06/28
During meditation in the morning, I got to a state where I hit something like an internal wall, not being able to let go, although theoretically  I know that there is a need to surrender, to give up wanting to achieve anything. During meditation, it felt like I could see my mind/brain flickering in the desperate attempt to grasp something with another part of me trying to surpress that. During the rest of the day, off the cushion, it felt like these cycles were continuing by itself just hitting me repeatedly with an internal struggle which seemed to have no obvious external reason. Once the internal struggle was done, everything would relax until the next wave hit. Not the most fun way of spending a Sunday...

06/29
I woke up with an irritated feeling still. Practiced some "Touching the Earth" (which is basically the poetic name for prostrations, and in my experience very useful in helping to surrender to the present moment) listening to some nice chanting before sitting meditation. Meditating, it felt like I was easily getting beyond the state of internal struggle. Dropped noting then because I wanted to just be and watch, e.g. see how thoughts come up and how attention moves from one focus to the next. At some point I was getting lost in thoughts a bit, noticed that, got slightly annoyed before somehow remembering to rather preceive the fact that the thoughts are just "thinking themselves". which was fascinating. Then there was some energy and anticipation growing in my body, like something moving me further towards something else. At the same time, time was up and the office jumped into my mind too strongly.

06/29
Waves of dislike / depression / aversion are back, although at the very bottom there is also compassion. I am wondering what I am doing, why I have started this practice and don´t just lead a normal life. Went for a walk in the evening sun. Realized that it´s a kind of disassociated feeling, where there are these negative emotions, which don´t belong to a "me" but that still leaves them an unpleasant experience. The tension/feelings seem to be located mostly in the brain as a tense ring around the skull. I was thinking if I should do some Metta practice do make it go away, but have the impression that the whole idea is to stop resisting and simply accept what is...

07/01
2 attempts to sit and note yesterday. Both ended up in inner tension and aversion which was almost unbearable to the extent that it was impossible to step out of it and just notice feelings come and go. Waves of the same emotions continued throughout the day, leaving me completely exhausted and very poorly functioning. Didn´t feel like a skillfull endeavour anymore. Luckily, I had the opportunity to talk to a friend reflecting on what was happening and what might be the underlying issues coming to light. Helped a lot to calm me down.
Decided to back down from Vipassana for at least a day, did some concentration and metta practice in the morning. Feeling nice and much more stable.

07/02
Lot´s of interesting energy and emotional things happening yesterday: difficulties concentrating on anything as there was a lot of excitement and feeling of anticipation. Funny feeling of energy in my head which almost made me dizzy. I am watching this with curiosity. Even though the emotions itself are known to me, I am used to them being triggered by external events and now they just seem to be happening on their own.
Sat for about 35min this morning: concentrating on the breath, then switching to noting and just staying for a while in open awareness at the end. Starting with concentration seemed to calm everything down, difficult to recognize much mental changes with the noting, ended in a calm state, quite focused but with a tendency to drift away in thoughts. feels quite nice, though.

07/04
It seems to be a delicate balance as to how much vipassana/noting meditation I can stand before falling back into waves of aversion and inner conflict. All fine and nice yesterday morning when I easily passed through some fear and irritation to a much more calm and open state. So I gave it another try in the afternoon and immediately the problems came back and stayed... With a busy week ahead, I will just focus practice on concentration and metta for now hoping that these cycles will disappear or at least be much weaker in the coming days.
Found a nice description on working with the jhanas from Leigh Brasington. I have the impression that the lower jhanas have been appearing in the background when I focus on my breath, but so far I didn´t know how to find out if that´s true or how to strengthen them. I started with the first now and got quite intense physical feelings, even though I had the impression that I wasn´t very strongly focused on the breath before that. Also, the feeling wasn´t entirely pleasant. It did have aspects of joy but also an aspect of rather unpleasant physical intensity.

Continued with some light concentration-focused practice over the past week. I was happy that the intense experience of cycling into difficult emotions stopped once I stopped the noting practice and made a deliberate resolution not to aspire for any insights for now.
Tried to see if I could recognize access concentration and enter into jhanas. I don´t ever see any lights, but was trying to recognize if and when the breath would get very shallow. The notion of "gently resting my attention on my breath" works well for me. If I try to force the attention too much to be with the breath rather than thoughts (as I have done a lot in the past leading to great frustration), I may feel focused and a strong pressure between the eyebrows but it doesn´t seem like a constructive state of concentration. 
With respect to a physical feeling of pleasure in what´s probably a soft first jhana, that seems to move around the movement of the breath in the body and decrease or stop in the pause before inhaling. I wonder if it´s always linked to the breath or would get more stable if I was more concentrated. I am sure there is much more potential intensity here, but after all I am doing this in short stretches of time next to intensive work days. The feeling of emotional joy (of what´s probably soft second jhana) seems much less linked to the breath. Beyond that it´s still a bit murky, so much more room for practice. I am very fascinated by being able to consciously steer meditation in this way. Before, experiences just happened in a seemingly random fashion and it has become much more structured now.

