Falling off the cliff (practice journal)

Wednesday 8/17
Starting off there was a great deal of muscle tension and feelings of hunger. The energy of the hunger was quite intense and felt like an erupting volcano, seething and churning in my guts. I decide to try perspective switching again. I entered the perspective of the heart, and felt tenderness, sorrow, and compassion for my body and all of the aches and pains it has to constantly deal with. Next I entered the base of the spine, and everything became very still and quiet like a very cold winter morning. Emotion dropped away, and the hunger was still present but not as distracting. I then entered the belly, and the hunger dissolved into its various components (aching, throbbing, burning) and actually became pleasant to experience. Entering the space above my head, I felt like I was floating and bathed in light from above, but the feeling of hunger became more solid and distracting again. I switched back to the base of the spine, and the hunger became attenuated again. I switched back to the heart and rested there for the remainder of the sit, feeling contentment, relief, compassion, joy, expansion, and loving-kindness.

Thursday 8/18
There was lots of throbbing aching pain throughout the body, and I kept noting as best I could. I was somewhat annoyed that it seems like I always have to deal with painful or neutral sensations, I hardly ever get pleasant ones to note. Gradually things became more still, and I noted whatever came up while in the stillness. I briefly tried some perspective switching to the heart and the base of the spine but I wasn't able to tune in to those locations; I figured my concentration was not sufficient today. Continuing noting, I had the sense that the reality being experienced was flimsy and translucent, like curtains made of gauze, and the observer and the noter was a part of it, and the gauze was hiding something important that couldn't be seen directly. I returned to stillness, and continued noting until the end.

Friday 8/19
I felt a lot of anxiety over stuff that's been happening at work. I kept getting distracted by complex fantasizing thoughts, and it was very difficult to stay present during the sit. There was a very strong desire throughout to stop the session early, but somehow I managed to note all the way through, though there were plenty of times where I was lost in thought or in contracted mental states. I was surprised and humbled afterwards by how difficult this session was.

Saturday 8/20
When I closed my eyes, I saw luminous yellowish-white fractal clouds suspended within a field of brownish-black. The entire scene seemed very solid and three-dimensional, and was somehow fascinating to watch. I noted "solidity" and "luminosity". The clouds were standing still at first, but gradually they started to shift back and forth like a gentle wave in a pond, which I noted as "movement" and "breathing". Then I noticed that the clouds were made up tiny points of light flickering very rapidly on and off. At this point a larger circular wave of bluish-purple color alternating with darkness started emanating out from the center of the scene to the periphery. These waves seemed to be overlaid over the flickering fractal clouds. I noted this as "movement" and "translucence". I noticed the interplay between the very fast flickering rhythm and the slower rhythm of the circular waves. I had no idea what any of this was, which I noted as "not knowing". The circular waves died away, and the entire scene seemed to be closer than it was before, like it was an infinite plane vertically intersecting my face through my eyeballs. A second set of smaller circular waves started; these were a bright electric blue and were moving in towards the center of the lower half of the visual scene, towards the tip of my nose. These waves gradually faded away, as well as the background clouds that they were overlaid on, and the only thing left was a shimmering white light filling up all of space. I noted this as "luminosity", "energy", and "electricity", because the shimmering had an energetic quality which reminded me of the sensation of touching a 9-volt battery to the tip of my tongue. The light had a wispy and fragile quality, as if I were looking through a piece of gauze in front of my eyes.

(cont)

I had the sense that the light was obstructing something important, and I needed to see what was on the "other side" of the light. Then there was a sense of an observer silently watching all of this, not perturbed by or reacting to any of it, and there was a sense that this same observer has watched everything that ever happened to this body and mind from birth and childhood throughout adulthood up to this very moment in time. There was some kind of a resolution, and a strange feeling of fuzziness everywhere, after which there was no longer a sense of observer or myself at all being present, there was only the light filling up space. The light existed in what seemed like a timeless moment. Then the experience shifted again with a sense of presence gradually coalescing around the act of perceiving the light. A questioning thought started to arise about whether the nature of this needed to be understood, but before it could fully form, a response came from somewhere else: "Just look." The questioning and analyzing aspects of myself became more present, and again started to ask what this all is, how could it be truly understood, and so on, and again there was the same reply: "Just look!" At that very moment the first ending bell rang, and the memory of the instruction intermingled with the resonating sounds of the three bells. My eyes opened, and as I looked around my room everything seemed to be bathed in light, and I felt deeply rejuvenated.

Sunday 8/21
Lots of stuff happened, but I wasn't interested in any of it. I can't even be bothered to write up a description now.

Meh.

Monday 8/22
I did sit today, but I didn't feel like noting or doing anything else during the sit. Meditation seems like a completely pointless activity lately.

Tuesday 8/23
I felt much less apathetic this morning than I have been these past few days, and I was able to note throughout today's sit. At one point I realized that the negative mental states in the dark night are not these horrible obstacles to be overcome, but rather are opportunities to experience these states in a safe environment, on the cushion, without having to react immediately to them. I can practice feeling fear or misery and observe how it manifests in my body and mind without getting caught up in these emotions and losing myself to them in the moment. At the end of the sit, I became very concentrated on a grayish spot associated with a sense of solidity manifesting right in front of my face. It seemed to be a jhana-like state that I had slipped into.

Wednesday 8/24
Lots of body tension for the first half of the sit, mainly in the lower back, forehead, and hands, though I didn't get too bothered by it. I felt very peaceful and content throughout the sit, and was perfectly happy to note whatever was arising in each moment without thinking in the back of my mind that I should be experiencing a particular mental state or getting myself to the next stage in the progress of insight. Towards the end I got into the same concentration space that I entered at the end of yesterday's session, and there were several times when everything in the visual field kept flickering on and off very rapidly. There was a sense of everything (including the observer and the noter) being all interconnected, all part of the same fabric, and there was a feeling of closeness and intimacy.

Thursday 8/25
Started off in a good mood, even though I didn't sleep well last night. Kept noting lots of throbbing aching pain throughout the body, mainly centered around the gut and lower back. At first this was no big deal, but as the sit went on the pains got worse and worse and wore me down, leaving me exhausted afterwards. Also caught myself lost in thought several times. I think it was harder than usual for me to focus because I was so tired from not getting enough sleep.

Friday 8/26
I had a strange dream before waking up this morning featuring my grandparents (who died about two years ago), and I was in an emtionally charged state at the beginning of the sit. I decided it would be more helpful to do Mahamudra noting today. There was an intense feeling of soreness and tenderness in the heart which lasted throughout the sit. Gradually it deepened into feelings of compassion for myself and for everyone who suffers. Then I expanded into a space of equanimity encompassing the compassion. After resting in the equanimity for a while, I saw images of a river flowing, and of myself in free-fall (both from my own perspective and the perspective of an outside viewer). Then I returned to the sense of myself sitting on the cushion, but there was a feeling of floating in boundless space with nothing supporting me anywhere. The feeling of space became more prominent, then there was a surge of energy in the center of my chest, like an electric spark or a light turning on, and the energy/light illuminated all of the space. I noticed the similarities with the 5th and 6th jhanas, though I wasn't doing intentionally doing jhana practice at the time. After resting in the sense of boundless light, the bell rang, and I returned back down through boundless space to equanimity before opening my eyes.