Time: 45 minutes.

Situation: A quiet room with my eyes closed, sitting in a chair with my hands on my knees.

Experience:  Awareness settled on touch-sense. Touch-sensations arose and passed at an increasing rate from perhaps 8 times per second up to around 16 times per second. The happened over the course of about 30 seconds. Awareness shifted to sight-sense; these sensations were also arising and passing at around 16 times per second. Concentration and equanimity were high. I reminded myself of what the Three Characteristics are and that if it is observable, it isn't me. I observed sensations arise and pass. I fell into a little story. When I popped out concentration and equanimity were very high. Mind-sensations were objects just like physical sensations. The process of assigning a sense of self to sensations was obvious. The physical sensations that usually (immediately) precede "strong" mind-sensations like anger and sadness arose and passed and were clearly just physical sensations. The mind did not assign a mind-sensation to them like anger or sadness, awareness just recognized that, for example, the tension and heat in my upper chest and tightening of the temple-muscles that usually precedes an "anger-sensation" in the mind was arising, and then observed it pass. That was all. A few light shows. Some body-twisting. Then a story. Then more physical sensations that usually precede "strong" mind-sensations. More observation of them arising and passing. Lather, rinse, repeat. End of session.

Observations: Coolio, Yo.

Time: 45 minutes.

Situation: A quiet room with my eyes closed, sitting in a chair with my hands on my knees.

Experience:  Awareness settled on touch-sense. Touch-sensations arose and passed around 12 times per second. Awareness shifted to sight-sense; those sensations arose and passed at 12 times per second as well. Concentration and equanimity were low. I reminded myself of what the Three Characteristics are. Mind-sensations were difficult to observe as not "me", just a sixth category of sensation. I fell into a series of stories. After maybe four or five stories, the speed of sensations quickened to around 18 times per second, and the character of sensations smoothed-out a bit. There was physical pain. There was aversion to pain and to meditating. I wanted to stop meditating. I continued to meditate. Equanimity increased. Realization: "I" was not the cause of perceiving sensations, sensations were perceived without "me", and that to the extent there was a "me", it was just a part of the moment of perceiving. Not-self came to the fore. Mind-sensations were just sensations. White light. An almost physical "clunk" of awareness doing something. More pain. More aversion. Less equanimity. Less concentration. Then less pain and aversion and more concentration and equanimity. A kind of cycling between these. The timer went off. I was startled.

Observations: N/A.

Time: 45 minutes.

Situation: A quiet room with my eyes closed, sitting in a chair with my hands on my knees.

Experience:  Awareness settled on touch-sense. Touch-sensations arose and passed at about 8 or 10 times per second. Concentration and equanimity were moderate to high. I reminded myself of what the Three Characteristics are. Mind-sensations were observable as sensations just like any of the five physical sensations. Sensations were very much not "me", they were just sensations in whatever moment they were "doing their thing" in, and then, of course, they passed away.  Awareness entered a story. When it popped out, the rate of arising and passing of sensations had increased quite a bit, if I had to guess: ballpark 25 times per second. The character of the arising and passing was smooth and fine, but the periods of "nothingness" between one sensation passing and the next arising were very discrete and perceptable, despite the speed involved. The body began to twist and tilt for some reason. Proprioception was off and there was some physical pain the lower back and shoulders. It was difficult to tell whether I was sitting in a normal upright position or not. Awareness entered another story. When it popped out, sensations were arising and passing just as fast as when awareness entered the story, but the pain and proprioception/twisting issues were gone. Continued observation of sensations arising and passing. The alarm beeped. This session did not feel long, but it didn't feel like the blink of an eye either. 

Observations: N/A.

Time: 45 minutes.

Situation: A quiet room with my eyes closed, sitting in a chair with my hands on my knees.

Experience:  Awareness settled on touch-sense. Touch sensations arose from nothing, did their "thing", and then passed away utterly, at a rate of about 8 or 10 times per second. Concentration and equanimity were low to moderate. I reminded myself of what the Three Characteristics are. Data from the sense-organs (including "mind") presented distinct from each other, but part of a moment of time, as if the data-experiences were pieces of a puzzle (large, chunky, and not terribly a "part of" the other pieces, but still fit the others perfectly). Not-self was very, very clearly visible. I fell into stories a few times. This session seemed very long; it ended. 

Observations: N/A.

Time: 45 minutes.