07/11
Some general observations:
Outside of formal practice, a lot of half-conscious psychological changes and adjustments continue to happen. I am convinced that this is as important as any insights during formal meditation. Seems like the consequences of the (probably) SE event in spring need time to fully kick-in or that more changes just continue to happen. A lot of social insecurity which has always been there in my life has fallen away. Also lots of ideas of what I thought was important for a good life are becoming much less relevant. All of that creates space for much more freedom but I also just need to get used to it. At times last week that scared me deeply, as I felt like leaving a lot of certainties behind while obsessively moving somewhere unknown, although I had never consciously decided for these changes. At other times, it made me very happy as I know it´s the right way. When I manage to just be with these emotions, it feels like small inner shifts are occurring, even though they may not all be lasting. All seems to have calmed down now and I feel quite peaceful.

On practice:
Went back to noting. sat for 30min. it was very easy and calm almost from the start, nothing spectacular, I just continued noting and felt at ease. There was some tendency to drift off into thoughts but I always came back to noting physical sensations after a while. maybe low equanimity.

07/15
Have mostly been doing one formal meditation session of about 35min a day with about 30min of noting due to lack of time for more formal practice.
Sittings have mostly been uneventful in the sense that it was mostly calm, very little emotional uproar, hardly any more cycling apart from maybe just faint perceptions of different nanas. feels physically grounded and somehow boring in the sense that I mostly notice physical stuff, such as my body touching the ground, noises etc.
One day there was a somehow annoying tension between my brows, which as I focused my attention on it, led to a feeling of dizziness and heat on that area of the forehead.
This morning, towards the end of the sitting, perception became more spacious until at some point, though, where I felt like the spaciousness was only in my head, and that there was a seemingly impenetrable border between my perception/consciousness and the outside world (where basically the real spaciousness lay). That was accompanied by a strong desire to break through that wall and connect to the outside. However, I had no clue how to go about that.

In addition to doing the noting, I have the impression that the most important lesson to be learned for me at the moment is surrendering to reality and stopping to want it to be different. Basically giving up my desire to control and letting go. I am trying to practice that in daily life in the sense of trying to remember as often as possible to be mindful and paying special attention to cultivating a feeling of acceptance. Also, I strongly believe in the power of metta practices (or similar). So I am now starting each formal sitting with combining metta phrases with my motivation for practice and something along the lines of "may I be able to trust and let go". I believe this is highly useful - but then again am also just trying different things.

07/19
The perception of the nanas is back during sitting meditation - although not always with the same clarity and not very intensely. Most of the times I probably continue to get to low equanimity. At the same time, I feel there is still a lot of need for acceptance and letting go before any "progress" is going to happen. Sometimes I seem to be able to locate that urge to control and hold-on somewhere in my brain, but don´t quite understand how to resolve that.

Practice has been very chaotic. Will try to just stick to what has happened and what I thought in the moment. It´s difficult to describe - and I already considered to just drop this journal, but will still give it a try.

Had continued to work on accepting everything as it is and it seemed like I was moving deeper into equanimity. When I was there last time there was much more clarity of mind, but I guess it is also much easier on a retreat. Now the focus was much more strongly on acceptance.

While meditating in the morning three days ago, I passed to equanimity, but then the experience was getting less clearly defined. I wondered if I had fallen back to some earlier stage but just continued. There was some fear again and then some energy. I remember thinking "whatever, I´ll just continue" and just went along without much control, somehow placing awareness rather at the back of my head. Suddenly, it felt like something black passed over my field of vision (although I had my eyes closed) and awareness. Like a black curtain passing across. Afterwards I thought immediately "what was that?". Then, with a slight delay there was a single wave of enery rising from my abdomen to my head leaving my heart pounding. I opened my eyes, more thoughts set in and I wondered if this was a fruition. I felt confused and it basically mostly felt like an anticlimax, almost annoyingly, but in that very moment I also had the impression of "ok, that part is done".

