Time: 35 minutes.

Situation: A quiet room with my eyes closed, sitting Burmese-style with my hands on my knees.

This session marks my return to vipassana. Samatha was interesting, pleasant, and may have increased my concentration skills, but ultimately it simply felt less revealing and likely to produce permanent change than vipassana. I had switched to samatha to get a handle on some on what some "mystery states" were that I was experiencing and I feel like I pretty much accomplished that; I'm confident now that those states were pure abodes (or jhanas 9-13). I could have spent more time doing samatha, I but I feel like (having accomplished the ID I'd set out to accomplish) it was time to get back to business.  

Experience: I closed my eyes and observed the perceptual field arising and passing at perhaps four or six times per second. Almost immediately, I felt a huge pressure at my third eye. I allowed attention to settle on that area and the arising and passing I'd been experiencing increased to maybe eight times per second. I fell into a little story, snapped back, and concentration was increased, as was equanimity. Equanimity was not particularly high, but it was there in the background. Data from the sense-doors arose and passed together, the door of origin being irrelevant. There was the sensation of awareness being sucked out of existence for a moment, then it was back. In retrospect, the door was suffering. Sense-data became a lot more jumbled and concentration ebbed. I fell into a little story, snapped back, and concentration was higher. Arising and passing was again rapid and clear, and sense-data arose and passed together but was not longer swirling and jumbled. Equanimity was higher than previously in this session. Awareness momentarily blipped out of existence. In retrospect, the door was impermanence. The session ended.

Observations: I'm pretty fatigued today and my mental health has been better. Anxiety and depression has been in the background quite a bit. These periods are never fun.