Laurel's practice

@JLaurelC I agree with Chris. Expectations are like protocols. The narratives have characters and the characters follow protocols. These take us, little by little, into anxiety, euphoria, anger, sadness, etc. Here are the good news that seem like bad news: the protocols are like machines, they are processes, they are mechanic. How do mechanisms work? Well, usually they dont care about right intention, right effort, etc. They just happen. So one might say "well this just sucks, can't I just change the mechanics and be healthy?". A common trap is to judge the whole thing, wage war on narratives, characters we incarnate and their protocols. But when we investigate these phenomena, we dissect them and see they are just processes and not solid beings. Ironically, by providing conscious space (through sitting and investigating), the processes liberate themselves effortlessly. Space is awareness that is respectful, it is awareness that allows the existence of protocols, without feeding or suppresing them. How does one provide basic space? Sitting with the protocols, and let them soak for a while like Chris says. One could investigate like this, for example: if you find sadness and note "sadness", you could also note the components of sadness AND all the stuff that isn't sadness (the rest of your body parts, and the rest of mental phenomena for example). I let the noting expand itself, I dont exclude unpleasant sensations, I just expand my noting and surrender little by little. Then things seem to want to change and what I do is LET them change. In the past I wouldn't allow change. I would feed the narrative to be someone or something. One feeds unpleasantness through being picky, we tend to note just unpleasant (or pleasant) sensations and that treats the phenomenon like an existing entity. If, on the other hand, you note unpleasant feelings along with pleasant and neutral, simultaneously, selectiveness ends and energy spreads out.

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Oh yeah, I like your third option

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Ditto.

"I tend to have issues with people in authority, and I tend to grant authority to people, sometimes almost randomly, so I can then have an authority to generate expectations. Mind then generates internal voices that tell me what expectations I'm supposed to live up to, and not living up to them makes me feel guilty. Quite absurdly guilty. Anticipating not living up to those expectations generates anxiety. Absurdly high levels of anxiety. "

This is the story of my life, in a nutshell. But as APrioriKreuz says, this is just a process, a protocol. It's what I do. I get into these situations and certain results follow, the way they always have. And one of the things that has reinforced the process over the years has been my trying to make war on it. But I am beginning to find out--and long to find out more (Desire for Deliverance, anyone?) that just sitting with it and letting it be and investigating it as a process can be liberating. It is getting better. There is a difference between equanimity, which comes from surrender, and forced indifference, which comes from running out of energy. Thanks, everyone.

" There is a difference between equanimity, which comes from surrender, and forced indifference, which comes from running out of energy. Thanks, everyone. "

Nice insight Laurel !

One of the most powerful insights I can remember having happened while I was walking to what I knew would be a very, very stressful meeting. I looked down at the sidewalk and there was a beetle, just crawling along. I'm not sure why but it popped into my head that all the anxiety I was having about the meeting was the same "stuff" as the sight of that little beetle.

Poof!

Good work, Laurel!

Thanks, people. I'm working more and more on noting during the day. My sitting practice has reverted to more formal noting from the open-ended observation I was doing about a month ago. At the conference I managed to get in a 45 minute session each morning and evening. Last evening I noted and noted and kept alert, but not much seemed to be happening. Got some itches here and there, a sense of vibrations here and there, and then there'd be general relaxation. There seemed to be no jhanic arc going on.

I meditated for about an hour on the flight home, doing four foundations noting. The result was something similar. I discovered, though, that I was happier meditating than either reading or spinning thoughts in my head. There was only occasional mild restlessness.

I'm happy to be home. I am completely confused about where I might be on the maps, and am getting a trifle antsy about wanting to make progress, but I'm not letting myself go too far in that direction, other than to attempt to work as much as I can at my practice both on and off the cushion.

35 mins. this morning, an odd session. I hadn't had a full night's sleep, and took awhile to settle down, 3x10 focus on the breath. Then I alternated between dreaminess and profoundly relaxing vibrations that felt like bliss. I'd slip into a dream for a few minutes and then back into the relaxation. I wasn't doing noting, except when I caught myself thinking or imagining, but even then it was just a recognition of the fact. When the vibrations started I tried investigating, but there was nothing to investigate--no bodily sensations of tension, itching, or pain. At the beginning of the sit I heard my heard pounding like a sledgehammer; that dropped off and I couldn't hear it at all after a brief while. There was pronounced ringing in the ears. I began to wonder if I'd dropped into a jhana--maybe second?--but in any case, it was very refreshing. The dreams were somewhat distracting while they were going on, and there was some spillover of thinking in the more awake state, mostly in the form of curiosity about the dreams. Got up and did yoga after that.

