First, thank you to anyone who happens to answer my questions and for everyone who contributes to making this a cool place. Second, thank you to Daniel for writing a book that is helping me greatly and has inspired me tremendously. I have never had a formal sitting practice until recently, but have always been on my 'path'. I am not sure where I am path-wise in the MCTB model and am tired of trying to figure it out because I always think I am more advanced than I am. My practice has picked up significantly over the past few months. I now sit 1-1.5 hours per day each morning and have been doing this for about 5 weeks. I also practice throughout the day as much as possible.

'Noting' has always seemed forced to me until recently when I realized it is probably not a hugely different technique to what I have done throughout my life (on and off) which is full body awareness of sensations, usually starting at my toes and moving up until I can feel my entire body at once. The next three paragraphs describe what I am currently considering my "noting practice" and I am trying to confirm that I am in line with what others here would consider an adequate noting practice.

It is not possible for me to note sublingually or 'mentally' at a rate of 40 notes per second, but I can certainly experience 40 distinct sensations per second. I have a spatial awareness of where these sensations occur in my body, what their particular intensity is, and so forth. I can sense pricks, tingles, pressures, waves, and more as all distinct without giving a name to them. When I am resting in that state, experiencing distinct sensations moment to moment, I count that as 'noting' and that is how I have been doing noting practice for the most part.

As my mind begins to settle and the experience of these sensations in and on my body becomes the predominant experience (meaning verbal chatter, emotions, etc have mostly subsided and I have a calm mind), I can begin to notice my awareness of sensations encompassing a larger portion of my body. Perhaps it was just my legs and hands at first. Then it is my arms and shoulders, hands, legs, and now my feet, and now my throat, and so on. Awareness of sensations in these body regions is more or less predominant in any given moment, but I attempt to subtly include other regions as things become more stable. Eventually I aim to include basically my entire body at once, including smaller and smaller regions of my body once I am able to sense my entire body in a broad sense all at once consistently.

Now, I DO do verbal/mental noting interspersed with the practice I described above, but it is not the predominant effort that I am making. I note 'thinking' of course, as well as 'curiosity', 'investigation', 'feel-in', 'see-in', 'image', 'talking', 'moving' (meaning I notice my attention moving toward something), and other things. If there is a particularly sharp prick in a finger or leg, I will note that with whatever word seems appropriate at the moment. Sometimes if an arm becomes predominant, I will note 'arm', and then back to noticing my whole body.

Questions:

1. Am I basically doing the practice correctly? Does MCTB consider 'noting' to be primarily/only the sublingual/mental designation of a single sensation one after another or can MCTB noting encompass what I've mentioned above about simply 'sensing' each of the 40-something sensations arising each second without verbal designation? To clarify: there is a 'knowing' involved in sensing the sensations, but as I expand my awareness over the body, it obviously loses the specificity I would get from narrowing in and identifying each one individually.

2. How do I deal with the compulsion to note 'noting' whenever it arises? I can't help but notice that the most prominent thing about my experience in those moments is that my attention is going 'at' sensations, there is mild pressure in the attention areas of the head associated with the looking and seeing aspect of noting, and certainly a mild guttural pressure when my 'inner voice' arises and designates something or conceives of something. I want to note that "I am" noting and I associate these sensations as being the sensations that I am, in that moment, noting.

I have noted my 'inner voice' or 'noting voice' in the past, but recently a couple months ago I had a very distinct experience of my 'noting voice' becoming a distinct thing 'exactly where it was' in a hard sense, and it wasn't me or mine in that instant. [Edit: In that moment it seemed to be just a part of the whole field of experience. All the sensations I was experiencing/noting during that time and the 'noting voice' itself all became the same thing for an instant.] Am I on to something? At the time I felt that I had just had a breakthrough, but wasn't sure how to proceed except to continue looking at the 'noting' itself each time it came up.

Thank you for reading.

Hey,

To me, it sounds like a noting related practice. I've read a couple of books by Theravada teachers, and often they describe it as "noticing" practice. Essentially, the goal is to try to see everything happening on its own and take your hands off the wheel. The whole thing is actually a lot messier than it might seem and techniques kind of blend into each other. That said, when I was meditating regularly, I didn't really love noting out loud either, but I found that it keeps you honest and it can help you discover things you might be ignoring or identifying with.



This sounds like the first insight - mind and body. I'm not an expert on insight by any means, though. Mainly I want to bump your thread for you - maybe someone else can give you some better answers.