I have decided it is time I begin to keep a practice log here.  I will be documenting my daily insight sits and my daily-ish concentration sits.  A brief summary of my two practices follows:

Insight: I note sights, sounds, tastes, smells, touches, thoughts, and things that defy immediate categorization before they are deconstructed.  I note them as "sight," "sound," "touch," etc. at the pace I notice them, not noting multiple times unless I notice multiple times.  I generally do not deliberately move my attention or sustain it intentionally on one object or a selection of objects, but rather let it move on its own. 

Concentration:  I stare into the murk behind my closed eyelids.  Sometimes I add a mantra or a mentally generated drum beat when I do this.   I am modelling my practice here off of what Daniel Ingram writes about fire kasina, except I generally skip the candle flame and proceed right to the murk.  

Entries are to follow.  I will be grateful for your wise advice and encouragement.  

1 August 2024

I finished a 45-minute vipassana sit a few minutes before I made the title post for this log.  In this and other recent sits, I have been finding that for most sensations I notice, I notice a thought very quickly after it, and then often notice the "original" sensation again, and then again notice a thought.  This has been happening especially with sight.  For example, I will find myself noting "sight, thought, sight, thought, sight, thought" many times over, at a rate of 2-4 notes per second.  More and more this happens with the other senses too; many times now when I notice a touch, I notice a thought immediately after it, and then my attention will revert to touch, and the cycle repeats.  

The thoughts themselves tend to be mental images.  When it comes directly after noticing my visual field, the thought will usually be some kind of indistinct flash of imagery.  When it comes after noticing a touch, it is often either a mental image of the body part where I feel the touch or an image somehow reflecting the shape of the sensation itself.  Occasionally there will be an auditory thought that represents how the sensation seems to move, sort of like a sound effect in a cartoon.  In many of these cases, the thought seems in some way to represent the sensation.

I am finding that my attention will tend toward a particular sense door for a longer time than it did in previous sessions.  Previously it moved pretty rapidly across all of the six, but lately it has been resting in one for a longer time before moving on.  For instance, I might get a pain in my head, and I find that I keep noting "touch, thought, touch, thought" etc., frequently noticing and noting objects at other sense doors but continuing to return to the head pain.  I try not to try [sic] to do this deliberately.  It may have come about as a result of my attempts to resist moving my attention artificially out of a desire to notice more sensations, and as a result of experimenting with letting my attention sink into particular sensations.  

Moreover, I have been experiencing violent lurches or spasms throughout my body during vipassana, but especially in my legs.  This has been happening for at least a month.  Originally it happened rather late in the sessions, but now it happens most times about ten to fifteen minutes in.  It is often preceded by a surging, clenching feeling in my back and sometimes up my neck and in my head.  Sometimes this feeling is very pleasurable, and sometimes it is neutral.  

I will return with the results of my concentration sit later.  

2 August 2024

As for concentration last night, it went well.  I did 30 minutes, which is the usual length of my concentration sits.  I have nothing else to say on the matter.

I just finished up my vipassana sit of the day, which was 45 minutes long.  I had had a rather stiff drink beforehand, which slowed the rate of noticing and made it harder to differentiate between materiality and mentality.  Among my major distractions were thoughts of what I would post on this forum when my session was over, for which reason I am considering discontinuing this log, or at least restricting my posts to days on which I have particularly interesting sessions.  

Hey Henry !!! Welcome !!!

Your practice seems quite promising. 

Please feel free to log as much or as little as you like. 

You can log session by session or log to discuss the overarching themes. 

Distracting thoughts are always just distracting thoughts, if you get rid of one shade another will arise. More phenomenal to investigate! Why do these thoughts compel me so? How is it they have such a hold on me? If I just notice them in what way do they differ from any other thoughts?

After you've made a few logs I imagine the "excitement" of it all will die down. It can just become another thing you do when you need to do it. 

Looks good anyway. I look forward to reading more

Thank you for sharing Henry! 

Your log reminds me of my practice. It's very useful to include all sense doors into the field of awareness. As you say "not forced" but as they enter into attention so these are noted. It's like a big canvas and mind is painting stuff on it. But this stuff doesn't remain. It's in constant flux. 

Body twitching spasms were also part of my practice. Just note it and carry on. Note if there is "anticipation" about it happening again. 

Also the murk is very interesting to watch. 

Very fine practice you have going there!  

​​​​​​​Best wishes Henry! 

6 August 2024

First of all, Bahiya Baby and Papa Che Dusko, thank you for your kind words.  I have decided to update the practice log only when something interesting or unusual happens in my practice.  