During the course of the day, energy levels seemed to rise and since then it has been very confusing. Whenever I focus inward I feel energy in my body, which has an A&P / 1st jhana like quality, but is in some way too intense, almost painfully intense.

At home, I tried if I could repeat the experience, but it´s very murky till now. I am definitely cyling relatively rapidly (much more so than before) through different "energetic stages" and at times it gets somehow quiet and calm, and then back to the energy again. It´s all overshadowed by the energetic intensity which isn´t pleasant. As if I had thrown my body into something that it cannot (yet) handle. The last time (when I think I got stream entry) I didn´t know about any of this, so didn´t look for fruitions.

I also tried accessing the jhanas. With the first 4, it feels like I can now just arrange my mind in a way that I just access these qualities of the mind (although I haven´t tried to move deeper into concentration). When trying this yesterday, it also felt like it´s just a trick of the mind, like something done by a cheap magician. There has also been a lot of feeling of unsatisfactoriness in many other things.

The morning after that event, I woke up with a feeling of bliss in my body (which I have had in the past after A&P events and also during the last retreat), but at the same time irritated. I basically had to incline my mind towards the nice feeling in my body for the irritation to stop. Then I meditated and had a very disturbing experience where I felt like the awareness in my mind was moving along a current of energy until meeting some black hole which was drawing me into it but then also repulsing me, like my brain trying to get into a state which it cannot achieve. When I stepped out of it, I was quite scared and disturbed. It´s all a bit more calm now, but the movement of energy, bad moods etc. still ongoing regularly. It is interspersed by a few bouts of calm and happiness. What is certain is that equanimity is gone for now...

Ron says that it is possible to attain a path and go through a review phase with a focus on dukkha. I basically think I just need to take a break from vipassana...

07/25
The intensity of the energy had reduced a bit this morning. Did 45min of metta meditation which was very pleasant. Later in the morning, I noticed that the same repetitive cycles of energy where actually starting to be rather pleasant. I sat for another 30 min, just leaning back and watching, starting off with A&P like energy, moving pretty rapidly towards something more chaotic and revolving with bolts of fearful and stressful energy (there are hardly any emotional feelings of fear, distress etc - rather just these movements of energy), then the energy calms down, it gets quiet, some bolts of fear left, getting even more quiet. No real clarity of mind, but quietness and stillness, then suddenly a wave of energy rising upwards and the whole thing starts all over again. If there are moments of "nothingness", I miss them.
Was just having a coffee now, and there was a very intense feeling of happiness spreading through my body. There seems to be beauty in everything and this intense happiness.
Crazy life.

07/27
Feels as if I had been on drugs for 4-5 days in the past week. Most of the energetic intensity has subsided by now, although it´s still there somewhere in the background. This morning, I woke up with a feeling of light physical bliss, which was enjoyable.
For now, I will just give myself a break. No noting, no turning attention towards automatic shifts in energy and mood. If that´s still there, I´ll just ignore it. I have some more time to practice in the coming weeks (rather than being forced to take time for practice as it´s affecting the rest of life so much). The intention is to just do pleasant and nice stuff, metta, concentration, QiGong, practicing to feel connection with others and community (which is a focus in the Plum Village tradition). Looking forward to that.
I have also done quite some reflection on suffering and freedom over the past days. It´s funny, there are these simple statements I have heard many times before, e.g. " suffering is when we´re caught in our thoughts, emotions and life stories, when we´re unable to open the mind, keeping it narrow like a clenched fist.". And then it´s still a surprise, when I realize that it is indeed exactly like this. I have started to notice an ability to connect more easily with a state that is free from these thoughts, emotions and life stories. It feels a bit like sliding back into real reality. It´s difficult to describe, but seems a good direction to explore.

Feels like a lot has happened since I last posted here. My working hypothesis is that the event of end of July was 2nd path. Fully aware that only time will tell if the changes are permanent. It´s quite difficult to pin down exactly what has changed inside of me - not the least because I only perceive the current me and don´t have a direct comparison. I feel much more emotionally calm, e.g. there were a few situations where before I certainly would have experienced envy or jealousy, but this time around it felt like these emotions were hardly possible, although I was looking hard to see them. Maybe related to the fact that I seem to have much less desire for life goals that I previously found important. Like a feeling of detachment from many things. And an even stronger commitment for continuing on this path, seeing more clearly, understanding how it´s all connected and how this insight process works, and spending my time and effort on stuff that it truly useful.

