I've been reading and working with the content of The Mind Illuminated and I have a 15 day meditation streak.  Have been interested in this practice for a long time and have read MCTB more than once.  I'm definitely experienced at being a total beginner at meditation.  As regards TMI, I'm in stages 2-3 best I can tell.

The best meditation I've ever had was to focus on the closed-eye visual field and to let each inflection of the breath remind me to return to the meditation object, which I'll call the FOV for brevity (field of vision).

I wrestled with whether to change my practice to the breath as instructed in TMI.  But so far I haven't wanted to go backwards and learn to focus on a different object.

Reason for posting here:  any help interpreting what's happening would be appreciated.

----

That said, here's my notes on today's sit:

"this was good, I think. I was mostly engaged with meditation object (closed-eye visual field). My eye mask was askew and the asymmetrical pressure on my nose bothered me. there were rapid movements of attention (or is it awareness?) between that sensation and the FOV (field of vision). itches and twitches also provoked this storm of perception and rapid refocusing.  the biggest episode of mind wandering was forming a plan to ... do something?   hmmm.   sometimes both my mind and the visual field got peaceful, often on a big in-breath. I found myself smiling during the itching/twitching/tension/relaxing storms."

Got interrupted at 24 minutes. I'm working to get the interruptions tamed.

Good work!

A few connected thoughts, please see if you find them helpful, discard them if not helpful

1. Generally it is a good idea to modify instructions for one's own set of skills, tendencies. This should ideally be done after engaging with a set of instructions precisely the way they have been written for a defined duration - like 1 month - for example. If culadasa says - do 6 point prep before you meditate every time - then do it every time. If culadasa says - do 4 step transition every time - then do it every time. If Culadasa says use the tactile sensations of the breath at the nostrils as the primary object of meditation - then do it unquestioningly every time. This is not a matter of subservience to a teacher or a teaching. It is a matter of being very disciplined in executing instructions, and logging everything that gets in the way of executing those precise instructions. So if the tactile sensations of the breath at the nostrils arent suitable for you as a meditation object - struggling with them for a period of time and recording what the problem is provides clues regarding skill gaps. Are you getting bored, are you getting dull, are you getting restless, are you getting annoyed, are you getting resentful - all of these problems/hindrances as they show up in a set sequence of instructions, start showing up in a predictable patter which comes out in a log. This precise, deliberate structured way of practicing does not suit everyone, and may make people not meditate at all. But!! the more structured and methodical one gets, the more rapid is their progress

2. Samadhi - relaxed unification of the mind - is a property of the mind. It needs to be developed independent of the object. So if you can reach stage 2-3-4 consistently in a meditation session then can you do the same with breath, touch of the hands, mantra, visualization etc etc. To run such experiments once in a while and to switch to a different object simply to train the mind to be independent of objects in samadhi practice is very beneficial.

3. Every Samadhi sit needs to happen with a set of instructions clearly understood and executed, and a clear goal in mind like stable attention, no forgetting, no mind wandering etc etc just the way TMI maps it out. But every samadhi session has a success mode as well as a failure mode. The failure mode of samadhi practice is Vipashyana practice / Insight practice. In that sense it too is a success mode. To spend an entire session in ill will, or regret/remorse, or dullness and very consistently apprehending these things fully and peacefully trying to figure a way out of these things and attempting to return to the meditation instructions is excellent insight practice. Though this is not a stated goal of TMI - spending many many sessions encountering hindrances to samadhi and feeling around them is very very benefical over the long term.

4. I think TMI is a fantastic pedagogy and it will help you a lot. Good luck.

Thanks for the previous replies.  It gave me much to chew over.  Here's today's entry

I'm recovering from covid. this gave me a break from my sitting meditation, though I did meditate my way into hypnogogic states while I was resting and sleeping a lot.

I decided to give the breath a chance as a meditation object, since i'm trying to follow and learn from TMI. I've also read more of the TMI chapters and I realized that I've been aiming for much more stringent intentions than the actual stage 2 and 3 instructions I've meant to follow. I've been doing better than I thought while using my closed-eye visual field as a meditation object.

I intended to sit for 10 minutes. this seemed really long; eventually i realized that i forgot to start my timer.

