around 7 years old. It manifests both as an unpleasant sensation... something between an itch, a pain, and a pressue like someone is pressing on the area with a finger, as well as the repeating 3D visualizations about the area being harmed. 

When it does come up, it is almost impossible for attention to notice anything other than it. It is also quite possibly one of the most unpleasant things I seem to be capable of feeling in terms of vedana (positive, neutral, negative feeling). Physical aches and pains are not a big deal for me in comparison. 

I tried a couple of things like noting the different aspects of the thing and feeling it fully, but in both cases the unpleasantness would overwhelm it. I still sat for the whole 30 minutes but the last half was some combination of the sensation and my mind throwing up distractions. 
 

 Sept 18th
15m metta 15m noting. Insight timer didn't play any sounds unfortunately (I mainly blame the Android OS, it really messes with apps running in the background these days). I knew something was up and switched over to my regular timer app around the 15m mark.

Still had the annoying somatic chest thing but it was less prominent and disruptive today. 
 

You know the chest thing is not medical? Just asking because I had something I thought was somatic trouble and found out it was a medical condition that was pretty easily solved medically. Not trying to scare you or anything, just wouldn't want you assuming something and not looking into it. 
that said, if it's not medical it's content, and can be ignored like thoughts. If it's something you've stuffed down, it will come out eventually. 

 Thanks for asking; that's a valid question and cannot entirely rule it out. My partner is a FM physician and I have described it to her in the past. She figured it was probably an aspie somatic thing (though she put it much more eloquently than that). 

One of the main reasons I don't think it is medical (at least not like a physical presentation) is that I had a similar thing on my forehead up until about highschool. That one resolved eventually of its own accord but felt very much the same. My brother used to tease me for constantly rubbing my forehead; as siblings do. 

My current plan is to see if it resolves during my retreat in October. If I doesn't, I was able to get into contact with someone who sort of specializing in this kind of thing from a Kundalini-ish spiritual side and will follow up with them. I think failing that, a specialist physician would be next though!
 

 Sept 19th

10m metta/10m noting/10m do nothing. Mind was uplifted but easily distractible today. No big deal; I think it is just energetic after I got a good sleep for the first time this week. Somatic issue is still present but it no longer attracts attention the majority of the sit. 

Last night I had a lucid dream for the first time in quite a while. The setting started out in a small town near the water; very coastal northwest NA. A fellow who I used to know on the internet who passed away young was giving a speech about how a person needs to "go back to the green" every now and again. This was understood to mean going back to nature and spending time there which is something I would like to do more often; having grown up next to a forest. 

After the speech, the dream turned lucid and I decided I might as well do some flying. After flying around the area and through some forests, the dream space morphed into the beautiful collage of bright emerald greens, a bit like flowing lava if it was green coloured. This experience kind of had a vipassana feel to it.
 

 Sept 20th

10m metta/10m noting/10m do nothing/5m basking in lovely 4th jhana.

This was a really nice sit.  

Sep 21st

2 hour light kasina w/ sleep mask. Not a bad sit. it really didn't fly by and there was a good hour of out-of-phase, dark, 3rd Jhana going on. There was some good jhanic factors and  some interesting stuff going on with the ligth kasina:
- At one point, it was as if I was seeing slices of time, where each slice was a frame of some aspect of the light kasina object, laid out in front. By analogy, a bit like if you stand between two mirrors and the images seem to stretch out/repeat ad infinitum. It was like that but only in the frontal direction. This may have just been an optical trick but it did have this vibe film-reel like quality which implied passage of time/movement.
- Quite a few instances of bright and flashy lights popping up momentarily.

Sept 22nd

10m metta/10m noting/10m Do Nothing all with sleep mask on. Bit of a weird headspace probably due to sleep deprivation but it wasn't unpleasant. The noting went well but both the metta and do nothing periods were a bit all over the place. Getting quite a bit of light phenomena which wasn't something I ever used to get; even pretty deep into whatever Jhana I could access in the past. Normally they are white lights but I had one fireball looking thing. Nothing profound to them; just kind of neat fireworks. IIRC Ajahn Chah or someone said something like "if you want lights go stare into a flashlight" or something like that haha.

Unrelated practice, but I gave an internal presentation last Friday to my company on "Jhana". We do an optional show and tell on Fridays, usually about programming stuff but we can talk about whatever we want.

