Hello,

This is my first post here.

I’ve been reading Dharma Overground for years, but I haven’t had the courage to post here before. English is not my native language, but I’m doing my best (and with the help of AI) to make myself understood. I’m a 48-year-old man. I’ve been practicing meditation for about 8 years. I started in 2016 after reading MCTB and failing to manage my mental issues otherwise. Initially, my motivation after reading the book was tremendous, so I had no trouble practicing regularly. I’ve been able to maintain consistent practice, missing only a few days over these years. My practice has mostly been one 45-minute to 1-hour session per day, although sometimes I’ve practiced more. I’ve also participated in five 7-11 days silent meditation retreats during these years. During the first 3 years of practice, I also attended psychotherapy twice a week.

In the initial years of practice, I focused on developing my ability to concentrate. I progressed reasonably well and can mostly maintain decent concentration and I think I can even experience soft jhanas. After about a year of practice, I believe I reached the A&P stage during my first retreat. That retreat was probably the most pleasant one I’ve attended. Subsequently, my personal life became very challenging and turbulent. It included illnesses, family breakdown, resulting financial difficulties, and a collapse in self-esteem. Meditation practice became extremely difficult, but I managed to keep up with it, even though it mostly felt like a waste of time. That time, I resumed therapy, and it’s still ongoing.

I feel that over the past few years, my perspective on life has changed dramatically. I feel like I’ve been forced to let go of almost everything I once believed would bring happiness and peace, especially compared to how I felt ten years ago. By this, I mean that the things I thought would bring happiness and peace (such as material possessions, relationships, money, and financial independence) are not entirely unattainable, but I’ve noticed that they ultimately don’t lead anywhere—the suffering continues despite them. In some ways, the collapse of my old worldview has been painful and caused sadness. However, currently, my everyday life is going fairly well. I’ve increased meditation time, and now aim to meditate both in the morning before work and before going to bed. I’ve found that 1.5 to 2 hours of daily meditation significantly improves quality of life. There’s a sense of spaciousness in body, and hectic workdays flow much more smoothly. From the beginning, I’ve dreamed of SE, although I’ve temporarily let go of this dream several times over the years. Now, this dream has been reactivated. However, I’ve also considered that if I don’t achieve SE in this lifetime, so be it—I’ll continue practicing because I find it significantly enhances quality of everyday experience.
 
Finally to practice: At some point, I tried TMI practice for a few months, but I felt stuck at Stage 5. In another phase, I experimented with Self-Inquiry for a while, but I didn’t feel it was advancing the practice. So, I returned to the MCTB-style practice. Currently, I sit at least twice a day and notice whatever arises in the moment. Labeling each sensation individually feels challenging because there’s so much happening in the field of experience. Therefore, I observe sensations anonymously and allow attention to move wherever it naturally goes.During practice, I face challenges related to the “noisy” sensations in the forehead, nose, and facial area. I often feel pressure, tingling, flows, and even heartbeats in this region. As a result, my attention tends to stay fixated on the facial area. Another challenge involves “trances” what I can’t quite name. I easily slip into some kind of trance state. In these states, I feel pleasant tingling, body seems spacious and light, and mind produces mostly gentle thoughts. Sometimes these thoughts abruptly stop without forming complete narratives, although they mostly relate to the practice and expectations of its results. It feels like I’ve been sitting in these trances week after week, month after month, without any significant change. It’s as if I’m stuck in these states. Nevertheless, I do my best to observe impermanence in sensations and the stream (or lack thereof) of thoughts. Lately, as I explore my experience, it somehow feels like I’m “imprisoned” in the present moment within this body during meditation. I can’t move backward because I can only focus on what’s happening right now. And I can’t move forward because that future state doesn’t exist yet, and I can’t know what’s coming. This strange new feeling creates a kind of mental claustrophobia. I don’t know it this makes sense, but it feels like that. I try to practice metta 2-3 minutes in the beginning of each sit. I find it difficult to do it for a longer time because it energizes the body very strongly

Not having a teacher, I’ve considered starting a meditation journal here, but I fear it might fuel my mind and distract me during practice. I’ve also dreamed of participating in a 30-day retreat at Gaia House (I live in Europe) at some point. Sometimes I feel like I’m trying too hard, and other times it seems like I’m not trying enough. Despite meditation feeling pleasant, I sense little progress over the past few months or even 2 last years.

As mentioned, I have once again started dreaming about SE. I would be grateful for any suggestions or advice that could lead me in that direction.

Awesome, this is the practice !!


This likely needs some gentle and compassionate exploration, whenever you're ready. The more we "anonymously observe" the more the mind experiences interesting states, strange phenomena, these novel stimuli are further fuel for our investigation. Once we arrive at a good capacity to "anonymously observe" then we just persist in that observation as experience unfolds throughout various realms of mental, emotional, physical phenomena and the effort required to observe becomes ever more subtle. 

I highly recommend logging your practices at least semi regularly, go to Gaia house if you can and why not work with a teacher online? It can be useful even just to check in once a month or so. I suspect actually speaking to enlightened people is an important part of waking up in this life time. 

I've had a lot of crazy shit happen in my life but a lot of wild stuff went down the first year I took meditation really seriously. My practice became a little unfocused and later that year I just said "fuck it... Three characteristics, commited daily practice, lets see if this stream entry thing is worth all the hype." 

Welcome to posting on DhO

Your english and use of AI is very good -- it is very easy to understand your post!



Okay, it sounds like your practice has stagnated for a while. It's perfectly fine to focus on face sensatons and go into trance states --- if there is enough mindfulness. 

As an experiment, when you get into a trance the next time, could your try noting on each outbreath? In other words, when you are in the trance can you observe and label one part of your experience and say the label in your head or even aloud?

It would be like.... exhale, "pleasure"... exhale, "tingling"... exhale, "spaciousness"... exhale, "lightness"... exhale, "thinking"... exhale, "stopping"... exhale, "practice thoughts"... exhale, "expectations"...

When you are focusing on just the face try noting on every outbreath: exhale, pressure, exhale, tingling... exhale, flow... exhale, heartbeats...

Maybe try this out and tell us what happens!

> Not having a teacher, I’ve considered starting a meditation journal here, but I fear it might fuel my mind and distract me during practice.

Just more thoughts to note/notice during practice . And logging my practice here or on discord has helped me a lot with being at least a little bit self-critical.

As far as teachers goes I could recommend a guy called Fucci who is my teacher or Roger Thisdell and Wystan on twitter both seem solid. Teachers can be very helpful in addition to logging practice.

Good luck you got this.

PS:

https://shargrolpostscompilation.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html
https://danielpostscompilation.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html
might be helpful as well. There is also so many old threads on DO which are super interesting.

Thank you very much, Bahiya, shargrol, and Stranger. This means more to me than you can imagine. I’ve read many of your posts, and in some way, Dho with your posts has served as a substitute for the sangha for me.

I’ll keep your guidance close to my heart. I’ll start following shargrol’s instructions right away. Most likely, I’ll create a practice journal here during the autumn and share updates about my practice through it.

> Most likely, I’ll create a practice journal here during the autumn and share updates about my practice through it.

What about doing it right now and logging every day .

Very good post. If you're having trouble with negative thoughts, I suggest you increase your mettā , and I also suggest you increase your mettā in general. Two to three minutes seems a rather short period of time for such an essential practice.