Memories:
* I went through the 6 point preparation and the 4 step narrowing of attention.
* the breath is a much more subtle object than the visual field
​​​​​​​* breathing in is cooling and irritating (covid effect). the front of the wave washes into the nostril like a wave on the beach. there is turbulence.
* breathing out is warming and soothing and subtle. after the warmth, i can't tell if I'm feeling something or conceptualizing something
* visual field is competing with the breath as focus of attention. no surprise since that's been my object for some time. it's a much more restful focus of momentary attention than thoughts
* i had some mind wandering, mostly about writing in this journal

it was a successful sit. i did the things.

i'll try again later today with a longer clock.

24 minutes, intending to follow tMI stages 2-3 instructions

began with focus on breath, trying to find more features in the cyclepositive reinforcement: good, you're still with the breath (checking in), good, you noticed that your mind wandered (aha), good, you noticed a distraction quickly (introspective awareness?).  I'm just thinking "good".
eventually the visual field got blacker and became compelling. i chose to move my focus to the visual field. experienced some quite stable attention, with the breath reinforcing the intent to stay with the visual field meditation object. i suspect this is later stage (than tmi stage 3) material. this state deteriorated and i went back to the breath. on the out-breath, at the end, the only features i can find have to do with the chest falling.

focus on breath, looking for more features
* the pause between the end of the out breath and the beginning of the in-breath doesn't provide detectable stimulus. i noticed for the first time the "white noise" of those sensors, quivering and waiting for something to happen.
* my grief came up. i decided to "let it be". it provided a storm of distractions: the anguish, the physical sensations of grief, tears tickling my cheek as they glacially fell, the itching of tears around my eyes. my attention to the breath certainly deteriorated and broke up
* i remembered an important "to do". i told myself that "I can trust myself to deal with this later" and returned to the breath, repeatedly
the itching broke me at 22 minutes of the intended 25

Hey

Very happy to see you practicing regularly. It is inspirational.

Many years ago, there was a lady on reddit who logged her journey with TMI across three posts. This is the third post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/streamentry/s/ivLBqIliGf

It contains a link to her previous two posts at the very top.
I wanted to share this with you in case you find inspiration within it, the same way I did, a long time ago.

Her posts and *some* comments below were very valuable to me.

Hope you enjoy reading as much as I did. 

​​​​​​​Wishing you the very best.

Wow, @adivader that reddit link is quite a treasure.  Haven't read it all yet, but I will.

Yesterday I went to the local insight meditation center for a sit and a dharma talk.  being in that environment brought up a lot of distracting thoughts during my meditation.  and also it's late in the day and my mind is tired then.  it was a good experience.

EDIT.  I want to add a bit about that sit.  as I alluded, there was quite a bit of failure to maintain attention.  Excuse me, lots of success noticing that my attention had moved.  Aha!  anyway, at one point when I did have good focus on the breath, the thoughts percolating up were a fantasy of dancing with the breath in a quite impossible way.  I chose to let those thoughts be and to return to the breath.  It was pleasurable.  I realize that wanting them to go on is "grasping".

not too bad.  the breath is almost always in my consciousness but not always the focus.  i think the stage 3 instructions say that's ok.  maybe it's time to add the stage 4 instructions

i got some fleeting colors in the visual field even as I tried to stay with the breath today.  they seem to vaporize as a result of my awareness of them.  even as I lost most random thinking, there seems too much thinking about the meditation itself and how i would describe it in this journal.  the thinking about the meditation … cheerleading, checking in, revisiting intentions … does keep me with the breath better than not thinking about the meditation.

Nice! You are learning what is going on. That's the money!

i want to move on to stage 4, but I haven't read enough
* i hate that the mind-wandering lasts so long before i achieve a "locked-in" (but not all that skillful) focus. I have to let that aversion be
* repeating my intention to focus on the breath seems to help
* the characteristic of the locked-in state is that it's sort of two-pointed. I'm intending to focus on the breath, but my visual field is coming to the foreground, alternating with the breath. I'm trying to be one-pointed with the breath. but the two-pointed focus is so much easier and successful (at not mind-wandering).  and it's more pleasant
* at 23 minutes, i convinced myself that I had forgotten to start my timer (I hadn't)

Nice! Fun. Thanks for sharing your log here. I'm not that great at TMI, so it's exciting reading others posts on it! I don't read reddit that much so thanks for sharing it here.

This isn't my advice but Daniel Ingrams. On podcats he's said "lead with strength", so if you have initial successes with certain objects or techniques or whatever, lead with that and fill the other stuff in later. Like I think he said he didn't do any morality practices at first, but after gaining steam in vipassana he did concentration and metta later.

