I'll start by just describing my last sit.
13/11/23 - vipassana - 30min
keep developing sensitivity to the 3 characteristics:
- impermanence is just the arising and passing of anything, sometimes like a flickering or bubbling.
- suffering is a deep sense that any experience has something wrong in it, should be different, it's not quite right, something like an instinctive rejection quality
- anatta is the fact that nothing/no one stands behind thoughts, feelings or any other experience. It has the feeling of reality morphing, opening, become convex or rounded. Can feel like any experience is complete and not divided.
I'm trying to train sensitivity to avoid getting stuck with a superficial understanding and this seems like a good way to get deeper.

- the first part of the sit nothing much of interest, just training like above. Had to adjust the pose, suffering entered very strong but slowly I managed to recognize it and not despair.
- rythm is fast but not very smooth, absorption has a good intensity but not so stable.
- the last 10 minutes or so, it was like the mind finally was sufficiently sensitive and it let go. The feeling was like something previously felt as separate was now fused with the rest of experience.
- although the breath sped up and sometimes a thought popped up regarding what was happening the general mood was of rest. There wasn't a lot of movement. I could have sat for another bit, but I was going for just half an hour this time.

17/11/23 - vipassana - no timer
noticing the arising and passing of sensations sparked the questions: "what is it that arises?", "what is it that ceases?", "what is the arising and passing if I cannot tell what arises and ceases?". Not going too much into philosophy I just kept noticing while these questions arose.
Not just noticing but actually getting a feel for it.
At some point I could notice these thoughts while they were flowing and there was a feeling of space around them.
I started searching for the dukkha aspect because I wasn't noticing any at that point and it felt right to kinda balance the nice feeling of space and stability.
I could feel it in a less intense way than usual but with more clarity, what I mean right now by dukkha is a perceived ugliness, undesirableness, imperfectness.
Near the end of the sit there were brief moments where it was clear there was no perceiver behind this but just these qualities alone. All discomfort went away during those moments as phenomena (thoughts, sensations ecc...) in their ugliness, undesirableness, imperfectness felt at the same time totally fine.

Hey !!

I love the image of walking rain.

This all sounds awesome. I often get these little self arising inquiries "what is it that arises?". I guess it's the mind beginning to understand the world through the form of a question.

​​​​​​​Exploring the different balance of 3c's is great stuff !

18/11/23 - vipassana - 30min
- did a couple deep breaths to settle 
- began feeling the flickering of sensations that were more distinct each moment (i.e. not in a particular order)
- sounds started feeling a bit more like sensations, the flickering aspect at least
- noticed a thought in response to a physical sensation and it felt the same, like mental and physical processes all happened in a "space" that is neither mental nor physical, had some experience of "merging" of tactile, mental, auditory and visual senses. Rather than merging I would say seeing how the different senses integrated seamlessly with eachother sparked some inquiry on the differences like "is feeling really that different from thinking?"
- began noticing finer and finer stuff, the focus shifted on mostly subtle mental imagery
- breath slowed down, a feeling of joy, warmth, stability, relaxation pervaded the whole body.
- the noticing wasn't super fast but was like 5 to 10 moments per second, but still difficult to feel clearly the 3c's as the focus was on very subtle phenomena.
- after a little time and putting a bit of effort in a happy and relaxed way I finally started getting a feel for the flickering aspect, the ugly aspect and the anatta aspect.
Anatta at this point was marked by feeling not physical/not mental, not observer/observed (like the noticing or feeling or "tuning into" was just another phenomena) it felt like the entire sense field was doing itself. 
- while still feeling ugly this constant morphing of sensory phenomena was starting to feel also very blissful. This sit ends here.

