[Andrew SMember]

Hi Tom,

I’m so glad some of the ideas seemed potentially useful. And yes, I find the superego / inner critic to be one of the most challenging obstacles to our spiritual unfoldment out there, and often hard to identify.

One thing that’s sometimes helped piti to move more freely for me is to allow the “love affair with the beautiful breath” to unfold (I think that’s a quote or paraphrase from Ajahn Brahm). If you can let go of the goal of having piti arise, and turn more toward the present-moment experience of loving the depth and richness of the breath, the rest of it may just happen again… Good luck!

Warmly,

Andrew

[Andrew SMember]

Hi Tom,

A few details from your message jumped out at me. First, you mentioned some “fairly big things” that haven’t happened for you, but were your motivation for engaging the practice. That’s a perfectly reasonable orientation; who would commit this sort of time without expectations of results, after all? Then again there’s always a danger, when you’re working toward a specific _experience_, that we develop a sort of “filter”, watch for a certain result and even subconsciously reject experiences that don’t seem relevant to our goals. This could have had some impact on your progress through the stages, maybe preventing certain skills from being fully developed or integrated?

You described the sense of being “stuck … for about six months” – are you finding a quality of tightness, frustration, or disappointment in your practice? The “block” you’re sensing might be a really active “inner critic”, telling you you should be somewhere else with your practice, you’ve missed the best parts, something is wrong, or that your “radar … is off topic”. That’s not to say your practice couldn’t objectively be richer via skillful means, but that voice can be a huge impediment, and directly counter meditative joy, at least in my personal experience.

Another reason I’m leaning in that direction is that the two powerful experiences you relate; the spontaneous pleasure jhana, and the deep sit after the pot smoking experiment, both probably happened when the discursive mind and the personality structures like that inner critic were pretty quiet. Does it feel possible that your expectations and judgments weren’t interfering as much, and that fact allowed these peak practice experiences to arise?

If any of this resonates, compassion does sound like a really useful quality to work with. I’d distinguish between lovingkindness (metta) and compassion (karuna), however. The sense of an open-hearted acceptance of your own frustration and suffering can open the door for the arising of genuine compassion. Holding a phrase like “May I open to this pain with tenderness” or even just, “it’s okay” might be useful to experiment with, then shifting to the felt sense of the brahmavihara if it arises. To help get a sense for the quality you can try bringing to mind a suffering being whose plight moves you.

The other idea I have is to really favor pleasure, as Culadasa suggests. Start your sit by just letting yourself be delighted at the chance to practice, the felt sense of relaxing the body, the joy of exclusive attention, anything else you can find. Don’t worry so much about the techniques or goals, just invite pleasure and relaxation and let things unfold naturally.

There are probably other interesting questions to explore. Do you feel that subtle dullness is no longer present, and your meditations are very bright and lucid? I’ve seen advanced meditators who still carried enough of that dullness that their practice stagnated, and they were unable to clearly report on what went on during a sit. The body scanning practices from Stage 5 and 6 might be worth revisiting, if there’s any question about that.

I wish you the best of luck with your explorations!

Warmly,

—
Andrew Sherbrooke
Teacher In Training
Meditation Coaching and Debugging

[Andrew SMember]

Hi Vitaliy,

I believe what you’re experiencing is inherent to the practice. Traditionally (at least with the luminous jhanas – the meticulous distinction between the three jhana levels was something I hadn’t seen before TMI), piti can become increasingly unsatisfying and even feel “coarse”, and drop away, paving the way for the transition to the third jhana and its greater level of refinement. I’ve noted (in high access concentration, IIRC) what has felt like a subtle attachment to the pleasure of piti, and have subsequently felt that affect disappear, leaving just the physical energetics of piti.

I’m very curious to hear what other practitioners have to say…

[Andrew SMember]

Hi Alex,

I’m so glad the ideas seemed useful, and I look forward to hearing how your explorations go.

> Also I have tied reformulating my motivation to be more inclined to exploring rather than trying to attain greater concentration.

Nice. I remember a teacher (Ajahn Brahm?) referring to the “love affair with the breath.” It’s an image I like because it shifts my intention from striving to achieve a goal via the breath, toward an open and engaged exploration, as you describe.

