Hi all. New to the site. Muddling along myself having listened to or read MCTB 2-3 times and dipping into books recommended in that book plus podcast interviews. Meditation most days 10 mins to 1 hour. Sometimes sporadic.
Main influences:
Dan M. Ingram
George Haas
Leigh Brasington
Daniel P. Brown
Culadasa
Michael Taft
Thich Nhat Hanh
+ more
Recent Experiences:
1. September 16th, 2023: Moments after coming out of kneeling meditation, then going into a prostration to strectch my back, I had an image of my recently deceased parents and myself, they were on the other side of a circle (like a circlip shape, one side of the circle being open). The emotion in the "event" was nothing but love and acceptance / acknowledgement 100%, no doubts, no question, not one-way, not two-way. Not a choice but also a choice. Not magnetism, there was no push-pull. It was total. Instead of staying with it I stopped to write it down so as to not forget it. For 2 days after, without any intention to do so, I felt and exuded total compassion toward my wife and children and everything generally. I could not be rattled. This wore off however.
2. March 3rd, 2024: I needed to go into town, the journey there and back on public transport. The whole time it felt as though I was floating on a cloud observing everyone else lost in their own thoughts, completley unaware that they were acting from whatever they were thinking in an unconscious way. My mind said that I was the observer of all this "human" activity. That strong sensation also last about 2 days.
3. June 25th, 2024: Hour long meditation noting everything. Noting sensations, noted the mind labelling, noting thought as thought or content (story), dullness, brighteness, feelings (fear resultant from story or thought content), This went on for some time then realised simultaneously that everything being noted was impermanent, unsatisfactory and occuring automatically. In another way; things came up, they were noted, I perceived they were unsatisfactory and desiring novelty, the mind went to the next "new" thing. I perceived the mind desiring change due to dissatisfaction.
I also observed dependant and/or interdependant arising.
I just observed all this and it reinforced a belief (open to being proven wrong) that most of us are not aware that we are stuck in the mind's fabrications and thinking. In reality, the mind is doing what the mind does, like a central processing unit of the 5 sense-gates that spits out a story of what it thinks is happening based on memory, "life experience" (perceptions) and current stimuli and "perceived knowledge".
I appreciate any feedback.
Edit: I forgot to say, during this most recent meditation and the experience or realisation of impermanence, dissatisfaction and the perception it wasn't me doing this, there seemed a period of calmness, a sort of spaciousness / emptiness. I can't quite descibe it and am trying not to use words that I have read or heard in books/talks/podcasts but I don't have the vocabulary to explain it perfectly.
