Hello everyone,

after asking some questions over at the Dhama Diagnostic Clinic I found that it might be helpful to track my progress more thouroughly.

Where I come from

I started meditating about 10 years ago. Back in the days I did mostly zazen. Then I stumbled upon Shinzen Young, followed his method for 2-3 years. Then stumbled upon Ayya Khema and focused on awareness of the breath. Then I found Ajahn Brahm and through his advice I got deeper, less forceful meditation. Somewhere along the line I read Daniel's book and was fascinated but not yet hooked.

At about October last year I got kriyas while meditating and afterwards (mainly facial and upper body involuntary movements). I could even produce them deliberately by loosening the urge to control and tell some until then unknown part in me: 'I allow you to take over and do whatever needs to be done.' When I first experienced them there was a strong feeling of me being controlled or something else doing its thing through me. This felt not scary but rather interesting.
I also had an increased need for sleep and felt pretty tired during the day. Whereas I usually needed 7-8 hours of sleep and jumped out of bed in the morning, I now need 10. Sometimes never being able to shake off the tiredness during the day. There also was some crisis I went through. I was seriously considering to become a monk which was not very healthy for my marriage as you could imagine. This wish has weakened and I feel now that my spiritual goals can be achieved in a more mundane setting (kudos to Daniel and Yogani!). It also had a lot to do with running away from responsibilities and the fear to get too close to things and people.

This phase also coincided with some serious back pain,which I thought at the time came from wrong exercising, and some tension in the jaw. Now this all sounds a lot like what Daniel wrote about the 3rd nana (The Three Characteristics): "a sense of wanting to renounce the world... odd bodily twistings... painful tensions, particularly in the back, neck, jaw and shoulders..."

My current spiritual pracitce

At the start of my meditation sessions I do some spinal breathing (pranajama) as described on the AYPsite. Then I focus on present moment awareness and change over to breath awareness once my mind is calm and pretty stable. That's basically what Ajahn Brahm teaches. I seem now to be able to let go of the doing part and put most of my energy into the observing. Through this I find that the calming of the mind takes care of its own and by the end of my 20-30 minute meditation I'm usually very calm and focused. After all those years of trial & error I now seem to have come to the point where the meditative process is pretty reliable and becomes increasingly stable.
Now I will put also more focus on investigating the 3Cs after my breath meditation. I am very curious about what's to come next...

Aside from that I have an increased interest in (lucid) dreaming recently. Ideas seem to come up out of nowhere. Recently I put down a story for a children's book. Yesterday while lying in bed beautiful melodies struck mind and I even dreamed about flying through a church singing a wonderful anthem, which I could remember quite vividly after waking up. LOL.

Apart from the kriyas, which still happen at least once a week, there's sometimes an involuntary urge to breath out deeply. Sometimes to the point where breathing in becomes a slight burden.

I do psychotherapy and trauma release exercises (TRE). There are indications that some childhood trauma might surface in the weeks to come. And there's also a feeling of something "big" about to happen... hopefully with some bearable progress through the stages. Another thing I do which helps a lot to balance me out and get more calm and focused is fletcherizing/mindful eating.

Writing this it becomes more and more clear to me that I am probably somewhere at the end of the 3rd or beginning of the 4th nana. Which excites me, to be honest. Until two days ago I did not even consider myself to be anywhere on the map...

That's it. I hope that this log will help me to better identify and navigate through the stages. Comments are always welcome!

Howdy Andreas,
nice to see you here.  your title / subject is great!  it sounds as though you have done and are doing "work" on yourself in a broad way.

i'm familiar with aypsite.org and of course Daniel and Shinzen etc. and find that they all have some excellent contributions.

my practice these days has a lot of similarity to what you describe in that i am in a phase where relaxing, noting subtleties and letting it all go is both very pleasant and feels as though i am moving deeper and deeper into simplicity and subtlety.

that said, this is your post..keep it coming!

tom

Hello Tom,

thanks for the warm welcome. Yes, I found that relaxation was the missing link in my meditation. It was a huge discovery for me. Now I am trying to melt these two: concentration/observation and relaxation.

BTW, do you have a log, too? I couldn't find any links on your profile.