18/11/23 - vipassana - 30min
- few deep breaths, noticed slight pain in right hip
- felt body sensations flickering, also sounds and thoughts popping up
- sitting was overall unpleasant, noticed and felt the flickering of very small sensations
- starting to feel pain on both hips and lower back, kept trying to feel it as much as possible to get a better feel of the 3c's
- noticed that when I did it, it was like the mind moved to the sensations and from there moved back to the initial point.
It's like a point in the head saying to the attention "go there, feel the sensation" and then attention returns back to the point in the head saying "I felt it"
- seeing this somehow caused some relaxation and the feeling of back and forth became vaguer and vaguer like it wasn't needed as there were no real point A and B to begin with. This makes me see a link with another sitting where noticing movement made me start questioning the actual nature of it like "what is it that moves", "where is the start position and the end position?", "what is movement if I cannot find answer to this?".
- increasingly feeling like I didn't know what I was doing or what was happening at all, while feeling it was perfectly fine like this.
- all the senses appear integrated seamlessly, hard to identify if not by aproximation
- everything seems like happening in this weird space made of neither mental nor physical stuff, I could say morphing without anything morphing but I hope to find a better way to describe it.
- the alarm goes off and 30 mins of meditation felt like 10 despite the pain.

Thanks, we'll see where those questions lead...
Regarding the 3c's maybe there could be some relationship between the balance of their experiences and the unfolding of the nanas, but for the moment I'll just say I frequently look for dukkha because it feels so right to do that.

19/11/23 - vipassana - 30min
not sure what to write
- hardly felt like I was doing anything
- there were moments where I felt like I had to do something but every effort felt like an extra
- noticing this, the tendency wore off
- sometimes I had to readjust the pose because I found myself sort of nodding off
​​​​​​​- at this point the rest of the practice were just bright intermittent flashes of reality without a feeling of a doer or observer. Within these flashes there was intensity of presence but also lightness. 

This is an awesome thing to notice and when practice can be effortless just let it. Watch what interferes and do nothing about it.

equanimity territory maybe?

I don't know. You may not need to know either. Keep exploring. See where it leads and don't put too much pressure on the process. 

If you like... notice effort and notice not effort. Notice little things and notice everything. Notice what wants to label. Notice what's hard to label and notice what isn't. Notice what needs things to have labels at all. Notice the difference between labeling and not labelling. Notice the difference between noting and not noting. Notice shape. Notice the shape of your experience and the little wiggly vibrations inside it. 

You'll likely start to recognize stages when you've been through them a few times. At present and at any point in the future, it is more important to perceive clearly the qualities of the stage you're in than to know that stage by name. Stages just happen, practice is recognizing that and perceiving their shape, texture, movement, vibration, so on. 

You are really cooking! Nice stuff.

21/11/23 - vipassana - 30min
- just kept feeling the 3c's 
- anatta and dukkha were the first I could recognize after the arising of phenomena, then impermanence.
It seems that I'm starting to get a feel for all 3, as they became clear after max 1 or 2 seconds after each arising.
- after some time together with the seeing of the 3c's there was also a sense of synchronization, particularly on the disappearing end of whatever experience.
- there wasn't strong feelings of joy or pleasure, just some light sense of happyness
- equally, there was some pain and discomfort due to the pose, but not distracting
- sometimes I got distracted by some thoughts, childhood memories, but I just kept the practice going gently but fully committed. Investigating the 3c's in whatever arose.

24/11/23 - vipassana - 30min
- lots of itches and unpleasant sensations
- irritation and anger were the default reaction and noticing this sparked a sense of failure
- intermingled with this sense of failure there were images of success, saw both as impermanent/unsatisfactoty/without self
- this led to calmness and disillusion but also seeing this as a more desirable state
- investigating the 3c's in this revealed some relation between desire/aversion and identity
- it also allowed me to see in the same way mental states and emotions 
- this caused some amount of release, breathing felt easier, head and shoulders felt lighter 
- I also felt taller as if the spine was being pulled from both extremes 
- mind felt sharper and more spacious
- I kept seeing the 3c's in subtler and subtler mental movements as concentration was developing
- sometimes I couldn't tell them apart, it was like there was just one characteristic or flavour that icluded all 3.

- sometimes I couldn't tell them apart, it was like there was just one characteristic or flavour that icluded all 3.

Continue to explore this, allow them to integrate, broaden and include more of experience. From time to time then it can be good to go back to working with one specific characteristics, just every now and again, to make sure you've a good feel for it.

Overall sounds like great practice. Take it easy on yourself when dealing with tough states. Get some ice cream or whatever, don't beat yourself up over anything. Good to have people to talk to, even just friends. Share anything you need to here. 

For any real difficult, hollow, strange, dark states. Make sure to include the peripheries of your experience. Overall that may be a good thing to explore alongside the above. 

