NickP's practice notes

[NickP]

Things are stabilising, seemingly where they "should" be at this stage. I think the mood is only swinging according to the quality of the sleep on the previous night, so unrelated to meditation. Sleep As Android comes in handy to figure that out: after paying attention to my general mood of the day, and to the total time spent in deep sleep (as opposed to total time spent sleeping) the night before, there is a pretty consistent relationship between grumpiness/helplessness/negativity, and lack of deep sleep.

On Thursday I sat for 45 minutes, felt a couple energetic markers that would've been EQ in the previous path, said hello to them, and they vanished after a few minutes of paying attention and the meditation continued. Distractable, sleepy, not much happening other than a bright itch here and there. When paid attention to, they start to throb a little (more so if in the face) and slowly vanish. Unremarkable vibrations in the visual field. Boring sit.

Yesterday I could only sneak in 2x15 minutes, one session at lunchtime at work and another one in a bus. Not much to comment.

I just sat for an hour. Checking my log, it's the first time I've sat for this long in 6 weeks.
First 25 minutes: anapanasati. Can't force my attention to be laser focused, but when I pay relaxed attention to the breath it is sustainable. Less distractable, and it now feels that "the watcher" sees the mind as it drifts, but takes some time to react and bring it back. Mildly pleasant.
Next 20 minutes: noting silently. Vedana predominantly neutral. Tension in the visual field. Bright itches in the face, that behaved in the same way as Thursday. A few periods where all was solid (except for tenuous vibrations in a finger, and mild flashing visuals) and nothing happened, kept noting it "touching, softness, [brow] tension, neutral, planning thought, remembering thought, [back] pain", all felt meh.
Final 15 minutes: a bit of out-loud noting, then choiceless awareness. Here, the back pain became more intense and the brow tension became more pleasant and vibratory. Vibrations on the right hand became stronger and more consistent. Still, a lot less intense than in other sessions.

[NickP]

Interesting stuff going on. In the last couple days I've seen myself less and more distracted during meditation -- at the same tim. There's like two of me there, one meditating, the other observing the meditator. The guy who meditates gets distracted and comes back, and gets interested in energetic stuff and the maps and stages and comparisons between first and second path. The guy observing the meditator isn't observing the meditator from outside, it also feels inside the fictitious barrier between "me" and "the world". But that guy is less distractable (but still not perfect) sends metta to the other guy, does most of the noting and feels at ease. This is not a technique that I'm doing, it's rather something that I see happening naturally. Doesn't feel mystical or anything, just a little fascinating. Off the cushion my mood is pretty normal, lowish if anything, and tired.
As far as stages go, I could be anywhere and everywhere. Sometimes nothing happens and it's solid, sometimes nothing happens and it's vibratory, sometimes I feel like I could spend hours sitting, sometimes I just want to get up and feel like I'm not meditating and I've got no momentum, sometimes I get intense itches and when I focus on them sometimes they start vibrating and sometimes they fade, sometimes I'll feel a bubble inflating beneath my crown, sometimes I'll feel coarse vibrations at the brow, sometimes buzzing at the crown. And a random selection from that list seems to happen in each sit in no particular order. This has messed up with my previous notions of cutting edge and centre of gravity, big time. Can I be back in Review after more than a month of being past it? It doesn't really feel like review, and I'm getting no fruitions. In Review A and B the patterns were clearer than this. At the same time, I don't care and know it will sort itself out.

[Russell]

Welcome to the knowlegde of confusion it only seems to make sense in retrospect at certain points. Just keep on, keeping on and it will sort itself out.

[NickP]

Saṃmohañana for the win!

In the last couple days I've been meditating for 30 minutes each, and got nowhere. This is, got somewhere nice in the first 10 minutes, then spent the rest of the sit between dreamland (been very tired lately, due to mundane reasons more than to practice) and embeddedness in thoughts.

Today I sat for 30 minutes as well and had a textbook climb through the arc up to Low EQ, as judged using the markers I used pre-path. Another data point to add to the confusion.

[NickP]

Sat for an hour today, and went up the arc to Low EQ in the same textbook fashion for the first 35 minutes or so. Things don't vibrate a lot these days, and today wasn't an exception. At this point I changed my technique (choiceless awareness) to noting, so as to avoid the equanimity trap when all feels fine but nothing happens. After a few minutes things got more vibratory and peace deepened, and then the visual field became bigger and had an experience for 2 or 3 minutes that reminded me of what the entrance to a fruition felt like, only without the clarity and fireflies, but with much peace and felt "synchronicity" (can't find any better word). For the rest of the sit things remained EQ-like, more vibratory, and I felt more alert. Intense persistent vibrations at the brow, the most persistent they've been since SE.

Not a path, BTW.

[NickP]

Just to give an update, what these days are like is much fruit and little path. Meditating very little, skipping days, losing motivation, and having an abnormally crazy pace of life off the cushion. I'm really enjoying the fruit in the form of peace and wellbeing through the madness. At some later point I'm sure the insight disease will come and knock my door.

[NickP]

The fruit is growing less, and in real life it feels like I'm dark nighting again. Or not. Motivation is lacking, and my sitting is intermittent, maybe one day I'll sit for 2x15, then skip two days, then 1x30, then skip one, and so on. Life getting more exciting off the cushion in conventional terms, as nice as it is, is taking its toll on practice. And I'm starting to realise that there's still much suffering left, while the focus on whatever suffering disappeared two months ago is starting to fade. Thus, I'm starting to care more about my practice, and the gap between the hours I'd like to practice and the hours I get to sit is growing.

Today I sat for one hour. Got very quickly somewhere jhanic or rapturous and stayed there for an unusually long while. No desire to map my experience to X jhana or Y ñana, and during the first 40 minutes I was just calm and content in my rapture, while still gently investigating my experience. Any attempt to do noting would lose its fuel within one minute, it's just utterly unsustainable. The technique ended up being no technique and all of them. The mind is malleable, attention wanders, comes back, there's sometimes a Witness looking at the movement of attention and sometimes there's just embeddedness, sometimes "I" am OK to have a mind that comes and goes and sometimes I'm not, making no effort and just sitting there contemplating feels like the right thing to do now. For the last 20 minutes I was restless and looking forward to the end of the sit, but that's also OK and part of the game.

There's a sense of guilt behind this guy just sitting and observing. This guy feels like that's a technique reserved for when one's further along the path, whereas now one should note and note and go up the arc and map the stages (in order to optimise the technique for that stage) and eventually reach another Fruition.

[Russell]

Go with your gut. Just sitting and observing is straight up vipassana just like noting. Nothing wrong with that.

[NickP]

Thanks Russell, my gut is happy to get some validation.

Just sat for 45 minutes. This time I got to what seemed more like a textbook climb up the arc to Low EQ, mapped at regular intervals by a background thread in the mind. It's amazing how the view and approach changes even from one day to the next. After getting to Low EQ, some 25 minutes into the sit, I pushed on in the same way that had got me unstuck from it in the previous path. I didn't notice any of the energetic markers of the previous path's high EQ, but the visuals started to flicker much faster and at some point I got to something that reminded me of a Fruition, with an entrance with the mind "locked" onto the sensations, the feeling that it isn't really me moving the attention around but rather that it does so on its own, the exit with eye flickers and dropped striving. No discontinuities, and I don't really think it was the real thing, but it's cool to be having near misses like this so soon after getting back just a little bit of motivation. Like this path has a better ROI

[Dan G]

Hi Nick,

Would you be willing to share/summarize what got you unstuck from the previous path? I believe that you have referenced this before but don't remember reading what changes you made.