Hi Everyone, My name is Rob, long time lurker, brand new poster. Didn't know where to introduce myself, so I thought this would be as good a place as any. I've been meditating daily for 3.5 years, usually two, one hour sits a day. I've done at home structured retreats about twice a year 1 -2 weeks each.
I started my practice with just sitting and watching closed eye imagery to help my anxiety, had some interesting visual experiences, a drop in anxiety, and decided to do some research. I bought and read TMI and started using its techniques. Became more interested and read MCTB. I started incorporating vipassana and developed a noting practice. I had several lessons with Kenneth Folk about two years ago, had an A and P experience shortly after (concentrated on an electrical sensation in my left foot, it multiplied, became bands of electric ball lightening that scanned slowly all the way up my body). I entered the dukka nanas with mild effects. Mostly bad moods, nightmares during the Fear nana, nausea during disgust with accompanying disgusting dreams and imagery during meditation. Didn't really notice the other nanas, except Reobservation which was...weird, but mostly just very chaotic, with harsh sensations. About 6 months ago I had changed mostly to samatha and a sitting/do nothing practice where I just follow wherever awareness takes me. At that time, I watched Kenneth Folk's video on the direct path and read Untethered Soul by Michael Singer and those techniques seem to have lead me into meditative tranquil spaciousness, I assume is Equanimity.
When I meditate currently, instead of all these chaotic granular sensations that occur within and over and outside my perceived "body". I feel like I am a big room with no walls , and the sensations are projected into the room, and it leads to the feeling that the sensation or thought, has an accompanying tension that I used to feel was within or on my percieved body, but is now within that room. And all these thoughts, sensations, and tensions are happening all over the inside of that room at varying frame rates. They just appear in a group within the room, my attention is drawn to it, it dissappears and another group pops up somewhere else. Sometimes it's a thought with its accompanying tension, a sensation, sometimes it seems like a group of sensations and a thought and tension, just projecting into the room, like an expanding and contracting sphere. Getting to this state usually takes about an hour and usually occurs right before my timer goes off. I enter this state when the tension (dukka?) shifts forward from inside, or at the periphery of my "body" into the room's interior.
Yesterday, meditated for 90 minutes. Decided to meditate on aversion/attraction/neutrality after reading a post. Noticed the ring of tension in the area of my forehead and began noticing the neutral sensations in my awareness and space around me, the neutral sensations of space coalesced with the center neutral area in the ring of tension, and my awareness shifted within that neutral center, the ring of tension widened, engulfed "me" and dispersed. The space had the feeling of 5th or 6th formless jhana, but with bodily sensations still within the space. Then, within that space, I noticed bubbles of 1st Jhana sukka, then joy/sukka of 2nd, Joy of 3rd, all arising within that calm panoramic space. Then the alarm went off!
