Oct 20th

30 minutes laying down beginning with "Look at it do that" noting until it drops off into noticing. Cycled through the formed samatha Jhanas.

Oct 21st

30 minutes laying down beginning with "Look at it do that" noting until it drops off into noticing. Cycled through the formed samatha Jhanas.

20 minutes sitting in a clinic waiting room while my partner had a doctor visit. Same approach.

Oct 22nd

30 minutes laying down beginning with "Look at it do that" noting until it drops off into noticing. Saw rather deply into nonself and it triggered the visceral sadness for a few seconds; maybe around samatha J1. Wondering if this is specifically the "dukkha" 3 characteristics or just some vipassana nana thing. 

Afterwards, it went slowly up to a soft J4.

General thoughts: Sitting post whatever that thing was on retreat still feels extraordinarily different from it did the day before that thing happened. I am still trying to thing of exactly how to explain how but it eludes me. Here's an attempt: Something that used to be kind of in the way of things, related to some notions of a controller or doer, is just gone. I thought it might come back once I came down from retreat, and I am still open to the idea that it may come back, but so far it hasn't. There were still the expectations about how to do meditation that come up but they just create tension and increase this intuitive sense of preferring to just be with things as they are. Just sit, or lay down, or whatever.

I don't need my sleep mask, I don't need my earplugs, I don't need my partner to turn the TV down, I don't need to be wakeful, I don't need to be sleepy, I don't need to do jhana, I don't need to do much at all. Just the way things are is fine. It still is skillful to use some noting until it gains enough momentum to switch to noticing. But after that, drifting a bit, getting a bit too sleepy, or whatever is fine and gets noticed as another thing arising and passing away.

I am curious to see how this develops. I think I will keep a baseline of 30 minutes and do as many optional sessions as I like for the end of the month. 
 

I'm curious too!

 Oct 23rd

30 minute laying down, "look at it do that" noting. Less samatha Jhana than the previous sits but it did get up to J3 by the end. Again, visceral sadness briefly popping up when glimpsing nonself in a pretty clear way. 

If anyone knows about what the brief sadness thing is, I would be curious to know if it fits on maps or if it is likely just some psychological thing. I don't have a clear handle on what "dukkha" is in terms of noticing it as three characteristics; wondering if that might be related?

Might do some longer sessions tomorrow and the day after since my partner is back to work.
 

I don't know what the visceral sadness is, but am a bit curious about the description - what leads you to name the feeling sadness? What does it feel like on a more granular level? Could it plausibly be some other kind of welling emotion that shares similarities with the feeling of sadness?

(These are just suggestions, in case you feel inclined to explore the feeling and your interpretation of it. I have no answers, just questions!! )

Im not excited as I just came back from work, being hit right in my face by 3 or 4 cold beers, but I am happy for you! Waiting for updates! 

Hi Kailin! Hope you're travelling is going well.

When the thing arises after seeing anatta pretty clearly, a facial expression of sadness arises on the face without any specific memory content. It doesn't feel like a "head" based emotional sadness though the lines are blurry here. It also is felt in much of the torso area like a kind of pulse through the body. It doesn't feel kind electric/energetic like the Kundalini type stuff though (hopefully that makes some sense). That's sort of where I get the term "visceral" as being felt deep in the torso.

Speaking of, I had my first post-retreat Lager last night; it was very drinkable.

Oct 24th

30 minute sit, noting into noticing. Had some trippy hypnagogic closed eye visuals at one point of a asian style dragon, thousands of feet long, flying off into the distance straight ahead. Also, I get all kinds of wavy, rotating, fluxing stuff in the visual space; sometimes the whole visual space or sometimes just portions. This started happening on retreat and seems to persist despite my practice time being much lower.

Things still feel more spacious and less about the head area inside and outside of practice; but less so than during the insight experience and remainder of the retreat. I notice there's a bit more illusory sensation of permanence back in the area around the eyes, but moreso the area where the thought stream seems to function (middle-top of the skull). It is still possible to incline to seeing those things as nonself in a pretty direct way but they feel a bit "sticky" again. 

I notice that there is still much less clinging going on that before the retreat though. There is a sense it could come back but also that it might have some more lasting stability to it. Who knows!

Has the need for sleep mask, and quiet while meditating come back?

That's one thing that hasn't come back at all so far. Still feels like a kind of just sit and be with it thing is default and feels good. Sometimes it wants to do noting and on occasion more samatha.

Oct 25th

90 minute napitation. Poor sleep last night so I decided to lay down and incline to meditation but knew that I might fall asleep; felt like it was about 50/50.  At one point I dreamt that I hit 2nd Jhana in Fire Kasina practice even though I was just laying there not doing that haha. 

I don't know if that has any map significance, but it was a distinct change in my practice, and in retrospect opened up the possibility of a more continuous practice. A point when I started to be able to sort of self-remember during everyday situations. As I did that there were familiar jhanic qualities in my experience outside of specifically meditating. 

