Meditation

8:40pm - 40 minute Meditation

I found meditation itself really interesting tonight. Part of this process is learning what I can do.

Started and went into access concentration. Went into then what my mind wanted to go to. I recognized this as a Pure Land state. It feels like the top is opened up in the middle of the brain. PL4. Really great, chill for a bit. Then came back down to realize I've got to control these things. This was a great confidence builder but I must determine my own state. I own my emotions, they do not own me.

I came out of it and went back to just sitting. I slowly dropped my attention into my body around the pelvis. This drop began the process of deep relaxation. Although I didn't know this at the time. I knew I was going back to basics. So I sank, sank and once I felt sunk I switched my attention to my breathing. I started slowing my breath. Again unbeknownst to me at the time. I drew in breath to a point around my navel while straightening up my posture. Then when I was straight and my breathing muscles were taut, I took a massive inhale until all of my parts were full, every cell I could muster, sucked up with oxygen. Then out. Out, out, out, deeper deeper, releasing air until my fingers were moving automatically searching for some air. Then suck in and I began a process of consciously slowing my breath. Slower and slower. When I relaxed a bit I started rhythmic breathing. Started with a 5 count in, hold 5, out 5, hold 5. After a few I switched to 4. Then I tried to find a rhythm but I sped up too much and got out of it. Just relaxing, sitting, reflecting on my process until the end.

6:35 - 20 Minute Meditation Session

Posture awesome. Breath awesome. Everything awesome!

I started with sinking the posture. This happened quickly. Went to breath. Took massive amounts of air in and held. Blew massive amounts of air out, held. Started with a four count but I was so involved with it I didn't need a reminder. I drank in purity and hope and love and blew out discipline and cleanliness. I was swimming in a sea of purifying breaths. Holding my breath between in and out is absolutely amazing. That's when the purifying and hope and discipline were gathered. Through strength and leadership I guided myself to brand new heights of prana. I restored my oxygen levels with brand new, fresh air and it felt great! Freaking awesome sit!!

I've read pranayama can be dangerous. This I think is true if you have latent issues you haven't dealt with as it brings them up and they can contaminate your mind. You can go crazy from meditation or magick too. This is why I was emphasizing purity and healing and hope and discipline in my breath. Breath does connect to life, and I'm hypothesizing: behavior. I certainly felt wonderful after this. I just wonder about the dangers of altering breath. Probably the same as altering the mind or body. Be kind and all good. Research more. Henry, again any input?

10 min yoga this morning and a 10 min guitar practice focused on posture and breathing while playing a piece I was trying to brush up on (I've sort of forgotten it over the years)

Sort of weak routine with breathing/meditation proper - I do it a lot during the day as I'm standing still or watching a class or driving; I definitely feel the benefits, but no long range practice to speak of, just sort of maintenance/stress control/self-awareness/self-observation - but I have been waking up between 4:30-5 just to do anything and I get home after 6:30 everyday. Feeling good (not bitter and disappointed in myself for not keeping it up as much as I hoped like I would have felt in the past), so I'm not worried that I'm losing the work I've put into it; in fact I think it's because of the work that I have felt life differently (less fatigued at more work, less reactivity, increased self-awareness when stress does occur or when self-doubt/negative self-talk begins to dominate). I feel patient. Not searching for "IT!", but allowing the experience of being and watching that which I call "myself" just happen and doing what I do because I do it.

Throughout the day and for the last couple of days, I have had nostalgic feelings that remind me of childhood moments (mostly smells and some images) of unquestioned contentment with life in the immediate. Reminds me of early experiences of praying while walking in the woods or trying to meditate and thinking "what, I just think of nothing?!; Is this right? Just think of blackness? Is that 'nothing'?" Makes me feel a little better about who I am becoming because I can tolerate thinking of the early "myself" as one who has become the "me" that is now becoming... [Uuuuuh, huh?] At any rate, "illumination" or not, working hard (at my job and practice(s)) has felt a lot more joyous...

Don't worry Henry... that will change... heh heh heh...

6:25am - 30 minute meditation session
2 15 min timers. Stay in access concentration for 15. Go to 1st jhana for 15.