Best,
Andreas

oh man...
right out of the box and you call me out...  ;-)

no, i don't have a practice log here.  i have mostly posted after retreats and did have a log on another site which has since died.

i'm mostly pretty clear on where i am and what i need to do.  when i have specific questions or am in trouble though, this is always my first stop to help see over my limited horizon.  mostly i get really solid advice and input.

my advice to you though is to NOT follow my lead.  start a log, i'd love to read it.

tom

This is really good stuff, and something that didn't click in my own practice for quite some time. Eventually what really took off for me was the slight shift in thinking of concentration as non-distraction, and relaxation as non-restraint. Somehow this conceptual shift from something to be done to something to allow to come undone has made a big difference. Most of my sits consist of tuning these two aspects against one another like a pair of guitar strings until something just kinda clicks and any sense of effort drops away entirely, allowing awareness to simply rest.

Dunno if that helps any, but I thought I'd pass it along just in case. Good luck in your practice!

That's wonderfully said, John, and it describes pretty much what I experience lately. And funny that you mention strings. During my recent practice I sometimes think about the Buddha's simile he told a sitar player: not too tight, not too loose. For the first time in my life I can catch a glimpse of what he meant with that. I found that I can let go things and obstructions in my mind pretty much the same way that I can relax a tense muscle. That's probably what you mean by non-restraint.

One of my personal pitfalls was that I stressed the concentration part without relaxing. Ajahn Brahm straighten that out in me. There's a kind of concentration that does not come with force but with perseverance and trust in the process (i.e. that mind will calm down on its own).

Thanks for sharing, John!

Hope to see you arond, Tom!

Not exactly, though that too is excellent stuff. What I mean by non-restraint is that one gives up on directing attention and experience altogether, recognizing this as a kind of subtle stress and distraction. Again, not a doing so much as an undoing.

Hopefully that sounds less pretentious in your head than it does in mine!

Not at all, John. It again very well resonates with what I experience lately: let the doer do and put all you energy into the observer. Then the mind calms down almost inevitably.

Very nice to meet some people around with similar experiences.

My evening meditation was quiet interesting. At first I had to recollect myself as it seemed for some minutes that I had forgotten how to meditate properly. Then it took its normal course. At the end of the session the kriyas started again. At first my mouth moved from left to right, then sprung wide open doing some chewing movements that from the outside must have looked like a furious animal. Then the movements got faster and it felt like my mouth wanted to babble like crazy.

After a few minutes my head shook from side to side pretty hefty and I suddenly pressed my chin down on my breast. I deliberately raised it and got back to the present moment awareness. This was not the first time that I experienced such movement pattern. But then right before my inner eyes I saw a somewhat beautiful orange light or cloud. Kind of organic and sometimes pulsating at the periphery. And I think it had a slightly darker spot in the middle. It also got a bit stronger as I focused on its center.

I'm not sure if it was just the light coming through my eye lids or an after-effect of my wild head shaking or maybe even somekind of nimmita. Whatever it was, it was interesting and I feel there's definitely something going on. It seems like starting to post here coincides with some major change inside.

The kriyas get stronger. Yesterday in my evening meditation session I was silently barking like a dog and howling like a wolf (just the movement with no sound). Later my lower jaw was moving from left to right like crazy and my head was spinning slowly.

After a while I got into pretty deep meditation and started to investigate my sense of self. At first I simply tried to narrow it down while I was trying to focus on the present moment. Of course the sense of self was only very weak. Then I deliberately brought in thinking about how I move through the world or some emotional situations in my life. And the sense of self got stronger of course.

It did not convince me of anything and left no major insight (like 'the self is an illusion'). I mean just because you don't look at something does not mean it's not there. However the feeling of switching back and forth between thinking and present moment awareness was interesting. I could literally feel the sense of self diminish while doing that. And I could feel the contraction that comes with a stronger sense of self.

I think I can work with that in my next sessions...

I started with TRE (Trauma Release Exercises) about a month ago. I read about it on some internet forum. It was depicted there as a valuable method to work with trauma without the need to work it out intellectually or through other therapeutic methods. I bought the book and the DVD and started to do TREs almost everyday for about 30-40 minutes.

The theory goes like this: All animals quiver when experiencing severe stress and trauma (think of a gazelle getting away from a tiger). Children do it in their early years. But our culture and society does not look at tremoring as something useful, it usually sees it as a sign of fear and weakness and hence tends to suppress it. David Berceli, the inventor of TRE, lived and worked in crisis areas for many years. One day, sitting in  a shelter during a bombing raid he had two small children on his lap and felt them tremoring. The adults in the shelter however did not tremor, though some of them clearly had the urge to do so. Berceli also observed that humans tend to move their bodies in certain patterns while under severe stress and fear (i.e. contract the body at the pelvis area to get into more secure fetal position). TREs are exercise to deliberately loosen those muscles and produce tremor in the legs and pelvis area that subsequently may spread into other areas of the body and thereby work through trauma and stress that is stored and held in those parts of the body. So far the theory...

