This is such a wise approach. I have come to see this as intrumental in the way I overlay practice onto to everyday human activities. Loving-kindness on public transport, bodily impurities walking down the road, the five aggregates in conversation and so on. I'm quite a visual person and so I often see peoples innards doing what they do - the heart beating, the lungs expanding, muscles contracting, skin hanging. But there are more nuanced and dynamic things to notice in people especially during complex human interaction. They are the teachers in one sense. The unconscious mind sharpens those who wish to be more conscious and this is a humbling excercise. 

Linda/Polly - I think you are describing some piti. That is good, and is absolutely enough for the exercise I have been recommending. If you can turn piti off and on at will, and keep it going as a background hum, that will be excellent.

On being mindful and eqaunimious about the tics. Hmnn, as a starting point yes. But once you are mindful and equanimious, try to get insight into the dependent arising of the tics. Observe them closely, and try to spot the contact, aversion, thirst, inflaming, urge, becoming (becoming being the tic occuring and simultaneously burning in the feedback loop). Don't try to suppress them, or resist them. Just try to clearly see the whole process with insight.
 
When you see the links very clearly, you can renounce them or let them go if you want - at the point of thirst and inflaming. But that is not as important as not suppressing them or resisting them. When the feedback loop is broken the tick will naturally be emitted with reducing frequency (not that this matters).

M.

Thankyou! Yeah, it’s probably not part of the lingo, but that’s the closest word I can find. You put it into words very well, I think.

Or maybe I actually do stay mindful while sleeping sometimes, come to think of it. I was just reminded of it because I once again came into that deeply restful state that I visit sometimes, fully aware and with a feeling somewhat similar to absorption despite having no focus whatsoever, and unable to intentionally move. In that state I find that my mouth sometimes opens itself to let out a loud outbreath that is sometimes smelly. There are also occasional kriyas that are very similar to jerky movements during sleep. It isn’t formless, because I can still feel my body. I’m just not in control of it. That could be due to sleep paralysis, I guess. In that state I am very aware of my state and of my body, and sometimes dreamlike scenes pop up and then I’m aware of that (they didn’t this time). I never counted that as lucid dreaming because I thought I couldn’t be sleeping since I was aware even outside the dreams.

I spent about a couple of hours there this time. I no longer feel like I had too little sleep. The nada sound is loud. Breathing is very easy.

Hey Spatial. For me, mindfulness during sleep was a byproduct of intense meditation and mindfulness, rather than something directed. After a while I found that part of the brain was asleep, but another part was semi-awake and continuing to be mindful. So my awareness became contiunous even when asleep.

Mindfulness of the four frames of reference was not simultaneous. At first it was progressive - body, feeling, mind states, dharmas - steadily learning to perceive the five aggregates of clingining and the chain of dependent arising. Not all at once, but able to switch between them to notice anything that happens to arise. So you might be walking along absorbed in mindfulness of body through motion, when you see something that causes disgust - so then you are mindful of the feeling of disgust, as it arises and passes away.

Having established the ability to be mindful, the next step for me was to be continuously aware of the energetic feelings of the body, or of the fluxing nature of reality in the sphere of perceptions. At first I concentrated on rapid noting of the phenomena and their three chracteritics, but eventually I just becam absorbed in the construction of reality from the energetic flux. 

Your mileage may vary!

Malcolm

I don’t know how bright Alpha Centauri is, but that sounds reasonable. So yeah, that sounds like a very precise description.

I guess. Interesting explanation. Thanks!

And people are paying lots of money for dangerous and illegal drugs to get similar feelings! So unnecessary!

Sounds really good Linda. If indeed you're correct, congratulatons!

Oups. In merging with that vibrating sound, I followed it into cessation in the space between the sound waves, or something like that. Twice. They seem to come in pairs nowadays, the cessations. It went so fast that I don’t know if I there ever was a moment of absorption before the blip long enough to call a jhana.

I cultivated the sound through metta. I listened to a dharma talk on absorption by Ayya Khema and a guided metta meditation that ended the talk. It took me to first, second and third jhana. Then I put in an effort to get out of jhana to take off the headphones so that I could hear the nada sound the way I’m used to hear it. I had prepared mentally for that timeframe. Then I cultivated the feeling again, which made the sound stronger. I listened intensely to the sound. I noticed that I can listen to it in different ways. One way makes the sound split into different frequencies. I guess that was the kind of listening geared towards insight. The other way first made the sound intense, almost painfully intense, but then it sort of spread to other domains and partially became light, which was utterly fascinating and definitely something one could get aborbed into. But then it also made me curious, so I couldn’t help but investigating its impermanence as closely as I could. I had to see if the gaps in the light were the same as the gaps in the sound. I guess they were.