Impermanence is the mother and the death squad of all experience! If the one-pointed focus changes from one object to the other that's fine as Im noticing it, as I'm mindful of it. So, you do not have a two-pointed focus but two objects. Each moment is one-pointed. Its just passing too fast. However, this can be seen in more detail once A&P stage kicks in.  Do not fight the experience of attention flip-flopping fast from one object to the next Let attention be as is. Note it. Note that one arises and the other is gone and vice verse. The 3 Characteristics/Perceptions are right there. ​​​​​​​Best wishes to you! 

thanks for comments above!

another weeping meditation today. I knew I was in a crying mood when I woke up this morning. I started with the breath as usual, and my grief came up with the thought "my brother shot himself". I managed to sit with the grief, the tight muscles in my throat, the tickling tears, the itchy eyes, the upwelling of more anguished feeling. I experimented with returning to the breath, focusing on my visual field (my favorite), and focusing on those tight muscles in my throat. always thinking "let it be" with regard to the sensations. the runny nose finally broke me and i ended my sit.
I guess this is good for me. Any crying that doesn't lead a panic attack is good crying. At least in my current context.

second sit today. idea is to focus on the sensations of the breath at my nostrils while my awareness scans for distractions. i want to catch subtle distractions before they become gross ones.

one distraction is my disappointment with my mind wandering. another is what I'll write in this journal. another is a life circumstance that's challenging. I tell my "team" (subconscious) that we can let these be, let these go. good job, you're getting trained. and then back to the sensation of the breath at the nostril. interesting visuals? check, back to the nose. an itch. narrow my focus. oh the itch is ferocious. back to nose … eventually i focus on the itch. is an ant slowly crawling through my hair? tmi says pain (and an itch, i suppose) is a good meditation object since it's so compelling. it became less compelling and I went back to the breath. i completed the 25 minute sit.

​​​​​​​i feel doubt. I'm not good at this. maybe I won't get better. i want my mind to not wander. i want to be immune to gross distraction. i guess it's time to trust the process.

Every time you leave your focus on right now and then return, you're developing a more consistent mindfulness. So wandering away and coming back, surprisingly, is the best practice at this stage.

And everyone goes through it. It's a necessary part of the learning process.

+1 

You do not need to have laser focused or immaculately clear attention. Work with what you've got. Return to your awarness. Moment after moment, practice after practice, day after day.

Hello all.  I'm really digging the comments here and in this other practice log, https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/view_message/27818831.

It's really hard to judge ones' own progress in a landscape where you don't know how to read the signposts.

As a thought to consider, in most cases, it is not necessary to judge ones' own progress, at least not on a day-to-day or even month-to-month basis. We all try to, especially at first, and there is nothing wrong with trying, but it is not necessary. Basically what is necessary is just following the practice instructions and noticing what happens. Most of the time, although it is fun to do so, there is actually very little practical benefit to locating what happens in a larger framework. 

27 minutes in the morning. I've been very happy with what I've learned from reading TMI through the chapter on the fourth stage. Having a clue about what I'm doing (training the mind, including subconscious processes), and how (with intentions and other tools) is game-changing for me. At the same time, that information is swirling around when I try to meditate; it takes me away from the sensate reality i intend to focus on.

I broadened my focus today, to include breath sensations anywhere in my body. It gave me more to observe, and I think I did a little bit better. i intended to focus on the sensations of the breath; I intended to let things come, be, and go, returning to the breath. My pressing issues arose, and I "let them be". Itches, too.

​​​​​​​Afterward I was thinking about how I might apply some of this … process? … to the stresses I'm experiencing in daily life. Not sure how at this point.

28 minutes.  i intended to focus on the sensations of the breath; to let things come, be, and go; to teach all of my minds that everything that arises doesn't need my immediate attention.  it can just exist in the periphery while i focus on the breath.  actually most of this stuff doesn't need to arise during meditation.  my subconscious minds can learn not to throw up an alarm over every little thing.  and my conscious mind doesn't have to focus on every little thing.  and i can focus on the sensations of the breath.  i had some sense of pleasure as I gave myself this "pep talk/instruction".  for a hot moment.

there was the usual parade of "stuff".  itches; life problems I don't quite know how to deal with; my inadequacy to meet the current demands on me; my grief over a recent big loss;  in that order.

I was listening yesterday to something (i think in mctb2) that said "Get some insight before you work on your stuff."  That makes sense to me.  But it seems that I have to "be with" my stuff in the meantime.