Thanks Brian. There definitely has been some of that going on; more that before the retreat. Wasn't sure if it was due to retreat momentum. On Thursday night I attended a staff happy hour for my partner, and there wasn't much for me to do except listen to Doctors talk about work. I had a good time just letting the meditation do its thing though not so much that it looked too weird. I start work again next week and am curious to see if anything carries over.

lol. My wife often says to me: "oh Jesus, are you meditating right now?!" 

 Oct 26th

30 minute morning sit, nice mixture of samatha and vipassana. At one point, the thought stream was flowing with thoughts of worry and disappointment about someone I care about, all the while the face was smiling and the body felt pleasant in some sort of J2 state. By the end of the sit it had gone up to a medium-firm (tofu joke) J4 and started to go into a drifting state after that; something that I learned to welcome over the retreat instead of have any aversion to.

In reflecting about this after the sit, difference between what was going on in the thought stream, the body emotion, and the general sense of wellbeing around the J2 state is really striking to me. The degree to which these things were totally decoupled and on different wavelengths has never been so apparent. It also reminded me about something a person said on my retreat about different parts of the conscious space being on different "frequencies". 
 

 Oct 27th

30 minute morning sit. The thing wanted to skip noting and just be with things today. It felt like the result of this was not going as deep but it still had some light jhanic factors and did it's bouncing around to all kinds of different sensations. 

Today is my first day back to work so I am curious to see how the brain functions in that environment. I did some writing over the weekend and that was pretty easy; only a couple of hours though. 
 

 Oct 27th again

Some random musings about one of the things that still feels quite different after my insight experience on retreat. I am not sure I will ever be able to fully articulate what feels different and don't think it really is important to do so.

But just the same, here is the latest reflection: Subconsciously, and often consciously, almost every sit I did this year was about trying to get something that was missing. After my insight experience (or whatever it was), the sense that something is missing, is now missing. Not at the thinking level, it took my thinking mind several days to even figure out what the hell meditation even was anymore. It kept trying to apply some of the old frames about getting something or controlling something, which would just create this tension and get overwhelmed shortly thereafter by the forces of impermanence and nonself. 

I think that is why I am having so much trouble understanding and describing what actually has actually felt different and continues to. Some of the tension in my head has come back. Some of the sense of being "behind the eyes" has come back; probably because I am back to staring at screens for 12-14 hours a day. But something, which sits at a level deeper than my thinking mind can grok, is still gone. Something that feels like a core process that had to do with a sense of something being wrong or missing and a sense that something needed to be done about that.

It still seems that the thinking mind needs to adjust to that, and perhaps it never fully will.

I don't mean to imply that I feel a sense of completion, no desire to meditate, and no desire for my meditation to give me things. I am choosing to stick to the advice of people here in that having a regular practice, unless one is specifically dealing with a situation where meditation is not a great idea, is a good plan. Just once again trying to communicate something that seems profoundly more difficult for me to explain than just about anything else in my experience. 

You said you're not sure why you feel the need to express it or write it out. You are doing that because it's one of the best ways to work it out in your own mind. It's why journaling works,<br />why spiritual autolysis works (Jed McKenna), and why writing in general works, whether fiction or non fiction. Writing is slower than thinking and it forces the mind to consider things, including itself, which is what we are doing on the path. Are you familiar with the concept of self-remembering? That is remembering yourself or an aspect of yourself as you do anything else—so two things at once. Say, breathing, or the feeling of your feet on the ground as you're having a conversation. Or could be anything.&nbsp;<br /><br /> 

I think you're right; I normally feel like I am able to at least generally explain my own phenomenology whereas this one has me stumped. So my mapping/analytical process is trying over and over again to get it!<br /><br />I have never heard of self-remembering but I think this happens automatically from time to time. I feel like conversations are one of the main situations where it happens for me. I used to struggle with communication and that ended up being mostly due to talking to an abstract version of the conversation in my head; instead of being grounded and listening to the person/people in front of me.&nbsp;<br /><br />I'm curious to know more about why you asked.

Oct 28

30 minute morning sit. This was a fun one! Very, very little, samatha Jhana, and quite a bit of transient dukkha (sense of dis-ease), with no apparent source. I slept well, things are fine at work and home, and overall feel fine. In retrospect, instead of just doing "look at it do this" noting, might have been better to note the specific sensations. 

On retreat and even before, I felt like impermanence was very apparent. During retreat, nonself/ownerlessness got viewed in a very apparent way around the insight experience. However, I still do not have a grasp on the dis-ease (dukkha) quality of all conditioned things. I get on a theoretical level that clinging to any conditioned thing is bound to result in suffering. But as some kind of apparent and noticeable quality, I either do not sense it or do not recognize it as such. 

Today's sit felt like a playground of dis-ease. Nothing horrible and not caused by any particularly bad thoughts or conditions. It was just there!

See if you can get specific and note the specific qualities of dukka - pressure, tension, aching, pain, friction, heat, vagueness, confusion, etc. It might not be what it seems(!)

This might also be interesting: https://www.shinzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/art_ickysticky.pdf

Thanks, that was a good read. 

