Pablo P. Practice Journal

[PabloP]

Usually, I right more or less in chronological order. I'll do it in detail today. Thanks for the interest!

[PabloP]

Date: 04/24/13
Pre-Meditative Context: Throat discomfort throughout the day. 5' stretching and Qigong, Noted vibrations on the back and dantien right before sitting.
Length of Sits: 45'
Posture: half-lotus
Cutting Edge Insight Stage of the Session: ???
Meditative Techniques Utilized: silent noting and writing labels down every 2-3 minutes.
General Thoughts:
* During the first half of the session, noted chest tightness right after writing labels down. The tightness passed away in 10-30 seconds.
* Lots of reporting thoughts, because of the writing labels down. Couldn't get any deep because of this too.
Aversion baseline: n/a

Noting Dynamics / Chronological Order: Vibrations, outside noise, heat in the head, mild discomfort in the chest, disgust~nausea at the throat, remembering, vibrations, discomfort gone at chest and throat, sneezed twice, outside noise, vibrations at the torso and head, inner noise, seeing, vibrations in the dantien (lower belly), remembering, coolness at the Crown Chakra, pulsing skull, tension in the jaw, calmness, coolness in the Brow Chakra, agitation in the chest, release tension in the skull, coolness in the Brow Chakra, agitation, calmness, cool dantien, agitation and cool chest, cool arms, heat at the crossed foot, remembering, faster vibrations in the arms, melody, head tension, coolness release at the skull and temples, seeing darkness, jaw tension release, vibrations in the head, thought out of the blue "How? The patriots?", reporting, heat and tigh foot, cool neck, release tension, agitation, coolness running down from Crown to Brow Chakra, tight chest, cool head flowing down to chest, cool arms, reporting, jaw tension release, seeing dark then flickering, remembering, melody, tight leg, heat leg, seeing lights, analyzing, tension release in the head, out of the blue thought "Tell a story", agitation, arm spams, cool head, melody, disgust, heat head, heat, vibrations in the head and torso, release tension, startling outside noise, read abstract image, heat leg, heat head, cool Brow, release tension, vibrations in the chest, cool torso, analyzing, tense jaw, heat leg, cool chest, vibrations at the torso and head, tension in the Brow, heat leg, analyzing, jaw tension, release, seeing dark, aversion to lights, out of the blue thought "Ohh, what then?", heat leg, heat torso, bell alarm rings.

Goal for Next Session: Keep doing the 4FN & the concentration practice.

[PabloP]

Date: 04/25/13
Pre-Meditative Context: waking up from a nap a being able to jump into a HD colorful (amazing but mundane) scenario. It has been happening (in varying degrees) in the last few days. Still trying not to spoil it with anticipation, etc.
Length of Sits: 40'
Posture: half-lotus
Cutting Edge Insight Stage of the Session: n/a
Meditative Techniques Utilized: silent noting and writing labels down every 2-3 minutes.
General Thoughts:
* Instead of building tension because of leg pain, changed the position around the middle of the session
* Noticed I'm not noting enough the 3C's.
Aversion baseline: n/a
Noting Dynamics / Chronological Order: Vibrations at the torso and head, foot pain, tension at the shoulders, vibrations, cool lower back, agitation, twitches in the face, mapping, coolness at lower back and dantien, thought, heat in the head, reporting, vibrations, cool dantien, twitches in the arms, tension in the shoulders, lost in thoughts, cool dantien, tension in the shoulders, remembering, analyzing, released tension in the jaws, nausea, pulse in the throat, released tension in the jaws, vibrations, dissolved into tinnier vibrations, "don't know if you have realized", bubblinh right jaw, "it is not mine", "Néstor" (!!), mild discomfort in the chest, vibrations in the chest, "what took you?" (to get it done), rehearsing, chest discomfort, vibrations, vibrations passed away, "let it go" , leg pain, changed legs position, pulse in the head, calmness, cool chest, vibrations in the throat, hunger, coolness in the lower back, bubbling dantien, calmness, mapping (3C's), "it's magic", vibrations, bubbling skull, coolness flows down to the Brow Chakra, "are you afraid?", lost in thoughts, cool Brow Chakra, cool dantien, "you lost it dumb-ass", cool brow chakra, calmness, seeing (darkness), smell of roses, nice smell, "Now", calmness, remembering, sting in the neck. Time is up.
Goal for Next Session: Keep doing the 4FN & the concentration practice.

[PabloP]

Wording it out...

[NickP]

Very interesting. And I'd love to see Néstor in the word-it-out version!

How does the energetic activity interact with thoughts?

See if you can pay attention to the process by which thoughts and other mental activity arise. How things that start out as something other than thoughts, morph into thoughts. Try to see how early in that process you can become aware of them.

[PabloP]

Clinging & aversion to anything is what trigger thoughts. Many times they appear during the time out-side noise lasts, say 30-60 seconds, as long as a car passes by. Other times, they appear because of energy activity. There's agitation, then some kind of aversion either to a narrow or wider visual focus, later analysis, then heat in the face and limbs, finally images, phrases, melodies or a combo of them three.