Had a lesson with Kenneth yesterday, the last for the foreseeable future. Will be working with Beth from now on, which is fine. Worked at a couple techniques for staying in the present: thought counting, noting the sense doors.

This a.m.: 35 mins., seemed like a long time. Noted sense doors, caught myself thinking quite a bit, drifting off to dreamland a few times, then nice, pleasant vibrations. This alternation went on for most of the time.

Yesterday: only a short session in the morning, which didn't get very far off the ground. Difficult day, inadequate sleep the previous night. Tried mindfulness during the day.

This a.m.: 35 mins., same as Wednesday, almost. Not quite so much thinking. This alternation between dreamy imagery/thoughts and vibrations pretty much describes all my sits lately. I can hear the ears ringing, but no heartbeat noise.

During the day: feeling fretful and unhappy, seems dukkha-like to me. Lots of intense thinking about/awareness of death, some time in Fear. Trying to be gentle with myself and others. This morning there was a bit of anger, frustration, irritation, sense that this is never going to end. I've got to keep at it, that's all.

35 mins. this a.m. I had something on my mind that kept coming back; noted "thinking, thinking" and tried turning my attention back to sounds (mostly ringing in the ears). Little by way of bodily sensations, except for some tension in the midsection that is the manifestation of anxiety. Today instead of a hard knot it was more diffuse. The thoughts intruded persistently, and I never settled into the pleasant vibrations that have been so characteristic of late.

My workload has become oppressive to me, and I'm in a cycle of pushing hard and then collapsing with either a distracting book or else surfing the internet. Am observing this pattern. I'm thinking a lot about the future, hoping to adjust my workload. I keep reminding myself that taking refuge in projections of what I imagine might be a more satisfactory future is something I am doing now. I am also fantasizing about being on retreat, all of which is happening now. I alternate between awareness of the 3 C's and wishing life could be better. Am observing this.

I decided to resume jhana practice for awhile. 35 mins. anapanasati this a.m. and then late this afternoon. It took longer getting focused in the afternoon session after a full stimulating day than in the early morning sit. I felt deep relaxation and blissful vibrations eventually in both. It was nice. I want to deepen my absorption a bit for awhile. Perhaps I just need the good vibes. Plus I'd like to learn more about the jhanas; haven't really done much with them since last spring.

Not a bad idea at all! The good vibes will carry you a long way.

You might want to read/re-read Kenneth's article on the inter-relation of jhana and insight nanas:

kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/page/Jhana+and+%C3%91ana

The trick is to be able to cultivate the good vibes and not feel like you are doing something wrong when dark night stuff comes up. Working on the jhanas -- which, pre-path, can just feel like cultivating good vibes -- is also working on the nanas.

So in any sit, you might do some breath counting to get concentrated, find a pleasurable sensation and cultivate that, find some more subtle bliss and dwell in that, watch the mind get active and do some noting, then both attend to overarching blissful body/mind sensations while watching the thought-producing mind do it's more changable thing. Another time it might be noting from the very beginning that gets you concentrated. Other times you'll sit down and right away there will be some blissful sensation to explore and cultivate. Those are all good sits! Don't worry about doing pure jhana or pure noting, a mix is good, too.

Thanks, Betawave. I think I'm going to have to do at least some noting with jhana practice, because my mind tends to get stuck in a thought loop more easily doing jhana practice than doing noting, when I can just objectify it and move on. This morning I was pretty distracted, ultimately reached some calm, but then this afternoon was spinning around thinking about an issue at work. I had a few lovely moments of bliss, got interrupted, and was unable to recover from it. When I do noting I manage to submerge myself underneath the surface deeply enough so that these things don't develop into a total think-fest. Bill H has a thought stopping technique that he discusses on his thread; I took a look at Ian And's instructions on DhO and tried doing this, but wasn't able to get past the ruminating. Maybe I can try one approach when I've got a lot of stuff on my mind, and another when I'm less distracted. Of course if I wait to be less distracted I may never find a good time. Oh well! Just have to keep practicing.

I always found asking "to whom does this thought arise" to be quite effective at cutting off thinking. It also has the benefit of being a second gear sort of practice (self inquiry).