I didn't totally forget the breath much.  

i think i need to quit fighting my "stuff" off of the cushion. not sure what that exactly would look like, but I can think about it later. now to sit

29 minutes. this is where i am. learning to focus on the breath. not my idea of the breath. the physical sensations of the breath. I give my mind a little pep talk "we can let everything just be while we focus on the breath". I feel myself smiling.

I have the usual parade of stuff, though I think my focus is better today. I feel the sensations of sadness and crying and i feel myself not smiling. later the pep talk makes me smile again. post-meditation, I feel like I could cry some more.

​​​​​​​in case anyone is worried about my mental health or possible depression, I think I'm ok. I'm talking with a therapist about all of the life stuff. the grief just has to work itself out, I think.

28 minutes. intent to focus on sensations of the breath; intent to check in briefly and frequently enough.

I realize that the "software interrupt" for checking in is a subconscious function. I asked my mind to do that as often as needed. quite a bit of success, but I got derailed on a memory of a bad software design decision (related to interrupts). later I realized that i was focusing on the checking in and the idea of the breath rather than the actual sensations. impatience happened several times. i let my focus go to the visual field for a while and when that attention broke down I went back to the breath.

​​​​​​​i realized something. what was it? oh, it was just that i could watch for the instant that i stopped focusing on the breath. not really a new idea to me, but it seems like a good idea

based on some reading I've been doing, I allowed my focus of attention to change some during my sit. began with the breath. visual field was moving, in and out, or left to right, at times. for some reason that's pleasurable. i had an itch in my eyebrow for most of the sit, and it was aversive. i let it be. later i focused on it and saw that sometimes I couldn't sense it. but it would come back. i made it the object. i saw my focus jumping rapidly from one thing to another. itch, vision, breath, itch, vision, itch, vision … focus on the itch is energizing. Not in a pleasant way, but maybe it's a way to overcome dullness?

so i thought about a certain political candidate and did metta for a bit; i felt happy; back to the breath or vision; i came back from a discursive session and was thankful: my mind brought me back to the meditation object. thanks mind! i broke my sit 30 seconds short.

I feel smiley now. Nice session."

skipped posting a few journal entries.  here is today's:

32 minutes. with a bell at 16 minutes. i set my intent to perceive the breath sensations clearly and for each other perception to return my focus to the breath sensations. this part went pretty well.

after the bell, I looked at the left foot, then the right. the left foot gave me more sensations (i think it's more messed up). I couldn't sense variation with the breath in either foot.

​​​​​​​finally I moved to the visual field. i tried to see it vividly and to detect the separate images that were presenting so quickly. i couldn't. the fluxing images seem to vary continuously. I had dullness, which was pleasant. i tried to counter it with intention to see vividly, and that was unpleasant. i seemed to be losing this contest when the 32 minute sound sounded.

question: if the visual field seems to be a large and continuously moving image, how can I deepen the investigation of it?

Relax with the movement. Let it move and be aware of that movement. See and feel the movement. Know this moving sense field as deep and as intimately as you can. 

thanks @Bahiya baby

​​​​​​​28 minutes. gongs every 4 minutes (ooops, made a mistake). intention to perceive meditation object vividly
I'm getting better at sensing the breath, focusing on the breath, moving my "stuff" that comes up into the periphery. the 4 minute gongs seemed to delimit variable lengths of time, ha. a couple of times they interrupted mind wandering. at some point I got really settled onto the breath and waited with anticipation for something to arise so that I could set it aside and let it be. i felt good about my small new skill. my visual field got active and i moved to that. and my grief came up. i focused on it. the physical sensations. then trying to really sense the feelings which are strong but also kind of elusive. i let the energy of this end my meditation early.
i know that i don't want my main meditation to turn into therapy, because that could turn into a habit. i want my main meditation to be TMI/insight. it's just that this grief thing is … well I want to process it and heal. maybe i spend some specific meditation time on this in the evening.

Yes, separate sits for issues can be useful. I don't do it a lot but there have been a few times where I have sat with the intention of just being with a difficult thing. One time, more than 10 years ago, I sat with some intense fear, and the insights that I gained have informed my life ever since. Also, giving an issue full attention in its own sit can sometimes mean that it does not demand attention elsewhere. I have never tried sitting specifically with grief, so I am not sure how that would go. 

 
thanks Martin.  I think sitting with grief, even with my low meditation skill, has been good for me.  There's a tendency outside of meditation to add words, concepts, fears, reasoning, etcetera to the raw grief in order to try to resolve or predict or mitigate or understand .... it.  I haven't yet sat down with the intention of meditating on the grief, but it is likely to come up, given a chance.

