I sat in a chair this morning, to give my knees a break from kneeling. I spent a lot of time thinking about posture. I suspect this is to be expected, because I am not accustomed to meditating in a chair, and have not yet found a stable posture. Concentration was in and out.

I was able to observe a lot of sensations and thoughts. I noticed recurring thoughts, and I noticed how disconnected they were, and how my mind kept trying to reconstruct them. Thoughts about how irritating this was, about how I think I know just what adjustment to make to sit upright.

I had the sense several times that I was leaning far to the left. No idea if it's true. I was able to sit with these sensations and notice the images in my mind for a while. I let myself count three breaths and then adjust a tiny bit. It felt better for a while and then went back.

I noticed myself falling into a deeper concentration state and then snapping out of it at least 4 times. I don't know if I was falling asleep or what. It felt like a startle response, and I felt safer after it happened. I have a feeling it would be great if I could catch this response before it happens.

I noticed my foot feeling like it was falling asleep, and I noticed my urges to move it. I noticed the feeling of my fingers touching each other, and then gradually felt those sensations disappear. I noticed myself wondering if my fingers were still touching. When I was done meditating, I noticed they were.

I could feel the muscles in my back and neck working hard to support me. I suspect this makes concentration difficult.

A couple times, there was pulsating light in my vision.

I noticed myself trying to go deeper into concentration by recalling images I observed in previous sessions.

I noticed myself getting frustrated that there were so many sensations I wasn't clearly noticing. I tried to make a real effort to observe everything. I felt discouraged, and felt a little panicked that my meditation was so unstructured and graspy.

Did 10 minutes of metta practice at the end. It was very hard to focus. I suspect a lot of this is because of the chair. Not sure if I should try to adjust the chair, or continue to sit with this and learn more.

Still think I'm moving in a good direction, though. I think there's a lot more dust that needs to be kicked up.

Started off with really good concentration. I could observe the breath in minute detail. I felt like I could follow it through its whole cycle, and observe a very tiny sensation beneath my nostrils.

My vision was pulsating quickly. I felt at times as if this was synchronized with my perceptions of the breath. Perhaps it was only the exhale. It came and went.

Strong urge to swallow. Felt like mouth was overflowing with saliva. Could feel the pressure building up behind my lips. Felt horribly disgusted by this. Decided to sit with this sensation for a while.

Worried I might become a crazy person who didn't care if he drooled all over himself.

Decided to swallow just a little. Realized my mouth was nowhere near overflowing.

Just make this stop! Can't I just be enlightened already??? How much of this do I have to go through?

What if meditation is always just more and more observation of unpleasant sensations, and I just go deeper and deeper and nothing actually changes?

I alternated between this type of thinking and equanimity several times. Was able to observe these thoughts pretty clearly, and my urges to react to them.

I can clearly remember a time when these thoughts would have completely derailed me. I have all the same pain I've always had, but it doesn't freak me out as much now (time will tell, I suppose!).

Noticed clearly how my eyes want to move to whatever part of the body I'm observing. I think this is tiring for my facial muscles. I tried to stop this, and sometimes was successful and sometimes it caused a great deal of stress. This might be worth working on.

Examined some thoughts with curiosity, to observe their static nature. This has been particularly fascinating to me lately (how thoughts are not the dynamic movies they claim to be).

Was able to observe sensations throughout the body pretty well. Some doubt about whether I should focus on the breath, or scan freely. I didn't seem to have a plan in place.

Was certain my lower body would be numb when I finished. This wasn't the case.

I think it's good to journal some of this stuff. Reflecting on my experience makes it easier to see patterns. On the other hand, I wonder if I'm casting it in a specific light based on how I want to perceive it, rather than it being an objective log of what really happened.

This was not an easy session this morning. It amazes me how quickly it can change like that.

I decided to try no technique, and simply sit for one hour.

I noticed restrictions in my breathing due to my posture.

A lot of thoughts about how difficult it was. I tried to observe these thoughts, to separate myself from them.

I noticed strongly how I was identifying with so much. I was discouraged that I would never be able to penetrate through that. I reminded myself that I need to tease things apart more. I'm not seeing everything.

On a related note, I started to realize more about the connection between my posture and my breath constriction. This made me feel more discouraged, because I I felt like there was no way to clear that up.

Spent some time observing how some actions are performed by "me" and some are performed by "my body". It drives me crazy trying to see the difference. I tried to look into the nature of those thoughts as well.

Started to worry I was compressing nerves in my legs and would end up with a serious problem as a result. After 45 minutes or so, I switched to lying on my back.

10 minutes of metta, very hard to stick with the phrases, as I kept daydreaming, possibly falling asleep. Although, I had the sense that I could somehow synchronize the phrase with speed of my thoughts if I did it very deliberately.

Part of me says this was a good session, because it gave me a lot to observe. But, part of me says I am somehow conditioning myself to be averse to meditation, and I am going in the wrong direction. Not sure what to do.

I want things to go well. I don't even want to talk about them when they don't go well. I want to feel like I have a handle on this. Why is equanimity easier sometimes and harder other times? All I wanted to do was sit and observe unpleasant experiences, but somehow they got the better of me.

Practiced for about three hours (over 4 or so sessions) yesterday. It was all over the place.

This morning, things went pretty well. I decided to give Goenka's technique another serious try.

Start by concentrating on the breath. Mind wanders. I let it wander, and then tune back into the breath when it presents itself.

I am concerned that I am trying to focus my eyes really hard on my nostrils. A lot of pressure in my face.

Build up a good amount of concentration, and then try to tune into sensation at the top of my head. Nothing. But, I don't want to move my eyes there. Don't want to concentrate too hard. Just wait for it. Nothing. Mind starts to wander. Bring the attention back to the breath.

I work this way systematically through my upper body. Sometimes there is sensation, sometimes none. I am trying not to use my eyes. I am trying not to block out thoughts, but rather perceive the sensation through the noise of the thoughts.

I go into a deeper concentration state. I feel sensation throughout my body. A lot of vibration. My vision alternates now and then from dark to light.

I'm not sure if I'm doing the technique right. I can't seem to sustain the attention necessary to move part by part through the whole body. I always lose my place or start skipping around, or just decide to screw it and feel the body as a whole.

I feel imbalances in my posture. I feel anxiety caused by this. I feel myself trying to correct it.

I remind myself over and over that anything I feel or think is ok, and to refocus on physical sensation. The anxiety calms down, and I feel more settled.

I worry that I get attached to the positive feelings, the feeling of concentration, the excitement of a meditation that is going well. Equanimity with respect to negative sensation is easy to understand; just don't move when you feel it. But how do I practice equanimity in the face of positive sensations?

By the end, I was pretty concentrated. Large parts of my body had totally dissolved into (pleasurable) vibration. I am always so stiff when I stand up. Hopefully that will improve over time.

This morning was quite an interesting meditation.

It started off with the usual discomfort and obsession over posture. Observed how the breath kept moving me off balance. How I kept adjusting. How frustrated it made me.

I had an idea bouncing around in my head: "meditation is not physical... it is purely about training your attention." What if I really took that seriously?

I observed the breath. Very hard to concentrate. I tried following it, but my mind kept wandering. Every time it wandered, I tried to bring it back. Frustrating and nauseating.

Ok, let it wander. This isn't physical. It's just about my mind. The frustration and nausea is not mental. Obviously, "trying to bring it back" is doing something more than the meditation really calls for.

Let the breath gently intrude on my mind-wanderings.

I've been down this road before, but this morning was a bit different. It occurred to me, "I can use the breath as a weapon to dissolve my experience." When the mind wanders, let it wander, and focus on the breath. The experience doesn't disappear, but the breath introduces disruption into it. It becomes slowly harder to concentrate on the experience. And eventually I'm back at the breath, or perhaps a new experience interrupts.

I played with this for a while. I would be pulled into thoughts, sensations. I noticed how the breath made it hard to really latch onto them. Just let them break up into little pieces.

Once I felt reasonably secure in this, I switched to Goenka body scanning. I tried the exact same technique. Focus on the top of the head. No sensation. Get distracted. Ok, let the sensation at the top of the head dissolve my distraction. Nothing.

Attention goes to sensation in legs. Great, let the sensation at the top of my head dissolve the experience of being with my legs. Now we're getting somewhere... This is exciting. Great, let the sensation at the top of my head dissolve the experience of being excited.

Once I felt something at the top of my head, I moved down my body bit by bit in this manner. I practiced dissolving absolutely every experience I noticed I was having, using the awareness of sensation of the body part I was focusing on.

This brought me into a deep state of concentration. My body felt still and I could feel subtle sensations everywhere.

There was a moment of fear. As my body was losing solidity, I started to panic with the thought that I might actually dissolve my entire being. And what if it didn't stop after the meditation? What if I ended up with some kind of dissociative identity disorder? I decided to go with it, and used the sensation of my body to dissolve that train of thought.

I was half expecting to achieve stream entry right there. But, I think that was just a preliminary defense mechanism. There's a lot more self that needs to be dissolved. Yet, the path seems a bit more doable at the moment.

The fear actually seems a little silly as I write this. I'm not dissolving myself. I'm only practicing focusing on something other than the self, for a brief period of time. The self isn't going to disappear. It's just a new habit I'm building. And if I'm happier with no self, then I guess that's not a problem...

I used the same strategy in my 10 minutes of metta.

"May I be safe...fr.... Oh this is really cool! I can really focus! Sensation in body is really pleasant...where was I....? May I be free from...."

No, that's all just experience. My focus is on "May I be safe from danger."

Wait for it to come in loud and clear, as a single uninterrupted action. If it's hazy, if I'm distracted, frustrated, whatever, then just go with it and wait for the phrase to come in loud and clear.

Not sure what to make of this morning.

It was pretty difficult for the first half hour. Not easy to concentrate on the breath, or even feel the breath. My mind was racing with thoughts. I could not find a comfortable posture.

I tried using the technique I thought of yesterday of letting the breath dissolve my experience, but it wasn't working.  I could recognize that the feelings and evaluations of "it's not working" were themselves experiences, but they seemed more solid.

After 30 minutes, things changed a bit. I noticed I wasn't really feeling the breath. There is a difference between the mental concept of the breath and the actual physical sensation at the nostrils. I realized the physical sensation has quite a lot of power, because it's real and ever-changing. Trying to dissolve my thought patterns using more thought-patterns is potentially frustrating, but using real physical sensation is another matter.

So, I tried to zoom in on the sensation. It was a very tiny sensation. But, once I found it, it gave me something to anchor to, much more stable than any of the thoughts or even the larger unpredictable movements of my body. 