Such certainly happened today.  I just finished up 30 minutes of gazing into the visual field.  Previously when gazing into the murk, I would redirect my attention to the true physical images behind my eyelids whenever I got a mental image.  This time I did not do that, but paid attention to whatever images arose, either mental or physical.  To my delight, images in the style of the jigsaw puzzle I have been working and  on swam before my sight and faded, leaving the darkness of my eyelids in their wake, which would then give way to various mental images again; and this would happen alternatim.  As the session went on, the mental images became more vivid and less moored to the images of the puzzle, and in the moments when the mental images were disappearing, the dwindling remnants of them assimilated themselves to the physical eyelid-images.  

My decision to try practicing this way was in part because I had noticed that when previously I redirected my attention to the backs of my eyelids, it seemed to involve a physical sensation in my eyes.  It seemed to me that I might be using my eye-muscles to create a sensation to guide my attention back to physical images, and I wanted to see if I could get on without the added materiality.   I found that it was seemingly not possible to redirect my attention away from mental images and toward physical ones without invoking some sort of eye-sensation.  

As of this moment I have not answered for myself whether mental images and physical images really appear on a different screen.  I have been wondering about this because of certain recent experiences in my vipassana practice.  It seems so far that they do not, but I will be on the lookout for any sharp borders between the two.  

I plan to continue practicing in this way.  I want to develop my capacity for clear, vivid mental images, which as it stands is not very great, and I think this way of working will accomplish that.

6 August 2024 (cont.)

I just finished up vipassana for the day.  I had done a fair deal of noting informally earlier.  In any event, I was pretty tired during today's session, and I found myself slipping into hypnagogia once or twice.  Despite this, my awareness of where my attention was at any given moment was on the whole pretty good.  Lots of twitches, lurches, and spasms.  They sometimes appear to be connected with uncomfortable body sensations, especially itches, but sometimes not.  At various points I felt somehow stupified, as if neither my noticing nor my noting were keeping up with the flow of objects.   The session was about 54 minutes long and was interrupted by a short bathroom break at around the 30 minute mark.  

Interesting practices. 

Tell me more about this

"At various points I felt somehow stupified, as if neither my noticing nor my noting were keeping up with the flow of objects."

Any images? Emotions? 

​​​​​​​Stupification is often most a most welcome relief from the drudgery of knowing. 

8 August 2024

First, Bahiya Baby:  To answer your question, no, I don't think there were any images other than the usual, but the session in question was two days ago and therefore my memory is a bit foggy.  As for emotions, I don't have any to report about that session other than various types of discomfort.  I've not been having very pleasant sessions lately, and in fact find myself delaying them until the end of the day.  

Now, I just finished 45 minutes of vipassana.  My mind felt much sharper than either Tuesday's or yesterday's session, especially toward the end.  I noted many sensations at the various sense doors quite quickly.  The twitching and spasming were a lot less severe than yesteday (yesterday it got up to a rate of one big spasm every couple of seconds).  I found myself dreading a session as replete with them as yesterday's, and I am relieved they weren't so bad this time. 

Various spine, neck and head sensations continue.  It feels as if there is a kind of exhilarating column of tension going up my back, which is not particularly unpleasant.  There is also a repeated flexing and relaxing of some odd muscle in my pelvis, which begins at  maybe at an even height with my tailbone but continues upward a couple of inches into my lower back.   Throughout much of the session there was a kind of locked-in, ready-for-action kind of feeling -- I mean a physical sensation with an attending mood -- such as which you might summon on purpose the second before lifting something heavy.  This seems to have been connected with the spine feelings, especially the column one.  

A lot of energy can move through the spine and this can often happen in practice. I've been told of Polynesian warriors practicing awareness of the spine and peripheral vision (these two things are connected) as it kept them alert, tuned in and more likely to succeed in combat. Some yogic traditions prioritize cultivating this kind of spinal energy and letting it collect in the top of the head, this can lead to "trippy" experiences. For what we are trying to do... It can be enjoyable, it can also be overwhelming but ultimately it's just something that happens when we start playing with relaxation and deepening awareness.

​​​​​​​Breathe, ground yourself and feel free to investigate these sensations too.

Bahiya Baby:  That is very interesting to hear.  It is fascinating how this sort of thing can be discovered by people in different cultures and how they often make completely different use of it.  Do you know have any further information about this and other things the Polynesians did that might be familiar to meditators?

Another question for you:  If I prioritize insight now and forbear to pay any special heed to the energetic things going on with my spine above other sensations, will I still be able to go back at a later point and cultivate the type of trippy experiences you mentioned?  Or do I now have a window of opportunity that will permanently pass if I do not use it?

Thanks in advance.  