Your fear insights sound powerful.  Have you posted about them?

 

Sitting with our grief is meditation practice. Meditation is sitting with our suffering, intimately and deeply knowing our suffering, through and through. Knowing the games we play, the lies we tell, the tricks we pull, on ourselves, on others, on the world at large. 

There's no escaping trauma with meditation. It will come up and should be practiced with when one is ready to do so. 

4 noble truths...

There is suffering. There is a cause of suffering. There is an end to suffering. There is a path to the end of suffering. 

​​​​​​​There is one commonality through all 4 truths 

32 minutes. gong at 16before the gong, was doing pretty well at letting distractions be and staying with the sensations of the breath; stuff came up: my sense of overwhelm; disliking certain responsibilities; disliking certain interpersonal situations. I focused on the overwhelm feelings. They have some but not all of the same sensations as grief (imminent crying, tightness in chest, but not the painful throat or sense of anguish). back to breath

after gong, i stayed with breath for a while. noticed rapid jumping back and forth between breath and vision. switched to vision. felt happy. noticed that happy makes me smile and also I feel like crying is imminent. I let the happy be in the periphery. my attention got very stable. when the 32 minute bell rang, my attention was very active and focused (at least for me). time to increase the sit time tomorrow, I think.

i look forward to … how do I say it? i look forward to getting my attention together faster, at will.

Nice practice. Do take it easy on yourself when there is grief. Eat good food. Take a bath. Talk to friends. Meditation is one of the most powerful practices I have found for healing but it's important that we take a holistic, or a whole, approach too. 

Yeah. Nice description! May I ask what insights you taking away from sessions like this? At first, the mind's seeming chaos can be unsettling. Over time, however, there are insights that can be found even while we toss ourselves into the middle of that storm.

Bahiya and Chris.

I guess my insights, if any, are extremely mundane at this point.  "oh, this meditation seems helpful even though I don't think I'm very good at it.  It's helpful with real life stuff even as I'm intending an insight and concentration practice.  there is suffering!  discursive thought about feelings has limited utility.  and yet that's how i try to figure out a solution.  the feelings are impermanent (though they tend to come back).  they are unsatisfactory.  they don't seem to be me." i'm sure there's a lot more to appreciate, and I hope I do, in time.  And it's nice to just be able to feel good when there are uncertainty and unwanted challenges in my life.

Mostly I want to think that the meditation on my stuff will help me move on from it, heal, understand, be whole ... to put it into regular-world terms.  And that i can pay better attention to the insight part as I make the stuff less ... stuffy.

Yes, that's exactly it. Outside of meditation, we are too busy making it and changing it to notice what it actually is. 

My sessions with fear happened many years ago, when I was just following standard Inight Meditation Society teaching, and before I had heard about the sort of things people discuss here. I did not log back then. What I learned were two things: fear cannot hurt me (it can't even touch me); and fear has a pattern (it does its thing). Not exactly earth-shattering insights but it changed me, like a kid who goes awayt to camp for the first time, or finally dives off the high board. 

You might find it useful to focus on the more immediate, the right now - of what's happening when you meditate. Yes, there is a long-term purpose to this, aiming to reduce suffering, but there is also a lot going on that has to happen along the way to that objective. For example, the discursive, chaotic mind - can you control anything about it? If so, what does that tell you? If not, what does that tell you?

The shorter-term objective to think about is to understand the mind by observing its functioning. Without an understanding like this, it will be far more difficult, if not impossible, to achieve your long-term objective. This is how a vipassana practice works - investigate what's happening now. How are thoughts formed? What's that sound made of, and what does it bring to mind in the way of further mental impressions? What fixes my attention on the various things that arise and pass all the time? Am I choosing what to give attention to, or is it an automatic process? Can I control the sensory input that comes my way? Can I observe and clearly see the arising and passing of things as this process occurs? What does all this tell me about how my mind works?

Past the mind's discursive thoughts, into the mind's processing.

So nicely put!

33 minutes. gong at 17

​​​​​​​as usual started with the breath. did the usual dance of distraction and refocusing. a memory came up that involved some anger and powerlessnes feelings. I tried to focus on the feelings and they are elusive. when some words come up about that memory (calling someone a bad name), emotions came with them. that anger and … ??hopelessness??. I dunno. I gave myself the intention to acknowledge, allow, accept the memory, and any feelings about it. then a traumatic and painful memory. same treatment. and then with the knowledge of those things in the periphery, I was back with the breath.

after the gong, i turned my focus to my toes. they got tingly! there was interest in noticing the tingly moving around as i moved my focus; there is a delay in that motion. left foot got warm as i focused on it. moved focus to right foot. it's not so interested in warming up. there is some variation of the foot feelings with the changing breath, but that relationship is murky to me.

then there was more mind wandering and coming back from that. i think i was with the breath at the end.