Zooming to a tiny level has the effect of stabilizing the mind, I think because it synchronizes everything to a level which is not on the same wavelength of the rest of the experience that was preoccupying me at the moment. 

I noticed that the sensations and thoughts I was experiencing were wholly separate from my perception of the breath. It was surprising, because a moment ago I had been completely wrapped up in them.

There was a moment of blackness, I felt tingling through my whole body, and my vision "reset" itself to a more stable pattern of slow oscillating light. I felt much more grounded after that point.

The rest of the session was fairly uneventful, except once there was what looked like a flash of lightning. Not sure what it meant.

I believe it is good to spend some time really making sure I am sitting as comfortably as possible. Even to take a few minutes at the beginning of every session to work on this, rather than immediately jumping in to observing sensation with equanimity. I am hesitant to do this, because I don't want to obsess over discomfort. However, unpredictable physical pain and instability of posture is really distracting, and if I can eliminate it, I should. I do think that a big part of this is being able to tune the mind into a concentrated state, because it makes observation easier, as much as that feels like a cop-out to me.

And, I am going to stick with my viewpoint that concentration is not about developing concentration, but rather about breaking up concentration.

I practiced for a bit yesterday afternoon. I was really getting the sense that I could dissolve any aspect of my experience. The sensation of the breath, or other sensations I chose, could be steadily maintained, while thoughts came and went. Body parts disappeared.

A black hole appeared in my vision, and grew in size. It covered half of my vision, and then a new one appeared. The cycle repeated many times. I had the idea of allowing it to grow until it enveloped me. As it approached, I had an intense fear of disappearing. I decided to sit with the fear and let it approach, but I think I was distracted, and the black hole dissipated. I was slightly nervous that in my attempts to deepen my meditation, I was depriving my brain of oxygen, or threatening to burst a blood vessel, or about to cause a stroke or seizure, or something like that.

---

Not very concentrated this morning. Distracted by posture and noises from the kitchen. The noises made me angry, but I tried to welcome them as an opportunity to practice.

I wonder how much of this has to do with how well I slept at night.

15 minutes before the end, I changed posture to cross-legged. I'm nervous to do this, because I think it might be back for my neck and back, but I always feel that way about my neck and back no matter what I do with my body, so wtf do I know?

I felt my hair brushing against the back of my neck and imagined it was a spider. I noticed the image of the spider in my mind and felt tingling through my body. Just watch and return to the breath. My mind came up with another more detailed image of the spider crawling slowly. I saw the image frozen in time, and returned to the breath. Another image, spiders crawling all over my body, down my shirt and up my legs. Pretty terrifying, but I also saw clearly how my mind was trying to play this game. I thought "you laugh now, but what are you going to feel when you reach back there and find a real spider?" (I'm trying to put this wordless thought into words). But, it seemed clear to me that this really was just a game, and my whole experience of this was constructed in the moment. So what if there's a real spider later? It's only *right now* that I'm bothered by it.

Well, no meditation happened this morning. I spent the entire hour working on posture.

A few things are on my mind:

- Concentration is very difficult when I'm straining my muscles and when the act of breathing itself threatens to knock me off balance.
- I think it is possible to solve this problem.
- If I solve it, my meditations will probably be much more productive.

I was reading an article last night that suggested a method like this:

1. Sit grounded on your sit bones.
2. Lean forward until you feel yourself starting to fall, then relax as much as you can, feeling the pull of gravity.
3. Lean back until you start to fall, and do the same thing.
4. Repeat over and over, making the movements smaller and smaller each time.
5. Pull up through your head, and relax.
6. Repeat until you are balanced.

So, I started my session with this.

I noticed I was in a hurry to find balance. I wanted to meditate as soon as possible. Once I felt balanced enough, I tried watching the breath.

And then I wasn't balanced anymore.

I tried this a few times, getting increasingly frustrated.

It became clear to me that I was not giving sufficient attention to my posture. I was imagining how much time was left on the clock, and how little meditation was happening.

After 30 minutes, I gave up meditation and decided to work completely on posture.

What I noticed while focusing on posture:

- sometimes not sure if my sit bones are pointing straight down or not.
- not sure if leaning forward and backward means rotating the pelvis, or moving from the bottom of the spine.
- even after I find a "balanced" position, I still find that I can let go and "slouch". This means I'm not relaxed enough. The relaxed position should support my spine.
- at each position, it is useful to take at least a full breath, to observe what effect that movement has on my balance.
- I believe it's possible to find a posture that requires practically zero effort, because I remember having found those balance points at times in the past (including, I believe, last night.)
- Sitting lower means the yoga blocks cut into my legs less, but it also means I worry more about my knees. It may be useful to get a meditation bench, but those seem expensive and I have no guarantee it would work better than what I'm doing now.
- I need to be aggressive about relaxing as much as possible, even if it means the routine will take longer.

It is a good idea for me to set aside time for no other purpose than to practice this balancing routine. I can meditate in a more comfortable posture until I feel I have it figured out better. I will have to run the risk of falling asleep, I guess! (And also potentially not be prepared for the retreat I have coming up in less than two months...)

There is a part of me that thinks this is either cheating or will lead to more obsession about posture. That vipassana is supposed to be about feeling your aches and pains and learning to be mindful of them, rather than trying to eliminate them.

I think it needs to be understood that yes, in meditation one should be mindful, but a posture needs to be chosen where mindfulness is possible. There are times where I feel OK sitting and watching my discomfort. But, if am constantly adjusting my posture, it is simply not meditation, no matter how much I am trying to be mindful. I need to proceed with determination, but also with gentleness.

I've been thinking a lot about the characteristic of dukkha over the past day. I believe it's starting to make sense to me in a more comprehensive way than it was before.

I listened to Joseph Goldstein's recent podcast on the topic yesterday, but honestly I can't remember much of it. I think what really did it was flipping through MCTB last night and coming across this sentence: "Just knowing in each precise instant how you actually know that pain is unsatisfactory can be profound practice."

Life is unsatisfying. Everything is. This is so fundamentally true that it's easy to miss.

I experience pain. How do I know it's unsatisfying? Just pay attention. Notice my impulses. Chances are, I will find some reaction inside of me which is an attempt to minimize the pain. If I were satisfied with the pain, I wouldn't do this.

I experience pleasure. How do I know this is unsatisfying? Same deal. If I pay attention, I will find some attempt to hold on to that pleasure, to intensify it, to assure myself it will last or that it's real. If I were satisfied, this wouldn't happen.

In my meditation this morning, I tried to observe this characteristic of sensation. I think it proved to be somewhat fruitful.

Every time I experienced a sensation, I asked myself "what is unsatisfying about this sensation?" I noticed what my urges were to eliminate pain or hold on to pleasure. This isn't the first time I have thought about my urges this way, but this was the first time I made a deliberate investigation of analyzing ALL of my experience in this manner.

A lot of sensations seemed neutral, neither pleasure nor pain. These were challenging. How can these be unsatisfying?

It started to dawn on me that something wasn't right. I wasn't satisfied with the neutral experiences either. This was so simple that I am surprised I had missed it.

I was doing things in response to the neutral sensations as well. I was investigating them, asking questions about them, trying to observe them better, etc. I would not be doing those things if I were satisfied with them.

It's the only reason we ever learn to do anything. It's the only reason anything ever catches our attention. It's the only reason we ever care about anything.

This actually drove me a bit crazy. I felt like a pinball in a machine. I could see that everything I was doing was a reaction to something, an attempt to satisfy some deep unsatisfaction. Do I have any control at all??? Is life just one long sequence of bouncing from one urge to the next???

Why am I trying so hard to focus on the sensation in my leg? So I can be mindful. Why was I trying to be mindful? So I can be a good meditator. Why do I want to be a good meditator? Because that's just how I think of myself. Why am I thinking of myself that way at this moment? Because I am meditating and investigating the characteristic of dukkha. It's hard to convey with words exactly what I was experiencing, because much of it was subtle, and these realizations felt like they were happening quickly and sometimes simultaneously, but I am trying to give a sense of it. It's just one thing after another, all happening in perfect sequence.

These realizations moment-to-moment had a strange effect of allowing me to let go of a lot of my physical activity. I saw how interconnected much of it was...the interplay between my sensations, my concept of self, and my whole program of meditation. I think there is a way out of this mess, and that the way out is to see the concepts of self as being yet another attempt to satisfy an urge. This will need to be practiced. (It also raises the question for me: is the idea to see more, or do less, or both? There is the troubling realization here that "seeing" is itself more urge-satisfying)

Anyway, I think this line of investigation is worthwhile, and I am going to continue it.

I also think "suffering" is entirely the wrong word for this. That's my impression anyway, because hearing the word "suffering" made it impossible for me to understand what was really going on here. Now I think I understand that, on some level, one could say that what you think of as "suffering" is really just more experience (because "suffering" is just a label tacked on by your mind to a bunch of impermanent sensations), and all experience has that fundamental quality that sometimes manifests itself as "suffering", so in that sense there is an equivalence. But, it's misleading at face value.

It's so easy for this stuff to turn into abstract philosophy. It's important to keep it practical. I think physical sensation is the key to this.

June 4:

So, I'm rethinking some of what I was saying about posture. It may indeed be problematic, but I think something else is going on too.

Over the past few days, I've been feeling increased sensations in my face. They happen frequently when I'm meditating, and often when I simply stop to focus on them. There is pressure, vibration, movement, all kinds of weird things.  I've been thinking that this is a result of the increased durations of my sits, that I have been straining muscles, and re-aggravating whatever started at the retreat last year.

I have also been noticing that the feelings of pressure and tightness disappear when I touch my face. I'm not sure they are as real as they seem to be. Maybe they are the result of heightened perception, or perhaps hallucinations or something like that. Maybe I'm feeling something real, but my mind is interpreting it as something worse than it is.

I have no idea is this is safe, but something tells me the only way to proceed is to continue meditating. 

I sat tonight and resolved to simply observe the sensations, without trying to make them go away. I decided to approach this with no pressure, with awareness of physical sensation as the antidote to getting lost in thought. I started with awareness of the sensations of the breath, with no expectation of where I would feel those sensations. When the sensations in my face started to distract me, I included them in the breath. I became concentrated pretty quickly. 

The outer layers of my body began disappearing. I don't believe it has ever happened in such a pronounced way. I could feel the skin detaching from my face. The feelings of pressure flickered back and forth between solid and decomposed forms. I could feel subtle vibrations throughout my whole body. I was scared that I was damaging myself.

I had the sense that I could not get lost in thought. I was constantly aware of sensation. I had thoughts, but I immediately recognized them as thoughts. I had emotional reactions to thoughts and sensations, but I saw those too. 