"I always found asking "to whom does this thought arise" to be quite effective at cutting off thinking. It also has the benefit of being a second gear sort of practice (self inquiry). "

Thanks, Mu; I've been doing some of that. Been practicing every day, similar kind of thing. But my workload has been frustratingly in the way, and then I'm having these medical issues with chest pains. Saw the heart specialist on Wednesday, who told me to take my nitroglycerine when I have an episode. I finally did this morning, after 45 mins. of vipassana in which I continued to note pressure in the chest and a sense of short breath, not extreme, but after some pain last evening I decided to do it. Continued noting after putting the little pill under my tongue. For awhile nothing happened, then I felt this powerful sense of a loss of control and dizziness, kind of like what happens in an airplane during the descent except much, much more intense and extended to the entire body. Tried noting through the whole experience. I felt an inclination to panic, noted that. I also noted an intention not to use the medication ever, ever again unless I'm convinced my life is in danger. Eventually I stabilized.

Maybe I had more of an intense reaction to the stuff because of the noting, or maybe the noting is what helped me through it. I really don't know. I think my practice as a whole is helping me cope with the fear that my health is not what I want it to be. I am going for a more thorough exam on Tuesday, after which I'll have a better sense of where I stand.

The vipassana practice itself alternated some dreaminess with vibrations. I have to confess that there wasn't a whole lot of difference between that experience and what I've had doing jhana practice, except for the distribution: more blissful stillness in the latter, more mental activity in the former.

I know this will sound sort of obvious but let's all agree that meditation is not medication. If you need to take medication then take it, and meditate later when you can. As my friend Ron Crouch recently said to someone else here, you have to be alive to wake up.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled journal....

"As my friend Ron Crouch recently said to someone else here, you have to be alive to wake up.
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That exact thought has passed through my mind lately . . . I'll do my best to stay focused.

Long sit last evening, set the timer for 35 minutes, blew past it and ended up sitting for about 80. I focused on the breath for about 4x10, then switched to noting, then just bare attention as things unfolded. It was like the sessions I had in the evenings last summer. First there'd be itches, then shaking, perhaps with pressure in the back of the head, then finer vibrations. This time the sequence was compressed into many repetitions of the same pattern, over and over, and the itches would seem to begin as discrete sensations but then break up into many intense pinprick pulses which would extend over the entire face. It seemed at times like very, very harsh vibrations on the surface of the skin. Unpleasant and uncomfortable, gruesome even. Lots of grimacing. Sometimes the shaking would be rapid, sometimes slow, sometimes in a kind of rocking motion. I opted to sit for as long as I could stand it to see if it would stabilize, but it really didn't do that. There were fragments of thoughts and images rapidly cycling through the mind, I noted but did not attach to any of them, and the more I did that the faster they came and went. I tried to note them as quickly as possible. I also had the first movement to Bach's St. John's Passion going through my head over and over in the background the whole time (been listening to that lately). Unlike last summer, there wasn't the excited commentary accompanying these phenomena, just a watching and observing, occasionally noting "unpleasant, unpleasant," occasional attempts at resolves to stick with it. After I got up to go to bed I continued noting until I fell asleep.

This morning: 35 mins. anapanasati, some restless distractions followed by periods of fine, blissful vibrations. Not particularly happy, though; felt an undercurrent of fear and uncertainty. Trying to keep noting off the cushion.

Last night, 35 minutes or so, interrupted when my husband came home. Unlike the night before, I did not feel that I wanted to keep meditating; I got restless and wanted to stop. I also had trouble settling down. The session was a lot less active than the previous night, although there was some itching and a little shaking, some vibrations.

45 mins. this morning, did vipassana practice after 4x10 breath count. Lots of distracting thoughts, no real sense of anything specific. Noisy heartbeat would come and go. The knot of anxiety in the midsection was noticeable at the beginning, but then at a certain point I realized it was gone. This in itself is noteworthy. Ear ringing rather loud. A few aches and pains here and there. No itching, shaking, or other activity of that kind.

Okay, my health issues have been resolved; had a test where they inject dye into your arteries and take a picture, and I'm fit as a fiddle. So whatever distraction I have gotten out of that situation over the past few weeks is now done. Time to move on.

I am now officially into my seasonal depression, fwiw. I crave sugar, chocolate preferred, or failing that, any other carbs I can find. I am feeling all sorts of random aches and pains. I got bogged down with the meditation, but have managed to get in some time each day, with the low point being 10 minutes on Wednesday. But I had a lovely, bliss-filled session yesterday morning, and then a nasty one last evening, harsh vibrations compounded by distraction and restlessness.

