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| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | |
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1 | aug 1-2 | 3rd | 4th | 5th | 6th | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
2 | 2hr formal sit | 0 | 0, hung over | 45min timed sit | 1hr timed sit (1st sit) | 45min timed sit (2nd sit) | prep for 3rd sit | 1hr timed sit (3rd sit) | 30min timed sit (4th sit) | | | | | | | | | | | | |
3 | | | | 5min logging | | | goals are: | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
4 | mostly concentration | | | started w/ intention to do concentration practice | resolved to 4th jhana | did not resolve to get 4th jhana, felt somewhat rushed, just investigated | investigate 4th properly, alternating between spacing out and investigating seems like the place to be | | did not resolve to get 4th but just eased into each jhana, solidifying properly and paying more attention to nuances. observed much less effort, more bliss, no background desire to race through the jhanas to get to insight practice. | | | | | | | | | | | | |
5 | | | | spaced out | near the transition from 3rd to 4th, got really strong but stable freq vibrations in top of hands/fingers (everywhere but palms), like they were covering my hands, feeling of warmth as well | vibrations started quickly in the face, and as I was reminded of going to jhana, I shifted out of insight to concentration | Look for the 3 Cs relentlessly. Keep Daniel's insight heirarchy in mind. | possible fruition: | no strong vibrations from 1st to 4th, warm tingling hands showed up about 45secs into 4th though | | | | | | | | | | | | |
6 | | | | when i noted that, noticed strong bodily bliss similar to 3rd | (im sitting half lotus with palms open+flat over knees) | vibrations slowly strobed in and out and keeping concentration clean to move up jhanas was sporadic | 7: rapture equanimity doubt fear expectation | Post sit...first thoughts...this might be impossible to track... | just moved into really stable, fast noting. not much content stuck out that I can remember well | | | | | | | | | | | | |
7 | | | | then noticed really strong rapture, which brought me to focus on concentration more | i hesitate, not being sure if i should switch to insight yet but decide the bodily sensations I normally associate with 3rd are gone now, and the attention is still wide/panoramic/calm like 4th. the hand sensations are nothing like it though. anyway i switch. | felt like my attention was behaving like in 3rd jhana as vibrations really started up, felt 'rocked' and out of control like 'fast' portions of cycles in last sit. rode it out and noted everything furiously, emotional/mental content had no sticky quality to it. | 8: add core processes such as the sensations that seem to make up attention itself, intention itself, memory itself, questioning, effort, surrender, subtle fear, space, consciousness, and everything that seems to be Subject or Observer or Self all the way through the skull, neck, chest, abdomen and all of space such that nothing is excluded | start by resolving to 4th jhana and working towards it, strong rapture at 2nd that I try to ignore but end up just resting with; around 3rd jhana the vibrations start in the background, i stay with the breath and remember to navigate by observing the 'peripheral' quality of 3rd jhana attention, causing it to eventually widen and bodily bliss slowly dropping away, I alternate between focusing on the breath and the wider attention while vibrations intensify | sit was just much, much more relaxed, no real goal/purpose but to just continue noting as it seemed natural. no strenuous effort. no hang ups, except occasionally wanting to experience what i thought was fruition/bliss wave, before noting it and continuing | | | | | | | | | | | | |
8 | | | | waited a bit and saw it was a solid 1st jhana (possibly in the middle of a downshift) | pretty stable/calm as 4th tends to be, but i start noticing light tingling again in various parts of my body. within 2 minutes I start getting regular surges/tensing/twitching. i notice I'm fully erect despite not feeling sexually aroused, and just note it and move on | was waiting for the low end of the cycle, with the idea that what I was going through was dark night/re-obs, and if I maintained concentration through the 'slow' portion, I'd find myself in something like equanimity, but wouldn't space out | 9: do 8 effortlessly | I find that I can shift (was going to say apply more effort but it sounds wrong) a degree of my attention to the breath/observing the wide attention itself (so two seperate objects), and the degree to which I do this is the degree to which the vibrations don't continue to grow. They fade if I continue to solidify 4th and ramp up if I focus on them...I didn't try just relaxing and spacing out so I'm not sure what would have happened. | much less noticeable vibrations...strangely started getting (very light) energy surges again in front/shoulder, which were absent in last 2 sits. | | | | | | | | | | | | |
9 | | | | moved through to 2nd (rapture really intense) | surges/tingling keep coming, primarily in upper body but basically all over, upper back especially strong | eventually sensation from beginning of 1st sit occurred, warm/tingly hands, and after noticing it I found my attention was 4th jhana-like, wider/panoramic, vibrations a low hum and hardly noticeable | | i do this a few times (solidifying 4th and half-shifting into insight) before realizing I had goals pre-sit that I resolved to see 3Cs in 4th jhana and whatnot, so I let go and start observing sensations | overall feeling was peaceful, relaxed, and noting them as such did not bring about any vibrations, just that the noting seemed to be much more in sync with the sensation such that they seemed almost paired | | | | | | | | | | | | |