The method works great for me and I got the tremor in my legs and pelvis in every single session. Still, after one month of doing TRE almost everyday and feeling a slow expansion into other body parts, I was still sceptical. I thought, well, maybe it's just the fatigue and loosening of the muscles through the preliminary exercises that leads to the tremor. It must not necessarily have something to do with trauma. But I gave it a shot and now after about 5 weeks the TREs seem to unfold and go to the next level.

In the beginning it was mostly my legs and lower pelvis quivering,  sometimes my arms and sometimes the quivering triggered my facial kriyas. I had no emotions, no rememberance of trauma and no signs of breakthrough. But since yesterday the quivering changes. It starts earlier while I do the preliminary fatiguing exercises and it moves up to the upper abdomen accompanied by some mild cold feeling. In yesterday's session I also had pretty intense quivering in my arms for several minutes, especially both triceps and the right lower arm. While that happened there was no tremor in my legs which is a sign that it's not simply some fatiguing that leads to it but obviously some kind of discharge.

I feel that the combination of meditation, TREs, spinal breathing and some other things I practice are really powerful catalysts for my psychological and spiritual progress.

As I said I will now put more focus on investigating the 3Cs at the end of my meditation sessions. I wondered how I should go about that and found the MCTB section of impermanence very helpful. Unfortunately I'm not able to copy and paste any of it here. So I will just post the link as a reminder for myself: MCTB Impermanence. Starting with "Each one of these arises and vanishes completely..."

Hey,
noticing the 3Cs is not complicated and dramatic.  for example, decide to notice the impermanent nature of everything that pops up on your screen for the next X minutes.  and keep doing it.  that pulse...where is the permanance there, what is permanent about it, this touch of breath, what about it has the nature of permanance...etc. over and over and over. same with dukka.  is this cramp satisfying?  is this wonderful energetic rush reallly ultimately satisfying or will i be dissapointed when it is gone.  for anatta i tend toward the advaita question..who is seeing? where is this "I" that is feeling this..who am "I"...

another suggestion.  a short while ago in a post here i read a (for me) very practical method to sense and promote "calming". it is to acknowledge a sensation as 'concentrated' in a particular place and then to generalize your attention to the entire sphere of experience.  eg: you may not energetic sensations "inside your skull" , you then spread your attention to include that sense sphere to your entire body so that the "touch" of this energy is spread to the "touch" of all of your skin.

my description is awkward but i hope i have conveyed the concept a little.  it is a pleasant and powerful excercise for me.

tom

Thanks for the helpful suggestions, Tom. I will try that.

I wondered if there's thinking involved in the investigation of the 3Cs or if I should just intent to investigate them and leave the rest to moment to moment awareness. According to Daniel's writings it's the latter. The thinking and pondering about it happens off the cushion as far as I understand now.

As for the "I", when I observe it, I feel there's a self. But I've not yet seen this as an illusion or as a mere process without any substantiality. But I'm sure this comes with practice...


That's a good advice. I feel this kind of concentration as a narrowing of the sphere in which mind moves in all directions. Ajahn Brahm compares it to training a little puppy to stay in its basket. In the beginning it will get up often and walk around very fast. Whenever you notice that you just patiently and compassionately pick it up and put it back into its basket. After a while it stays there for longer and longer periods. That's how this concentration feels like. It's like a small but very potent space where the awareness begins to rest quite naturally after I while. I will experiment with that and try to broaden that space.

Thanks for your help!

When I had my first Kriyas and read about them I did not really buy into that energy blockage loosening thing. Then a few weeks ago I discovered TREs and, boy, they do exactly what they say they do. In todays session the quivering started with the preliminary exercises again. While doing the wall-sitting (one of the exercises to fatigue the legs and pevlis muscles) my pelvis, legs and right arm tremored. Then during the main exercise I felt a slight fear and then sadness accompanied by one of those facial kriyas I have that looks like I'm bitterly crying. The strange thing with these kriyas accompanied by emotions is that they seem kind of distant. The neutral observer part in me still dominates but seems to soften. I suspect it to be a process of getting accustomed and step by step opening up to deeper levels, bringing body and mind together until the organism is ready for the real thing. That's what it feels like.

