Forum: Daniel's Practice Hut

Lately I have been experiencing regularly certain states where I start being able to see quite clealry when the feeling of self, of I, arises. There are images that arise in the back of the mind that accompany a sensation (particulary in the chest area) and these seem to give the impression of a self. When it is observed it seems to dissapate very quickly for a moment or two and reappear as another image (usually of my physical state or even just a generic male face and the state of meditation becomes more concentrated and I guess I fall deeper into equanimity. That´s how it feels. I just kept doing this in every sit. I observe every moment that the self seemes to arise as an image.

At one point, as I was doing this last night in a sit, I felt a shift just as the image and sensation of self kind of dissipated and there was a sudden sense of excitement that somehting was about to happen. I think I got quite sidetracked by this intense excitement and I think I lost some of my equanimity. When I get sidetracked by things like this I have been practising a tecnique that was talked about in past thread by Prisnonergreco. I focus on the sensatins in my heart/chest area and quickly change focus to somewhere else on the body, then return to the heart and keep shifting the focus but return the the chest area always aware of the pulsating vibrations.


Anyway, I don´t have any specific question. Just feel the need for some feed backI to see if what i am doing is right and should I continue doing so. Am i on the right track? Any advice?

hi nick,

my advice would be dont worry about getting excited and 'losing equanimity' when it happens - just notice it when it happens and keep going.

also, start broadening out your attention to include things like space, attention, silence, etc. big things, swathes of space (what are the sensations that make up space?), the nature of attention itself (what is it? how does it keep up with the so-called objects its tracking? what are the sensations that make it up?), the mental silences that sometimes present (what are the sensations that make up silence? note these carefully when they present). pay attention to the entire moment/take the entirety of your experience as your 'object' from moment to moment. and take care to avoid spacing out. fine tune towards relaxation/effortless awareness but dont get lax and lose continuity. too much effort is still better than not enough effort. just keep fine tuning, losing it briefly but then coming back to it. keep it going.

go back and re-read daniel's chapter on equanimity. see what resonates with you, and proceed with careful confidence.

hope that's helpful.

Thanks Tarin,

Very helpful advice. However, I can´t seem to put it into use yet because now for at least the past 4 sits, I´ve been unable to concentrate like I could previously. It is quite an amazing sensation. I try to focus on anything for even a few moments and the mind seems like it is blocked by some hazzy fog. So I just tried observing that but with less focused effort as that seemed to cause confusion and frustration as I could not anchor the mind anywhere. It was a very weird experience. I wasn´t tired or being lazy. It was like some forcefield in my mind was deflecting my efforts to focus on something for more than a moment.

At the same time as this I felt quite a bit of an uncomfortable sensation in my chest area. I figured I was experiencing dark night symptoms again or perhaps it was reobservation I´d fallen back to.

Any how, last night after the sit I felt a bit dizzy and woozy from over an hour of that state.I got into bed and had to close my eyes because the uncomfortable sensation got stronger and stronger suddenly and quickly passed and I had that same experience of ¨woah, somethings going to happen¨ ´. That was then followed by a free flow of subtle vibes throughout the body and then I feel peacefully asleep. I think my next sit will be less confused because it felt like what I was experiencing had passed.

I will try your suggestions then.

Thanks for the helpful advice! It has really shifted my practise into weird and interesting areas.

Nick

nick,

doesnt sound like reobservation you're falling back into.

keep it going, as you would have anyway - perhaps a bit of emphasis on just moment to moment awareness of 'the whole moment' (whatever that is, different every time). that is to say, just go with however whatever comes up

everything you write sounds good to me.. keep going.

tarin

Hey all,

Just updating my experience in my current sits. Thanks to good advice above I seem to be pushing onward. I am presently dealing with equanimity in my meditation sits. Observing everything that passes by. I came to the realisation that in the past I would experience a lot of equanimity states like the ones I am dealing with now, but I would give up and stop meditating after reaching there because I thought...¨that´s enough for the moment¨. Now I get this urge to push on when this feeling to quit comes up. And now the sits seem to be shifting into deeper areas. When I have the words to descirbe what´s going on I will write about it.

Someone asked me via PM

The uncomfortable feeling, is it expansive? Does feel like something is about to get bigger or move?
Perhaps; what you are experiencing is similar to what I (and others) know but you have focused on the "feeling" calling it an "uncomfortable sensation".

This uncomfortable senstaion that i talked about is exaclty that... a vibrational flow of physical sensation directly in the chest area that was unpleasant to experience. It ebbed and flowed and then bubbled up to my throat area and dissapated as a small escape of air...like a tiny burp. Weird, but this happens a lot for me when i experience these sensations pass.