10 | | | | bouncing between 2nd/3rd, then 3rd for 4-5mins, hitting 4th shortly after | as intensity increases, I note everything I can, including the feeling that crap is happening too quickly to note well, and associated uncertainty with that conclusion | tried to note something every second but attention alternated between 5-10 seconds of "looking for sensations of peace, calmness, and noting them", and simply spacing out. had a lot of trouble finding the suffering in peace/panoramic awareness. | | vibrations get really intense but it doesn't distract so much as I just objectively observe "this is more intense than it usually is", noting that along with everything else physical and mental | reclined for 2-3 mins after alarm rang, just started at the ceiling (or more the space between the ceiling while noting everything else was going on), seemed to space out for a bit, noted that, got up. a feeling of 'nothing special' | | | | | | | | | | | | |
11 | | | | stayed for under a minute, switched to insight | somewhere in here i drop the breath as primary object and just let my attention get rocked around by various intense pulses, raptures | a 3rd state that would last a little longer was noticing mental and physical phenomena in two seperate but increasingly similar "places" in my mind, wheras the noting was occuring somewhere else, which seemed like an observer. | | I notice afterglow effects of 4th and kind of tune into that, vibrations still present. I make a strong resolution to myself to observe the 3Cs in peace/equanimity/space, and start by trying to see all 3 in 3 moments, of 'peace', but can't really grasp onto anything, noting the analysis and emotions that arise after I come to this conclusion, and the conclusion itself | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
12 | | | | lots of attention pulls, noting, neglated to note the attention jumping though | it dies down for a bit and I space out for maybe 5-10secs before resuming slow noting, increasing as vibrations increase | I'd bounce around between these, and often get frustrated when it went too quickly, noting frustration, but having the thought that I was frustrated and noting that thought, and then wondering if it was the observer or not | | my memory is a little hazy at the point because the changes in vibrations, intentions to perceive them in specific ways, results/spinning off of those intentions, and the chronological order/causal properties of all of those things start becoming meshed. so the rest will be in bullet points that stood out...I can't be sure they'll be in the right order but they at least happened and lead to the last paragraph I've already written | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
13 | | | | 10-20mins of electric shocks, energy surges, pulses of fine tingling every 2-3 secs from navel up through face, sometimes persistent(did not fade) | for the next 15mins I cycle (around 1.5mins per cycle, although i wouldn't trust my intuition with ballparking elapsed times) between really intense combinations of rapture/bodily energy surges (including yawning that produces tears...)/rapid-fire mental content and much slower periods with the potential to lose focus on the object | by this point 4th jhana is pretty hard, and it takes little effort to stay in it. but shifting between trying hard to notice 3Cs in 4th jhana qualities like attention, space (and not really getting anywhere but a mental note like "this is space"), and actually spacing out for a bit before noticing and applying effort again | | at some point I decide to focus on space, and after what seems like an eternity of repeating stuff like "there is no self here to experience the space" to myself (except im not sure if repeating is the right word because i conventionally think of it as an auditory thing but there were elements of thought and sound and other stuff mixed in such that it was more like an instance of a certain phrase being repeated, without a speaker or thought clearly causing it), | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
14 | | | | | | | | eventually the there is a shift, and slight detatched kind of vertigo | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
15 | | | | got glimpses of gross background stuff like peace, relaxation, tension, nervousness. was working with awareness of those things along with primary object (sensations on tip of nose/nostrils) | I feel like I can influence the speed/re-buildup during the low part of the cycle by starting slow noting practice again. | at some point inbetween I notice a vague sense of pain in my back, note it with intention to continue | | ...I feel like this is becoming more natural. The "thought" occurs (scare quotes because it started to seem more like an occurence of something that resembled a thought, with stuff related to the sense doors, instead of a purely cognitive self-talk thing) that the quality of space and attention has shifted into something that resembles 5th jhana a lot. I neglected to do a spot check to notice whether there was a sense of body or how my attention was orienting itself, but the 'open expansive space' quality predominated. in the background I'm noting all of this analysis with hardly any effort, periodically running memory tracks down to my last note, and noting everything I 'thought' about, all in probably less than a second | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
16 | | | | pain in back, numbness, awareness lowered, slight posture shift, applied more effort, stabilized attention back on primary object | at some point during one of the slow periods I get 3-5 instances of spontaneous breaking of posture (slouching, then me noting the slouching and correcting it) with light back pain, the drop in concentration + not normally *that* irritating pain strangely causes me to decide to switch posture, I lie down, keep noting, and cycling continues | , but then I get a strange feeling to just stop, and I can't really explain why but I decided to open my eyes and recline, I'm lying down for all of 5 seconds when the alarm rings. | | inside' this 5th jhana space I have the actual thought that there is no thinker or observer of the thought, it's just 'there'...but not really. 'I' observe it but don't/can't because there is no observer, and I'm struggling to find the words, but this, whatever it is, reveals itself at that time during the stream of consciousness with extreme clarity. | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