The tremoring pattern changes dramatically. I now tremor up to my lower left costal arch. Then at about 30-35 minutes into the session there suddenly was a pretty solid and localised tension in my lower right back right next to the spine. This tension slowly moved up during the session and stood still for a while in the middle of the back. There it was accompanied by the same kind of tension on the left side of the spine and some mild warm feeling. At the end of the session it moved up even further until a few inches below the scapulas. I ended the session about 15 minutes ago and still have a slight tension up there (not uncomfortable) which slightly raises my shoulders.

I attached some videos of TRE below. As you can see some of the movements look pretty much like kriyas.

Trauma & Tension Releasing Exercises - TRE - David Berceli
David Berceli TRE Training in Bogata Columbia
Myofascial Unwinding

If I needed any more prove that I'm currently in the beginning stages of A&P then I got it yesterday. During my evening meditation session there was a short but obvious episode of fast almost hectic breathing. Furthermore during the whole sit there was tension in my calves (I am currently sitting on a chair due to lack of a cushion and some back issues I had).

Then tonight I had two lucid dreams. I tried lucid dreaming multiple times in my life. There were episodes when I read a lot of books on (lucid) dreaming, did reality checks all day and made this effort a full-time job. Now, probably with the beginning of A&P my interest in this topic has rekindled and it seems to come almost effortlessly.

As an aside here are two nice quotes about patience I found today:

"Patience is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in mind." - David G. Allen

"Patience is the training in abiding with the restlessness of our energy and letting things evolve at their own speed." - Pema Chödron

Howdy,
excellent..things are shaking up!  change is progress.

i remember hearing about "chakras" for years and scoffing at the Birkenstock crowd and their detachment from reality.  then, years later on a luxury trip to india, i went to a yoga class to relieve my boredom in the hotel i was staying at.  the teacher's name was Vishnu.  i thought we were there to do yoga but he said, today we will do a chackra meditation because a couple of people here need it."

i thought, shit.  until the practice allowed me to feel and influence others directly.  CHACKRAS ARE REAL!!!

i rushed back to my room and showed my wife that chackras are real...and my daughters...

so just a crazy story.  enjoy your kriyas.  i particularly like the face stretching grimace grin myself.  have fun with it and when you DO get to the A&P event...try to stay with it all the way through. ;-)

Thanks, Tom. That sounds like a very interesting story.

Yes, I am trying to enjoy every moment of it. And I try to keep that perspective even for the darker times to come.

One question: could you elaborate what you mean by "stay with it all the way through"? I think I have to reread the whole MCTB. There's so much I have forgotten.

...yeah..what does that mean?  for me the A&P presents as a whirling energetic upward rush which makes 'seeing it all the way through' (staying mindful) difficult. its no secret weapon or anything you might even experience so better think of it as "always stay mindful"..that's better advice.

cheers

tom

Now I understand. Thanks for clearing that up.

Cheers,
Andreas

My first enthusiasm about probably being in the early A&P stages has subsided a bit, which I guess is normal. So to push things further I started to read Mahasi Sayadaw's Practical Insight Meditation today. And it dawns on me why meditation is so powerful: to me it seems that it basically enables me to be mindful and at the same get out of my own way, let things happen in their natural course. And in today's sessions I found that meditative awareness is most powerful when it's not just awareness but also allowance.

In a another forum I read that an effective way to deal with Kriyas is to not obstruct the energy flow they represent. So I closed my eyes and let them happen. They started as usual with a tightness in my forehead and eyes. Then I simply focused on the most prominent point of tension and tried to see how it changed over time. An intersting thing happened: the tensions and spasms seemed to move almost systematically from top to bottom and in different directions - first the forehead and the eyes, then the cheeks, then mouth and finally the neck and throat. Then there was a moment of silence and the kriyas started again. But this time, as I was trying to allow the process to happen more freely, they were not as tense and did not last as long as they usually do.

During my TRE session I tried the same thing, plus I followed the built-up of the energy (i.e. tingles, tightness, movements of awareness) where the tremors and spasms were about to happen. Then I gave these energy flows allowance to move more freely just by intention and mild imagination. I observed that the kriya energy sometimes built up but did not lead to the typical tensions and spasms, and if they did happen they were less intense and shorter in duration. After a while my whole upper body began to sway mildly - the pelvis, the breast, the arms and the neck.