I opened by talking about how meditation can actually make you crazy and some resources to get help (I always lead with this now that I understand the risks better). In general, my goal was to describe samatha Jhanas as a model for mental states and ground them with some examples that people might be able to relate to. In particular, I currently hold the opinion that 1st and 2nd Jhana are similar or perhaps even the same phenomena as "flow states". For 1st Jhana, I used an example of a kid who was painting something while they are undistracted and happy. For 2nd Jhana, I used the example of a top athelete who was "in the zone" so to speak. I also proposed that people may experience 3rd Jhana during the transition from waking to sleep at times; with a nod to feeling like going to a spa. However, could not/cannot think of anything remotely similar to 4th Jhana.

I also introduced the ideas of attention having a size or "aperture" (to borrow from the resource Shargrol linked recently) and how that is for me, the most prominent and noticeable aspect of each Jhana. This was useful in giving some idea about what 4th Jhana was like, but honestly I could not grasp the idea of conscious space being 3D (at least with my eyes closed) until I actually started accessing 3rd and 4th somewhat consistently.

I only spoke for a moment on 5th Jhana (which I believe I have only felt "hard" about 2 times... and I am not sure how many times I have had a soft version of it). I mainly just said that it was so different from baseline operating consciounsess that it was absolutely nothing like it. I attempted to say a few things about senses of boundaries disappearing and a sensation of being a space which is expanding... and that this was not an exercise in imagination but actually what it feels like. I did not speak about 6 and beyond except to point out the funny paradoxical names for them; I do not like to speak on things from a purely theoretical understanding. 

It went over pretty well and I was blown away with the questions people had (considering these were people with generally no experience with meditation):
- How discrete are each of the states?
- Does knowing which state you are in interfere with it?

Anyways, it was just nice to talk about something that I am interested in. I generally only get to ramble about this stuff here.

 That is really cool! I've been wondering about the relationship between flow states and jhanas, and had a similar suspicion to what you described. My best friend is a programmer, and he's in flow states all the time while working, so just comparing experiences gave me the sense that it might be. He's started doing fire kasina in the mornings and has been having good results.

That aperture analogy (or my noticing of it in daily life or practice) has been on my mind a lot this last week, and just noticing when it 'opens up', becomes less fixed, panoramic...I'm still very fuzzy where the technical lines for them are drawn but from what you're saying, sounds like I'm on the right track. 

Glad that went well! Sounds like it was recieved really well, and like you taught the concepts in a way that was down to earth and relateable. I gave my buddy the same up-front warning, about how it can drive you crazy, lol. But then talked about my crude current understanding...how I'm focusing on mapping the states internally, then going back to resources to test them against.

I'm not surprised that programmers/developers etc have a good mind for dissecting these things! To borrow from one of Daniel's interviews, I've come to appreciate that "vajra" mind ability. This explanation helped me quite a bit, thank you  

Sept 23rd

10m metta/10m noting/10m Do Nothing. Not much to say. Got it in. 

I found it started out very fuzzy and then just gradually become more clear over time. It seemed to help that I was doing a lot of body scanning/awareness at the time though, so it was very apparent when the thing would flip from sort of 2D feeling J1/J2 to 3D feeling J3. All of the sudden I would go from being aware of my face to being aware of most of my torso, or sometimes my limbs all at once but still have an unclear torso. Over a long period of time these shifts tended to become quite apparent... probably some level of awareness becoming sharper and noting more characteristics of these things over time. 

To make it even annoying for my mapping/modelling mind, sometimes it seems to skip a Jhana. Often it is a somewhat repeatable progression but sometimes the thing will seem to skip J1 and J2 entirely, or go from J2 straight to panoramic J4. It feels like a bit of a cosmic joke at times haha. Just when you think you know the pattern, fuck you, I'm gonna do something different today!
I can relate to that. Most of my posting from this year was basically just me desperately trying to map things, putting a lot of time in on the cushion/couch/bed, and eventually learning two things:
- My mapping/modelling thing is going to keep doing it's thing
- The incessant mapping/modelling is a huge obstacle

So for me, I try to let go of the mapping/modelling during the sits (which itself seems a skill that needs to be practiced for me) but otherwise let that part of my brain do its thing.