If I can jump in here, as a guy who has had a boat-load of trippy experiences with body energy etc. in meditation, I would like to say that the trippy experiences, while cool and all, and while offering some opportunities for learning, are just bubkis compared to insight. People with advanced insight can, and do, cultivate trippy experiences, often more or less for fun. But the question is kind of like a new investor asking, "If I focus on building my first million now, rather than earning travel miles on my credit card, can I still do that later?" Yeah, you can :-)

Stop fooling yourself that what you are doing has anything to do with fire kasina.
Murk? WTF? Have you done fire kasina enough to get to that? You call it up on command? Wow. Perhaps you could just call it closed eyes concentration practice. Why use other terms unless you are specifically doing that practice?
You do you, vocabulary is always variable.
​​​​​​​~D

Dream Walker that was rude. This is clearly a good quality log, being kept by someone with earnest intentions.  Take it easy

  --- Henry I only really came across that first piece of information by chance. A lot of information around these topics is incredibly difficult to come by and very closely guarded. 

​​​​​​​Regarding the bright lights... I would agree with Martin. The problem people run into trying to cultivate this stuff is that day to day, nana to nana, their ability to experience it may change. Somedays they might be Kundalini angels and the next day their spitting and snarling like strung out junkies. Narratives are invented to backwards rationalize these experiences, spend enough time in these kinds of circles you'll hear it all, not pure enough, not celibate enough, diet, whatever, really it's just the Nana's, it's the spiritual journey unfolding as it should.  ​​​​​​​So my advice is always let the journey unfold as it needs to. That's the natural way to do things. This experience is what is significant. 

​​​​​​​If it is for you to cultivate these things you will likely know when you ought to do it. It doesn't really lead anywhere but it can be cool to explore the stuff the body can do. 

Bahiya Baby and Martin:  Thank you for your answers.

14 August 2024:  Just finished 45 minutes of vipassana.  My sessions over the last two or three days have included considerably less twitching, spasming, etc., which makes them more pleasant, though they are not especially blissful or joyful.  The spinal sensations, which sometimes seem to have the character of a column of pressure, have continued and become more constant.  

Noticing/noting seems to change pace, at times slowing down to fewer than one noticing per second and at times speeding up to a faster clip.  I am trying to be careful not to note automatically without noticing.  I think what sometimes happens is that attention goes to different sense-doors in stereotyped sequences.  I've noticed, for instance, that there is a frequently occurring sight-touch-thought sequence, corresponding noticing the backs of my eyelids, noticing a sensation in my eyes, and noticing a mental image representing my eyes.  I think I might be picking up on such sequences and noting them to myself before they actually occur.  For this reason I am often pausing for a moment after various noticings to make sure that the think I note next is something that I actually noticed, not something I merely predicted I would notice.  This may be responsible for the popcorn-like rhythm of speeding up and slowing down in my noticing.  

"Noticing/noting seems to change pace, at times slowing down to fewer than one noticing per second and at times speeding up to a faster clip.  I am trying to be careful not to note automatically without noticing.  I think what sometimes happens is that attention goes to different sense-doors in stereotyped sequences.  I've noticed, for instance, that there is a frequently occurring sight-touch-thought sequence, corresponding noticing the backs of my eyelids, noticing a sensation in my eyes, and noticing a mental image representing my eyes.  I think I might be picking up on such sequences and noting them to myself before they actually occur.  For this reason I am often pausing for a moment after various noticings to make sure that the think I note next is something that I actually noticed, not something I merely predicted I would notice.  This may be responsible for the popcorn-like rhythm of speeding up and slowing down in my noticing.  "

NICE! My practice was like this as well! And it did lead to Stream Entry. Yes! Noting matter-of-fact, arise-passed experience. Not just automatically repeating a sentence! Top-notch stuff! Keep going! 

BTW, try note "assumptions" or "assuming" if it pops up! any mind image accompanying this? Feeling tone? 

Papa Che Dusko:  Thank you for your encouraging reply.  To answer your question, the feeling tone when I catch myself noting what I predicted I would notice rather than what I notice indeed is unpleasant.  

-----
28 August:  Well, I typed out a long entry but somehow either I pressed the "cancel" instead of "publish" or the website swallowed it.  Now I am grumpy and will make a much shorter entry.

I stopped being so cautious about the note-prediction problem.  I determined that I was being a bit obsessive, raising the threshold for noting too high, artificially slowing my noticing speed, and thus missing a lot of things that ought to have been noted.  