Perhaps buying noise-cancelling headphones would be a good thing to do. At least it would help me get more times quicker to calm states. I'll open a separate thread about them.

EDIT: Actually, after writing the report I read that ear-plugs are far better for meditation, and way cheaper.

----

Date: 04/28/13
Pre-Meditative Context: 10' concentration app, 10' stretching & qigong
Length of Sits: 45'
Posture: half-lotus
Cutting Edge Insight Stage of the Session: n/a
Meditative Techniques Utilized: silent noting and writing labels down every 5-10 minutes.
Noting Dynamics / Chronological Order: "food", heat, jaw release, foot pain, calmness, vibrations up the spine, spine humming/vibrating, chest discomfort, vibration in the dantien, agitation, tension release, coolness in dantien and lower back, coolness grows, heat limbs and face (cool/heat mix in the skull), analyzing, coolness/calmness, twitches in the face and throat, calmness, analyzing, lost in thoughts, loop-thoughts, heat in the face, aversion, blame, calm, coolness, pulsing throat, pulsing lower back, party shitty music (triumph), analyzing, heat in the face and limbs, image, ill-formed words, changed legs, storm of stings -> aversion 4-2-0-2-0-4-0, discomfort in the throat, image, spam, skull meridian opening from the Brow Ch. to the Crown Ch., coolness flows from Crown Ch to Brow Ch., "pros and cons", again coolness flowing in the up-down direction, "nobody listens", coolness flow, image, outside noise, "two quarrels", "pack of lies", "it's a fight", "I tried (swim) against the tide". Time is up.
Goal for Next Session: Keep doing the 4FN & the concentration practice.

[PabloP]

Date: 04/29/13
Pre-Meditative Context: 40' stretching & qigong
Length of Sits: 40'
Posture: half-lotus
Cutting Edge Insight Stage of the Session: n/a
Meditative Techniques Utilized: tried silent noting but ended in choice-less awareness.
General Thoughts:
* I bought the earplugs, as the outer noise of my new flat don't let me go any deep in meditation. The street cars sound almost disappear, they didn't bother anymore.
* Felt a big calmness right in the beginning but soon was disturbed by heat, which at first I thought it was a consequence of a previous hot bath, but the heat persisted (in a lower tone) and only subsided fully after finishing the session. Perhaps it's a effect of the earplugs. Or may be the combo of a longer qigong session plus hot bath plus earplugs. Time will tell.
* Other than heat, it was hard to note any other physical sensation. And that's really odd, because they are what I note more.
* Instead, thoughts were abundant, big time. It was almost as if physical sensations were replaced by thoughts. They were abundant but not overwhelming. More like a fun experience! They were so abundant that it was impossible to keep track of them, note them with the usual labels. So I just sit back and became aware of the flavors of thoughts as they were showing up.

There were three kinds of thoughts:
(i) at a superficial level there was "the commentator", lots of online thoughts making statements about arising thoughts
(ii) at a deeper level there was "the emotional response" to thoughts or commentator statements, this mind-states showed up with some seconds of delay, and sometimes they were easily tied up with the triggering thoughts as other new thoughts already were showing up.
(iii) at the deepest level I found the "thoughts machine", it's like a process where there's an ever present volition of delivering thoughts, and the really odd thing is that many times the machine didn't have the raw materials to process thoughts, but nevertheless the machine tried to do it's job. It was felt like chewing without food, or gesticulating like actually speaking, but no words nor thoughts came out. Just the volition to deliver thoughts!

In levels (ii) and (iii), thoughts were easily noted as not-self. In the level (i) sometimes yes, sometimes not.

[PabloP]

In yesterday's session the heat repeated, but after 10 minutes or so the heat shrink to the ears. The coolness bathed the rest of the body, with less intensity though. The usual physical sensations could be noted. Thought notes were abundant again. Calmness kept longer. Today, I'll start again with the report.

[NickP]

If left to its own devices, is the noting mind subtly more interested in some types of experiences than in others?

[PabloP]

Thanks for your continuous support. It's definitively no an EQ mind as there's preference (in this order) for energetic phenomena, over other physical sensations, and then mind-states, feeling-tones, and thoughts.

I think I have more sensitivity on auditory stuff, that's why the earplugs are of big help. I can see how sounds trigger thoughts and mind-states. Instead, I see clinging to restful dark eye-sight (or when the nimitta appears) but an automatic aversion to lights display. If the lights stay long enough, I manage more or less to accept them, something that doesn't happen very often.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Yesterday, I managed to sit for 60' despite having slept only 3 hours. All in all it was a good experience as the sleep deprivation forces me to let go, and the earplugs reinforced the calmness, the deepest I have experienced in formal meditation. The flip side is that my noting practice was not continuous but scattered because of enjoying the calmness. Hopefully, today I'll resume my previous noting practice.