Another observation I made was that I can let go of cravings (e.g. food and cigarettes) as I can let go of other mental obstructions lately. It feels exactly like deliberately loosening a muscle. I will work further on that.

Today I've been really moody. Most of the day I was happy without any reason but pretty unfocused. Then in today's TRE session I futher opened up to the trembling and kriyas. They happened all over the place: my face, arms, hands, legs, lower body, shoulders... After the session I was really grumpy. My wife got home, wanted to talk and I was just kind of pissed and withdrawn, although there was no obvious reason for that. The meditation was good, I let go of any controlling and trying to be more awake than I am. At the end I was very focused but unfortunately had to stop because of an appointment.

No idea why I'm in this mood. But I've observed again and again that after a good day (meditation-wise) there almost always follows a bad one - I'm sluggish, moddy and unfocused. But the ups and downs got flatter over the years. Boy, I don't even have the patience and energy to write this. LOL. Gotta go now...

Just wanted to add these great dhamma talks Richard Zen recommended to me in another thread. In case I want to listen to them again. They are about dependent arising:

http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/91/talk/24023/
http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/210/talk/9553/
http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/169/talk/15836/
http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/210/talk/11929/

Today I started my evening meditation with awareness of the breath right from the start and made some interesting observations. (1) Usually I practice present moment awareness until my mind is pretty calm and stable and then go to the breath. It gets easier to focus on the breath and stay aware in the pause after the in and outbreath these days. (2) At the end I investigated the 3Cs and imagined situations with people and in my day to day life, like I did a few days before, and then came back to present moment awareness. In every of those imagined situation I felt a different coloring of my sense of self that subsided with present moment awareness. (3) Then I saw that there's a kind of vulnerability in every of those self colorings. Inspired by another thread I read at DhO I simply asked the question: Where is this vulnerability? With the intention to let my mind lead me there. Right after I posed the question my mind kind of got sucked deeper into the present moment. It's very interesting to see that it has become very sensitive to affirmations and suggestions.

Tonight's meditation was the deepest I've ever had. Although it was pretty noisy outside (neighbors listening to music) and my wife has a friend over here chatting with her in the kitchen. Plus I feel a little dull today.

I already was in bed reading and decided to do some meditation. I closed my eyes and after some minutes of present moment awareness my mind was pretty calm. So I decided to watch the breath. And so I started to get deeper and deeper into the darkness before my eyes. This was sometimes accompanied by some tension in my forehead and the feeling of being sucked in. Then there was some mild feeling of spaciousness, like a room opening up in front of me and slight feeling of lightness. But there still was some wanting and forcing in me. I felt right on the edge of something big but couldn't manage to get over the cliff. Maybe that was the problem: that I tried to manage it instead of letting it happen. Another thing I felt was the perception of the breath slightly fading. Something I have heard Ajahn Brahm talk about. But it came back again and in general it felt like I was oscillating from a deeper to a more shallow state and back again.

I'm pretty excited as my meditation really seems to take off these days. Curious what happens next...

A few days ago I stumbled upon this wonderful and funny dhamma talk by Will Kabat-Zinn with the title Effort and The Three Characteristics:

http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/318/talk/21042/

Yesterday I listened until 35:00 then I had to turn it off. It catapulted me into a state of deep awareness and amazement about how I always tried to make something out of meditation and how that very effort stands in my way now. I began to realize that really everything, every distraction, every thinking about the past and future only happens here and now. It is nothing I have to change, it's just something I have to awake to. I can now see this subtle grasping for a slightly better meditation and for a slightly calmer state of mind, always wanting to be somewhere else even in very restful states.

The last few days have been kind of dull. I guess it has to do with my diet. Some sugar binges left me with a hang-over and only suboptimal awareness. Today I seem to get back on track. This night I had the most lucid dream I've ever had. Actually more than one lucid dream with great clarity and mindfulness.

My meditation this morning was interesting. I was aware pretty much constantly aware from the beginning. Yet, the meditation did not deepen in the same way as it used to a few days before. But it does not really bother me as I feel there's a profound change going on within me. Meditation clearly affects my daily life as I get back to being aware more and more often.

interesting note on diet.  I find excess sugar/starch also leaves me very sluggish in meditation and life in general.  More so than alcohol, (meaning a moderate intake obviously).

Thanks for your comment, Hugh.

