Sorry to start a new thread about this matter, but it seems that the other one isn't getting any attention. So here's an update with a question.

I've been working on this practice from MCTB section on impermanence. I'm starting to get it, but only fleetingly. Sometimes I get the mental impression. Mostly I find my attention instantly turning to the memory of the sensation. A near instant recollection right on the heels of the sensation. So I'll keep working at it. On any given day I might get an hour, but usually a few minutes here and there over the course of the day. This might sound stupid, but the trick is remembering to do it! So for now, it's one sensation only, whether it's sound, or physical touch. Tactile sensations only get attention in one location, the nose, the hands, feet, head, etc. Keeping it simple seems to be a key to mastery.

So the question - What was your experience with this technique? This might mean: what was it like at the beginning, and how was it as you progressed? What did you find that made it possible for you to get this mastered, and what was it like once you did.

Thank you.

Hi Darrell,

I found the sensate practice to be helpful and dissolving/breaking down. I knew I needed to "get out of my head" so to speak and so I jumped into a sensate method wholeheartedly.

After about four days (during a work week) I noticed that my volitional attention would much more easily go to sensations, but there was that little delay you mention (attention going to sensation that has just happened). I did not let noticing that lag time become a reason to return to discursive thinking and give up the sensate practice. So I kept at it. Several times if I was sitting and just observing sensation I would notice that there are mental moments in which sensation becomes unidentifiable: is that sound or feeling? Taste or smell? I don't know if that is executive function/pre-frontal cortex subsiding or not, but I just noticed that identification of senses would sometimes go away and that those moments were useful to experience in that these were unexpected aspects of my mind-- that there can be a dissolution of naming and actuallyknowing. It probably showed me about the limits of my own control, that learned/taught identifications can go away momentarily. Certainly, it showed an inherent impermanence and insolidity of what I think of as me, my mind.

After about two weeks in the practice my partner made a point to note that the practice was friendly to be around (the practice itself was housed in a deliberate friendliness, welcoming the senses-- chronic illness and injury can make such a practice inaccessible, so I was glad to have a sensate practice with good health conditions and I took advantage of my good health to do it pretty easily). And in about the fifth week the brain suddenly  jumped into a very focused attention with a very calm boundariless body feeling while i was watching a friend address a group of people at length. Later I called it single-pointedness or "magnetization" of mental attention where physical sensations became neutral (like sound and sight) and feeling (like body sensations) became a suffusive pleasantness.

That single-pointed attention experience was so nice caused me to try and chase it, but that mental state was not possible to create through chasing it or desiring it.  It just arose via a dedicate plain practice without the interference of adding expectations/wanting. And I found that to be the case in the jhana practices of the anapansati, then, too. I turned to anapansati as a way to cultivate that mental state in isolation. To the extent I just do the practice without adding a lot of want/expecation is the extend to which it fully occurs. Wanting is useful for motivating a practice though.

I am glad you wrote your post. In the few years since I deliberately worked on that sesate practice and anapanasati I made a lot of life changes including a big effortful move and I'm glad I could do that. But I also let the sincerity and dedication of mental training practice get diluted and sometimes set to the side or aggitated by having a lot of disparate things to do -- like everyone else: busy =) Thanks and best wishes with your own trainings.
 

Katy,
Thank you for the response. Everyone on both of these threads has been helpful, and it has pushed me to keep trying to understand this so that I can work with it effectively. Humorously, what has helped the most is to quit reading that chapter for a while, then come back to it (as someone else suggested, more or less). I've done that, and it helped clarify things. Particularly that we're just dealing with what mainfests as form and sense information. It's not as if these "vibrations" are hidden and need to be teased out, or that the mind has to be trained well to see them. There's the initial splisecond awareness prior to comprehesion and processing by the brain, then there's what happens after that initial moment once the brain begins to manipulate and understand.

The real hang up was the word "vibration". Probably not the best word for me to use to understand the concept. I also made the mistake of trying to use auditory and visual for practice purposes. Mr. Ingram describes using bodily/tactile sensations, and I imagine for a reason. Those are much easier to use and get a handle on.