Remember, even in the face of tumultous vibrations, each and all of the three characteristics are an invitation to let go and relax.

Thanks for the advice, Bahiya. Yes, seeing the 3c's usually leads to some degree of release.

Yesterday I went through quite some dukkha, unfortunately due to the bad mood I didn't write any notes, could have been interesting to read today.
26/11/23 - vipassana - 30min
Now I'm taking the breath at the belly as a "grounding object" so I just notice any movement and then return to noticing breathing sensations.
Not forcing concentration, just noticing both stillness and movement. 
- noticing is wider now, rather than single objects I'm noticing whole moments of experience, that include the senses/thoughts/actions/events.
- these whole moments appear somewhat "flat", like images on a screen.
- sometimes the 3c's are very clear, sometimes not so much, but this quality of flatness is overall always present.
- dukkha right now relates more to an impossibility to grasp at experience and also to the fact that nothing concrete is really gonna come out of experience or happen on top of what's already there. Hope to find a better way to explain this.
- anatta relates directly to this flatness, in the sense that this flatness rather than just a visual thing feels like an equalization in weight or density of the entire sense field, resulting in less sense of "I", a doer/observer.
- noticing requires less and less effort, to the point where is difficult to tell noticing apart from whatever experience, like experience is the noticing/noticing is the experience.
- sometimes there are little "micro dreams", quick, unexpected mind movements. I say micro dreams because it feels the same kind of thing that happens while falling asleep, but they're not actual formed thoughts or "little dreams" where you see stuff.
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Cool !

This can suck to admit. It kinda hurts to hear. 
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Awesome ! Things can notice themselves if you let them. This may be more prominent in certain states, nanas, paths. 

02/12/23 - vipassana - 30min
- quickly started feeling like practice wasn't going anywhere, probably due to noticing the 3c's in whatever arose, meditative experiences and ideas about meditation included
- noticed I was trying to think of a hypothetical better way to meditate
- as I was applying a mix of noting, noticing and just feeling to all this eventually these became broader and broader
- I was noting "meditation thoughts", "meditation", "awareness", "experience" (which included all of the previous)
- I was noticing all those little sensations that seem to make up an observer, a meditator, a doer.
- I was feeling the peacefulness from the initial "practice going anywhere" thoughts as right now it wasn't important anymore. Not just that but the whole idea of "going somewhere" seems so absurd non-sense.
- the end portion of the sitting was just this constant but everchanging bubbling of conscious experience, where experience and consciousness sound more and more like synonyms and what makes up the different shades of "I-feeling" feels more and more just like any other experience.

03/12/23 - vipassana - 35min
- still using the breath as grounding object
- noticed every arising/ceasing I could
- the flow of noticing was pretty steady, not fast, not slow 
- this time there wasn't any inquiry or anything that sparked some reflection, for example dukkha was just dukkha, plain and simple
vipassana - 35min
- the method is the same
- the sitting in general was very similar to the previous one, the arising phenomena were a bit clearer at times
- near the end there was some aversion and restlessness, followed by some pretty harsh anxiety, but mostly related to thoughts about stuff to do off cushion, rather than to practice itself
- anyway noticing continued as before, just in a more turbulent way

These days there were some "off-cushion" experiences that could fall into the category of "non-dual experiences" which were quite pleasant.
Like somebody talks and it felt like I was talking, a car passes and it felt like I was making that noise.
The colors of whatever I was looking at felt like they were emanating from me.
Not just that, but also, let's say I was looking at a candle, the candle was both the cause for everything else and the result of everything else.

Next there was a lot of confusion, by confusion I mean feeling like a child who cannot find his parents or like a crazy man who is losing contact with reality. Quite the opposite on the pleasant/unpleasant spectrum. 

This made everything feel both perfect and a total mess at the same time. I was growing very tired of all this but knew I had no choice but to keep going.

