Time: 45 minutes
Situation: A quiet room with my eyes closed, half lotus.
Experience: I began with my focus on my breath and soon felt a pressure between my eyes. I shifted my attention to the pressure and observed it intensify and grow. I observed some low level physical pleasure in my arms, hands, and torso - the pleasure seemed to pulse in a non-linear way. This was followed by some (again low-level) strobe effects behind my eye-lids. My awareness seemed to expand somewhat from a narrow-focus to a wider one and I began to tune into a sense of mental calm and equanimity. From here, the rest of the meditation was spent examining my sensory experience of breathing from this place of equanimity. Like my last session, this one was characterized from beginning to end by a sort of unfocused concentration. The object was constantly slipping away when I tried to examine it. This lead to feelings of doubt, disgust, and frutration about my meditation efforts. I attempted to turn my awareness on the arising and passing of these feelings themselves, but without much success.
Observations: Based on my experiences so far and a few conversations with yogis on DhO I suspect I'm in the Dark Night. The difficulty concentrating and general feelings of doubt and misery while meditating seem to bare this out. Ingram's MCTB recommends pushing-on through by simply "being with" these phenomina as they are, so that's the plan; although I'll be the first to admit this seems like a tall order and I'm more than a little unsure how to begin.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Friday, December 30, 2011
Time: 25 minutes
Situation: A quiet room with my eyes closed, half lotus.
Experience: It took longer than usual to really "get with" my breath - maybe five or ten minutes. Once I had Access Concentration I shifted my attention to the sensation of pressure between my eyes and tried to stay with that. There were pulses of pleasure through my body, but not at the usual volume. After a while I experienced a few blossoms of light behind my eyes and my sense of calm increased. My ability to focus and follow the birth and death of thoughts increased beyond what it was when the session started - but nothing earth shattering.
Observations: Maybe the problem is that I was looking for something "earth shattering." This session was characterized by a lot of wandering attention - I couldn't really seem to focus tightly on the object; it was always slipping away like it was coated in soap or grease. Thoughts would arise and I would get sucked into their content for a beat or two before tuning into their existence and watching them themselves. Even when I did spot a thought arise my observation of it was slower than usual and my focus had a dull quality to it that usually isn't there.
Situation: A quiet room with my eyes closed, half lotus.
Experience: It took longer than usual to really "get with" my breath - maybe five or ten minutes. Once I had Access Concentration I shifted my attention to the sensation of pressure between my eyes and tried to stay with that. There were pulses of pleasure through my body, but not at the usual volume. After a while I experienced a few blossoms of light behind my eyes and my sense of calm increased. My ability to focus and follow the birth and death of thoughts increased beyond what it was when the session started - but nothing earth shattering.
Observations: Maybe the problem is that I was looking for something "earth shattering." This session was characterized by a lot of wandering attention - I couldn't really seem to focus tightly on the object; it was always slipping away like it was coated in soap or grease. Thoughts would arise and I would get sucked into their content for a beat or two before tuning into their existence and watching them themselves. Even when I did spot a thought arise my observation of it was slower than usual and my focus had a dull quality to it that usually isn't there.
Time: 35 minutes
Situation: A quiet room with my eyes closed, half lotus.
Experience: I started out with my focus on the breath, trying to perceive the fine vibrations of my own perception of it. In less than a minute, a sensation of pressure built-up between my eyebrows, and I shifted my attention to that. I began to perceive non-linear cascades of physical pleasure moving through my body - mostly my arms and torso. There were blips of light behind my eye-lids; some like sheet-lightening, some like sparks. The light-thing didn't last too long, but happened a few times throughout the session. My though process slowed down a lot and I could spot thoughts the moment they formed and examine their appearance, existence, and then fading away (almost immediately) into nothing. This thought-examining process went on for some time. Then I seemed to drop out of focus. I played a long fantasy story in my head before I realized what was going on. I moved back to the thought-examining process then ended the session.
Observations: I seem to be moving to a stage of slow-thought/equanimity fairly quickly lately, but once I'm there I find I "don't really know what to do with myself" in terms of the object of meditation. This sounds like the Fourth Jhana to me - which means (if that's true) that I could go on to the fifth, or use the Fourth to examine my perceptual experience of reality. I'm not really clear and how to do either.
Situation: A quiet room with my eyes closed, half lotus.
Experience: I started out with my focus on the breath, trying to perceive the fine vibrations of my own perception of it. In less than a minute, a sensation of pressure built-up between my eyebrows, and I shifted my attention to that. I began to perceive non-linear cascades of physical pleasure moving through my body - mostly my arms and torso. There were blips of light behind my eye-lids; some like sheet-lightening, some like sparks. The light-thing didn't last too long, but happened a few times throughout the session. My though process slowed down a lot and I could spot thoughts the moment they formed and examine their appearance, existence, and then fading away (almost immediately) into nothing. This thought-examining process went on for some time. Then I seemed to drop out of focus. I played a long fantasy story in my head before I realized what was going on. I moved back to the thought-examining process then ended the session.
Observations: I seem to be moving to a stage of slow-thought/equanimity fairly quickly lately, but once I'm there I find I "don't really know what to do with myself" in terms of the object of meditation. This sounds like the Fourth Jhana to me - which means (if that's true) that I could go on to the fifth, or use the Fourth to examine my perceptual experience of reality. I'm not really clear and how to do either.
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