Coming back manifested as before. A click immediately followed by overwhelmingly loud nada sound, sort of like the feedback sound of bringing a microphone too close to a loudspeaker, although it doesn’t hurt the ears since those are not at all involved in this hearing. The first time around I was so surprised that I just kept going. Then it happened again, not long after the first one. It manifested the same way. Or maybe the first one was less overwhelming and the second one was intense like feedback. Yeah, I think so. Then it sank in what had happened and I observed the aftermaths. There was very apparent impermanence in audio, vision and kinesthetics for a long time. It took time for the vision to stabilize enough for me to read properly.

I think I’m really on to something (yes, yes, I realize the irony of talking about it as an achievement, but one has to start somewhere and if somebody who’s brain is wired similarly to mine happens to read this, perhaps a cookbook recipe could come in handy).

The sound of stillness really seems to be a valid nimitta. I believe it is talked about in some old texts too, although I have no idea which ones or how trustworthy they are. Some people call it the nada sound. Others talk about it as inner sound and pairs it up with inner light. It sounds pretty much as a chorus of crickets, or perhaps as white noice, but it doesn’t come through any sense organ. The inner light doesn’t come through any sense organ either. They both emmanate from the mind. I guess how they manifest is a matter of interpretation, and most people seem to be visual. I’m not. Anyway, I’m testing it out as a working hypothesis, and so far it seems promising. It turns out that it makes things happen AND with a certain critical degree of absorption, it doesn’t seem to matter what sensory mode one starts out with as they all seem to merge into one. I really had the sense that the sound was white light, and the detectable vibrations in the sounds seemed to correlate with fluctuations in the light. They were the same.

I started with listening to a short (and abruptly ending) metta (or at least some of the Brahma Viharas) recording with Ayya Khema, on forgivness. It seems to work very well for me right now. As it ended so abruptly, I stopped to check whether something had happened to my ipad, but it really does end mid sentence. That took me out of my light jhana, but I could recall the feeling and get back in quickly. For a very short while I focused on the breathing to strengthen my access concentration a bit. Then I focused on pleasant feelings parallelly to the breath, then entirely on pleasant feelings. I’m now once again trying out the hypothesis that a narrow focus is not necessary for jhanas, only for some jhanas (which according to Leigh Brasington are not the ones that the Buddha talked about; I wouldn’t know, but regardless, it seems more helpful right now to go with the jhanas that I can actually access). There were plenty of pleasant feelings to focus on, throughout my body.

In the beginning it was rather buzzy (albeit in a gentle way) together with a sense of floating and also a sweet silky wellbeing (first jhana). This time I knew that the buzzing wasn’t something independent but responding to intentions. Of course, intentions are dependent, too, but they still work. So I played my part in the Dirk Gently investigation and assumed agency over my intentions for practical purposes. I felt that I could make the piti do whatever I wanted, but I didn’t have time to play around, so I just resolved for it to calm down to stillness, and so it did.

First it calmed down the piti and put the sukha in the foreground (second jhana). There I focused on that sweet feeling of just relaxing and letting go. I had no inclination whatsoever to move any body parts or do anything else, and that was a great relief. I enjoyed the peace that comes from that, which for me is a bodily sensation although it has nothing to do with the touch sense. It makes the body as such fall more and more into the background, but apart from the remaining piti, there is also still a sense of having access to some energy field, and I enjoy feeling that there is a balanced flow there, if that makes sense. This is not piti/kundalini. In energy terms, maybe it is more like prana. I don’t know. I know too little about these systems. Maybe it is just a sense of presence. Please bear in mind that I make sense of the world in kinesthetic terms. Much of my conceptualization is based on the sense of touch. I often ”visualize” things kinesthetically. Some piti remained too, but the distinction is important.

I cultivated sukha for a while, and the remaining piti naturally subsided. At the same time I shifted my focus more and more to the nada sound. According to Leigh Brasington, it doesn’t seem that important what object of meditation one uses as key once the key is used anyway, so I figured I could just as well use different keys depending on what worked for the current purpose, as long as I didn’t hesitate or doubt. I think timing is essential if one is to shift objects like this. Intuition has been helpful so far, so even if I want to develop the technical skills for the purpose of reliability, there is no reason to throw out the baby with the bath water. When I shifted my focus to the sound, some vague visuals appeared. I’m synesthetic and often find that other senses open the door to visual thinking for me. The vague visuals had to do with movement. It looked like I was moving in space, away from something. Somewhere around here, there was an unknowing event. I don’t know if there was any gap in experience, but there was a subtle sense of coming back and a very brief sound that had some resemblence to what usually arises after my cessations. If it was a cessation, it was probably a very brief one and one that involved a minimal amount of subminds.