I could see how certain things were being prevented from de-solidifying. The sensation of the breath at my nostrils. The sound of the cats running back and forth in the kitchen. The edge where my hair touched my neck and moved slightly with each breath. The floor. 

It was all a really pleasant feeling, and I could observe that feeling.

June 6:

That was two nights ago, and meditation has been much easier since then. I have not had any trouble sitting motionless. I get concentrated pretty quickly.

I've been experiencing strange sensations on my face. Rippling feelings. Tickling. Fizzing. Tightness. Release. Heaviness. A lot of fizzing... Sometimes I can feel the breath landing on my upper lip and dissolving almost in slow motion. Slightly worried I am giving myself neurological damage. I don't feel these things when I'm not meditating, unless I tune into them. 

I get absorbed into the patterns in my vision sometimes. They can be mesmerizing. 

My body has not disappeared as much as it did the other night, but there tends to be a pleasant tingling. It's actually hard to describe, because sensations are changing a lot. Sometimes I feel like there's just a ton of stuff happening under my skin. I'm trying to keep my attention moving, observing as much of it as I can. Whenever I find something solid, I rest there for a bit, trying to look under the surface. I've been doing this with sounds throughout the day, as well, listening for harmonics and beats in musical tones, and oscillations in any kind of sustained sound, such as a fan. 

Not sure what to do at this point. Just keep investigating whatever comes up, I guess. I'm a bit worried this ease will disappear at some point.

Again, no significant trouble sitting motionless for an hour this morning.

I do something like the following routine:

1. Take a few moments of heavy breathing to make sure my posture is reasonably stable.
2. Focus on the breath, trying to be aware of each inhale and exhale, whatever that means. If anything distracts me, I incorporate it into the concept of the breath.
3. Wait for myself to become aware of the sensation of the breath at my nose.
4. Hang out there for a while, until I feel I really perceive it continuously.
5. If I feel antsy at this point, I try to get absorbed into something. Sometimes I can find a "glow" or "rhythm" somewhere. Not sure if this is recommended, but it often seems doable, so I go with it.
6. Once I feel stable with my attention, I start scanning my body top to bottom (the Goenka method), attempting to perceive subtle sensations in each part. If I feel something solid, I observe it and try to perceive some more detail. Often, it ends up vibrating as the breath does. Sometimes it remains solid, or blank.
7. Once I go through the whole body, I sit and wait for solid things to catch my attention, and investigate them in the same manner. If I get lost in thought, I come back to the breath.
8. Finish with 10 minutes of metta.

I find myself wanting to really perceive every single oscillation. It's a mixture of frustrating and fascinating. It's frustrating because the oscillations are usually way too fast (I wish I could count! Reminds me of an old computer monitor with a refresh rate that is way too low). It is fascinating because I feel like I can perceive them in anything I bring my attention too.

A couple times, I noticed blank areas on my body, and realized that the frustration over that was actually causing them to stay blank. I investigated sensations relating to the frustration, and found that this "tuned me in" a bit better to the level of sensation present at the blank area.

There was a time (I can't remember if I wrote about this) maybe a week ago, or more, when I realized that the vibrations were fast as I was inhaling, fast as I was exhaling, and then super-slow in between. So, I just decided to speed them up to even it out, and I could do that. It was like my attention went in and out based on what part of the breath I was interested in, and I realized I wasn't interested in the whole thing. I find myself wanting to do this with sensations of all kinds now, whenever I realize I'm not fully interested.

Several times this morning, I thought I saw several "harsh frames" of light in my vision, which pulsated for about 4 times (this happened a few days ago once, and it was like there was a metallic sound which went along with them...no sound this time). When I brought my focus to them, they disappeared and I felt irritated that I couldn't grab on to them. It was like I had fallen into a state by accident, but then my attempt to observe the state caused me to snap out of it. After a few instances of this, I started to investigate the sensations of "irritation".

I also get irritated when I hear sounds of someone walking. The sounds distract me from my attempts at de-solidifying my reality. Not sure if there's a way I can incorporate them better.

I find myself craving "pleasant tingling" and "disappearing body parts" and "motionlessness" and "glowing light" and "synchronous absorption" and "novel experiences."

Part of me is also thinking, "ok, now what?"

Last night:

Very concentrated. Large portions of my body disappeared. I saw a great deal of light at times. Felt tons of movement on my face. After I was finished, I sat down again and had someone look at my face intently while I meditated some more, and she didn't see any signs of movement. I was really surprised.

After scanning my body part by part for a while, I realized I could feel the whole body on the exhale, if I tuned into it. I think I've noticed this before, but prevented it from happening, because I had taken it to mean that my posture was too strained. After I was done meditating, I tried tuning in to this while sitting on the couch, and found that I could do it then as well. It was like it had taken me 50 minutes in meditation to figure out how to do it, and then once I got it, I had it.

I think the trick is to keep it moving. Don't dwell on any sensation for too long. It seems that an expansive awareness is what I'm after. But on the other hand, there also seems to be the danger of just mentally running through the body too quickly, without actually experiencing any sensation at all. I have the same conversation with myself in piano practice. And there, the solution is, in my opinion, to just keep practicing.

The experiences I am having now are reminiscent of what I experienced on the Goenka retreat last year. At that time, however, they freaked me out. I think I was too ashamed or something to really talk to the teacher about them. I just viewed them as my own personal provlems that I would have to deal with alone. (I guess I don't have a lot of faith that teachers will be sympathetic to me, throughout my whole life!)

---

This morning's meditation had the least amount of movement yet.

I had a recurring urge to swallow, but I didn't. I wanted to adjust my posture, but I didn't. Every time I had such an urge, I brought my attention back to physical sensation.

I noticed how the effort of focusing on physical sensation is not the same as the effort of blocking out thoughts. I can really do this. It doesn't use up energy in the same way. If I get lost in thought, I can double down on the amount of sensation I observe, and it doesn't cost me anything. At least, that's the sense I was having this morning.

I was keenly aware of the difference between scanning my body by following a visualization, and scanning by following sensation. It's a subtle difference, and I often get confused by it. For example, I will observe sensation on the back of my neck, and then move down to my upper back, and feel nothing. Then, I realize I wasn't actually tuned into the upper back, but rather I was tuned into an image of the upper back in my mind. So, I go back to the sensation in my neck, and follow the sensation down a little bit, until I'm actually on my upper back.

After doing this for a while on the surface of my body, I tried a little bit on the inside. I could feel sensation in my mouth, followed it down my throat, felt my heart beating, into my abdomen.

I have certain fears about letting go of the need to move. What if I cut off blood supply to some body part for too long? What if I am putting too much pressure on my spinal cord, and the damage feels good? What if I figure out how to manipulate my heartbeat, and have a heart attack? What if I start feeling something scary, and I can't stop feeling it after the meditation is over?

I'm also wondering what is the best way to use this remaining time until I go back to the Goenka retreat in approximately 6 weeks. Should I be trying to make progress now? Or should I wait until I'm there and there is a teacher I can see?

Somewhat frustrated this morning.

My mind was all over the place. There were fragments of thoughts bouncing all around: images, sounds, all coming and going very quickly. It was hard to maintain concentration on anything. I couldn't tell if I was falling asleep and starting to dream, or just had a crazy mind. I couldn't tell if I was being jolted awake, or if I was trying to concentrate my mind.

I got stabilized on the breath OK, and then tried to scan my body. I kept getting lost in thought. I kept losing my place. Was I just at my neck, or my legs? I can't even remember.

I kept feeling like I was losing my balance. After 30 minutes, I switched to sitting on the couch. My mind had a ton of objections to that, but I figured that I may as well try it and see how those objections hold up in reality.

The couch wasn't much better. I was still keenly aware of how I had to support my neck to prevent my head from falling backward. I just don't see any possible way to meditate in a relaxed position except perhaps lying down. I wonder if "relaxed" is the wrong goal. There have certainly been times (yesterday!) where I didn't feel like this was an issue.

The question kept coming up in my mind: when I am at a blank area of my body, and I am waiting for a sensation to appear, do I keep awareness of the breath, or do I stay with my attention on the blank area, thereby risking losing contact with sensation altogether and getting swept back into my thoughts?

I don't want to just invent my own technique and disregard the instructions. However, I find that what I perceive as progress has always come from "disregarding the instructions". I suspect that my attention should remain on the breath. What is the sense in getting lost in thought?

This is just always the issue: if I am going to observe without reacting, what do I do when I notice myself struggling? It's so easy for a teacher to say "you're doing it wrong...stop struggling and just observe", but it's not like I planned on struggling. In my piano practice, and with my students, I avoid this issue by keeping everything extremely concrete and physical. It doesn't matter if you are "struggling"...what matters is if you are doing the correct physical action or not. And if you get distracted, that is always 100% perfect, because you are only responsible for what you're doing at those moments when you notice that you have control over your physical action. I feel like I've constructed the exercises in such a way that you really can trust them to teach you. In meditation, I'm not really always clear on when I'm following the instructions and when I'm not. The instructions are vague. I can either resolve the issue on my own by clarifying the ambiguities, or I can just go day-by-day with whatever interpretation I happen to have at the moment. I could ask a teacher for clarification, but they would almost certainly introduce more ambiguity, or just tell me to persevere (persevere doing WHAT?) and then I run the risk of getting discouraged and quitting.

I'm not expecting anyone to resolve this for me or help me with it. I just wanted to write down my thoughts on this, because I have been to this place many times before. Someday, it may be useful to have a record of what I was thinking at this particular point in time.

In my metta practice, I could not keep my attention on the phrases. Literally not a single one. I kept losing my place in the middle of the sentence.

Yesterday, I had the idea of focusing more intently on physical sensation when I get distracted. For some reason, I didn't want to try this today. It seemed like it wasn't actually in accordance with the instructions.

A lot of light and vibrations today. While doing metta, I kept losing my train of thought. I started saying a phrase in my mind, and by the time I got to the end, I was somewhere else entirely. I thought I was falling asleep. I tried really hard to stay concentrated. Sometimes I got distracted even from that.

It seemed I was putting in too much effort. I tried to broaden my focus a bit. Sometimes when I did, I felt like I broadened too much, and almost lost consciousness entirely. When that happened, there was a very bright flash of light, and I came back. This happened at least three times. Eventually, I had the idea of going very slowly. One syllable at a time, I made my way from the beginning of the sentence to the end, checking after each syllable to make sure I still had contact with the breath, and that I was still aware of what sentence I was saying. It took several tries, but I eventually made it. I have no idea if all of this was because I was falling asleep, or if it was because my focus was at a level that was just much slower than my thoughts normally go at. It was a very odd experience.

