Time: 30 minutes.

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

Experience: I closed my eyes and observed visual sensations flickering in and out of existence at about six times per second. Awareness shifted almost immediately from visual sensations to tactile sensations, and the flickering of sensations seemed to increase in speed to perhaps eight times per second or so. Concentration was very low. I was sucked into stories many times. I would pop back out briefly, but always got distracted again. The stories would wrap around awareness like a thick blanket. There was almost a muffling volume to them. There were emotions present like disappointment and despair. I nodded-off once or twice. I ended the session at 30 minutes and lied down to take a nap for the remainder of the session - which was really nice, because I was bushed.

Observations: I'm trying sitting in a chair for meditation. Its a new thing. My back has been "out" for about a month now and my wife has suggested that it might have something to do with how I sit when I meditate. I kind of doubt it, but I figure a week of meditating in a chair is a worthwhile experiment to see if it helps .

This area feels like Dark Night to me. The difficulty concentrating and feelings of worthlessness are definitely red flags I associate with the dhukka nanas. Time will tell though.