[Black GhostMember]

Thanks for the information Mary, It’s useful. I haven’t read the appendices yet but will do – I know it will be good to add those practices, I’ve not done them regularly enough the past few years.

I had another question regarding noise if anyone could help. I have some tinnitus – it’s not too bad and I only notice this high-pitched sound some of the time. When I do notice it while sitting, it usually grabs most of my attention instead of whichever meditation object I’m using. I know that the advice is often to use it, the tinnitus sound, as the meditation object. I’ve been reluctant to do this though as I’m worried it will cause me to notice this sound even more than usual. I’m pretty sure I have it most of the time but I guess I’m used to it and don’t notice it too often – then when I do, I can hear it for days at a time. One of the times this happened was when a teacher taught a ‘nada sound’ practice in which I could just hear the tinnitus during the practice session, and again for the next week or so.

Something similar would be when moving through the 4 step transition, I may not notice the breath sensations in the nose until I move to step 4. After I’ve been focussing on it for a while and I choose to step back to awareness of all body sensations or open awareness, I then often still have the sensations in the nose being the main thing that comes to attention, as my mind had previously been focussing on it. This is why I’m unsure about focussing on the tinnitus – at the moment I just try to keep going back to the meditation object without pushing the sound away but I’m not sure which approach to take with it.

[Black GhostMember]

Thanks for the reply Michael. It’s strange that I already feel I ‘know’ the answers to these and other issues that come up but I guess there is lots of doubt mixed up with it all so the remedies (ie to simply follow the instructions) to the issues often don’t seems so clear.

I’ve also noticed that the during the initial few weeks of doing this practice, the levels of attention both during the practice and general mindfulness immediately after were higher than the last week or so. It’s as if the newness of it kept the mind more interested, which has faded as time has gone on. Again, I know the advice will be just to keep practicing but it’s such things that can bring up doubt and frustration – I know I should just recognise these without feeding them but knowing that is often much easier said than done when the mind seems to want to ruminate on these and other hindrances.

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