I have never been so excited to have an uncomfortable sit again

 Oct 29th

30 minutes laying down. Noting specific sensations for maybe the first 15-20 minutes. Noticed that Jhanic factors were very strong today. I would say it was at equanimity by 10ish minutes. I also noticed that the conscious space was in a similar state to when I had my insight events on retreat. Very much full of equanimity factors (peace, spaciousness, alertness, but with some periods of drifting/wandering interlaced). 

Once I noticed that, I noted sensations like excitement and anticipation as a response to that. Eventually it felt like time to drop the noting and switch to noticing, and I continued through this nice cycle of bright, spacious, clear, collected into the more wandering phase (but not exactly the same as J3, there's still a "pilot light" of awareness, to borrow a phrase from a dharma friend). The visual space and the body space was doing sort of fluxing, rotations, lateral movements from time to time, also somewhat of a precursor to the insight events.

Just before my alarm went off, something did happen that I was fully aware of the lead up. In the slight drifting/wandering state pilot light awareness state (which feels devoid of striving, excitment, or controlling), over the course of what felt like maybe 250ms (quarter of a second), it was as if the whole conscious space was hooked up to a dimmer switch, and it dimmed down into nothing. I don't mean just the visual field, the whole thing just slowly shut down in a very gentle way, and either just before, or just after it shut off, there was the gentlest "woosh" feeling. Not like a kundalini energetic thing at all. Post sit, I would say I have some kind of a light afterglow but it is possibly just a really deep state of samadhi. It has a level of brightness/alertness that feels a bit more active than what I typically think of as just a good samadhi.

I would chalk this one up as a possible cessation as the lead up to it, the specific phenomenology, and the after effects do not correlate with anything I can recall in the past few years apart from what happened on retreat. Not a sure thing though.
 

Time will tell. Usually people need to get comfortable with having lots of "near misses" before SE, but time will tell.

This is usually when being advised "when it gets to the "noticing stage", watch how attention moves itself" is good advice.  

Straight ahead!

Oct 30th

30 minute sit with noting. Nothing remarkable; pretty groggy but the noting kept up with things pretty well. 

EQ or no EQ, just keep noting and follow the natural noting "tempo". No reason to stop noting in EQ. Let it go into High EQ and noting will not even be an issue any longer! Its just going to merge into the all inclusiveness, hence non-issue. All One Field! 

 Oct 31st

25ish minute laying down; got interrupted towards the end.

Sometimes I think one of my biggest difficulties is merely awareness of emotions. I don't mean to say it is a huge problem, but today is a great example. I was laying down noting, and after about 10 minutes, I noticed a visceral (i.e. around abdomen and solarplexus), very subtle sensation of something like anxiety or sadness. I steeped in that and eventually it triggered some Kundalini type action that cleared things out. Once I finally had noticed this sensation, which was extremely subtle, I realized I had been carrying that around all morning.

To me, it outlines the utility of daily practice for myself. 
 

November 1st

33 minute sit, mostly noting but switched to noticing. Decent sit with both samatha and vipassana factors.

I notice that quite a lot of solidity has returned to the area around the forehead and top of the head. Spent some time investigating that and feeling it through. 

I would say that this is probably the furthest I feel from the insight event in retreat so far. For several days after that retreat, anatta (non-self) was a very apparent quality. Everything felt quite centerless. 

Things still feel different though in an increasingly difficult way to describe. Sensations which feel more like a sense of self in some way are more prominent again. But it still feels like some core process that was somehow getting in the way of things has not come back in the same way. Something that really needed things to be different and was spending long portions of the day consciously or unconsciously looking for a solution to that.

November 3rd

30ish minute sit on an airplane at 2:30am. Pretty awful experience with travelling last night (multiple airline cancellations, rude staff, broken support lines, and so on). It was really great fodder for noting. I only had about 3 hours of sleep prior to boarding and my mind was extremely tired. Curiously though, noting and general mindfulness was very acute; rarely spent a moment lost in though, and when that did happen, it was noted as such once the train of thought crashed. 

Some nice soft Jhanas all the way up to some 4th Jhana characteristics came up which were pleasant and noted. Also noted some vipassana state which had these qualities:
- Impermanence was investigated in all phenomena very strongly
- This lead to a pretty strong sense of nonself
- An emotion of despair or sadness as seeing the reality of this endlessly changing vortex of sensations that seems semi-random
- Plenty of spaciousness and centerlessness as general characteristics of the conscious space

It was quite brief as the dukkha nanas (if that is what it was) tend to be for me. 

Nov 4th

30 minute sit with noting. Noting started out slow and attention wanted to hang around some specific areas for a while. It fixated on some kind of abstract feelings of space around the head then the back of the neck and head. Quite a bit of head oriented joy popping up, and based on the size attention, I think it was a pretty J2 dominant sit. Usually it tends to go into the body quite quick and I don't get much of that going on. 

Still reflecting on how things are feeling after the insight events on retreat. Narrowed it down to this today: This macroscopic yet background sense that something is wrong with the way things are, and that this can be fixed from a frame of controlling, resisting, or doing, still seems to be gone. 

Hi Ryan,

Congrats about the retreat and all.
You might enjoy reading about the second fetter here for instance: https://www.simplytheseen.com/2-understanding-the-fetters.html

Best,
Olivier

 Hi Olivier,

Thanks for sharing that; I read that section and see some correlation.