For the first few weeks after my last post, meditation practice (and basically just life in general) has been very enjoyable. Worked on my concentration and accessing the jhanas - well, a very, very watered down version of the jhanas if you asked any Thai monk, but it has the advantage of giving a good structure for working on concentration.

I also tried to just be present as much as possible, and there were these amazingly clear and beautiful short periods where all surroundings got very clear, colouful and 3-dimensional, like a super high-definition-colour movie and people had this inherent beauty to them. Where I could just see my own hand cutting vegetables in this same beautiful but unpersonal manner or feel like being part of the forest around me or rather just being aware of the forest without the "I" interfering with that. Also, many interactions with others where a connections on a deeply personal level just came easy and natural. When coming out of concentration or when being very mindful and present, sometime a fruition would just happen by itself - at least that´s what I think it is, I don´t normally perceive the moment of nothingness clearly, but there is this joyful tension building up in my head, maybe a short blink of reality and then a subdued but noticeable bliss wave rising up. As time passed and I also went back to everyday life after some holidays all of this has become much less accessible. That makes me a bit sad at times, but I also feel like it has shown me what kind of experience of the present moment is possible.

Now I am still a bit uncertain on how to continue. After the intentional break on insight practice, I want to pick it up again. Intuitively, it feels like the most important thing is now strengthening that ability to connect to the present moment. But as I said that has already become much more difficult. There is so many thoughts in my mind and mindfulness in the office is a big challenge to say the least. Some part in me still shies away from noting practice. Athough when I tried again gently, after 30min of concentration and while keeping some concentration on breathing, I also enjoyed it a lot. That approach got me through a very soft version of the insight stages to an equally soft fruition a few times now. As MCTB puts it, it feels like passing through known territory, though.

09/07
Still a bit uncertain about how to continue with my practice. I have picked up Vipassana again, although with much more concentration mixed into it. Somehow it feels like it does me a lot better to remain anchored to my body and breath. If I don´t do this and just let my mind plunge into the somehow chaotic turbulence in the mind right before a fruition, it seems to release an energy which feels somehow toxic in my body. Sounds all a bit strange... None of this feels like a new insight cycle, though.
While just going through daily life, my mood changes a lot. At times there are these odd insights or memories of teachings when just walking or sitting somewhere, which do seem to deepen my practice and understanding. E.g. understanding for a while how these changes in mood are not "me", or how I will have to unconditionally accept all of reality including the parts in myself that I am still unhappy with before there can be real freedom. With some of these odd moments of understanding, somthing inside me seems to move just a little bit. So maybe it´s all just little steps which will add up somehow... And yes, I am preparing myself for patience...

09/28
The last weeks haven´t been easy. Lots of old fear, anxiety and aversion coming up in daily life regularly. Continued rapid changes in mood. Occassionally, I would see in meditation, that in reality there is no basis for the fear and aversion, and there would be a wonderful inner freedom. Half an hour later I would be back to identifying with these issues, wanting to fight them and change myself and the situation. Which in turn, of course, caused more inner conflict until at some point I would be able to step back again, realizing that it´s just my mind causing problems for itself. Etc.
I continued with a mixture of concentration and vipassana meditation, but frequently that too was difficult as there was rapid and often scary cycling through insight stages (or whatever type of stages as I didn´t really notice any insights to be honest) which felt like energy in my body having gone mad.
Yesterday, it finally felt like a more stable breakthrough. I had been talking about models of awakening with a few people and reading about it. That made me realize that to some extent I had used the maps on the progress of insight, however useful they generally may be, to set myself another goal and strive for a result. Seeing through my own mind, I felt kind of silly. It also felt scary but at the same time liberating to seriously just see it as one long process which always only takes place in the here and now. It felt like understanding for the first time what is really meant by being patient with myself. And I made a deep resolution to finally stop avoiding my inner fear, to turn towards it, be with it but not give in. That process led to a deep, almost blissful feeling of inner peace and freedom, like finally being able to truly rest my mind again after all that struggle. Some of the ability to see clearly while meditating seems to be back and much less crazy energetic stuff going on. Lets see...