In some sense, I am having a much easier time sitting still. In another sense, there is more turmoil, because I am even more sensitive to all of the urges that are trying to prevent me from sitting still.

A couple times, I saw a small black dot in the center of my vision. There were a couple other patterns that came and went, and are hard to describe. There's a pulsating circle (what I described in another post as a "black hole"...this is nothing like the "black dot" I just mentioned) that gets bigger and smaller, and which seems to appear when I am very concentrated. Faint white light started to appear about halfway through. Sometimes there was bright light, for one instant, and then I would try to investigate it and it would disappear (very frustrating). There is vibration, which seems to go through certain stages, depending on how sharp my mind is: 1) unnoticeable, 2) fast when I am inhaling and exhaling, slower in between, 3) fast and even, 4) erratic, sometimes freezing for a moment (filling me with some sense of momentary dread when it does this).

I understand why people think they can contact spirits and otherwordly realms while meditating. At one point, I felt like there was a woman walking by me. I could feel the air brushing against my right side, and I could see her clearly. It lasted just an instant, but it was very pronounced.

There was a moment where I felt very detached from all of it. I could watch my body struggling subtly, and I could watch myself evaluating all of it, and I could watch myself feeling like I was doing it wrong, and I had this sense like "Here I am over here, and I can just observe all of that over there. Yes, there is struggling, but I'm not the one struggling." It lasted just for about one second. The same thing happened yesterday (or was it the day before?)

One thing that is driving me crazy is the clear awareness that I am enjoying many aspects of my meditation. I notice myself trying to recreate certain experiences (tingling, light, concentration). I almost wanted to scream in frustration at one point when I was thinking how every teacher on earth would tell me I'm doing this wrong. WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO??? I CAN'T HELP IT! I DON'T EVEN NOTICE I'M DOING IT UNTIL IT'S ALREADY DONE!!! I went through the same thing with my piano playing, and the only thing that helped me was to take a stance of complete and utter acceptance towards anything my body or mind happened to do while sitting at the piano. I am considering taking the same approach with meditation.

I have a greater sense that my attention span has certain junctures. There are moments where things can go one way, or they can go the other way. I have some amount of control over this, but my mind has to be sharpened to a certain resolution before I can do that. There are certain things that seem to encourage this sharpening:

- Focus on subtler sensations of the breath.
- When I observe a blank area on my body, try to observe the breath simultaneously.
- When I'm trying to focus on one part of my body, and I feel a tension elsewhere in my body, do not relax that tension.
- As much as possible, try to broaden my awareness, seeing as many different things as I can.

There is a balance between trying and not trying. It's hard to tell when I'm trying too hard and when I'm not trying hard enough. And sometimes I try too hard to stop trying. How can I make sense of this? I'm thinking "getting frustrated and wanting to quit because I can't stay focused," is an indicator of trying too hard, and "not meditating at all, or meditating and totally forgetting what I'm even trying to do" is an indicator of not trying hard enough. I think it can tip from one to the other very very quickly, though.

I think certain things need to be welcomed:

- Distraction, noise in my mind, rapid/half-formed thoughts
- Forgetting what I'm doing
- Doubt: am I doing this right? Am I screwing myself over by practicing this way?
- Discomfort: muscle tension, nausea, constricted breathing
- Feelings of imbalance: will I fall if I let go? am I leaning too much to one side?
- Frustration: am I craving too much? Irritation with those who tell me I'm doing it wrong

There doesn't seem to be any use in fighting them. It doesn't matter if I experience them. I can always return to bodily sensation at any point. And it gets easier with practice.

I think perhaps the appearance of many of these factors is a sign of progress. When I started meditating years ago, closing my eyes for one minute led to a ton of agitation. But this isn't from the meditation...it's from taking the time to be aware of what I'm actually experiencing. I think this process just gets deeper and deeper. As I get better at meditation, yes, certain things become more tolerable and even pleasant at times, but that steadiness only paves the road for new restlessness to emerge. This isn't a bad thing.

I believe I experienced this many times this morning. The sensations are so subtle that it's difficult to put into words actually what happened. Several times, I would get deeper, and then something distracting would show up, and I would get irritated, and have an urge to attend to that new thing. At times, this would make me feel like I was regressing in progress, but I'm not sure that's it.

There was a moment when I felt the amount of tension in my head change abruptly, and my vision took on a certain glow after that. It seemed very significant at the time, like I had discovered something about how to physically sit, but I can't even remember exactly what it was.

Several extremely disgusting images went through my head at times. I observed them, and observed my physical reactions to them.

Some more philosophical thoughts:

The object is not to think less. It's to experience more. The thoughts aren't what they advertise themselves to be.

The meditation routine itself is wrong. The body scanning is wrong. The way I focus on the breath is wrong. It all needs to be recalibrated over and over. This isn't a bad thing. As I practice, I change, but the technique remains the same. If I insist that I am the constant one, then from my perspective, the technique is always changing.

Not related to meditation, but I wanted to get this down:

I think the pain I experience while standing up after sitting for such a long time is not related to my joints. I think it is due to the fact that my muscles have shortened, and I am trying to stretch them. Over the past couple days, I have been considering this, and after I sit, I have been extending my legs very very slowly, giving the muscles time to lengthen on their own. This has led to a lot less pain. I am hoping that over time, this process will happen faster, and I will be able to stand quickly with no pain. I am also stretching the backs of my legs before sitting. I suspect this is all neurological, despite what I have been told my whole life by pretty much everyone.

Help...I'm trapped inside a giant robot!

I'm very small, and very fast. The robot is lumbering and awkward. I don't even know exactly how big I am. There's a force that makes me want to connect with the robot. It's like I'm walking through a maze with sticky walls. If I get too close to the edge, I get stuck, but if I stay in the center, it's not hard to keep walking.

It's tempting to think that I am here somewhere in my head behind my eyes, but that's not it. I say that because I am clearly detached from both the sense of being in my head behind my eyes and the images and thoughts associated with it.

I have control over myself, but I don't really know how to use that ability. This is slightly new territory for me. It is like trying to control myself in a dream. I can't use the body, because the body is the robot, and will only encourage me to get stuck. I can't use my thoughts and feelings, because they are from the robot too.

I see flickering light, slowly pulsating light, black holes. I feel parts of my body dissolving. I feel excited that I'm making progress. I feel frustrated that I'm not getting it completely. I hear "Eye of the Tiger" playing on and off. I feel trapped in my body. I feel parts of my body move. I feel myself reacting to all of these things.

But, after each one of them, I can see that I'm not the one doing these things or feeling them, because I'm too small and light to really exist on that level. I marvel at the ease with which I can observe physical sensation, when I'm not weighed down by any of that stuff. It's like I'm going deep underwater, and I am able to survive fine as long as I remember that I don't actually need to breathe. The moment I try to take a breath, I come back to reality.

I could imagine some people might be really disturbed by this sort of thing, if they are very invested in their identities (several people come to mind). I realized some years ago that self-concepts are a major source of suffering in my life, so I have always been eager to dissolve them whenever possible. We'll see what happens.

I feel like the amount of concentration skill I built up until this point had a price attached to it. It requires way too much effort (even physical effort). I am pretty sure concentration can happen with far less effort, because I've been getting glimpses of that, but it will require re-learning a bit.

My meditation so far has taken places in certain "modes" (are these stages of insight?). When they first occurred, they each seemed like "ah, here's the way it *really* is!" I'm starting to have the sense that none of them is really real, and that I am learning to be able to call them up almost at will. I think it's just a matter of what level I want to zoom my concentration to. I was noticing that a lot this morning. It was almost getting easy to be able to flip back and forth between the sense of "being my body" and "watching my body". The light doesn't excite me as much as it used to, because I have more of a sense that it's just caused by something rather mundane that I'm doing, and if I hit the right spot, it happens. But I'm clearly learning something, because I'm finding layers I didn't know existed before.

I feel like I'm just writing philosophy, instead of actually describing what happened in my practice. Oh well.

I've been going to a couple meditation groups as well. However, no one seems to want to talk about this kind of thing. They would rather discuss their relationships and jobs. Then, I am left feeling like a weirdo (or perhaps a show-off) if I mention anything. There's my self-concept causing misery again (isn't meditation supposed to *increase* compassion...?)

I'm noticing that a new perspective is starting to emerge once in a while. I'm not sure if it's "brand-new" exactly, but I've never seen it as a distinct perspective before, or given it a label.

Perspective 1 (the old perspective):
- I am glued somewhere behind my eyes
- I control the body
- Sensations in the head are closer to me, and sensations elsewhere in the body are farther away. Thoughts and feelings are closest of all.
- Sensations happen to me
- Concentration requires physical effort

Perspective 2 (the new perspective):
- I'm not glued anywhere in particular. I can even leave the body.
- The body moves by itself
- Sensations feel close if I happen to be near them. Thoughts and feelings seem like part of the body, and aren't any closer to me than other sensations are.
- Sensations happen to the body, not to me, but I can perceive them even more clearly than in Perspective 1.
- Concentration is less predictable, but requires no effort (because effort is something the body does)

Perspective 2 seems completely superior to Perspective 1 in every way. I feel more detached from my body, but I am also able to experience the body even more fully, so I don't see the disadvantage. I don't feel as stuck, as heavy, and as responsible for making sure the body does what it's supposed to do.

I've been flipping back and forth between these two perspectives over the past couple days. Most of my time is spent in Perspective 1, but sometimes I flip over spontaneously, and sometimes with some effort. I believe what triggered it was the decision to stop forcing my attention so much (itself prompted by the realization of how much frustration and physical discomfort that causes). Not sure exactly how to explain it. This ground is certainly not new intellectually, but this experience is a bit more tangible somehow.

---

Meditation last night was a little freaky. I swear I heard a creak in the floor next to me and had a vision of a murderer behind me. It took all of my strength not to open my eyes and look. I got chills through my body several times. I was meditating as the sun was setting, and as the darkness became apparent, I was really creeped out. There was no light in my vision, just really profound blackness. It did not help that I was home alone last night. I noticed wanting to do things that would reassure myself, but I thought "This is just what the body does when it's afraid. It's fine to experience it." Later that night, as I lay in bed, I heard extremely realistic sounds which I am certain were only inside my head, and started imagining really scary things.

---

No fear this morning. Concentration was all over the place. I have not been able to complete a body scan for a couple days now. I can barely stay with the breath. This doesn't bother me. I have a better sense of how fragile concentration is. My intuition tells me that I will need to go back to the beginning and learn anew how to concentrate on the breath, and how to scan the body, now that I have released some of this weight. I have very little desire to move, and the body mostly disappears. I see a great deal of light. Towards the end, there were waves of pleasure running through my body.