One of the most profound and clear differences shortly after my insight experiences was that meditation felt totally different in some specific way that had to do with "pushing and pulling." It is like that process stopped and now it was about whatever was happening now instead of whatever the pushing and pulling was trying to achieve or do. 

The funny thing about it is that this took quite a while for the mind to get used to. Some parts of the mind, especially in the first sit I did after the insight events (which occured within about 30 minutes of each other), did not get it initially. It was as though these parts were so used to operating with the push and pull that they were still expecting or trying to apply them. However, this just caused tension and would almost immediately get overwhelmed by the torrent of what was happening moment to moment. The analogy I thought of at the time is that it was like trying to stop fast flowing water by sticking my hand in it; not very effective and it only served to create some resistance. 

Anyways, thank you for this presentation of the fetters; I'll plan to read more of it. I had started to ignore the fetters model as I had seen a recent and high profile case of it sort of going a bit wrong.  

 Nov 5th

30 minute sit. Noting at the natural rhythm then noticing when the thing decides to do that instead. Kind of another funny sit. Lots of somewhat unpleasant sensations like mild pains, cold feet, tensions, body emotions, while the rest of the field feels nice and there is a smile on the face for almost the whole time. Attention bouncing and moving around these different things with very little apparent clinging to what was going on. All of these things felt quite independent, like different parts of the space totally different vibes.

For whatever reason, the analogy comes to mind of going to a house party in a large house and visiting different rooms. In the living room there's a bunch of dude-bros fighting, in the kitchen is somebody microwaving some instant noodles, people are having sex in one of the bathrooms, people are high in one of the bedrooms, and somehow, at times, the house is aware of all of this without participating in any of it. 

On a mundane practical note, need to tighten up my morning routine a bit more. I still did my sit but almost got pulled into starting my work beforehand. I work from home and have some flexibility on when I start, so there is no excuse for missing a sit (at least work-wise). This was an old habit that I was able to kick off this summer (i.e. getting too fixated on work) and I do not want it coming back.  

 
Nov 6th

30 minute site, noting and more noting. Again, quite a few different things going on at the same time emotionally, physiologically, and energetically. Noting kept up with most of it but there was some drifting here and there; which is fine. 

I am reflecting now on something which I heard brought up in a different thread some time ago:
Is it dark night vipassana or is framing what comes up in that way an unskillful way of bypassing genuine psychological concerns? Are these genuine concerns that need to be acted upon or is the mind just steeped in a particular kind of neurochemical soup that is making things seem worse than they are? I see benefits and shadow sides to both approaches.

I think my goal for now is to just better try to feel these things and learn their characteristics. Today there was a pretty palpable ickiness coming up from time to time in the body; which was reflected in the thought content. 
 

Yeah, that's a really good thing to ponder. "The easiest person to fool is myself" as the saying goes.

The important thing in the dark night is understanding. Nana means knowledge, knowledge of. Understanding why misery, why disgust, why desire for deliverance, why reobservation... Not intellectually, but experientially. Why does misery seem like the answer to fear? Why does disgust follow misery? etc.

It may be that there are real reason and real demands of us to "fix something". It could also be that our feelings could be elaborate confused-compassion ways of further avoiding something.

Thoughts about events cover up emotions about events which cover up the actual felt-sensation of events. It's very important to see this in meditation. The number one skill is learning how to experience felt-sensations, including the felt-sensations of moods and memories that arise during meditation.

When felt-sensations are fully and intimately experienced, they arise and pass, conveying meaning without remainder. But when an event isn't fully experienced, emotions and thoughts linger as a remainder, as a placeholder marker for "this wasn't fully understood". 

Many times people think vipassina is a way to get rid of or ignore or neutralize the dark night and it's suffering -- like it is some bomb you can drop to blow up the enemy. But the dark night and suffering is how we actually learn equanimity. Here we are sitting in this room, safe and with nothing to do, yet all of this material arises. Thoughts and emotions without end. Why? Why do they arise? And if they are simply arising, why do I react so strongly? Clearly these are little more than wisps of mind, yet they are so powerful. Why?

"The path to beyond is by going through" and conversely "what you resist will persist".

It's really amazing. Almost every time I've dived INTO an a lingering experience of frustration and resistance and discomfort... what I find is something different that what I assumed was there. It's a small dog with a big bark. Usually when I incubate in a sensation for a while, an old flash of memory will come up along with a new thought about it. Something I hadn't considered. It's almost as if the original feelings were covering up the raw experience of the event, and when I re-experienced the raw experience of the event, I came to a different conclusion about it. And usually it was seeing how my reaction was an over-reaction and the situation was much much much more workable than it seemed at the time. I always feel kind of stupid and it's humbling, but I feel wiser in the end.

If practice isn't making us humbler and wiser... then something isn't quite right. It could be that it is being misused for spiritual bypassing.


This is an old post, sorry about lazily cutting and pasting:

The Progress of Insight. The Progress of Insight is what happens when we take the things that we identify with and notice them as objects in awareness. It follows a predictable pattern, but there are limits to the extent that it applies to a given person's practice.