This is the first time I'll be going into the month of December with an active practice. I'll have to see how it compares to previous years. I see the 3-Cs in everything, which is good, I suppose, but not always a whole lot of fun. For example, I had a temporary experience of relief that my health is reasonably good, but I quickly returned to the recognition that all conditions are temporary. Joseph Goldstein has a series of three three-minute meditations on the IMS newsletter: www.dharma.org/ims/ai_news_worth_busy_life_no_self.html . Session 2, "Breaking Identification with the Body," has been particularly relevant to me lately.

You takin them vitamin Ds????

Yes, I'm doing the vitamin thing! Thanks for the reminder.

I had an upsetting thing happen last evening, managed to get to sleep but woke up early with a painful thought-loop going through my head. I lay in bed like that for awhile, then got up and meditated for 45 mins. until the timer went off, and 10 mins. or so afterward. Once I got settled I had an alternation between sleepiness and vibrations, which wasn't pleasant or unpleasant, but kind of a heavy feeling, slogging through the dream-state. My thought-loop was derailed during all of this. A part of me was tempted to think what I was doing wasn't really meditation because I wasn't actively noting anything, and from time to time I'd note something just to keep myself reassured that I wasn't slacking off. Eventually I got up to do some yoga, and wham! the thought-loop was back with a vengeance. It's as if it had been lying in wait for me to finish the meditation.

I'm busy re-reading MCTB these days, and realized that I'd never made it to the end of the book. So I'm going through all of Daniel's responses to the various models of enlightenment. One thing that is interesting to me is his point that you can't simply decide to lop off half of your experiences in order to have only the ones you want. My biggest problem is figuring out how to surrender without wallowing in suffering. I guess that's what the dukkhas are for--teaching us how to do that.

I participated in a workshop yesterday, doing a guided meditation. It was relaxing but not as deep as the one earlier in the morning yesterday. Then this morning I meditated for about 30 minutes and spent the entire session spinning in content. This "upsetting thing" that happened Friday night was still continuing to bug me. It involved the mother of one of my son's friends treating my son hurtfully. My first reaction was typically shame-based ("he must have done something to deserve this") and then morphed into rage.

Then this morning I had an experience of anxiety driving on the first snowfall of the year. I found myself thinking that my brain had turned into its very own torture chamber; the physical reaction was overwhelming, combining the distress over the incident with my son, distress over the driving, and worst of all, distress over my own response to all of it. For the first time in almost a year I seriously considered quitting meditation, telling myself that I started it in the first place in order to cope with my anxiety, which now seems worse than ever. I don't seem to get anxious on the cushion, although there'll be fear from time to time, or a desire to get up and do something. I can't tell whether this is Dark Night fear nyana, or something psychological. I feel that I've arrived at "conscious incompetence" where I can objectify the sensation, but until it actually passes I'm a basket case.

Fortunately things don't get this bad all that often. Plus I was at church, participating in choir rehearsal, and no one knew I was a basket case. I am now looking on the whole wave of panic, rage, and despair with a kind of bewilderment. My chest was constricted, I was shaking inside, I felt weak and wobbly, and I had the fiery tension in the solar plexus. At one point I noted wanting to cry. I thought, how can I surrender to something like this?

What other choice do you have, Laurel?

Seriously -- you've come this far and now you can see the turmoil as it occurs. The next step is to just surrender to it, realizing it's just stuff, not you, not truly powerful, not even dangerous in the moment. That's liberation! Why not work on that? The only other way is to go backwards and I'm not sure at this point you have that option anyway.

"My biggest problem is figuring out how to surrender without wallowing in suffering. "

It can seem like "surrender" means wallowing, or worse, that it means letting go of feeling righteous anger. Like how can you "surrender" to feeling your son has been insulted? Wouldn't that mean letting that mean woman get away with it? How dare she! If you grab that rage and let it fill you right up, does that teach that other mother a lesson? If you didn't hold onto that, would it have to mean you thought what she did was okay? That's sometimes part of the thought process, isn't it? But that's not what surrender is about.

Bring it back to the moment. Your son tells you his feelings were hurt. You feel adrenaline kick in, your heart begins pounding. Embrace that. Intense physical feelings. Allow them. Surrender to them happening just as they are. Pounding. Pounding. Shaking. Perfect. There it is, the beautiful natural response of a mother protecting her child. Embrace that totally. Just that. Just that.

Then your mind throws up some imagery, some associations - bursts of memories. Embrace. Allow. Memories. Images. Memories. Images. Burst of fear. More flashes of memories. Shaking. Fear. Gripping in stomach. The natural response of the mind and body. Allow it. Just that.

That's how I see surrendering to the moment, just as it is. Is that at all helpful?