I am thinking about the recent Culadasa podcast, where he talks about "dullness". I am a bit worried that perhaps I am cultivating dullness now. Meditation has always been so difficult, and then it became easy (but I could concentrate even better...I felt like a highly-disciplined soldier...I could just "force" it, and it would work). Now, I seem to have slipped into a point where I just don't freaking care about the concentration as much as I did in the past, because I am more interested in exploring the nature of sensation itself. Is this somehow hedonistic or avoidant?

If I detach my "self" from my "body" too much, I go into this weird place where thoughts become very fragmented. It is like when I'm starting to wake up or fall asleep, perhaps like sleep paralysis. I see things and hear sounds, but nothing is really connected.

If I keep letting go, I feel like I fall asleep for an instant, and get startled by that and wake up. Or, maybe I'm not really falling asleep, but just going far enough that I get startled. I'm not sure exactly how to deal with this, because I feel that the desire to avoid this makes it harder for me to let go. Do I actually need to let go more? I feel like there should be a way to somehow maintain consciousness but also let go of the body entirely. What is going on here? Am I falling asleep, or am I just dissolving enough to the point where my mind scrambles to put itself back together?

Sounds of my girlfriend making breakfast in the other room really annoyed me. Every time I would get deeper into meditation, I would hear something, and it would startle me. I think the issue is that my field of awareness is not broad enough. Those moments are a good time to realize that.

I just cannot complete a body scan. I completely lose my place and get lost in thought. I'm not sure if I should deliberately work on this, or just spend more time right now focusing on the breath. I seem to have no problem getting to the place where I can feel subtle sensations all around the body, and where body parts start disappearing, and where I see light, by trying to focus only on the breath. This previously required scanning the body. But you know, I also notice myself investigating other sensations too, even if I'm not "intending to".

---

I had sorta forgotten that when I was 13, I became interested in astral projection, read a book on the subject, and practiced the exercises quite a bit. I had one moment where I was lying on my bed and suddenly felt myself shoot up out of my body. It really surprised me, and I opened my eyes, and said to myself, "well, at least I know this stuff is real now!" I could never replicate that experience, and came to believe that had probably just fallen asleep and dreamed it. I think I might be rediscovering some of this territory.

---

As I was writing this, I closed my eyes and tried moving my consciousness out of my body and over to the air purifier. I think the startle responses can guide me a little bit. When I get startled, I think it means I was focused too much on one thing. The head and the chest need to be integrated. They are not separate things. As long as I insist on making them separate, sensations in one are going to make me freak out if they don't comport with the sensations in the other. This applies broadly.

I don't know how to sit comfortably. I think that kneeling might be bad for my knees. Maybe it's possible to fix this with more flexibility in my legs, but it would be a process. There is no other position that is comfortable, either. I can feel subtle twisting in my knees no matter how I sit. I don't know if it's really harmful or if I'm just being paranoid about it.

So, halfway through my session this morning I decided to try standing. That actually seemed to go OK for maybe 10 minutes until I started to have what I think was a vasovagal reaction. I felt nauseous and began sweating. So, I lay down on the floor for the rest of the time (where I could then obsess over my neck and back).

I did have some good realization before my knees started bothering me, though. I was just noticing something about how much pressure I put on myself to meditate correctly, and how difficult it is to follow instructions, and bad it feels when I realize I'm not following instructions, and how none of that has to interfere with my focus on the breath. I'm repeating myself, because I've said this kind of thing many times before, but somehow I keep rediscovering it on deeper and deeper levels almost everyday.

Sometimes I have the sense that I'm not actually discovering anything new, but just going over the same ground. Maybe the illusion is that the discovery I made yesterday should still be active today, just because I remember having made it.

Whatever stage I'm in now is certainly weird.

The past week or so has been fairly difficult. It's like I've realized that there's actually a fair amount of concentration and perception that can be attained through force, but if I actually want to expose myself to the experience of being me, it's quite unpleasant. There's a ton of noise in my head that just isn't going away, large amounts of shame, restlessness, panic, etc. Maybe I'm exaggerating... who knows.

I think a lot of my current worries about posture are due to the fact that I have a retreat coming up in 4 weeks and I feel pressure to find a sustainable seated posture before then.

Found more ways to let go today. "Eye of the Tiger" started playing in my mind again. I stopped resisting. I started moving to the beat.

I noticed my attempts to adjust my posture, to get more comfortable and prevent injury. I just let myself do them.

I noticed the urgency I felt to take this seriously. Whatever. The breath will still be here when I'm ready for it.

Things got really noisy (in terms of thoughts, music, movements, flickering of my attention back and forth, physical sensations...sometimes almost dream-like thoughts where I really feel like I'm having an actual experience). I don't think I have to do anything about any of this.

I almost started laughing at one point, because it felt like such a release. Then, I started worrying that I was getting attached to feelings of release. So sue me...

I think the Goenka technique is pretty brilliant, actually. Nonetheless, with an ADHD brain like mine, it is difficult to master. So, I make my own modifications to it.

Teachers freak out when I say stuff like this. I can understand where they are coming from, but I also think they are not used to dealing with students like me. They are used to students who will take what they say literally, without trying to understand the rationale behind it, and thus feel responsible for keeping the student on track. They are used to students who, when faced with discouraging thoughts, will make a big deal out of it and possibly quit. I am accustomed to looking at my discouraging thoughts, and I don't have a problem experiencing them without trying to eliminate them.

I probably come off as arrogant by writing this. I just don't know how else to say it.

---

I had greater concentration this morning. I was able to complete several body scans without getting distracted. My body did not dissolve as much as it often does. Maybe it started to towards the end.

What does "body dissolving" even mean? Sometimes I literally feel like my body is dissolving. Sometimes I'm just not thinking about the body. Sometimes I examine a body part and find that it's just not a solid entity, but I never noticed it disappearing; I just see that it's not quite connected.

I had a strong sense yesterday that I could see chains of thoughts. I would notice something, and then it would trigger a thought, and then that would trigger another thought, etc. Like a rock skipping over a pond. I can feel the process of myself getting distracted and lost in thought. It doesn't just happen suddenly.

I have a lot of skepticism about the stages of insight. What are these stages all about? How can you be in one particular stage over the course of days or weeks or years? Are they not moment-to-moment experiences? If I don't have a flexible body, and I try meditating starting in an uncomfortable position, I'm not going to be in any of the "pleasant" stages, regardless of how well my meditation is going looking at the week as a whole.

What I'm writing may be a bit scattered. I just wanted to get my thoughts out. Here is what I have been experimenting with in terms of vipassana technique:

For each body part:
- Do I feel sensation here?
- If yes, move on to the next one.
- If no, there are three options:
a) keep asking the question until something appears or until a short period of time has passed
b) understand that any sensation I am currently feeling anywhere is the sensation in this body part, so move on when I notice anything
c) when something else appears, acknowledge it and continue trying to observe sensation in the current body part

I've been experimenting with all three of these. Not sure how different they are from each other.

I've been experimenting with the following ways of scanning the body:

1. Moving my attention fluidly from top to bottom.
2. One large part at a time (top of head, face, neck, torso, back, arms, etc.)
3. One small part at a time (very top of my head, front part of the top, forehead, eyes, etc)
4. Moving through the whole body in one breath.

Not sure if I should be more systematic, or keep experimenting like this. I'm not really seeing the disadvantage of experimenting.

---

I've also been experimenting with sitting in the Burmese position. I am not really flexible enough for this to be comfortable. I got the cushion recommended by Nicolas G. I think it is still hard to sit high enough. I got into a comfortable, stable position once, and even took a picture of it, but I can't seem to find it again. I am just going to keep experimenting. It's hard to meditate when I can't sit comfortably, so you could just say I should use a chair, but a) my feet start to fall asleep after an hour of sitting in a chair, and my back gets tired, and b) I think it's worth spending the time trying to figure this out, especially in the 3 weeks I have before my retreat. I can meditate while I am adjusting my posture, too.

---

I've noticed a progression of mental states. I'm not claiming these correspond exactly to stages of insight, but it is a progression I have noticed several times. I might need to perceive more nuance.

1. Trying to sit comfortably. Trying to get straight in my head about how I'm going to do the meditation today.
2. Realize that all I need to do is observe physical sensation.
3. Everything feels solid, but whenever I spend more than a moment looking at something, I can perceive subtle vibration in it.
4. I see faint or bright white light. Body parts begin to dissolve. Cool sensations on my skin, entire body buzzing, have a sense that some things are solid, but they don't stay solid when I actually bring my attention to them
5. Shivers occasionally through my body, horrifying images, sense of danger. Have a sense that I really *want* to experience negative things, because it makes me feel more alive.
6. Visual field suddenly stops being pleasant. Patterns appear chaotic and *very close to me*. Have the sense that it is really dangerous for me to let myself get absorbed into them. I lose the sense of anything specific that is threatening me...it's all very vague.

Going from 1 to 2 to 3 is very easy if I am seated comfortably, difficult if I am tired or worried about my knees or whatever. Going from 3 to 4 seems to be just a matter of staying in 3 for long enough. 4 to 5 is less predictable...it *seems* to require letting go of the vague pleasantness of 4, and deliberately broadening my attention to include *everything*.

The transition from 5 to 6 happened only twice, during one sit a couple days ago. It happened once, I noticed it, and then I went back to 5. I decided to try for 6 again, and was successful, so that's why I'm writing about it. Going from 5 to 6 seems to require letting go of the fun of 5, and observing that there is an observer separate from the one who is observing the sensations of 5.

Most of the time, when I am seated comfortably, I end up in stage 4 and stay there for the rest of the time.

This is a broad description of my experience. There are also progressions I have noticed relating to:
- speed of vibrations
- visual field
- width of attention
- stability of attention
- contents of my mind
- sense of being "here"
- sense of being "awake, conscious"

I've been meditating in a chair over the past couple days. Maybe I'll get used to it.

There seem to be 3 modes I can be in regarding concentration:

1. Able to keep my attention in one place with no real distractions coming up.
2. Distractions arise, but I can pretty easily notice them and still keep my attention where I want it.
3. Distractions arise, and they pull me away, and I can't seem to remember what to do about them, and I get completely lost.

I don't know what causes one or the other. Today was mostly in mode 2. I feel in control when this happens. It seems easy.

---

My meditation today was simply watching the breath at the nostrils. I'm not really sure why this is not a complete vipassana technique. The breath does not solidify when I do this. I go deeper and deeper, noticing more and more aspects of it. As I do this, distractions arise, and they begin to de-solidify as well, as I bring my attention back to the breath. Everything is constantly changing. I'm not really sure how I can stare at a single object for any length of time without this happening. So, why is anything else needed? Can't you develop equanimity simply by watching the breath?