The important thing to understand about the progress of insight is that it reflects patterns seen in meditators on retreat doing a particular practice. The further you get from that context, the less applicable it is... but it is amazing how it appears to have some pretty good applicability to lay people doing consistent high-quality home and off-cushion practice.

Basically, it's the old unpeeling the onion metaphor. There are layers and layers of identification, but a finite number. 

• If someone steps out of the trance of normal discursive thinking about their life, the first thing they notice is that they have thoughts and sensations in their body. Mind & Body.
• If someone investigates Mind & Body, they will see that they influence each other. Cause & Effect.
• If someone investigates Cause & Effect, they will see that most of what we do is actually driven by a visceral reaction to the unsatisfactory aspects of experience. Three Characteristics.
• If someone investigates the visceral reactions to the Three Characteristics, they see how these reactions are like dominoes hitting one then the other then the other. Arising & Passing.
• When they can simply watch all that happen, the body might have a small taste of the space between the dominoes. Arising & Passing Event. 

At this point, meditation is a comedy of errors, which comes from trying to "not see" what is actually happening. It's a more detailed map because this is where people really need help. 

• Instinctually and somewhat unconciously, the person will try to "find" the spiritual experiences of the A&P and of the nothingness of the A&P event. They don't find it and instead it feels like everything good is slipping away. If they actually just watch that happen, then they get the insight into the nature of Dissolution -- things don't stick around.
• Instinctually and somewhat unconciously, the person will have a sense of loss of control and be surprized by something and that evokes primal terror. If they don't see fear as an experience in awareness, then the meditator gets lost in thinking about all the things that evoke fear. If they actually just watch that happen, then they get the insight into the nature of Fear -- surprise is surprise, no big deal, and even fear is fear, no big deal. 
• Instinctually and somewhat unconsciously, the person will want to protect themselves from surprises and will instinctually create an ongoing, low-level sense of Misery to fill up the space. It's a coping mechanism. But if the person sees misery as misery, then they get the insight into the nature of Misery.
• Likewise with Disgust. Long term misery feels awful. Disgust is an empowering coping mechanism that allow someone to feel more in control and more powerful. "I am disgusted!" But if the person sees disgust as disgust, then they get the insight into the nature of Disgust.
• Likewise with Desire for Deliverance. The person is somewhat empowered and thinks, "there must be a way out of this". There is a focus on problem solving, perfecting practice, finding better teachers, etc. It has the flavor of some confidence and passonate seeking. But if the person see this as another reactive pattern, then they get the insight into the nature of Desire for Deliverance.
• Likewise with Reobservation. The person is now reobserving everything they went through, all the strategies, all the attempts to find the experience they think will make them happy. It has the flavor of desperation and failure. If they see this desparate feeling of "nothing works" as just another reactive pattern, then they get the insight into the nature of Reobservation.
• Low Equanimity is finally realizing that fighting experience or trying to find a difference experience other that what is actually happening is impossible.
• High Equanimity is being mostly at peace with this and continuing to sit, mildly curious about "if all of these experiences occur within awareness, then what is awareness? what is mind? what is knowing?"
• Stream Entry happens when the pervasive non-reactivity of equanimity (not grabbing at objects, not searching for objects) allows for momentary non-grabbing. The meditator doesn't "do" anything. It's more like when a sun runs out of fuel and it collapses into itself.  (DhO) 

Thanks for the post shargol

 Nov 7th

30 minute sit. Pretty drowsy at first but it ended up evening out. Noting for about 15 minutes then it switched over to noticing. It oriented around investigation of nonself quite strongly. Felt as though I was in near miss territory (not a sure thing, just that was the intuition) but my alarm went off right around then.
 

 Nov 8th

30 minutes laying down; nice but somewhat sleepy sit. Tomorrow I am home alone and planning to do a longer sit for the first time in a while. 90 minutes sounds good but we'll see how it goes.
 

 Nov 9th

30 minute sit. I did not end up doing 90 minutes, wasn't in the cards today.

This sit had all kinds of fun stuff. Main points:
- Some spinal twitching movements came back for the first time in.... hmmm... eight months or so. Probably happened about 12 times in total.
- Very, very nonself feel. This seemed to be related to the twitching. Mind recognizes something normally somewhat associated with a self as very nonself, momentary sense of despair, then a twitch may occur. 
- While things did not feel extraordinary spacious, the spacial locations of all things arising were far more evident that usual. For example, I could have traced with my finger the location in the upper left quadrant of the body space were emotions were occuring. The music playing in my head was in the top middle of the head area. The twitches were felt within a broad space beyond the body generally.
- Noting and noticing kept up with things except for a brief period in the middle. As is typically the case, noting was dropped once J4 kind of factors of tranquility and spaciousness came up. 

Feels very odd post sit. On retreat, some experienced practioners talked about a mini dark night that comes up within equanimity, and that is sort of the vibe right not. Equanimous, unperturbed, non-clinging, yet what is actually arising is weird and not blissful. In other words, it is fine because it does not feel like anything is being clung to.
 