Since I decided to do that, my noticing has sped up considerably, to the point that my mind's tongue can't always keep up by noting.  I am aware that Daniel recommends switching either to monosyllabic noting ("bip, bip, bip" or similar) or to simply noticing.  I have tried both, but only a little.  I find that when I try bare noticing, experience felt more continuous than the discrete frame-by-frame scrolling of the noting.  There are still many spiky individual noticings, but it feels more like I am watching experience smoothly unfold as a process than like I am noting a series of individual objects.  The transition between tactile sensations and the mental sensations that seem to represent them seems especially smooth.  Is it supposed to feel like that?

Speaking of tactile sensations and mental sensations, during this session I found that when I could match my noting to the speed of noticing, a mental image would be there as soon as I noticed a tactile sensation.  As before, the mental image was usually of the body part where I had felt the sensation.  It would happen so quickly that I could often scarcely note the tactile sensation in time before noting the mental one.  I even wonder if I am imposing theory upon experience by noting them sequentially and am perhaps experiencing tactile sensations synaesthetically.  

Finally, during the last week or so I have found that I often get into a drowsy state while doing vipassana.  Mentality becomes more vivid; and in the background there is an increase in often-nonsensical mental chatter, in which it is easy to become lost.  Sometimes the mental chatter even seems to incorporate my notes into itself as parts of sentences.  This state tends to go away on its own after a while, though it tends to leave some residue.  I recognize it from TMI as dullness.  Is it an issue in vipassana?  Should I apply remedies or just bear with it? 

Sounds like good practice. 

These are all good questions, but not for answering based on some abstract theory. Sometimes meditation "teachers/friends" do a disservice by trying to answer these honest questions...These are the kind of questions that can be redirected back towards what you are experiencing and drive investigation during your next meditation sit. 

Notice that something about what you are experiencing is creating doubt and worry and questioning, note the doubt and worry and questioning, and then investigate what is really happening. Collect more data in your next sit. Is the problem you think you are having really a problem? Is it really an issue? What don't you like about what is happening? What is the mind that is having these doubts and worries and questions? What is actually going on?

A lot of the time "problems" in meditation come from our sense of self/witness/observer/controller/do-er becoming less strong, less clear. Which is exactly the point of meditation (!) but it does feel weird when we first notice it. It's also a major stopping point for 90% of people that try meditation. They get uncomfortable, uncertain, doubtful... and instead of having that drive their investigation, they go back to reading books or listening to dharma talks, so they never truly become meditators.

Hope this is actually helpful in some way. I just wanted to answer this way because I think it will help the most in the long term. Ultimately we need to become experts of our own experience and become independent of others... and this does happen over time. We just need to get more and more comfortable with uncertainty and questioning.

Definitely keep asking questions, but also look for the answers in your next sit. This is the way meditation "leads onward" and people eventually awaken. Your problems and doubts and confusions fuels practice. No books or teachers or theory are needed, just you and your own experience over time.

Ironically, very advanced meditation practice involves a lot of uncertainty and even confusion. Awakening isn't "knowing exactly what is really going on", but it's more like a combination of having a prediction and also cool with everything being completely different in the next moment. "Emptiness" is understanding that this moment right now is vivid and what-it-is, yet also completely free to change in the next moment. It sort of gives us nothing to hold onto, like being in free fall, but the interesting thing there isn't any fear because we know we'll never hit the ground... and we get used to it.

But like I said, definitely keep asking questions, too. Nothing wrong with asking questions. Best wishes for your practice!

So nice!

Knowing that we don't know is the place where the best work gets done.

"Finally, during the last week or so I have found that I often get into a drowsy state while doing vipassana.  Mentality becomes more vivid; and in the background there is an increase in often-nonsensical mental chatter, in which it is easy to become lost.  Sometimes the mental chatter even seems to incorporate my notes into itself as parts of sentences.  This state tends to go away on its own after a while, though it tends to leave some residue.  I recognize it from TMI as dullness.  Is it an issue in vipassana?  Should I apply remedies or just bear with it? "

shargorl already gave very practical advice but here we go a bit closer to what you might want to hear; You are in a very good spot right now when it comes to Mahasi Vipassana or Tibetan stuff too! Its not a bad thing to be drowsy! Its a "development". 

You don't bear with it, nor do you apply "remedies", nor do "you" do anything.  

All that is required is to loop the matter-of-fact experience by NOTING it very simple. Note it! Put it back into the hopper, as Kennet Folk is saying It all becomes the fuel for your awakening! All of it! No matter what the experience is Isn't that cool? Such a relief! I don't have to do some exact thing except to note a matter-of-fact experience based on the sensate experience! Wow! So simple! KISS! 

Best wishes! 

What???  "knowing" that Im "not knowing" ???  I'm off to have a glass of red tempranillo now! Cheers!