Same for me. I'm very sensitive to my diet. I guess it has something to do with my histamine intolerance. Eating a lot of sweets and/or food high in histamine always leaves me derailed and sluggish for at least another 24 hours. Also does lots of alcohol. A little does not seem to affect me too much either. At least not with my current state of awareness (guess that changes as perception gets more refined).

I'm wondering if my latest dullness is not so much the product of my diet but also the beginning of the dark night stages. And I wonder if I haven't already been through these stages multiple times in the past, because I know this feeling all to well: after some great meditation, some pretty aware days and some insight there usually comes the hang-over for me. I'm now barely motivated and mindful, feel sluggish and dull. My awareness during meditation is still good but I somehow feel disorientied, don't know exactly what to concentrate on and it's easier for me to get lost in thoughts and phantasies these days.
I think I have to ramp up my practice a bit and put some more effort into it without loosing my fundamental attitude of accepting things as they are right now.

Furthermore I had a breakthrough in my psychological progress. The facial kriyas are now sometimes accompanied by deep emotions. Until then there were only those facial and bodily expressions but no thoughts or feelings inside me. This changes now. I think it might be the organism's way to deal with trauma by re-introducing and making its emotional impact accesible bit by bit: first bodily expression, then feelings, then thought.

I'm still not sure where exactly I am compared to the maps laid out in MCTB, but I guess that's not too important as long as there's progress going on.

The last few days I've been feeling really dull and unfocused. Nevertheless my meditation gets quite deep at times and I've prolonged my sittings with ease. An indication for DN territory is the fact that I can see that there's some clarity in the periphery rather than the center. For example I have a hard time keeping my breath in the center. I'm constantly aware of it but it feels like it is a bit offset. Knowing that it is a good idea to focus on the periphery and not try to make my awareness into something it is not seems very helpful.
Furthermore, during yesterday's evening meditatioin while investigating the 3Cs there was a very short and mild perception of vibrations in what I perceived. I'm not sure if it really was that or if I just made that up, but it could be a hint to where I am at them moment.

Another thing is that I begin to see distratctions as some kind of purification as long as I get back to the present moment. It doesn't really seem to matter what distracted me and how long it did as the process seems to take care of itself.

Sorry, hope this all makes sense. I still feel kind of derailed and unfocused while writing this.

Inspired by my latest lucid dream attempts and this post I yesterday tried to stay aware while going to sleep. I had some success. At about 4 am I woke up and simply lay there motionless and played around with my awareness (mostly figuring out how I could let my mind run wild and asleep without me interfering too much). After a while I saw an incredibly detailed "movie" of a skateboarder. And a few minutes later I saw a pattern made out of small grey dots. I saw this in great detail and could deliberately zoom in and out of this pattern and move it around. When I woke up in the morning I kept lying in bed half awake for about half an hour. Very interesting experience.

Another thing I'm doing at the moment is interpreting my dreams from the perspective of my spiritual journey and insights. This seems to be quite helpful to strengthen the insights I have during meditation: While investigating the 3Cs whenever I noticed a perception I asked myself: what does this perception rely on? I did not get a clear intellectual answer. Instead it felt like I was sinking deeper and deeper and had a mild "feeling" of the groundlessness of all these perceptions. Feels like the right thing to do at the moment.

In the last few days there was tension in my forehead whenever I meditated. I remembered that it may be a good idea to widen the focus and yesterday started meditation without narrowing my awareness intentionally. I let my mind be as wide as it wanted to be and tried to be aware of my breath on the periphery. This worked great and after a while the breath naturally settled in the middle of my attention.

Later that day I imagined some situation I could get into when I have kids (my wife and I are planning to). It was a situation where I had to defend my son/daughter. This made me incredibly angry. I couldn't stop thinking about it and my aggression grew stronger. When I was alone I closed my eyes and asked: Where is this anger? Almost instantly my facial kriyas started and my face tranformed into an angry grimace. Then I said to this angry part in me: 'I love you, no matter what.' And the reply came back: 'But why? I'm not loveable. I don't deserve to be happy.' But I persisted and send it all the love I could give in that moment. Suddenly my face turned into a sad one like I was crying but without any feeling. This brought some until then unknown kriyas to the surface: my scalp started to move back and forth (like when you try to wiggle your ears) and my perineum and musculature around the third eye started pumping like something wanted to get out of it, almost like a gagging. This was accompanied by a slight inner shudder. After about half an hour in meditation the movements stopped.