This is all sounding good. It really does sound like the equanimity clean-up phase. The near miss feeling, the mini dark night feeling. The body releases that are more like offgassing and less like accelerating kundalini. (I can sense the lingering slight boredom, slight frustration, slight "inadequate" feeling.)

This is where it is very common to lose consistency because things aren't that bad, but they aren't that good either. Equanimity during home practice is like swimming upstream. Since your last sit, you've drifted backwards, it takes 15 minutes just to get warmed up and swimming again, it takes 20 minutes to sort of regain the distance, and maybe if you sit for 10 minutes more you'll pick up on some nuance that you didn't quite "own" before.

(Times are specific to the person, for me I needed 50 minutes at least, I remember one DhO person that never sat longer than 30 minutes and yet got it done --- be honest with yourself.)

And then it's time to stop -- no sense bashing your head if the sit isn't productive anymore -- and then this all gets integrated somehow while you slide back again until your next sit. 

Some days you'll "achieve" something, some days you'll just get your workout in. That's not your decision, it's just the nature of equanimity clean-up. 

This stage can feel like all the annoying prep work before painting a wall. The washing, the filling, the sanding, the primer, the sanding, the cutting in, etc. etc.  But the key thing here is the "annoying prep work" feeling comes from not getting into the work itself. If you tone down the attitude and just wash the wall, then washing the wall can be kinda fun. But if you assume washing the wall is some annoying chore before you get to the good stuff, it will definitely be an annoying chore. This is a clue!

Any resistance that occurs in the sit is a pointer to how dukka is created all the time. Here's your chance to really study how a subtle pre-existing ill will creates dukka right at the point of arising! 

"no mind object can observe another mind object. no mind object can collide with another mind object. no mind object can resist another object... so what, afterall, is dukka? This must be the greatest mystery there is and it's all happening within my mind... I give permission to let myself feel ill will so that I can see it display itself in real time..."

And when things stablize...

"In this sorta equanimous state, what is the witness and how does it witness? What is attention itself? What is awareness? What subtle dualistic tension remains?"

And remember that high equanimity isn't powerful or effortful, it's almost more like a lucid daydream. It's kinda magical like a daydream. So no need to develop OCD or puritanical guilt Ill will and dukka are already here, all you need to gently inquire is "Where is it?" and as important: "How is it?" Don't try to change it, just watch it. Watch it like you are out in the wilderness and hiding in a blind and observing wild animals. Don't disturb the animals. Don't tell them what to do, don't correct their behavior. Just watch and learn their behaviors.

And remember that the dukka nanas and equanimity mini-dukka nanas are also a source for jhana, either the third jhana or the third sub-jhana of the fourth jhana. So let things get sloppy and analogy and drifty and confused and oddly numb and peaceful... just soak in it that feeling and continue to follow along. You really can't do it wrong, you just need to follow along. 

(Hope this helps in some way.)

 Nov 10th

40 minute sit. Somewhat of a continuation of yesterday. Mindfulness (in the sati sense) felt very consistent and kept up with a wide variety of different sensations and states. Again, all things have very distinct locations in the conscious space. Visual thoughts arising sort of in the upper center, slightly forward offset. Music more just upper center. A little bit of light kundalini stuff going on in specific regions of the body thought minimal twitching today. One thing that is nice, is that on my left side about 12 feet away, we have a cat water dispenser that always makes a trickling sound, and to my right side is a somewhat busy road. Frequent noting of sound on either side really helps to prime a three dimensional sense of the conscious space. 

At one point, a great deal of solidity and investigation of that solidity was felt around the eyes, forehead, and head in general, in more of a J2 kind of way. Then eventually it was released and dropped into equanimity. 

Sleep was a bit unusual last night. My partner and I watched Welcome To Derry, which is a horror TV show about a creature that specifically feeds off of fear. My perception is that I spent quite a long time this morning in a sort of half-awake half-dream J3 like state, thinking about that creature trying to feed off of my fear. But the funny thing was that all of this was taking place within a broad, equanimous, and somewhat disinterested space; absent fear. I feel a bit bad for the creature in retrospect as it was probably like showing up to a party but it is just an empty room without any booze. 

RE: shargol

Thanks for the advice!

I am not sure if it is coming through in my writing, but I am feeling quite content with the quality and content of the sits lately. Since retreat, I still don't have that sort of "pushing and pulling" background feeling which I used to have in pretty much every sit prior. It seems like whatever the fuel was for the process is gone and so far has not returned (despite many others things coming closer to baseline since the retreat). 

Probably through some kind of rewiring and all of the teaching you all have given me, even the weird sits feel fun in a way. I did samatha and bliss for so many years and it is still nice when the sits incline towards that. But the novelty and weirdness of the more vipassana sits has this quality of being interesting that the blissful stuff just doesn't; even when the sits get into the more dark night stuff. This might be easy for me to say though as I got the feeling I don't experience dark night stuff anywhere near as intensely as some others do. 

Your made me reflect on practice time. The sense is that there's usually about 1 day a week where 30 minutes is good enough to get through substantial territory, 1 or 2 days  a week where the alarm goes off with a sense of that more time was needed, and 2-3 days a week of "just get your workout in". I don't like to adjust my baseline too much but you have prompted me to try out 40 minutes this week. If it sticks for the rest of the month I might try a bit more in December. 
 