​​​​​​​Good luck with your practice Tyler!


 

Is it getting harder to sit? Shortening the sits? 

Yes and no at the same time interestingly! I notice that depending on the day, usually one of the 10 minute interval "styles" will go better than the others. Like this morning metta was pretty distracted, noting went well, and Do Nothing was also pretty distracted. It seems kind of neat (and a bit obvious I suppose) that different mental contexts tend to work better with different approaches to meditation. Noting seems to work better with my tired/sleep deprived brain whereas the other two kind of flounder a bit.

I would say overall that the side affect of switching styles is that I don't generally go deep into samatha Jhana compared to just doing 30 minutes of naturally paced noting. I don't yet have a strong opinion about the consequences of that though and sometimes it goes just as deep.

​​​​​​​Any thoughts?

What I thought was that meditation itself is not the practice. Advancement in meditative techniques and attainments has little or nothing to do with the actual practice. The thing that identifies as a self, a me, or an I, realizes it is suffering (whatever that means to it), and hears of this system which promises to relieve  this “suffering.” The thing identified as a self, a me, or an I, likes the sound of this promise, and takes up the practice. Usually the beginning is mostly frustrating, and feels like work, but it does kind of help to calm the person down, and maybe alleviate some stress. Meanwhile, the discipline of a meditation routine puts the self on notice, sometimes very disciplined, and sometimes less so, depending on the individual, that you, using your will, will not do whatever your thoughts say, and might not even always believe what they say—which is the beginning of the watcher, or the one who is watching the thoughts, which is itself still a thought, albeit a directed one when it can remember to be so.As the thoughts watch themselves, and if it gets good at this, the thoughts start to slow down because this process of directed looking takes more time than just going with the thought stream, and at some point, there is a break in the thought stream and this is usually what people call the beginning of A and P. It may be only a second or less, but the impact is what a lot of non-dual teachers call first awakening, and religious people might call a spiritual awakening. It feels “spiritual” but really it is just the first taste of reality, and the self structure quickly jumps back in with bliss and exuberance, and often religious zeal. People can get stuck here, or they can even get stuck before this by identifying as the meditator, or the spiritual seeker.Anyway, when the bliss wears off there is often a terrible purging of suppressed or repressed emotions, feelings, thoughts, and all kinds of nastiness, and the person is often left feeling raw, and like they can’t go back, but it will also be hard to go forward. If they’ve learned to meditate, or do breath work, or other techniques, those things can help keep them from cracking up during this. Or, this may be the point at which they DO learn about these things. Some people go around this cycle many times, and some people it only takes one A and P. At some point though, it becomes a point of no return for those who will go all the way. I’d imagine there are endless variations of this story. At this point of no return there is enough knowledge or help to understand what is happening, and the skill to practice insight, or know where to find someone who does and can help. Again, endless variations of this story. Eventually the self structure slows and slows, and the whole thing realizes that it, the entire self structure, is itself the problem, and shuts off. So, it’s the self structure that convinces the self structure, through proof and methodical practice, that it itself is the whole problem. When it shuts off what is left is just THIS. It’s the looking itself without even awareness of it being a looker. Someone told me it’s like a giant eyeball in space. It can look at everything but itself. If it wants to look at itself, it has to create another smaller eyeball to look at itself with. That is duality. The eyeball creating other eyeballs to look at itself from different perspectives. Then the ripples and distortion that creates becomes the shit show we know as the world. Get rid of all the made up eyeballs and all that’s left is the looking. Thats the long version of, keep practicing meditation. It works whether you “feel” like you are progressing or not, because it’s not actually about progressing in meditation. 

Sept 24th

10m metta/10m noting/10m Do Nothing. 

I think I am going to change the first bit. I will start with a quick body scan, a bit of metta, then move to light kasina without noting for the first 10 minute block. Metta can be tricky for me in the sense that it does not present an obvious meditation object for samatha; apart from the sensation of smiling.

Sept 25th

30m slow noting. Decided to focus a bit more or relaxing/samatha today. I've had several bad sleeps in a row and my mind is also very active in planning mode for the retreat. Quite a mixture of thoughts and emotions. If I had the mindfulness available it would be great for noting! 