Today's TRE session was quite intense. The tremor in my arms was very fast and strong and the inner shuddering I experienced yesterday came up too. I'm feeling like the movements are allowed to inhabit more and more of my body which feels good and natural.

After yesterday's experience thought about something I heard Ajahn Brahm talk about in one of his youtube videos:: for some people the jhanas seem to be inaccessible until they have worked through their shame and guilt and their inability to let themselves experience bliss and joy. Maybe that's one reason why I haven't reached the jhanas even after 10 years of consistent practice (maybe I have but can't feel the bliss yet). But I seem to get closer and it feels like my organism knows exactly what to do to get there. Looking forward...

Hello Andreas, kind regards.

I think you are doing well to persist through all the phenomenon that turns on during a session.   I think after awhile the phenomenon is of itself of no consequence.   I personally do not keep notes on all that, and I keep notes on some of the thoughts and identities that come up.

The way I was taught was to enter a session positive and remain passive -- no flinching away, no agendas.   However, if it gets too uncomfortable for me I will stop and do my Metta practice until no more change and then renew the original purpose of the session/meditation.  

That is another rule I follow:   Do not change up the practice until there is no more change, no more phenomenon.  The fact you are experiencing all that means the practice is doing its job.   Granted, some practices are more direct and therefore faster than others, but only you know how your mind is constructed and what importances you should be addressing.  

I agree too that I need to weed out all the self invalidation of myself and others -- or the degradation -- before I can proceed to the next level.  Self-hatred is a biggie for me.   This usually comes up while I'm contemplating on the goal of To Enhance/To be Enhanced.   My meditation is usually about looking at my important life goals -- for myself and for others -- and persisting through the experience of all the phenomenon and scenes and thoughts that pass by me.

One other detail I learned:   Generally keep the eyes open and retain some awareness of your environment and that keeps the experience from being too overwhelming.   If it is still too overwhelming then stop and do a metta practice until feel better.

Best wishes for you,
colleen

Hello Colleen,

thanks for sharing your thoughts and advice. That's exactly what I've been gravitating towards lately: a wider awareness that includes not only the breath but the whole space my awareness naturally settles in (sometimes wide, sometimes narrow), plus having no agenda and practicing loving kindness and acceptance. Nice to know that this has helped other people, too.

Actually I'm trying to dig my way through to the more serious and maybe uncomfortable stuff. I don't wanna provoke it, but it seems my organism is working it's way there anyway. At first I had the kriyas, now they are sometimes accompanied by feelings, tremors during my TRE sessions get more intense etc. pp. I think it may be some kind of preparation for a hopefully controllable eruption that let's me integrate traumatic stuff. But I don't know. Maybe it will just be a short, unspectacular and barely noticable burp from my depth. : )

Wish you all the best on your way!
Andreas

Yesterday something very strange happened during meditation. Widening my awareness and watching my breath from wherever my awareness settles has proven quite helpful and effective in the last few days. But I still struggled with the fact that my concentration would only get so deep. There was still some kind of bumpiness/flightiness in my awareness, especially between the out- and inbreath (my breath makes a long pause here). I concluded that I would have to let go even more to settle this. So yesterday I did that plus I stayed with the bumpiness like riding a rodeo horse. That worked great and I soon became very calm and focused.

Then after a few minutes a feeling came up I sometimes had as a kid when I woke up at night or when I had fever: some kind of strong heaviness and contractedness in my anterior upper body. It's like the weight of a big stone is put on my hands and lower arms. Part of it also is in my head. I don't know why but when this feeling comes up I always think of a tooth (no idea where that comes from). The feeling is very hard to describe but it usually scared me as a kid. It often was accompanied by a very vague bad dream where I was some small entity that was somehow ruled/chased/oppressed by a bigger entity. When I woke up I often had the feeling that came up during meditation yesterday. But this time I did not fight it and I did not let it scare me (maybe there was an initial fear to it but that quickly subsided). Instead I tried to get into its details, which worked in a way.

Then there was another thing: For some minutes I felt like my upper body was bent to the left, almost in a semi-circle. I'm not sure whether this happened before, during or after the above described feeling of heaviness. And it didn't last as long, was neither comfortable nor uncomfortable.

I wonder if this has anything to do with access concentration or the 1st jhana. I read somewhere that the bliss of 1st jhana can come with a feeling of distorted body parts or heaviness. The strange thing is that there wasn't any bliss or joy whatsoever. There were just those two feelings.