17 | | | | | | | | ...I find myself observing / labelling a 'this' and 'that' similar to what florian called 'detachable attention' in his thread. there is the observer and the observed, in seperate 'spaces' in the mind, following his lead and watching attention shift back and forth and 'decrease the space', I get an idea and start trying to perceive sensations from different sense doors in as much detail as possible, starting with visual (back of eyelids), then auditory (there is construction work going on outside), then tactile (warm hands from previous sits have been here all along), and mental (all thoughts). the image of my mind as a dark circle appears, and the different sense doors seem to 'light up' different slices of the 2-dimensional pie chart, with the portions themselves oriented relative my head and where the sense is experienced (eyes in front, ears nearer to the top, hands under the head, so light up as a little slice under the eyes). as this develops the sense doors start becoming more immeshed and only distinguishable if I pay attention to the mental imprint of the pie chart...i mostly just noted the experience and moved on, but it did stick out as some kind of development of concepts after the sit | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
18 | | | | lower frequency tingling again | cycling speeds up, 'fast' periods are slightly faster | | | at some point I decide that no self is the easiest door to work with | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
19 | | | | sit ends (alarm) | more yawning/shakes, at points I hear my teeth chattering slightly | | | ...and get into a seemingly long (perception of time passing is really loose here, I have no clue how long anything took at this point) period of rapidly 'seeing' no self (and bits of the other two characteristics when possible) with everything and everything I possibly can, from gross sensations to the qualities of 4th/ 5th jhana as the qualities shift back and forth and I've stopped paying attention to what jhana I'm technically in and am just using the high degree of clarity and ease of 'mind movement' to aid investigation, including all the thoughts/dharma speculation/analysis that this investigation tends to normally create | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
20 | | | | noted thoughts of next activity (work) immediately. mild sexual arousal, partial erection | i notice 5hzish frequency that seems tuned to the vibration/shakes, but neither are stable and i can't get into a rhythm of observing them well | | | all of this is happening at what would have been breakneck speed for me under 24 hours ago, but I feel strangely calm and confident, however even that stuff doesn't stick and i just note it down...in short I feel as if I'm 'rapidly (rapidly isn't the right word, so much as the pace is quite fast but I'm just sitting there 'doing it') perceiving everything', there is way way less dharma speculation and pretty much anything disernable in general and I don't feel like I'm making a conscious effort to practice or direct my attention...basically a lot of stuff that has a similar quality of transience and sense-door-y-ness (all not exactly the same but not quite different) get noted....and after what seems like a long time of this, the events of the following paragraph occur: | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
21 | | | | tingling in upper body and exrtemities (toes inc) persisting as i write this | there is also a background low-pitched ringing in my ears, but I'm wearing earplugs and recognize this as characteristic of keeping them on for long periods in certain conditions (confirm that ringing went away the moment i took the earplugs off post sit...) | i felt like what i was experiencing was very similar to 4th jhana (concentration), except I was not using the breath as an object and kept forcefully pushing my attention to investigate the qualities of the state, bouncing back and forth between spacing out and attention...but the state itself didn't dissolve like it should/normally does. this leads me to think I'm in re-observation or equanimity, especially since my last few sits are very dark-night esque. | | (see "Post-Sit" write up) | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
22 | | | | | overlap between ringing sound (which I did not note well), and strong irregular vibrations/intense cycling causes feelings of discomfort, annoyance, etc that I note reasonably well and wasn't particularly distracting; i noticed one moment where I thought "god just stop please" before noting that | I'm not sure of all this because I have no memorable a&p event, and was really just having an open mind and waiting for a&p. some have said it's likely i've passed it in the past, or judging from florian's old thread, some of the bliss I experience could be me unknowingly speeding through early insight stages at the start of each sit | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
23 | | | | | I return to half lotus, cycling becomes less intense, noting less precise, more instances at 'slow' end of cycle where i space out for a few seconds | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
24 | | | | | emotions are moderately more peaceful/happy, although not pronounced as I still feel somewhat 'raw' from earlier intensity. attention is kinda like 4th (shamantha), but again I can't be sure. i only get about a minute or two to investigate this. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
25 | | | | | this ends up being close to the end of the sit, alarm rings during a 5-10sec slow period and I stop | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
26 | | | | | in retrospect feel i should have kept investigating to see if the cycling would continue | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
27 | | | | | did not feel very much like practicing (still raw) after this, but reading florian's thread, felt i was making progress, decided to have a snack and do another sit | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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29 | | | | | tarin: note equanimity, silence, quiet stretches, spacing out, the noticing of all of this. don't solidify into 4th during these slow periods | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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