Ma'am, please read --

This focus isn't getting you anywhere because it's on the wrong things. Please read my most recent comment to you. From your recent comments, you appear to be trying to do psychotherapy on yourself. What you should be doing is actual vipassana meditation:  

<blockquote>"Ma'am, please read --This focus isn't getting you anywhere because it's on the wrong things. Please read my most recent comment to you. From your recent comments, you appear to be trying to do psychotherapy on yourself. What you should be doing is actual vipassana meditation:
</blockquote>

@Chris M, I read, I heard you, I know, I get it. I want that for myself.

Could you consider that perhaps I have to deal with this content in order to get back to focus on my breath? This is literally the deepest, most upsetting trauma I've ever experienced. By miles.

Anyway, I am following the instruction in the TMI book regarding stage 4 regarding my stuff. They are much like the instructions in "Mindfulness in Plain English" as well.  So I thought it was ok to post about how I was following those instructions.  

Thank you for your concern and for your input.

35 minutes, gong at 15 and 30.

​​​​​​​maybe my best session to date. my mind is cooperating better at not throwing up thoughts. focus on the sensations of the breath was better. most of the narrating — which I'm trying to decrease — was about the sensations.

So first 15 minute segment I stayed with the breath. visual field gives the breath a lot of competition for attention. So those patterns were present constantly, fluxing continuously, and differently depending on the phases of the breath: in, out, pause. I kept renewing my intention to focus on the breath.

at 15 minutes i started to practice body scanning, giving the visual field some time. then knees; it's amazing how such an ignored body part can come alive with proprioception, temperature feelings, and a bit of tingling. i scanned each toe, and each tingles with attention. even now, right after ending my sit, those parts start tingling when i think of them. i guess dullness happened, because some distracting thoughts happened. i returned attention to the breath.

at the 30 minute gong, i knew that i had five minutes more to vividly attend to the breath. it was a good five minutes.

a good sit. nothing emotional and insistent came up to challenge my intentions

Posting with some trepidation.  To me this seems both exciting and very modest progress.

36 minutes. gong at 15 and 30
i'm turning away from the attempt to strictly follow TMI, instead attempting to use what I've learned to train my mind.

First 15 minutes I focused on the raw sensations of the breath, letting my focus be all of the breath sensations so that my mind has a lot to notice. when i have a thought or notice an itch, I think something like "my thinking mind wants to know all about the breath", or "my skin mind wants to know the raw sensations of the breath.". "all of me wants to experience the breath." I'm united around feeling the breath. At least that's my goal. and if I'm mindful enough, i get back to the sensations quickly

after gong, i tried some body scanning. I'm getting better at focusing on various parts of my body, but so far they aren't varying with the breath. not even my visual field is doing so. though it was when it was competing for focus with the breath. Oh, and I also experimented with letting my breath and my visual field be a united object. That seemed to go well, so I added my face. it picked up an itch. "the face-itch mind wants to focus on the breath". ha.

second gong, I just got back to the breath alone again.

it doesn't sound like it from my description, but there was actually quite a bit of wordlessness during this sit. that feels very nice, and intellectually i think it's a good thing for my meditation ability.

meditation stuff is starting to show up in my dreams or into the edges of my sleep/waking states. once it was a great deal of frustrating monkey mind. another time a black space and intense silence. another time was like a visual flip book with mostly dark pages and the occasional white one.

I've continued to practice and to bounce around the TMI stages 2-5 material in accordance with what I could do on particular days.  Have made some progress on body scanning.  That's been a cool and engaging development.

Ongoing processing of grief and issues in daily life seem to have shortened my attention span in meditation.  I have responded to that by doing shorter sessions, and more of them.  Recently was reading Lovingkindness (Salzberg) and have done a few metta sits in the afternoon.  Not surprisingly, these have evoked strong emotions.  Surprisingly, these sits have evolved into more concentrated states, less effortful, more full-body-breathing ... than I have been achieving in the follow-the-directions-TMI sits.  I had previously thought of lovingkindness as more of a supplemental practice, more of a deal-with-your-ordinary-life stuff sort of practice.  But these practices seem to have merged for me.  You just never know what a practice will be until you try it.