The struggle with meditation and life continues. It´s mostly a struggle with life actually, but I really hope most of it is caused by meditation. Again and again stretches of time filled with fear and aversion. Occasionally, I wonder, if the dukkha nanas really exist, or if it´s not just a funny story and something has fundamentally gone wrong with my personal stability. The feelings just come and go during the day. If aversion and fear get too strong, I just want it stop - until I remember “hey, wasn´t there something about not being supposed to run away and avoid stuff, what about trying some acceptance”. That tends to improve things for a while until it gets so bad that I forget again. The feelings of fear and aversion also combine very successfully with my real (whatever that means) personal stuff and problems, mercilessly bringing them to light from some hidden place in the sub-consciousness.

Fortunately, it´s not like that all day long. There´s also some stretches of calm and even happiness. Some insights from time to time, sometimes waking up with the blissful feeling that I have associated with A&P events in the past.

I am trying to address the whole thing by doing metta meditation. However, where a warm, fuzzy feeling around the heart used to be, it just feels like a hole or black spot now. So obviously, warm, fuzzy feelings are impermanent, too… Telling myself “may I be happy” just feels like more inner pressure. What does help is, if I manage to subtly change my inner orientation towards acceptance and just being with whatever is.

Long time since my last post. Life hasn´t been easy. Difficult to say what exactly caused what. I only know that some things happened at the same time: I was in a challenging situation in work and private life; and I took up insight meditation again after beautiful and happy weeks of playing with concentration in my meditation practice. At the same time, I probably didn´t pay sufficient attention to have enough balance in life by spending time with simple and happy things.

Looking back, it first seemed more like dukkha nanas in the sense of waves of negative emotions linked to the sitting practice. However, so many old, hidden and destructive emotional patterns were triggered that I was simple getting really stressed and depressed. In spite of all the liberating insight experiences I had had over the past year, I got very caught up in these feelings and emotional patterns. And couldn´t get out of it through meditation or just by myself. Interesting experience, so meditation is not a magic-bullet after all… After I managed to untangle the psychological stuff a bit and lift the depressive fog from my mind, the baseline perception now seems rather wide and open again. I´m really happy about that as in the weeks that I was feeling so bad, I had doubted if insight meditation had changed anything at all. Feels like I am left with a more differentiated view on meditation, a deeper appreciation for psychotherapy, grateful for what I´ve learned about myself. Ultimately it seems like it is still all leading into one direction.

12/18
Since I started to feel better, I also have much more energy and motivation to put into meditation practice again. Still being wary of insight practices, I intensified my concentration meditation, trying to do 1-2 sits of about 35min a day. It’s quite nice to see how fast my ability to concentrate has increased significantly again, basically within 3 to 4 weeks. I just focus on the breath, ignore everything else that comes up, including any rapture or joy, always just gently returning to the breath. I find that very calming and stabilizing as it is such a simply and straightforward practice. I also do a bit of metta in the beginning and in the end, occasionally a bit of mahamudra type practices in-between where I try to place awareness into space. In daily life, whenever I remember, I try to consciously accept every moment as it is right now. If done deeply enough, that changes my perception in a funny way which is difficult to describe and resolves many negative emotions. It seems like that combination of practices is paying off now, a lot of stability and simple joy has come back into my life. Sometimes the joy is so unexpected and strong that I catch my mind trying to look for a special reason and being left astonished that there’s nothing our there, that the joy just comes from inside.

Also, however much I consciously don’t want to do any Vipassana, it slips in from time to time. It feels like my mind is drawn to it, like it wants to move on its own to a state where there is only observation of bare sensations. As if "I" should just step out of the way and let things happen by themselves. However, I hardly give in to this urge to sit back and watch perceptions unfold, as right now I wouldn’t have the time to deal with any side effects of wherever that may lead to...

12/19
Did 40 min of concentration meditation this morning and still feel like being on happiness drugs a few hours later. Focused on the breath at the tip of the nose. After a few minutes, feelings of joy and pleasure came up already but I always returned to the breath. After a while my breathing would become increasingly shallow and my mind calmer. When the breath had calmed down to a level where it was hardly noticeable, I tried to switch my attention to the feeling of stillness. Rather than entering into a quiet space, though, pleasure and joy came up so intensely that I just surrendered to these feelings. Difficult to tell how long it lasted, maybe 5 minutes, maybe more. Definitely, one of the most intense experiences I have had during formal sitting practice. Once that intensity faded a bit, a few trivial thoughts started to come back, I lost some of the focus of attention and presence and drifted off a bit. When I noticed, I returned to the breath and my mind was getting still and calm again, less “disturbed” by joy. At the same time, the field of vision became brighter, but I stopped with the sound of the bell then.