Giulio B. pre-practice journal

[Giulio B.]

Most of the time the situation is terrific. This evening though the mood was uplifted and I was unusually concentrated. I have decided to start noting (15 minutes, choiceless, silent) postponing the concentration part of the session (10 minutes, abdominal breathing focus) in the end, to shake things up.
Started by noting very fast. It was almost effortlessly fast, 1 every second or more. One major arrest point lasted 3-5 seconds in which i couldn't note anything. Not many fear and aversion formations (I am usually dive bombed). Completed with little effort 9x10 breath counts, mistaking only the first one.

Rant: It's sad how practice(s) outcomes are so mood-dependant. I would like to reach a dimension that lies beyond these things. I can tell that i'm scared of the frail nature of this body and mind, and that life could **** me anytime in general.

Current practice is always a couple of minutes of conc. + 15-20 minutes of noting in the evening. From when i started this new diary up to now it's 40 days. I think that I have skipped 1.5 sessions per week on average.

Although i sometimes get curious about mind in real time, i'm still not really interested in it, so I do it only because "I must", in some sense.

[Giulio B.]

The last post was 5 days ago. I have had 4 days doing completely nothing (in terms of practice), while i re-began today's evening. Reasons in order of importance: low self-efficacy perceived towards meditation, fears linked to feelings of hopelessness and so unconscious avoidance of med. , i was mentally and physically busy with things.

This evening 10 min of conc. On breath followed by 15 minutes of noting. I wasn't very sharp. There is a lot going on though.

Tomorrow i'll have a 40 minutes drive and will note for 40 minutes. (Choiceless, silent). Tomorrow evening med. Starts at 22. In the next days hopefully i will take this thing more seriously and write some more meaningful posts.

[Giulio B.]

I was sharper this evening. Still, sharpness in noting is so much conditioned by external factors...

Two times, at the beginning of the session and distanced abou 30 seconds each other, it seems that i have made some "discovery" which made me think "i have to tell this at kfd" and "i better not forget this". I got all excited (for nothing anyway), and forgot a bunch of seconds later.

Tomorrow evening at 22.

[Giulio B.]

Noting 15 minutes (choiceless, silent), evening.

Minutes 2-6 (more or less): A growing speed, sharpness and "catching it". Positive emotions about it.
Minutes 6-8: Slight decay of the previous sharpness. Fears about it.
Minute 8-15: Stabilization to this lesser degree. Negative feelings of various kinds (mostly hopelessness and sadness) kick in. "Fog" phenomenon: a sort of mixed sleepiness, mind slowing down, generaly unclarity.

Extremely common notes: "hearing, pulsing, thinking, sensation". Very common notes: "seeing, judging, worry, fear, self-reference, image, imaging, knowing, fantasizing, pressure...". Other: "contact, unpleasant, laughing, grief, hopelessness, sadness, seeking...". I also had the feeling "to be locked on a superficial level of experience" or something like that. I note stuff like this "thinking".

10 mins of concentration afterwards. Didn't concentrate, i think because 20% I was a little shaken by the last part of the previous noting, 80% the pulsing (heartbeat) was a little intense and the sensations of the abdomen going up and down too feeble. So i immediately thought to switch to heartbeat as object. But then i thought that i would have acted according to the usual whim, which i didn't want to indulge (again and again), so i stayed on breath.

Tomorrow evening at 22. Saturday morning at 8 am (first time in the moring after years!), and then at 22.

(thank again for letting me write here).

[Giulio B.]

The last post was 15 days ago and the practice in the meantime has been zero. I'm closing the journal, perhaps for a few months. I don't know what's going on (of course - if i knew i would be enlightened or something like that). Very very very very very very very very very very basically though, the aversion, frustration, fear of failure, hopelessness and that kind of stuff have been too strong and BENT my motivational circuits into fearing vipàssana. Experience has showed me that this is beyond whatsoever control. Now I can feel this is the end of a down-cycle and a new up-cycle began (probably lasting a week minimum - and - i'm not bipolar, i'm talking about cycles of aversion to meditation), however i'm probably not going to update this journal again until i've made extremely and inarguably tangible progress. I'll most likely continue with noting, and some other things that I have in mind. Anyway, the general future direction is: see.

[Giulio B.]

The last post was 15 days ago and the practice in the meantime has been zero. I'm closing the journal, perhaps for a few months. I don't know what's going on (of course - if i knew i would be enlightened or something like that). Very very very very very very very very very very basically though, the aversion, frustration, fear of failure, hopelessness and that kind of stuff have been too strong and BENT my motivational circuits into fearing vipàssana. Experience has showed me that this is beyond whatsoever control. Now I can feel this is the end of a down-cycle and a new up-cycle began (probably lasting a week minimum - and - i'm not bipolar, i'm talking about cycles of aversion to meditation), however i'm probably not going to update this journal again until i've made extremely and inarguably tangible progress. I'll most likely continue with noting, and some other things that I have in mind. Anyway, the general future direction is: see.