Anyway, there was a clear sense of deepening. During the movement there was also a sense of increasing pressure, as if sinking down to the bottom of a pool (third jhana). I can see why that description is so often used. The sense of pressure seemed to correlate with the sensations from my eyes relaxing more and more and thereby sort of a sinking of the eye bulbs into their cavities, as if they were moving further back into my head. (Do they really do that when they are relaxed? If so, why?) I probably rushed things a little too much here. I don’t recall taking time to build up the equanimity. I should probably learn to do that. I think I was too attached to the remaining sukha. It had been a fairly deep third jhana (for being a light version). I felt more and more parts of my body fall away: the lips, the hands, the feet, most of the face, the arms, parts of the legs and torso. I loved that. That should have been a cue for building up more equanimity before I proceeded, but I wasn’t exactly thinking much. I probably need to resolve that beforehand, so that the set intensions can guide me when I no longer have a sense of choosing.

Instead of building up the quality of equanimity, I went all in with regard to the sound, and first it led to another phase of movement, further down, with increased pressure and extremely relaxed eyes. Then - lo end behold - first there was a bright disk, and then everything turned white! It really did. But I wasn’t equanimous enough. I reacted with excitement, which made it go away. I tried to merge with the sound again. It did make things brighter, but not white. White sparks, dots and disks appeared and disappeared. I was approaching fourth jhana, but I wasn’t there. I wasn’t equanimous enough. This eventually resulted in some tensions from trying too much and some piti coming back, and of course I came out of jhana. It was very educational. Apparently I have a tendency (while lying down) to sometimes curve my back and raise my chest up as if I’m aiming at a halfbridge pose - one of the asanas that I like the least in yoga. No wonder I have a hard time getting into jhanas when I do that. I probably look like I’m trying out for a part in a rip-off of The Exorcist. Or maybe it’s just a very subtle movement. I hope so.

The metta recording took about ten minutes. The rest of the meditation took slightly more than an hour. Then it was time for yoga class (Vinyasa, 75 minutes - great class today).

Right now I believe my energies are as perfectly balanced as they have ever been. It is very temporary, of course. It wasn’t long ago that I was very low, and yesterday I was pretty hyper. Tomorrow... Who knows? But at this very moment I’m enjoying this high but calm energy, lightness, fulfillment (which has very little to do with outer circumstances; those are actually challenging in several ways that are way beyond the scope of this forum), and whatever this is. The best equanimity I have ever experienced. You are very welcome to remind me of this next time I seem to have lost faith. This kind of equilibrium is possible.

In daily life I’m gradually shifting my sources for wellbeing both to more wholesome stuff and stuff that is better for the world than my previous sources of (what I mistook for) wellbeing. For instance, I used to buy myself flowers sometimes because it made me happy. Not very expensive ones, but still... they didn’t last long and I hear that conditions are often really bad for the people who grow some of the flowers (I didn’t realize that until recently). Now I rather give the money to homeless people who sit outside the shop. Not just out of bad conscience, as before, but I have noticed that it makes me many times more happy to give the money to someone who needs it more than I do than to spend it on something that is so unnecessary as flowers on the table. If I’m in the mood for eating something that I know will give me an allergic reaction, I can make myself happy by way of deciding to help someone with those money instead, and then I can let go of the craving (unless I have the pms from hell - that happens) because it is weaker than the happiness in knowing that somebody in need can eat a decent meal that day. I know that these examples are very banal and don’t make much difference in the world, but the difference is in me. I crave less for myself. I cling less. This doesn’t make me a better person per se, of course, but it makes it easier for me to choose actions that are beneficial for others. That is one of the main things I was hoping for. I have very poor executive functioning and some issues with being impulsive, so if the good choices are too difficult, I’m not capable of making that many of them, but I would like to. This proves to me that I’m on the right path. Not that I doubted - I actually didn’t - but I definitely don’t mind tangible results. More results in that direction would be wonderful. These are very small steps to a less self-centered life, but wow, they are so liberating! It is such a relief that this is possible. That I can actually change my wiring for the better by way of just letting go. Just like that. Worrying less about me and mine has nothing to do with guilt and shame and much more to do with just finding it natural to put things into proportions.