08/12/23 - vipassana - 35min
- noticed I was trying to make sense of something, but I coudn't tell what this something was
- noticed feeling like I forgot something important
- lots of tension in the body 
- noticed the mind/body trying to wrap itself around something, finding out there was nothing, forget and repeat all over
- noticing in the first part was more focused on mental phenomena (dreamlike or in this case nightmarelike experience), then more on the internal body movements (wild nature kind of experience)
- later noticing became broader and broader, less tension, some happyness and relief
- was noticing the whole experience again and kinda seeing through experience, experiencer and noticing
- left the seat refreshed

09/12/23 - vipassana - 40min
- decreased fixation on events
- mind and body just doing their usual stuff
- relaxed
- question: "is fixation even possible?"
- some people coming to mind and there was a spontaneous reaction of feeling so grateful for them just being how they are
- some tension in the legs and lower back and restlessness near the end but I found increasing slightly the concentration helped to develop some equanimity and a general and light curiosity towards these sensations.
- left the seat quite relaxed

10/05/24 - vipassana - 45 min
​​​​​​these days I'm noticing a slight increase in clarity and also it's easy to notice thoughts as they arise, also happens with dreams at night. 
Been able to notice some subtle intentions. 
Been able to sit with pain and unpleasant sensations and emotions.
This brings a sense of freedom, beeing able to just sit with all this.
Towards the end of the sit, my mind was becoming quite still. Kept noticing that till the end.
​​​​​​​Got up very relaxed.

11/05/24 - vipassana - 45 min
Using mental notes this time for "up" and "down" of the breath.
Didn't take long for breath to slow down and mental notes to become quieter, also increased sense of mental presence.
​​​​​​At some point I got a memory of an event and then a sense of frustration arose, I thought maybe this is impermanence.
I can see sensations come and go etc...but these kind of things I find more powerful for contemplation. When there is some kind of emotion related to the 3c's it has a different flavour. 
Like noticing I had subtle urges to get up and do something else because I felt I wasn't getting satisfaction or entertainment with meditation, I thought maybe this is dukkha.
I got more and more interested in my own relationship with the 3c's and as I was "zooming in" with my attention, I started noticing very subtle patterns of reactions chaining together.
As soon as I noticed some subtle intention, I applied almost instantly a "remedy". Then that mind moment felt like shifting forward, and almost instantly another "remedy" was applied.
Like a constant stuggle to be right, to feel ok, to be in control, to be strong. As this was going on 2 contrasting feeling were arising together. One was a feeling of being doomed to this without a way out, while the other was feeling blissed by being allowed to experience this. 
I thought this was an interesting contrast because while it can seem painful, I was feeling good and was smiling through all this. 
For the last part of the sit I felt fragile, weak and vulnerable and it was ok in a strong down to earth way.
​​​​​​​Left the seat quite relaxed.

Good. 
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Nice. In every molecule of every moment the three characteristics can be seen. As though what reality is made out of can be only directly known as the three characteristics, not that we always notice this. Impermanence: reality is made up of shimmering particles that fade from experience as soon as they are experienced. Dukkha: every atom of the experience is dissatisfactory, this can really be seen when we understand that no amount of reacting to pain (or grasping at pleasure) will ever lead to any form of lasting satisfaction. There can be no lasting satisfaction in a grand narrative sense but also, this is important, no lasting satisfaction can be found in any element of this current experience. None. And thus how could we believe in the notion that lasting satisfaction will ever be found. No-self: The wind blows but you don't blow it. The particles shimmer and wave but you don't shimmer them. The wind is out there it is clearly not self. The particles are all around and they are not self. So, between the particles that make up your internal experience and the wind blowing in the leaves, where is the self found?

12/05/24 - vipassana - 45 min
Noticing was switching back and forth from broad to narrow.
Was able to notice "feeling of observer", "feeling of observing". 
Energy level was rising.
Feeling a bit uncomfortable.
For a brief moment each arising felt groundless.
Shortly after there was a strong sense of not being the main character of the story.
Sensory experience was like fine dust noting itself effortlessly. 
​​​​​Some of it appeared to be merely a body sitting and breathing, nothing more to it.
The urge to meditate went away completely and was almost getting up to do something else.
I resolved "this is temporary, let me keep noticing" and kept practicing. 
It felt both very natural, but also quite awkward.
Then some mental images started arising, they were "colored" with anxiety and fear. Despite feeling theese emotions I was also aware of the fabricated nature of that, I was just smiling and noticing all this.
The last part of the sit I just paid attention to the breath, noting "up" and "down".
Left the seat feeling less relaxed than usual and a bit achy.