I have changed idea. Without some social pressure i end up doing nothing... due to my instability i didn't feel good about posting here but i have asked, and they have told me it was ok, so ok the diary is re-opened.

1) I’m currently doing KF’s “texting”, in substitution of noting aloud which gets my mouth too dry. I also do silent noting and somewhat alternate between the two (not in the same session though). This before going to bed.
2) I bought a comfortable beach chair and, while "texting", take note of arising formations in a shortened code-like format, so the process goes on a little faster.
3) Due to some ego-softening I have experienced recently (psychoactives...), i feel more capable about practicing metta so i'll most probably start experimenting with it in the following days, with the instruction from the website alohadharma. This would add up to the noting/texing in peculiar days when i feel up to.
4) I'll update this diary weekly because it's less stressful, with some relevant data.

TY

[Giulio B.]

Weekly report.

- I've regularly done Noting for 7 days, before going to bed. 20 minutes the first four days, 30 minutes the last three days. The first time it was paper-based "texting". The second time I've noted aloud. The third, fourth, fifth and sixth silently. The seventh, today, aloud.

- Three out of the seven noting sessions were made while in notable anguish-dominated states. These are the same that made me drop the practice in the past (for both a day and long periods of time). What always happened is that i gave up for one to several days and either stayed at the PC (discrete painkiller) or got high (ultimate painkiller).

- Today's session: Wild. Lots of fear and judgment. The latter typically concerns the Noting itself. Truckloads of worry. Some laughs after recognizing very fast or predictable phenomena. Some strange happiness. A little empathy here and there. Gratefulness towards all the people who have helped me here. More worry, hopelessness. Fantasizing, some tears, wanting to stop. Disturbing images -> hopelessness. Hope. Feeling that i was noting really well and making progress with it -> worry again (this is not just "worry", it's more like a punch in the stomach, lol). Feeling like I want to do it again -> worry (fear to be hopeless). Lots of "knowing" (when i can't find a note). Note: my noting is a little on the skeletal side, this is because many thoughts are very specific, and I can't find categories to put them in without spending time to think about it.

- I can't stop thanking in my head a lot of people, recently Ona Kieser and limbic. Just thanks. Wednesday i should be having a meeting with Kenneth.

[Ona]

Consistency and persistence make a big difference...

[Giulio B.]

Thank you Ona. I foresee that in some time I will develope a sort of resistance to noting again. This tour though I'm more prepared, because I've seen it happen already once or twice with some (minimal) clarity.
The past 8 days: done 30 minutes of noting aloud each day, and missed one.

- The noting tonight was quite steady. It seems it is getting generally steadier.
- Some evenings I'm at a point at which, given any moment, I can tell what's happening in matter of... i think around 1 second.
- Sometimes I have understood why Daniel I. was talking about a frequency up to 10Hz for the "first set of vibrations"... some things are there for a split of a second. "Judging thoughts" are usually one such category. No really a lot of things seem to go that fast.
- Most of the times the noting is lagging, enough to give space to 1-2 further phenomena right before the start of a note. Being the noting loud, i can't go any faster than that anyway.
- Intrusive reactions such as urges (to wet the lips, to do, to move...) and some emotions like strong versions of "hopelessness", have enormous power. It's like, for an arachnophobic, seeing a nasty spider crawling inside his clothes. The reaction is completely distorting. It looks like some kind of meaningless primordial fear. Suffering is somewhere inside there. Again there's a question that returns to me over and over, what is suffering. This is not a question that has a logical sense though... It's more like a feeling that something I don't know is going on.
- After 30 minutes i'm completely K.O.

[Giulio B.]

6-days report. Done 5, skipped 1. All of them consisted in 30 minutes of noting aloud. Three significant sessions:

1) From a state of strong aversion at the beginning the noting got fast, precise, and sort of automaticized. It may have been among the peaks or the peak so far. I felt a persistent perceptual distortion, where I was "sinking" on my chair and getting flatter to the ground.

2) This one was dominated by aversion. I switched halfway into assessing its intensity from 0 to 5. I did that, truly, because I wanted to escape. It didn't happen so I got more frustrated.

3) Today's one: a nice depressive evening (feeling mostly hopelessness); I postponed noting and listened to music instead (painkiller). Then went into the meditation room. I felt a strong resistance to sit down on the chair. So I walked around it in circles, talking to myself about how I was feeling, aloud. After a while I realized that I was catching my mind states one after another. So I was encouraged and sat down, to begin the session (would have done it anyways, sooner or later). It started out with big aversion formations, which at a point made me want to interrupt it and do "texting" instead which is easier. But then a thought: "No! whatever happens, stick with this!" So I continued and the noting got somewhat precise. I know what the patterns with which phenomena arise are. The only thing I can do I think is to continue with this.