 Nov 11th

40 minute sit. This one had a lot of variety in it. First half seemed like it was going to be one of those sits where it doesn't get past 1st gear. Fair amount of hindrances that were noted.

Then it went into more of a samatha jhana arc following this pattern:
- Attention fixates around the forehead area without deviating
- Attetion grows a bit larger while still fixating around the head in general now
- Some areas lower down begin to fill into awareness but it is kind of vague
- Little bit of mind drifting/wandering like feeling though this is noticed
- Abruptly switches into bright, clear, and spacious awareness

This pattern was essentially what happened to me almost every sit over the summer before I was doing any noting practice at all. I do not get it so often these days with noting; or perhaps I just do not notice it the same way. Anyways, after that, it was time to flip from noting into noticing. There was quite a bit of discomfort in the body now and general unpleasantness, but again, this was occuring in a broad and non-grasping space; making it possible to just sit through it. I did lay down for the last five minutes as I got the feeling a little bodily relaxation would be nice.
 

 Nov 12th

40 minute sit. Extremely neutral for just about the entire thing. There was some attentional shifts indicating movement through different Jhanas, but it was as if the shape of attention was the only clear marker for such shifts. I neither experienced much joy or bodily pleasure nor experienced the typical dark-nighty pains and weirdness.

Somewhere around the 35ish minute mark, things were very neutral, broad, and expansive. The mind began to investigate two characteristics (impermanence and nonself/ownerlessness). This mainly involved taking up two different sensations, one which felt very local and tied to self (mainly area around the head) and something which did not (mainly the cat's water fountain which is about 12 feet to the left of my couch). Not much seemed to be going on, and then it seems like I may have had a near-miss just before the alarm went off. 

This one was pretty visual in nature but had some other stuff going on. It was as if there was some kind of half-globe down somewhere in the conscious space. This thing acted like the drain of a sink, and everything in the conscious space started to flow down into this "drain" like thing. Once all or most of everything went down into this drain, the mind snapped out of it in a very slightly jarring way. No intense afterglow beyond what I would normally feel sitting in an equanimous state for a while. 

It is possible that this was just an extremely vivid visualization but the melty-collapsing quality of it is quite atypical of that kind of thing for me. Anyways, I have heard Daniel describe different gradations of cessations (A for having all phenomenological markers, B for having most, C for having fewer, probably he would correct me but that's the gist). I would put this one in C category, whereas the possible ones on retreat would have been B (clear lead-up, subject/object collapse, tension evaporates afterwards, intense afterglow to the point of being high for about 16 hours, and so on).  
 

Just to have in your back pocket, not necessarily a diagnosis from me... but don't underestimate how tricky it is to diagnose between an "A&P event" and cessation. I've been there, done that. And the misdiagnosis can happen during each of the four paths, so even if this info isn't relevant now, file it away for the future...

4. The Arising and Passing Away – MCTB.org

"When we do have a distinct A&P event, it can happen in three basic ways corresponding to some combination of the three characteristics, just as can happen at the entrance to insight stage fifteen, Fruition. The A&P and Fruition are easily confused for this and other reasons. There is great variation in the specifics of what we are seeing and feeling when we cross this profound and often intense event, but certain aspects of A&P events will be common to all practitioners. A&P events tend to manifest in a way that can mimic the three doors (described in a few chapters) at about the middle of the out-breath, leading to an “unknowing event”, which consists of moments about which we know little. [...]  

In these profound and clear moments, most, but not all, of our sensate universe is perceived to strobe in and out of experience, arise and pass. The subtle background and sense of an observer still seem to remain stable. In contrast, the entrance to stage fifteen, or Fruition, is through one of the three doors, which involves the complete sensate universe (background, time, space and all), and happens at the end of the out-breath, and does not involve two closely related unknowing events. The relevance and usefulness of this information may become apparent later. [...]

Those who have crossed the A&P event have stood on the ragged edge of reality and the mind for just an instant, and some will feel certain that awakening is possible. [...] They will have an increased ability to understand dharma teachings due to their direct and non-conceptual experience of the three characteristics. [...] Philosophy that deals with the fundamental paradoxes of duality will be less difficult than it might once have been, and they may find this fascinating for a time. [...]"

32. “What Was That?” – MCTB.org 

This whole chapter is very good and includes:

"There are also many possible momentary unknowing experiences that can present in ways that seem convincingly like the attainment of Fruition, even for meditators with years of experience with these issues. Again, by “unknowing experiences”, I mean experiences that seem to lose such a substantial portion of the clarity regarding sensations by which we might judge what occurred that we have a hard time knowing what just happened. I will mention some of the most common events that can be mistaken for Fruition here, though this list is far from comprehensive.Momentary experiences of the formless realms that arise in Equanimity, particularly Nothingness and Neither Perception Nor Non-Perception, are common culprits. [...] Speaking of Equanimity, there are also a reasonable number of practitioners who make it past the A&P, hit the Dark Night, and get to Equanimity. They may go through a few rounds of that, and finally manage to get relatively established in the high end of Equanimity and stay in that general end of the territory for some extended period and possibly even until they die. They don’t attain stream entry, but they have done something impressive. This attainment typically is relatively transformative. Many may mistake this for more formal awakening, but it should neither be underestimated as a spiritual attainment nor denigrated, as being relatively stabilized in Equanimity is vastly better than what most people achieve during their lifetimes; Equanimity can provide numerous valid insights as well as emotional and psychological benefits. Would I advocate that they push on into stream entry? Of course! Still, plenty of these practitioners derive enough satisfaction from this level of insight that motivation and inspiration to go further may drop off significantly, and they may continue to derive real and valid benefit throughout the rest of their lives from this achievement.[...] As mentioned earlier, insight stage four, Arising and Passing Away, particularly the Arising and Passing Away Event itself (the peak of the A&P, again something not everyone who crosses the A&P will notice distinctly), is a pernicious trickster and has fooled countless practitioners throughout the ages into thinking it was Fruition or the attainment of a path. This may even fool accomplished meditators who are working on the next path."

 That's a good point; I still cannot say if I have had cessations or not. It is enough for me to put them in different categories of certainty and just keep trying to learn the territory. I feel like I have pretty clear markers for the samatha jhanas but my progress of insight/vipassana jhana map is not so clear. 

 

Nov 13th

40 minute sit. Started with a quick body scan then did the usual thing. Once again, more of a neutral feeling sit for the majority of it. The first third or so felt quite J2 mode. Very little percieved effort, slightly positive kind of vibe. I did not notice much of a J3 phase but there was a bit of drifting for maybe 5 minutes or so. Then it felt like a very neutral equanimity phase for the remainder. Around the last 5 minutes I did start to pick up on some very subtle discontent which was felt somatically; almost like a thin layer wrapping around the upper part of the body. Noticing it seemed to break it up. 

Post sit, still noticing some slight bodily discontent. It is very subtle but again feels like a slight wrapper of tightness mainly around the head area. 

 Nov 14th

40 minute sit. Continuing with the phase of somewhat more samatha (or perhaps equanimity) oriented phenomenology. Less bouncing around, less variance in feeling (positive and negative), and one some levels less going on in general. At about the half-way point, the mind started investigating sensations of solidity. It began with areas around the top of the head and noticed that these areas felt quite sticky and intertwined with illusory sense of self. Awareness was broad enough to hold this and other things in and sort of compare.

A bit of discursive questioning came up like "why is this (the solid sensation in the head area) more of a center than this (the solidity of the legs on the seat)"; or comparing the body sensations with sounds outside. Why is do the things percieved to be more center seem more like a self than that sound of the traffic arising and passing, when the arise in the same space? 

For perhaps the last 10 minutes, it felt like a fairly J4 experience; quite a bit of stillness and sometimes dropping of the thought stream entirely. Apart from that, there was a lot of visual dream-like phenomena occuring today. Towards the end of the meditation, the mind started wanting to go up (attending the top of the head and an upward sort of pull/extension of the space there), followed by the root chakra activating. This was nice and actually reduced the solidity. 
 

 Nov 15th

20 minutes open noting on treadmill.

60 minutes noting while laying down. About half-way through, switched to noting with "look at it do this" to emphasize nonself. The centerpiece of this meditation seemed to be specifically noting sensations associated with a sticky/illusory sense of self. Also deepening investigation on sensations of contraction in the head area.

Overall it was quite easy and pleasant. I had a decent sleep and had just done some cardio, so I did not fully fall asleep at any point. There was the usual drifty J3 phase though. Very deep equanimity towards the end of the sit which has persisted somewhat.  

I think it might be a good idea to switch to using insight timer again for my meditation alarm instead of just the alarm clock app. I have not been inclined to switch the style of meditation during sits, but I am noticing somewhat frequently that my alarm goes off during periods where I would rather keep meditating. I am lucky to have quite a bit of flexibility over my start time at work, so I would not mind if I started work later than usual. I still plan to keep my baseline at 40 as I always think about what I can maintain on a day where I am not feeling it or life is pulling me in other directions. But I do feel like interrupting sessions that are going well is not ideal.
 

What I normally use in Insight Timer, instead of a set end time, is a setting that rings a bell every 30 minutes. I've found it allows for a great deal of flexibility - I can do a 30m sit, 1h sit ( = hear the bell twice), "somewhere in between" (= hit the 30m bell then sit a bit longer) etc. Or, if I'm in the mood and have the time, I would just sit for as long as I flippin' like, and the bell chimes would give me a very rough idea of how long I've been sitting for.

I got this tip from someone who was working on j7/j8 and they said that bells at regular intervals help entrain the mind to fall in and out of formless realms. I can't vouch for this from personal experience, as I don't regularly fall into formless realms ( ), but I do find the bells interesting and non-intrusive when I'm drifting about in dim, diffuse, surreal mindstates.

Nice, thanks for the tip! I don't think I would find the bells instrusive either. My practice lately is very open and choiceless so it would just be another example of something arising and ceasing.

​​​​​​​I'll give the a try tomorrow.