Any other vipassana technique (including the Goenka technique) has a certain amount of stress to it, because it requires remembering what "instructions" I'm trying to follow. I am wondering if my attraction to simple investigation of the breath is representative of some avoidance on my part, which may be preventing me from going further.

So, I could spend more time with the Goenka technique, exploring that discomfort, but I know it will cause me to get lost in thought and worry. Is it worth deliberately exposing myself to that, or should I stay in a place where I know I can observe a greater amount of physical sensation?

I am pretty sure I witnessed the transition from stage 5 to 6 that I mentioned in a previous post. However, there were no terrifying images in stage 5. I felt myself go from the warm pleasant feeling of stage 4, to the more "real", disconcerting feelings of stage 5. Then, at some point, my visual field got really close to me. It's hard to describe all of this. I will just explore it more, and hopefully the lines will become clearer.

---

My biggest doubt seems to be related to the fact that what I feel "works" for me is not the same as the way teachers and books describe it. Am I limiting myself by doing it my own way, or is this just a difference of language?

I have the feeling that if I could track what stages I am in better, I could know how to modify my technique to progress at any given moment. I have recognized many times that certain things seem to work at certain times and not at others. It's all very confusing, though. I'm going through the same circles over and over.

I wish I could track the order in which events occur during a session. In an attempt at trying, I noticed the following things this morning, in roughly the following order:

Tried to find comfortable position
Tried to allow breathing to govern my posture
Stressed out that I couldn't concentrate
Decided to focus on breath despite whatever was going on
Started trying to figure out why I couldn't see that earlier
Felt a lot of pressure to be still, conflict between that and the knowledge that I could focus on breath even while moving
Noticed how breath can dissolve other things

Sometimes I think about running an audio recorder while I meditate, and calling out events as they happen, so I can analyze later.

---

I had the sense a few days ago that I had this concentration thing figured out. Here are my thoughts:

There are two types of effort:

Effort 1: the effort of trying to focus on something
Effort 2: the effort of trying to take the attention away from something

I think Effort 1 is the one that needs to be exercised. Effort 2 completely gets in the way.

When the mind wanders, dial up Effort 1 and dial down Effort 2.

The object is to have a steady stream of Effort 1, a constant pressure.

The trap is to think that when the mind wanders, you should dial up both, but that doesn't work.

When there is too much noise in your head to really have a steady sense of the breath, dial up Effort 1. Really push. This is not about letting go. It's about digging in.

If you think there's only one kind of effort, it will only work half the time.

Now, I think there's another way of looking at it, which is that Effort 2 is really of the same substance as Effort 1, and that when you try to take your mind off of something, it is equivalent to trying to put it on "not that thing." So, then you have a conflict between on "breath" and on "not the distraction". So, you are really splitting your attention. Better to keep it entirely on the breath

---

After I realized this, concentration was easier for a while. I seem to have lost touch with it a bit, though, and I'm not sure why. I wonder if this way of looking at it only works when I'm in a certain stage. Or, maybe it's still working, and I'm just taking it for granted. Oh well.

I tried a little bit of an experiment this morning. I said, "what would happen if I just try to power through everything with intense, exclusive focus on the breath, even after the point where it feels impossible?"

This led to interesting results. First, it is more possible than I thought it was. That doesn't mean it was always possible, just that it's possible right now. I think there is no sense in evaluating success based on what percentage of time is spent observing the breath. If the attention keeps returning, even if it takes 30 minutes, it's still a success, because it's a first approximation. The mind seems to consist of nothing more than cycles. There's no real continuity.

At one point, the distractions became so intensely uncomfortable. A few processes were quite apparent:
- The sense of failure
- The sense of frustration
- The checking to make sure that I was *really* aware of the breath
- The sense of having the attention glued to the breath
- The feeling of apprehension at the idea of letting go of checking

I could feel these in my body (I suspect that if I had tried this type of manipulation back when I could not feel these types of sensations, things would not have gone so well).

So, I decided to try letting go of the checking, and just glue my attention to the breath, trusting that it will work. Is this any different from "let the attention wander to wherever it wants to go, and just wait for it to return to the breath" or "forget about the breath completely and just observe"? Not sure. But, I also think it may be a good idea to try experimenting with all of these different permutations, because they do all represent different threads in my mind, anyway, and it may be useful to investigate all of them.

This seemed to lead to greater awareness of some things:

- I had a song stuck in my head, and I could see it clearly: the cycles of attention, the sensations in my body, the way it simplified and disappeared entirely as I became aware of these processes.

- I felt like I had a very great sensitivity to exactly where every subtle emotion was located in my body. Every time I felt like I was doing it wrong, or afraid that I was straining my back, or happy that I was feeling peace, it was pretty easy to feel the corresponding physical sensations.

I have a sense at this point that there is no real way for me to do any of this wrong.

I just want to make note of a phenomenon that I have observed many times:

I believe this is when I transition from DN to EQ. Things are a bit hectic, and then seem to calm down. Then, there is a bright flickering light, a sense of anticipation, and a feeling like someone just opened a huge window to give me a panoramic view of the whole landscape. It's always very disconcerting, because what leads up to it is a lot of work on letting go of things, and then when it happens, I feel an intense need to make sure it goes well, which then makes me feel I have just failed completely at letting go... As the meditation continues, I generally pass through several more of those transitions, and I notice that I start craving them, but I guess that's just more stuff to watch.

Morning of 8/30 (Didn't feel like writing in complete paragraphs):

Maddening

Right leg falling asleep
Shifting positions

Shifting is an opportunity to watch breath

Breath is used to dissolve objects

Stick with whatever comes up
Try to see the breath through it

Oscillations
Was trying to get rid of them
Then tried sticking with them

Had the sense that if I just had enough time, I could get somewhere

Irritation when bells go off

Skipped metta
Feels like a distraction from vipassana

Can one get enlightened through metta?

Calmness and peace in visual field towards the end

Alternating between:
- I need more peace so that I can deal with individual oscillations
- it doesn't really matter how much is going on, because what I'm really training myself to do is dis-identify from it.

The moment of realizing that the attention is not on the breath needs to be rewarding.
- let myself get distracted
- let myself return to physical sensation whenever it happens
This is all relatively pleasant stuff

Is this different from encouraging psychological breakdown? What's the alternative?

- try to keep things calm

What leads to real breakdowns?

Insight from the other night:
- it is fine to observe any behavior of mine
- it is all conditioned
- it is all loops and cycles
- even if it feels like a one-off thing, it is still a cycle
- so, absolutely anything I observe is getting my foot in the door

There are patches of stuff around my body.
They can be observed as large areas simultaneously
They need to be unified

The object is to find blind spots where the breath isn't being perceived. These are good things to find, and should be rewarded. If I feel stressed when it happens, that is the result of some other weird conditioning, and it should be observed as any other sensation.

Solid objects:
- don't try to break them down
- instead, let the attention stick to them, and also simultaneously perceive the quality of vibrating objects
- if the solid objects break down on their own, great, and if not, no big deal, because the attention remains tuned to subtle sensation
- it's not the strategy of "breaking down object" that is the problem, but rather the way it causes me to rapidly shift gears.

Anxiety about not being able to remember exactly what happened during the session
While sitting, I kept thinking about how I would report
Impossible to separate my insights from my experiences from my interpretations and evaluations
I think I'll just write whatever and see what happens

Last night was horrible. It was just complete hell with no break. Probably because I sat with my right leg in front of the left (I've been alternating every day because I want to make my hip flexibility more symmetrical).

---

This morning was probably the easiest Re-observation yet. After last night, I spent some time reading the sections on Re-observation and Equanimity in MCTB2. This gave me some inspiration.

A few thoughts as a result:

- There's no need to be a hero, and try to sit with absolutely every single vibration. Aim for the ones that are fast and irritating.
- The ones around the edge of the object, and the ones "here" as opposed to "there", are particularly interesting.
- The slow and irritating ones should not be sat with. I think they are the ones that lead to the truly awful experiences.

I don't know how to put this into words, exactly, but I have for a while been struggling with what to do with the immense mental and physical pain that occurs here. Up until now, my only two options have been:

1. Sit with it and observe it
2. Let it tell me what to do, and observe that

I don't think either of these is wrong. My observations lately have been that both are fine in that they both lead to greater awareness. But, Option 1 has the downside that it leads to discouragement over time. Option 2 leads to doubt. There is a third option, though:

3. Notice how much it hurts. Notice how much that sucks. Notice how much more it hurts than other parts of my body do.

This seems to change things in a subtle way, that lead much faster to EQ without compounding problems.

A lot of these slow painful vibrations can be eliminated by a simple shift in posture, actually. It is incredible to realize how that feeling of complete hopelessness toward life seems to be nothing more than a twisted feeling in my abdomen resulting from constricted breathing. So many of the fast irritating vibrations are just the result of my reactions to that one sensation. However, it is impossible to realize this while following the slow vibrations, since they do crazy things to my attention. It is thus necessary to observe something faster, from a more stable place. That is my current interpretation, anyway.

---

I wonder if DN and EQ are basically presenting me with the same problem: how to observe what is without adding to it.

In EQ, I noticed myself trying hard to label exactly what I just experienced. I think this isn't necessary. It's enough to simply observe it. Words are not needed here. Understanding is not needed. It's all there, right in front of me.

It's just really irritating when the bell goes off and I'm still working! (Ha...I remember a time when I was so happy to hear that sound.)

For the last couple days, the predominant feeling in meditation has been that my attention is being pulled constantly from one spot to another. This is no longer a painful experience. I feel sensations of pressure and tingling throughout my body that seem to correspond with the moving attention.

My mind is interested in questions (and the sensations provoked by them) such as:
- How do I know I'm here and not there?
- How many different things are going on right now?
- How do I know they are different things?

It seems to have been very fruitful (although not fruition-producing...) to say "I resolve to have a fruition" at the beginning of my sit, and then just sit back and watch things unfold. It seems to relieve me of any responsibility to do anything except watch.

I have sensations of peace, and at times apprehension. 

I find it interesting and easy to examine my senses one at a time and see what they are experiencing.

My vision often has a warm glow. Things seem more symmetrical and closer to me.

There is a knot of tension in my head that moves around a bit, seeming to correspond to my attention. There is a knot of tension in my abdomen that seems to correspond to "emotions". 

I have much more sensation in the back of my head, neck, and back.

Over the past couple days, I have had the feeling of being pulled into meditation a few times, just in my daily life. It's like little things that come up, movements others make, etc., trigger waves of sensation in my body, and I am fascinated by observing those sensations. 