Situation: A quiet room with my eyes closed, sitting in a chair with my hands on my knees.

Experience:  Awareness settled on touch-sense and after a moment sight-sense as well. The two flickered in and out of existence in tandem at a rate of about 12 times per second ("vibrated"). The texture of these vibrations was smooth. I reminded myself what the Three Characteristics are. Vibrations slowly sped up to about 16 plus times per second. Concentration and equanimity were high. Mind was doing its thing - trying to assign things a status of "I", "painful" or otherwise "undesirable" - all of these activities had been pretty absent from the scene for about a week, so this was new, but all of these activities were very transparently observable as mind just doing it's thing, and having nothing to do with anything other than that. I dropped into stories several times. There were no black-out-like fruition events. No lights behind the eyelids. In many respects it felt like the Dark Night, but the "unpleasant" character of it was CLEARLY a series of obsessive, repetitive, mind activities labeling it as such. The session ended.

Observations: This session was exhausting. It had a great deal of laser-like focus to it, and the sort of broad perspective that comes with mind-contacts being clearly discernible as such, but it was very new to me to go through a chunk of territory that was seriously unpleasant while seeing it just as it is, instead of being embroiled in the unpleasantness of it and "feeling" things "paining me". Instead the painfulness of experience was clearly the product of foolish, arbitrary mind-activity, and not anything to do with a "me" or the "thing" that was "painful".

Time: 45 minutes.

Situation: A quiet room with my eyes closed, sitting in a chair with my hands on my knees.

Experience:  Awareness settled on touch-sense and after a moment sight-sense as well. The two flickered in and out of existence in tandem at a rate of about 10 times per second. The "out of existence" voids were opaque and cavernous. The flickering had a rough quality to it, like chop on the ocean. I reminded myself what the Three Characteristics are. Over the course of perhaps a minute or two, the flickering sped up to about 16 or 18 times per second and smoothed out too. Concentration and equanimity didn't seem particularly high at the time, but in retrospect they were off the charts high. Awareness-stimulus-organ "contacts" arose and passed at all six sense-doors. Experience began to be defined more by awareness of a moment versus void of non-awareness than by the nature of the particular contact being experienced (for example, sound); I'll go ahead and call this "formations". I dropped into a brief story. I popped out and the meditation continued as before. Then there was a dip into non-awareness for a moment. A brief  bliss-wave through the body, and then lights behind my eyelids, REM, eyes rolling into the back of my head, then back down, and extreme mental quietude. Then back to the formations, of which physical and psychological "pain" were components. I put quote marks because the sensations that made up the "pain" were not felt as painful, or happening to some separate "me". They were just happening and observable more as just another sensation in the body - they were just happening in their moments, along with everything else. Then a dip into non-awareness and the whole thing repeated once more. Then back into formations, with the moments flickering in and out of existence smoothly and rapidly until the session ended.

Observations: This is new territory for me. I feel like I'm always saying that about meditations! But it is new to me. I'm still sussing-out what this all is and what it means. I feel like I really could use an extended retreat to  investigate this new quality of experience - 45 minutes a day is great, don't get me wrong, this just feels like a whole new vista that I don't quite "get" at this stage of the game. Oh well. Onward we go.

Time: 45 minutes.

Situation: A quiet room with my eyes closed, sitting in a chair with my hands on my knees.

Experience:  Awareness settled on touch-sense. It flickered in and out of existence in at about 8 times per second. Concentration was high. Equanimity was hard to really evaluate. Mind-activity was observable as any other object would be. All sense doors received data when I turned awareness to them. I reminded myself what the Three Characteristics are. After a few minutes the flickering of sensations sped up to maybe 16 times per second. I dropped into a story. When I popped out sensations were presenting very fast. Data from multiple sense doors presented simultaneously. Then awareness was gone for a moment. My rolled up in my head and there was REM and lights behind my eyelids. My eyes rolled back down and a bliss-wave went through the body. Then lots of equanimity and observation of vibrations again. Fast. Then awareness was gone for a moment. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. At no point was there a felt sense of self. There were just "contacts". The session ended.

Observations: I've been meditating since the last entry on this blog, but haven't blogged about it. There has been no felt sense of a permanent or separate "self" since the last entry. Just "contacts". Discursive thought continues. Uninvestigated "emotions" feel like they always have, but investigated ones are simply touch sensations in the body, which flux and eventually dissipate over time. This is unlike what I expected, but not bad; just different.