> Interestingly even though Im still finding it difficult to discern breath sensations at the nose I was aware other some unusual sensations which are new to me. This leads me think I had expectations of having certain sensations which was limiting what I am able to perceive.

That makes sense to me as well.

I was recently on a retreat that involved a lot of meditation out-of-doors. At one point I was meditating in a strong breeze, and initially felt confusion because I couldn’t discern my own breath sensations. When I let go of that expectation and simply observed the swirling sensation of the wind at my nostrils, I relaxed and my sit deepened again!

Andrew
TMI Teacher-in-training
Offering meditation coaching and debugging

[Andrew SMember]

Hi Alex,

First I’d say that it sounds like you’ve done some really useful exploration of what’s happening in your practice. I think that willingness to experiment and take a deep dive into what’s arising for you is key to “making the practice your own” and progressing.

There are some good reasons to try using the breath at the nose as your object (Culadasa mentions the large number of nerve endings in that area and the correspondingly greater sensitivity to details, for example), but it’s not critical. If breath at the abdomen is working for you, maybe that’s a way to go for a while? He mentions that as an alternative object at one point. I’ve used it to good effect as well.

I went through a period of time when the breath at the nose gave rise to a lot of physical tension for me. I was pushing hard, trying to force the stability of attention that I’d felt in previous sits, and this gave rise to pain around the eyes, face, and head. Probably shoulders as well, as I’d find myself leaning in with my head and neck. “Backing off on effort” became a really valuable lesson for me too. I learned a lot about my motivation as I explored my patterns of striving – as someone who spent a lot of time in my head, the breath at the nose brought up a lot of content.

I think two options might be to work with the breath at the abdomen for a while; or to play with allowing lots of ease and relaxation into your practice with the breath at the nose, not worrying too much if you can’t pick up too many sensations. As you get accustomed to the new object and as attention increases you’ll find much more detail there. Until then you can “wait patiently by the gate,” tracking whatever intermittent sensations do come.

As for moving on Culadasa has said, “As soon as you’ve succeeded in counting 10 breaths and can follow several breaths before your mind wanders, start doing the Stage 2 practices.”

Finally it might be useful to play with a movement practice of some sort, or some sort of conscious relaxation, to allow the energy in your upper body to move and disperse a bit. Even taking a walk to ground yourself in your lower body, etc. Good luck with your practice and your exploration!

Warmly

Andrew
TMI Teacher-in-training

[Andrew SMember]

Hi Sheldon,

I was also going to suggest exploring Somatic Experiencing, and specifically starting by reading some Peter Levine. I’ve found his work really useful in broadening my understanding of trauma – there are a variety of possible sources that we might consider relatively innocuous.

I’d add that trauma work is distinct from other approaches to psychotherapy. There can be overlap, but the body-based element was particularly useful to me, and not something I’d encountered in other forms of counseling or therapy. As for location, there may be practitioners who can work via Skype – a quick search seems to show that. I think at least a couple of sessions with a practitioner can be really supportive in a way that exploring it on your own might not be. Again, true for me at least; I feel that I learned some skills that I could then apply, but having someone to help me orient was great.

Even if this is a manifestation of piti I wouldn’t be surprised if a body-based practice helped to move things along in a more tolerable manner. I wish you the best of luck with your work!

Warmly,

Andrew Sherbrooke
Teacher-in-training

[Andrew SMember]

I also appreciate the summary. This part in particular:

>expand awareness/ shift focus from meditation object to expanding awareness

has been very helpful for me in my own practice.

I had a tendency to move quickly to watching the breath at the nose, and to then really look hard for increasing levels of detail. This would often bring in sinking mind, and be hard to move past. I tried a more gentle approach; spending more time with Culadasa’s 4-step transition, and really allowing my attention to stabilize before worrying too much about observing as much detail as I could. I found that this built a strong foundation of peripheral awareness, and also corrected the sinking mind problem. I returned gradually to that more refined level detail in later stages (4, 5, etc.). So backing off attention a bit and taking note of how awareness functioned seemed to be the key for me.

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