Here's a fear that has come up many times: Suppose I do enough practice, and eventually all of this novelty of hyper-awareness wears off, am I just going to go back to feeling like I did before I ever started meditating, with the sense that I am not aware of anything at all? Maybe it's better to prolong this excitement as much as possible...

I believe this fear is holding me back to some degree (and I have the sense that if I wanted to, I could just investigate all of the sensations around all of the complex emotions here, but I don't want to, because I don't want it to change me....)

This morning:

Pulsating waves of blackness in my vision

Feeling of excitement

Sense that there were many thousands of things going on, I couldn't remember them all, but it felt like I was observing them.

A lot of agitation for the first half hour.

Intense pain in my legs and hips.
Noticed that if I slowed down and zoomed in with my mind, I could sit with it.
Reality feels very thick
The thinness is what seems to cause suffering

---

Last night, had the sense that attention either contains "something" or "nothing", and either way, it's basically the same thing. Rejection of this fact is what causes frustration with attention. If there is "something", then you can observe that something, and if there's nothing, then you are free to observe whatever is NOT in attention.

Last night was hell, though. It felt like I unlocked another level of awareness (I'm telling you, zooming in hard on the nostril area has a tendency to do this), and a ton more stuff came to the surface.

Part of me reacts with absolute existential dread at this. But part of me says "been there, done that" and just doesn't take it too seriously. It's just a change in the atmosphere.

Spent a long time trying to simply observe sensation. Wanted it to go away so badly. Tried to feel that wanting. It's hard when the attention is "empty". It makes things feel really hopeless. But I think it eventually worked itself out.

The last couple days have been very difficult. I think there was some new territory this morning, however.

Had a sense that there are "big pains" and "little pains".

The big pains are the ones that cause me to worry that I am injuring myself. They generate streams of thoughts. The sensations can be investigated, around the edges. Don't try to attack them all at once.

The little pains are the maddening ones, because they come and go before I can do anything about them. They seem to correspond to tiny thoughts. I think nothing can be done about these at all. Just investigate sensation in general, and hope that they work themselves out, I guess?

For the first time today, I think I really had a clear sense that I was actually seeing the "end of phenomena". At some point, I became aware of a thought, and saw that it was about to end. I then saw that as the thought vanished, sensation took its place. I saw that I could orient my mind towards this process, and from that point on, I felt like I could clear see sensations arise, thoughts arise, thoughts pass away, sensations pass away, in that order. I was even able to apply this manner of investigation to this thought process itself. This was very freeing.

I think the trick is not to argue with thoughts, and not to "put up" with sensations, and not to manipulate the attention in any way. The trick is only to get to the point where thoughts and sensations can be perceived individually, rather than feeling like thoughts trigger more thoughts.

I feel like I understand why it's called "awakening". There is definitely a sense of waking up from a dream. But is there an end to this? Am I just going to keep waking up more and more and more? Will I ever feel awake? (Did I feel this once before?)

The mind is like a TV, switching rapidly between channels (sometimes once every few seconds, sometimes once every 10 minutes, sometimes several times per second). Each channel is its own unique reality, with its own rules. The goal seems to be to blend them all into one reality. Should this be done by:

1. Feeling the dissonances between the different channels, trying to forge a new channel that resolves those dissonances?
2. Resolving the dissonances within each individual channel, and worry about unification later? If the mind is switching slowly, this seems like probably the better strategy, but maybe it works even in the faster cases.

I don't think I have fully mastered the transition from Re-observation to Equanimity. I think that will be the key to the whole thing. I have a list of techniques that seemed miraculous when I discovered them, but for some weird reason I always find myself in situations where they don't seem to work.

I feel like I have so much psychological garbage that I've accumulated over the years. It is very painful trying to work through it. Meditation seems to be doing the trick, however. But it's slow and makes me hate the world.

This is all speculation, but is it not worth capturing? I can just list more physical sensations that I experienced, but will that give any clear sense of what's going on? It might help me, though.

In no particular order:

Tingling sensations inside my mouth and throat. The clarity of these is a bit new.
Pressure in head
Throbbing and tingling in face
Burning in hips
Pains have fluctuating shapes, hard to describe
Center of chest has a sensitive knot that corresponds with most negative emotions

Waves of blackness
Pleasant glow
Steady vibration at perhaps 5 Hz (seem to be developing an aversion to this)
Areas of whiteness in my vision, for brief moments

Warm feelings on face after pleasant thoughts disappear
Thoughts stick around for several seconds. I don't always have the sense that they are vibrating like sensations do. But they aren't solid.

Things felt very difficult this morning. Couldn't find a comfortable posture.

Noticed a few times:

• Mind going in and out of trance.
• Inability to focus on my intended object, and the resulting struggle.
• Strong sensation of "my attention is empty, blank" (hard to describe what this felt like, but it was palpable).
• Elaborate chains of cause and effect throughout my body and attention.
• Felt a lack of control and completely scattered attention, but simultaneously felt that mindfulness was not a problem.

This is all very encouraging, even though this sit was highly unpleasant. Sitting for an hour in misery is not bothering me the way it used to. It feels like it's actually the gaps in my experience that cause the real suffering, and the more aware I am, even of pain, the more I am able to find a way to be with it.

This desire to achieve a fruition is making me absolutely insane. It's a very slow, creeping form of insanity. More like a restlessness at the center of my being, which I keep bumping into every time I feel like I'm getting close. There were 3 hours of meditation yesterday, one hour spontaneously happening while sitting in the parking lot in my car after having the sudden thought that "I think I know how to do this". That has happened a few times recently.

5 months ago, I had no idea that enlightenment was a "real thing", and thus was not working towards any sort of goal. Was that a better situation? I don't think so.

I feel like I'm trying to build a car while driving it. I know how to focus on an object, and how to pick it apart into little pieces. I know how to let my attention wander freely and observe connections between things. I know how to see when I'm experiencing the five hindrances. There are no thoughts or emotions I am unwilling to sit with while meditating. I think that what I really need to do is get out of the way and trust that all of that stuff will work when it needs to.

So, that's what I did this morning. I sat down, pointed my attention at my nostrils, and just watched what happened for an hour.

It's really funny how all of the same stuff happens. I still obsess over my posture, still make the same adjustments, still feel the same vibrations and other sensations, still see the same things, still have the same thoughts about how I'm doing it wrong. Something is obviously different, though, because I don't have the same sense of being responsible for making sure it all happens.

Thanks for the encouragement, guys!

I feel like in some sense, this insight has set me back. There has been a lot of pain and discomfort in my last two sits. It doesn't bother me as much, because I have a diminished sense of being involved in the whole thing. I can see my mind trying to work on the problem. I can see when strategies are working and when they aren't. Since "I" am not part of the process, it is up to "my mind" to find the right solutions, and sometimes I'm just sitting there marveling at how long it's taking. I think maybe this kind of cycle has to repeat over and over, until I finally shed enough weight to make it through. Not really sure. I keep going through the same terrority, but it's different every time. 

(Example: At the core of pain is that tiny tiny knot in the center of my body that seems to represent "I don't like this". I think maybe the shift into Equanimity happens when I can find that knot. Normally, I have gone looking for it myself, but now I'm not doing that. However, my mind did eventually stumble upon it this morning towards the end of my sit. Presumably, this is how it happened the first time I found it, since I certainly wasn't looking for it then...)

Here's where I am now. Maybe this stuff will only make sense to me:

The sensations are exactly where they are. There is no way to bring them closer. There is no need to chase them down. The chasing is what causes the misery. This requires letting go of the "certainty" that comes from really seeing things clearly.

The pain in my leg is in my leg, but the aversion to the pain is not in my leg. The urge to change my posture is not in my leg. If I think this is all in the leg, then I will search the leg for those sensations, and I will be thrown off balance.

Searching itself causes pain. It is in the center of my head. All mental activity seems to cause pain in this spot. It is very subtle, but it's there. When I keep my attention in this spot, interesting things happen.

Awareness needs to be as close to the self as possible. There is no sense in trying to figure out the whole universe from a distance. The further out I get, the further away I am getting from real reality, into a world that is constructed by the process of searching itself.

All of this, even though it seems obvious when I think about it, is exactly contrary to everyday intuition. So, it seems to take some coaxing for this perspective to emerge, each time I sit.

I skimmed the section on the Seven Factors of Awakening in MCTB2. I think I need to work a bit on rapture and tranquility, perhaps.

I sat this morning, really trying to enjoy every single experience. It's probably possible, with practice. There is a lot more enjoyment to be found in the pain than I normally think there is.

Meditation for me these days seems to alternate between 1) extremely irritating, like I am barely holding on and trying desperately to figure out what I am doing wrong, in order to get the pain to go away so I can get on with the real work, and 2) being in a state of pleasant bliss, but with an undercurrent of impatience and urgency.

I'm repeating myself, but I'll say again: I think I can work more on letting go of the mindful investigation. My mind seems to do it automatically at this point, anyway. There is part of me that is extremely reluctant to do this, because I don't want to waste my time and daydream.

I feel like I have all the tools necessary, but it's just a matter of finding the right balance. I almost wish I had a teacher who could just tell me what to do at this point.

(Added: It's like, I don't need to go looking for pain. The pain is already there. The problem is not that I'm not aware of my experience, but rather that I am trying really hard to change that experience. I can see this happening. If the experience is stabilized in front of me, I naturally start investigating it. But sometimes I just think, "this can't be the one I'm looking for...I can't get enlightened unless I am in a more comfortable posture, or unless there is fluttering in my head, or unless there is a bright glow in my field of vision, or unless my back is straight, or unless I understand how that sick feeling in my stomach is connected to my frustration, or whatever. So, I try to change those things. I think if I work on enjoying them more instead, my natural investigation powers might then have a chance to work on them.)

I was reading through Mahasi's "Practical Insight Meditation", and was struck by the following:

"One must recognize the fact that cherishing an inclination towards such phenomena, like a brilliant light, etc., and being attached to them, is a wrong attitude. The correct response that is in conformity with the path of Insight is to notice these objects mindfully and with detachment until they disappear."

Specifically, the part about "until they disappear"...

I think that there has been a bias in my meditation toward investigating vibrating objects and ignoring solid objects. Whenever I encounter something solid, I do recognize it, but I tend to immediately try to get my attention off of it, in order to comprehend "more things". Perhaps this is why I feel like I am always jumping randomly around through the ñanas. I think this is unneccessary. It is possible to investigate both solid and vibrating objects simultaneously, as I have been proving to myself last night and this morning. This might be a game-changer.

