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Julian S 8 years, 2 months ago.
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[Someone might be tempted to point out that I am being non-dual or judgemental of myself by using terms like “regress”, “backwards” etc… Please don’t let’s trouble with that. I’m ok with the path being non-linear. I am on the watch for judgement and impatience in myself, and while they do frequently crop up, I’m on it enough to take them as the object until they pass. I use these terms as reference points, nothing else. To keep that point clear, I’ll put them in quotation marks.]
I’ve been practising diligently for 30 minutes 3x daily since coming off a ten-day retreat. The last few days, the practice has deepened a bit and I’m experiencing a repeated pattern in my sits that as far as I can tell isn’t addressed in TMI and wondering how best to work with it.
I’ve read TMI up to halfway through the Sixth Interlude, and I would say it feels like initially when I sit, there is significant mental unity. Not just that “I feel like meditating”, but mind is intent on the breath. There is earnestness, fed by compassion for self and others. I have seen a lot of suffering. Eagerness is there, and strong motivation.
During daily life, I can sense subtle sensations of breathing anywhere I place my attention. After the Six Step Prep and Four Part Transition, these sensations are more vivid, although not vivid enough to discern individual arisings and passings. I am aware of tremors and jerkiness of kriya, which have been pretty much persistent for me while sitting since 2015. I try to hold them still because I find it distracting to let them do their thing (it can be quite violent). When attending to the breath (my usual meditation object), I can observe it for minutes at a time, and maintain awareness of movements of the mind as it observes the breath. Clarity of awareness varies, but there is usually enough to keep attention fairly stable (ie., gross distractions don’t arise).
So power of consciousness is fairly strong. Introspective awareness is pretty steady and encompasses mental movements. I take this to be a Stage Five experience, with the implication that increasing the power of consciousness still further is the immediate goal (because the individual breath sensations are not yet quite as vivid as they have been in the past e.g. on retreat).
But after “some duration” (I’d guess about five – ten minutes) of doing this Stage Five practice, what seems to be a “regression back through the stages” begins. It starts with the subtle distractions. I know I’m not trying to subdue them at this stage, so I return to breathing and the intention to observe breathing. But now I become curious about the mental movements associated with subtle distractions, and although I intend to stay with the breath, instead my attention spontaneously widens. It feels like I can’t control it. It tries to take its own mental movements as the scope of attention. As far as my theoretical understanding goes, this is not actually possible, but my tendency to hyperfocus (an ADHD trait) won’t let it go and persists with trying to push the shifts of attention itself into atention.
This 1) has a dizzy, vertiginous feeling like being in a hall of mirrors and 2) pushes the breath into peripheral awareness.
Eventually, after failing at this impossible task for a while (probably not very long in reality) and spacing out on the associated vertigo, what were subtle distractions become gross distractions, the mental movements turn into daydreaming and I’m pretty much operating at stage 3/4, not having forgotten the breath but having “parked it” in peripheral awareness.
That’s the “regression”. You’d think that at this point I’d see the whole thing as a gross distraction and re-engage back with the intention of observing the breath with stable attention and bright awareness, but there is much less mental unity after the “regression” and mind is not just toying with the lower stages, it really does exhibit all the characteristics of Stage 3 / 4 practice. I usually spend the rest of my sit working with dullness and/or pain, ending while still in Stage 3 or 4 (or sometimes 2). Occasionally I’ll get mindful enough to get back to Stage 5 practice. When this happens, I usually notice much more intense kriya than at the start of my sit. Quite often the whole cycle repeats, with awareness of mental movements leading to a kind of fatal curiousity of or mesmerisation by those movements. Trying to hyperfocus attention onto attention itself in order to perceive the infinitesimal mind moments associated with subtle scattering of attention. Boom, hall of mirrors, breath to periphery, “regression”.
But these are the exceptions, more often after “slipping backward” the first time I get mired in dullness, agitation or pain for the remainder of my sit.
Is this whole cycle one big gross distraction due to one of the “Brilliant Insights” so characteristic of Stage 4? That certainly seems like a possibility, but it doesn’t *feel* like one of those — those were quite simple to ignore once I learned to recognise their charge. It feels more like a direct result of the mind’s perception being finely tuned to the point where gross distraction has fallen away and the mental movements of subtle distraction become fascinating. In which case, the irony is real 😀
To develop sustained, consistent attention is why I came to this practice, so I’m more interested in what will help me develop repeatable, consistent experiences with meditation than I am with “making progress” to the next stage. In that light, should I continue practicing as I am, with the fall-backs and occasional re-gathering back to Stage Five but more often working with dullness for the remainder? Or should I drop Stage Five and work more diligently at Stage Four? Or, since it is the mental movements associated with subtle distractions that trigger a “regression”, should I read Stage Six and work to subdue them?
With gratitude and best wishes,
Julian
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