Goal worked out pretty well. Mind didn't wander from goal. I did daydream most of the time about Kathleen's and our fight last night and how to address it. Access concentration manifested as being wrapped up in that daydream. At that point I didn't need to be mindful. Now with 1st jhana there was a degree of mindfulness that has to be retained to go into the state at all. It is said 1st jhana rids you of the 5 hindrances: sensual desire, ill will, sloth, restlessness, and doubt. I did feel it and go into immediately. It feels like someone cracked an egg on my stomach chakra and warmness is running through my arms. This lasted only a few seconds but I would try to do it over and over. My guess and plan of attack is this is learning from the jhanas. For instance, toward the end, I forgave Kathleen and instantly was more peaceful. I didn't get back I got the energetic aspect of the jhana but I felt like I was closer. I picked back up the "wrapper" of the judgement and the only recourse was to establish nondual mindfulness. Reminding myself of our nondual nature. If I concentrate on that I perhaps could have picked away at the remaining wrapper of judgement but time ran out.

I am pleased at this session. Two reasons: I did exactly what I planned to do without deviation. And, I established a learning relationship with the jhanas. I don't have to have perfect concentration and mindfulness to enter them but through them I can learn concentration and mindfulness and thusly we will be able to abide together.

When you're not trying to get swept away by objects of attention are you saying you don't call them anything or you do? You just let it all go or you say, there's fury, there's embarrassment, etc? If it's a 'being' practice I would imagine you'd let them go. Is that right?

Also, I think that mindfulness, while meaning different things to different people- basically, an awareness of what is going on internally or externally, depending how you swing it- is a type of meditation. I did mindfulness differently than you but basically in the same informal style. I did an informal vipassana. Instead of focusing on being- which is awesome that you're seeing results!- I broke down experience into categories and depersonalized it. Sensations, emotion, thought, and action is how I broke experience down. This style produces insights into the nature of being and isn't very good for relaxation. You're style is much more therapeutic, appropriately!

I make a hard rule now. It's not meditation for me- for my own use, not other people's- if it doesn't have a definite start and end. I'm doing it ritualistically. I got swept away into thinking I was meditating (and I probably was) but it was all too wishy washy. I like measurable results now.

PS - I can't believe the site won't work on your phone.

Answering your question: I don't think I label everything or let everything go. When I am ideally successful, I blend phases of labelling and letting go (blending "name it to tame it" with "radical acceptance"). It is ultimately interesting to me that you are viewing the move from informal to formal as your evolution and progress while my view of personal progress and growth has been the opposite. I am only now becoming comfortable with the informal. Informal in the sense that I feel less pressured by dogma and axiom. At the same time, dogmatism and organized spiritual and practical exercises seem to overlap and give me a wonderful feeling of wholeness; integrating my drive toward the [impossibly inaccessible] infinite with that which one encounters in prosaic life.

My focus on "being" - just to clarify - is a focus on experience/the experiential; the "being this, here and now, and so on..." I don't mean like an ontological pondering of what it is for an object to be; rather, my focus has been the phenomenological event of observing what it is to be. I have enjoyed the freedom and discovery of veering away from hard rules (despite their incredible benefit).

I actually realized I don't even like the term "meditation" for ideological reasons. I'd rather not call it anything at all, but just live while doing it. My ultimate hope is to understand life and me - bracketing "me" is useful to remember the goal of realizing something ultimate in the unity of non-duality, but we mustn't forget the "me" that discovers this absence of "the self". Thinking of dark matter and dark energy in the universe (humor me): dark matter has been compared to the unseen ocean water at night while the visible foam of the breaking waves seem to glisten and shimmer in the moon light - these breaking waves appear to be the only things there are (superficial living). So, the knowledge of the dark water behind/underneath the waves is incredibly useful and awe-inspiring (illumination - connection with that which we previously did not know was there); but there are at least two things we neglect in that important revelation: 1) the ocean depths and inhabitants throughout the entire body of water (living in enlightenment), and 2) the dialectically integrative interplay between the relationship of water and the macro-environment and the relationship of water and micro-environment that makes the water and macro-environment itself (beyond anything that we ever can enlighten ourselves with?). My [current] view is that leaving the door of certainty open will excite the experience of discovery.

I know I'm blabbing now, but that's why I started the forum in the first place; to give myself a masturbatory outlet for intellectual and spiritual impulses...

I want to be careful not to through ritual out the window, however. It is guiding and possibly the only way to truly touch some things.