When there was a glowing light, I noted "glowing" every couple seconds or so. And in between notings, I observed tons of other vibrations and a few other solid objects. And eventually the glowing did go away (and I was surprised to have a more evident knowing of its disappearance). This happened several times, and seemed to open up a few things. Last night, there were rather uncomfortable, but freeing, jolts of energy. I had trouble sleeping.

In any case, it's something new to add to my toolkit, so I will continue to investigate it.

Here's my latest stab at the Grand Unified Theory of Meditation.

There are two separate things that need to be practiced:

1. How to investigate the field of sensations.
2. How to let objects come and go in the field of sensations.

They need to be kept apart somehow, I think.

When a solid object appears, it should be investigated.
When that object starts to break apart, the breaking apart should be investigated.
When the objects disappears, rather than clinging to it and trying to make it reappear, the disappearance needs to be investigated.
When the object is gone and there is a feeling of loss or instability left in its place, those feelings need to be investigated (because they are new solid objects which have arisen).

When I'm just sitting, and don't have anything to investigate, don't try to go looking for something. Always investigate whatever is right there. The feeling of not having anything to investigate is a solid object.
When the mind wanders and then returns, don't try to "get back on task". The feeling of urgency is a solid object.
When the mind is agitated because it's too hard to get a handle on what's going on, don't try to get a handle on it.

This is all obvious, of course. Why does it feel like I keep rediscovering it?

So yeah, you need to "be mindful", and "let things happen", and "let things go". I think the misery happens when you see these as being contradictory, somehow. Or, when you think that only one of them is important, and prevent the others from happening.

This morning, it was rather interesting watching my failures to let things come and go. I try very hard to stabilize the resolution of my attention. There's no sense in this. Sometimes the attention is filled with solid objects, sometimes vibrating objects, sometimes streams of indiscriminate sensations, sometimes strong emotions, sometimes not much in particular, and sometimes transitions between these. It's about letting things be as they are. Not trying to recreate the past, or anticipate the future. Just like whatever they print on a Thich Nhat Hanh calendar.

I feel like investigation is something that is done to the sensory field, not to objects. It seems like when I try to do it to objects, that's when I get stuck.

What's the difference between getting attached to an object (lost in a train of thought), and investigating that object? It's not the level of absorption. I think it's only question of whether or not I am investigating the sensory field at the same time as I'm being absorbed. It's tricky, because that train of thought can lead to other trains of thought, making me think I'm getting attached or losing focus. But I think that's the point. As long as the "investigation switch" is in the ON position, there's no issue.

I sat motionless for an hour, despite pain and numbness in my left leg. Not sure if that's safe, but I really wanted to test things out. I noticed those sensations, urges to move, thoughts of horrible consequences, fear, etc. Upon investigation, I saw chains of sensation leading through my body to my lips, where it melted away. It feels almost as if the pain in the leg is really the consequence of conditioning that has taught me not to move my lips. I think this is what "self-compassion" entails: following the pain until you can find that spot where you can simply hold it gently. Maybe an hour is too extreme (or maybe it will become easier with practice), but I think periods of strict motionlessness might be a good idea.

The front of the face gradually seemed to open up. My consciousness seemed to occupy more volume inside my head, rather than a single point. This sort of thing changes a lot. Then, I noticed that I was getting attached to trying to create sensation in my lips. No big deal.

What has been amazing over the past few days is the realization that (and you would think this should be obvious) I am already aware of the sensations I am experiencing. When I am feeling impatient, I don't need to ask "what does impatience feel like?" I already know the answer. It feels like *whatever is happening right now*. When I'm lying in bed and can't sleep, I don't need to wonder where the agitation is. The agitation is in the act of knowing that I am agitated. It is both frustrating and fascinating to watch myself struggle to look for more. I think this will open up doors as time goes on.

(Question of the day: is the process of awakening simply the process of disentangling eye movement from thinking?)

I have been playing around with the Goenka body scan again. I think it works well when I avoid getting attached to the contents of my attention. If I intend to focus on the top of my head, and nothing appears, I just stay with the experience, whatever it is. Then, I move onto another part. Sometimes, I deliberately look for blank areas.

Deliberately looking for blank areas seems to work well no matter what kind of meditation I'm doing. That feeling of blankness tempts me to freak out about my mind-wandering, but I think that's something I need to explore.

When I experience anything and don't seem to have a good handle on what it is, I am finding it helpful to just move slower. Move my body slower, move my attention slower, everything. This seems to make it easier to tune into whatever is motivating the movement in the first place.

The moments where I "wake up" from thoughts are extremely important, I think. They need to be explored and appreciated as much as possible. There is a tendency to be a little disturbed in those moments, either because I feel like I let my mind wander, or because it feels like my meditation was just interrupted. They need to be understood as they are, without trying to shape them into something I would like them to be.

It seems extremely productive to pay attention to the sensations of attention itself.

Also trying to explore any sense of wanting to feel "grounded", and any discomfort at being "ungrounded". 

Still feels like I am alternating between Dark Night and Equanimity every few days. Or, maybe I'm just misdiagnosing myself altogether.

My sits have been filled with a great deal of equanimity for the past week or so, which is perhaps a new record. I think I'm on to something here.

This morning, I spent a lot of time observing sensations of attention. When my mind wandered, I observed what it felt like to:

- be in the wandered state
- let the attention slip away from the nostrils and to whatever it wanted to wander to
- bring the attention back to the nostrils

I was able to track these sensations over large parts of my body, often feeling them as movements inside my head, and occasionally as tensions within a tiny point in the middle of my head.

I was motionless for the whole hour, and yet it was remarkable how much movement I felt in the middle of my head. I suspect that this movement is going on constantly throughout my day, but I normally don't notice it, because my body is moving so much.

(is this just movement of the eyes...?)

Towards the end of the hour, I started feeling pain in my left leg. The equanimity started to diminish a bit, but I managed to stay mindful to a much greater degree than usual. Eventually the pain went away.

It is so important to remember that there is literally nothing that does not involve sensation. The sensations need to be perceived. The mind tries to hide this from me. Even when I pause to think for a second about what I'm typing, my attention travels 1000 miles away, and that can be perceived as an enormous movement in the center of my head, if I just tune into it. 

I've also been having a few interesting insights relating to my real life. I have become much more perceptive of my need for approval, and the mechanisms behind procrastination. 

I keep having this recurring fear that if I somehow manage to get to the center of all of this, that I will "disappear" or perhaps die. It is a very intense fear, but it only lasts for a brief instant, and only surfaces rarely. It is as if I am finding a great deal of comfort in movement, and the meditation is inviting me to stop moving, so what will happen if I just....stop....? (like a wind-up toy)

Thanks guys for the encouragement! It is great to have a community like this where I can share these kinds of things. This isn't exactly the kind of topic I can discuss with most people I know...

---

Wow, this morning was really interesting. I had 3 "insights", the first happening right as I sat down.

Insight 1: IT'S NOT ABOUT KEEPING THE ATTENTION ON THE BREATH. It's about noticing how the attention goes away from the breath, and about how it comes back to the breath. (nothing new here, but for some reason it really hit me this morning)

The mind constructs stable states such as:

A. I am focusing on the breath and feeling the sensations at the nostrils.
B. I am hearing the air purifier over there, and I am sitting over here.
C. I am really feeling a sense that this meditation is going well, and I'm having all these great insights.
D. If I could just figure out how to really nail this, my life will be so great.
E. Oh no, I'm losing it...I'm not being mindful right now.
F. There is a fluttering in my head, sensation in my leg, a sense of energy in my spine.

and so on...

Each and every one of these is stable and comforting, in the sense that I am attracted to it. I can alternate quickly between them, based on whatever stimulus appears. Every single time when the attention suddenly appears to jump is an opportunity to comprehend more of my experience.

I start at A, and then suddenly I'm at B. My task is to notice how I got from A to B. So, go back to A, gently. The mind then pulls me back to B. No problem, go back to A, gently. Notice the rapid alternation between A and B.

Great, I can see how the mind constructs these states! Then, I started stressing out about how I'm getting stuck in my head, trying to interpret my experiences.

Insight 2: There's no problem at all. I don't need to see how the mind constructs these states, to "interpret" my experiences. If I simply tune into the alternation on at the level of sensation, it is just a physical tension. Just like my body pressing against the cushion.

Now, that is interesting. Mental tensions are now just physical objects in the environment...

So, I let that sink in a bit more. At some point, I was left with:

A. Sensations at the nostrils.
B. Practically everything else.

Insight 3: There is a tension between "here" and "not here".

I had the sense that I could really viscerally feel this tension. Between me and my environment. Between the spot at my nostrils and everything else that I thought was real. And I could feel the alternation between those realities, as physical tension. At one point, I felt myself suspending on the cushion in a state of what felt like pure tension. And it didn't bother me. I'm trying really hard to put this all into words, but it's tricky. I think I'm probably abbreviating this for the sake of writing it down.

I don't think my sense of "not here" is complete yet, and I don't think my sense of "here" is small enough. But, I think this is the direction to explore.

The theme for this morning's practice was learning to find the pleasure in every experience.

Every once in a while, there is a sense of disappointment and frustration that things aren't progressing well or fast enough. I realized I could tune my attention to those sensations. Then, there is space to be found in them, and pleasure.

There are places of uncertainty and ungroundedness, which I tend to avoid. When I locate them, and make a deliberate effort to reside in them, weird things start happening.

It seems useful to deliberately tune to:

- Impatience, frustration, failure
- Instability
- Movement
- Dissatisfaction

It seems that the point here is not to change or understand "experience" in any way, but rather to learn to tune the mind. I think this is at the heart of the paradox of "effort vs. letting go". The effort that derails practice seems to be effort directed at the outside world, in an inefficient, futile manner. The effort that works seems to be effort directed only at the functioning of the mind (treating all outside experience as simply "data").

At one point, I noticed I was falling deep into a trance, and I noticed my mind reacting (somewhat violently) and pulling me out of the hole. "Pulling out" was clearly observed as being a sensation of moving from the center of my head towards my nostrils.

I set an intention to observe whenever this happens. I caught a few of them, and gradually, my sense of location settled further back into my head, and I felt the front of my face "seal up", and I could watch the sensation of breath at the nostrils without actually "going there". This lasted a number of minutes.

I am constantly reminding myself that the point is to learn to be OK with this moment right here. I seem to rediscover this point on deeper and deeper levels every time I practice. I feel like I reach a place of deep equanimity only when I have about 5 minutes left on the timer. One hour certainly feels different than it used to! I sometimes have the urge to just sit down and anounce "I am not standing up until I've got this all sorted out." It almost feels like that could be possible.