The gentle electric crackling continued to build up. During the day there was a racing heart beat. I went to a soft meditative yoga class where we warmed up the spine a lot. I was in light jhana even before we started, just from lying down on the mat, and during the class I felt my aura and hands buzzing with energy. Sensations were getting more and more finegrained and started to separate from each other until they were... yeah, pretty much like confetti as in the interview I listened to today. That was a very illustrative analogy. Very finegrained confetti, though. Maybe more like that horrible glitter that one can buy in small pots, for craft purposes (the kind you can never get rid of because once you or your kid has opened the pot, you have it everywhere). Then I started to have pleasant shiverings moving upwards through the spine. They continued on the way home frome yoga class. When I came home I sat on the mat for 30 minutes. I didn't set a timer. I just resolved to sit for 30 minutes before I lay down. I'm starting to learn how to sit correctly, so I focused on getting it just perfect. I have noticed that it really makes a difference, energetically, and I'm very sensitive to blockages. When I sit correctly, it is quite comfortable (well, at least in the A&P, which this apparently is). My legs don't fall asleep and my back and neck don't ache. Now I can finally get into jhanas while sitting (I did during yoga class). I could feel that there was a nice flow of energy. I noticed that the bandhas were very helpful in keeping the body in a stable position. I still find it easier to let go while lying down, though, so when 30 minutes had gone by, I lay down on my bed (which has a hard mattress that enables the spine to be straight). I used a pillow to come into a slightly heartopening position. I turned the palms of my hands upwards to open up the shoulders. I focused on my breathing and made it very soft and smooth, and champagne bubbles were building up. The nada sound was loud. I tuned into it, and it made the champagne bubbles shoot up through my spine and explode in a soft bright foam in my head, like when one pours the champagne a little too fast into the glass. There was no popping of the bottle, because the bottle was already open. There was no barrier. This repeated itself a few times. It was very undramatic.

The reclining part of the session was close to one hour long. 

Okay, so I guess that was the A&P. I'm going to assume that it was the A&P of the current path, which I believe is heading towards third. Although I have continued to have fruitions, I have (looking at it in retrospect) seen the nanas body and mind, cause and effect, and the three characteristics, interspersed with some remaining review going on parallelly. That was fast. Okay then. I was fearing being stuck in the early nanas for a while without access to jhanas. I'm not very good at dealing with poor concentration. It makes me irritable and cranky. I'm not as afraid of the dukkha nanas. I might regret that in the days to come. Still, I find the theravadan maps tremendously helpful in dealing with the dukkha nanas, because they make them predictable and unpersonal. Thanks to them, I know that "this too shall pass" is true. However... my kid depends on my being constructive and reliable on Tuesday because that morning we will have to deal with a very delicate matter. It would be a mercy to either be back in A&P by then or visit equanimity for the duration of the meeting and during travelling time. For my kid's sake, I resolve to be at my best at that time. 

Let me know if you figure this out. I suspect that they either (a) haven't progressed very far in insight, (b) are naturally super-talented at jhanas and have no hindrances, or (c) have indeed struggled with insight but don't mention it when they teach, because they are just parroting the words they heard from their teachers, rather than teaching their personal experience.

I had to stay up late to work, so it was almost morning when I went to bed. I listened to that guided healing meditation again and was amazed by its strong effect. Although I didn’t chant myself but just listened, the vibrations from it definitely did something very tangible to my brain. I could feel it, in a very physical way.

Sleep deprivation is still not a good idea, though. I’m a wreck now, and yet I need to get up and get going. I really need to learn to deal with deadlines in a more mature way.

I can't answer definitively, but I will say that the description you wrote sounds a lot like what I've experienced, and I think you're drawing the same types of conclusions I did. 

During the last night of my retreat last year, I couldn't fall asleep because I had so much jaw tension. I felt like I was so wired up, and also so exhausted from the emotional rollercoaster the retreat had put me through. After trying for a couple hours to relax my jaw, I just gave in to it and decided to let it work itself out. What happened after that felt like thousands of knots throughout my body untying themselves over the course of the night. I couldn't sleep at all because there was such an overwhelming amount of piti in my body. I guess I still have "jaw tension", but it doesn't feel like jaw tension anymore, because it is so obviously connected to my neck, back, breathing, balance of my head, etc.

My current hypothesis is that all of those connections ARE the attention system.