I think relaxing will be the focus over the next couple of days though. I can feel my nervous system is a bit overstimulated from all the stuff going on (wrapping up work tasks, planning for the retreat, thinking about the retreat, thinking about travelling to the US as a non-citizen, and so on). 

The "seeker" is trying to do all sorts of "things".

It seeks here and there, they say! He goes for this, then that, to get IT! The seeker knows not what its seeking for but it must be a "grass greener on the other side"!

We practice until the "seeker" gets utterly exhausted! 

Keep going! (noting) ... (I would suggest Kenneth Folk free style noting ... search for his short YouTube videos)

 Sept 26th

Couple 20-30 minute sessions today. Very sleep deprived again; I was up at 3:15am to join a meeting at 4:00. 

Sessions were nice but I am ready for the weekend!
 

"Sessions were nice but I am ready for the weekend!"

Maybe try instead, "Sessions were nice but I am ready for the awakening!"  

Sept 27th

2 hour laying down w/ light kasina. Various levels of noting and noticing. At first it was a lot about attention and awareness expanding and contracting. Then towards the end it was more about consciounsess flipping on and off. More of a 3rd Jhana, dancing between awake and alseep with some level of minmdfulness way though. But in retrospect there was some noticing of it going "blip" off or on.

Practice is a bit weird right now. That sense of moving forward doesn't feel right, moving backward doesn't feel right, and staying in the same place doesn't feel right. Then a sense that this is exactly where to be for now. I don't know. 

Sept 28th

60m laying down with sleep mask. Goal was just noting and not trying to change anything. Went pretty well; light jhanic factors. Trying to practice more acceptance/surrender and non-judgementality. 

 Sept 29th

30m slow noting. Mind was proliferating ceasessly last night and this morning though there was noticing of it. For whatever reason, that turned into a deep and investigative meditation. There was continued deepening into jhanic factors... possibly up to a soft J5 but I'm not sure... at least a firm J4. The noting was on top of everything and then eventually switched to noticing within the J4/Equanimity phase. Things which don't normally get noted/noticed were getting noted/noticed:
- J3 has this relaxing/tranquilizing sensation which has at least two sides to it. There seems to be both a physical sensation which is pleasant but also a kind of.... melting... weighted blanket quality about the conscious space. Normally I notice one or the other during sits but this time it was noticing both at the same time.
- J4 has a quieting and dropping away of both bodily and coarse mental aspects (visual imagination, verbal thoughts, and so on). Analogy comes to mind. You are sitting in a box in the middle of a room which has a radio and a TV on mute; both are playing. Then over the course of about 5-10 seconds, the raido, the tv, and the box all slowly dissolve until there is just the room. 

Interesting and hilarious. The mind seemed totally disordered and yet this was the most balanced samtha/vipassana sit I think I have ever had. Cosmic joke.
 
Update: A message keeps indirectly coming up, mainly from people on the DhO. I will summarize it as "stop looking for fireworks and surrender to experience as it is."  I think the elements for insight are there, at least some days. So it is a matter of practice and letting go of this "I want to get 5th Jhana" or "I want to get a fruition" thing during sits. It is just looking for fireworks. 

Yeah that's a good insight. 

 Sept 30th

This will be my last log for likely a couple weeks. I get up super early tomorrow (3:00am) and will be travelling all day to get to my retreat. It's a Fire Kasina retreat with some advanced practitioners and will be the first actual retreat I have ever done; assuming nothing gets derailed.

Going into it, I am mainly thinking about these things:
- To neither be lazy nor to ignore what my body and mind are saying (i.e. autoregulate)
- To try to be a good person to the other retreatants and myself since we'll be stuck with each other for three weeks
- To try to keep returning to the practice itself and not worrying so much about chasing results or experiences; let go within activity (to paraphrase Ajahn Chah)

I don't really plan to post during the retreat but I guess that is up to myself in the future. If appropriate I will share a report of the retreat afterwards and perhaps my daily journaling about it. 

Thank you to everyone who has helped me with my meditation practice and understand over the past couple months. I am sure the level of consistency I have been able to put forth has a lot to do with my participation here.
 

Stoked for you! Sending a dm with a quick question 

Wishing you the best possible retreat!! Remember: gentle consistency not heroics.

I'm actually excited to hear your report when you get back. I'm too chicken to do fire kasina, and have only heard Daniel Ingram talk about it. Good luck and have fun!