Jarrod's Practice Notes

Had another 50 min or so sit this morning. I cruised up from 4th to 11th nana within about 10 mins or so. I think in future sits I will try to go more slowly through the dukkha nanas because these are still a bit unclear. I was hanging out in 11th for awhile, still no fruition. I decided to experiment a bit and tried to jump down to 1st jhana. I put the attention around the nostrils and focused on the breath there. It took a bit but the attention started to stay there and I had a few face contortions. Clenching of the eyes and some rocking of the body. But I settled in. Stayed there for a few mins, then went to 3rd, then down to 2nd, then back up to 4th.

Hung out there for a bit. The bell went off but I continued to sit for awhile. Suddenly I had some intense pressure at the third eye. It was very strong. Strong enough to physically move my head back. I didn't fight it and just found my head bobbing back and forth. It was intense. There was a lot of energy cumulating in the crown and third eye area. It felt like I was close to a "pop" but I don't think it ever did. It was just really intense so I went with it. Sits are certainly more dynamic these days.

Long hours at work have prevented me from updating my notes but I have continued to sit fairly regularly over the past couple of weeks. The sits were becoming a bit predictable: quickly moving up through the arc to 11th and hanging out there for the remainder of the sit. I'd often get strong areas of energy build up in different positions of the head, occasional head bobbing and such, but never any other fruitions as far as I could tell. Actually, except for the energy build-up portion, the sits were getting quite boring.

Then I seemed to hit a different phase. One day I sat and the usual stuff happened at the beginning, I was getting bored, mind started wandering. Not sure how long but when I snapped out of it, I was suddenly quite 'solid'. I felt heavy and could feel many coarse physical sensations. I'm fairly certain it was the 3rd nana (a dear old friend I hadn't visited in awhile). I started noting and sensed that I was moving up through the arc again. Peaked at 11th and then felt a clear descent going back down in reverse order. Felt like a free fall at first. The next couple of sits were like this. Going up and down. I believe this is Review Phase B.

Then the other day I sat and seemed to have totally lost the ease of sitting that I seemed to have gained over the past few weeks. I just stuck with noting 4Fs but felt heavy, slow and clumsy with it. Eventually, I felt like I hit a groove for a few minutes. Felt relatively pleasant and focused, noting with good consistency. My posture felt good. This last a couple of minutes, then I started to struggle with maintaining focus. Many distracting thoughts came flooding in. I noted them and the struggle/frustration and that was about it. I wonder if this was the start of a new path? It certainly had the feel of floundering, then finding the groove with Mind and Body, then the instability of Cause and Effect.

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Today's sit I decided I would do straight samatha practice, which I haven't done explicitly in awhile. I tried a technique I learned from Shinzen Young's The Science of Enlightenment audio book where you objectify the breath as a continuous expansion and contraction motion. It was very nice. With each in breath you notice the inward pull/contraction, first in the face, then shoulders, then chest, then back, then abdomen. You also notice the outward expansion in each of these areas with each out breath. I did each of these parts, then broadened out to the whole body. I found a nice rhythm and then noticed the attention wanting to stay at my face, then the nostrils. It slowly moved out to cover the whole body again and I felt the effort let up and saw brightness behind the eyelids. Things were feeling good. The brightness darkened and the expansion/contraction of the breathing process was primarily coming from my sides/arms/legs. It was as if my arms and legs were doing the breathing rather than my lungs. Then the expansion/contraction became all consuming and the attention was wide. It all sort of dissipated and the focus on the breath went away. The attention was just resting on the expansiveness and the silence. I then tried to visualize infinite space. This caused a shift that is hard to explain, but the attention moved up and out and the body and its expansion/contraction became irrelevant. Maintained this for a minute or so, then brought the attention back to the center. Everything was in the center of the skull looking out. Tried to stick to the sense of watching. I just let this go and thought I'd see what would happen if I switched to vipassana at this point.

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I noted some thoughts and shifted the eyes upward which generated some strobing. I scanned from inside the skull and found a couple of active spots on the surface of the head, which I stuck with and watched the sensations flicker. This got a bit agitating, so I slowly moved back to the breath and as I calmed I felt more of the pleasant focus of first jhana again. Great way to start the day.

Sat for about 30 mins this morning and tried the same technique as yesterday. I found that I was not ascending through the jhanas as easily as I did yesterday. I did eventually feel the tight focus of 1st but I didn't seem to go as deep into it. It then opened up a bit into 2nd, but again not as deep. I found myself really noticing things going on in the background (various noises, sense of sitting in the room, etc.). I decided to play with this a bit. I maintained and held most of my attention on the expansion/contraction of the breath but tried to let a thread of attention start noting the stuff in the background. I did this through first just noticing it then with soft mental noting. This included notes like sound, silence, and space and eventually I picked up a couple of image thoughts as well.

Another 30 min sit this morning. I started with breath counting and felt tight concentration relatively quickly. I stuck with the breath as object. I felt a shift to 2nd jhana, most notably the drop of effort. I switched focus to various still points. I got deeply embedded in the stillness behind the closed eyes and the relaxation in the body. I seemed to go more deeply into 2nd jhana than I have before. It seems that I've gone relatively deep into 1st and 3rd, but not 2nd for some reason. Anyway, I decided to start noting, mostly body sensations. As I did this I literally felt like I was melting. Very intense, pleasurable at first, then a strong surge of fear. I went back to the still blankness behind the eyes. The fear subsided and the skin was cool. It was easiest to stick with the blankness at the periphery. I steeped in this for the rest of the sit.

I'm still sticking with concentration practice at the moment. I tried "jhana jumping" during this morning's sit and found that I could not do it like I could a couple of weeks back. Is this a feature of review phase A only? Collecting the concentration and going deep still seems much easier than in the past but I've seem to lost a bit a control. I just progress up through the jhanas as long as I stick with the concentration practice, but it is just happening more on its own. I wonder if it is time to start down the road to 2nd path.