[Matthew ImmergutMember]

Thanks everyone for the responses! Very helpful

M

[Matthew ImmergutMember]

Sheldon

The one other thing that I found helpful is the various “pleasure jhanas”. They allow a distribution/management of intense energy in a very helpful way. I’d suggest even doing a retreat with Leigh Braisington if possible as he really is quite skillful in guiding people through these specific jhanas.

M

[Matthew ImmergutMember]

Hi Sheldon

Thanks for sharing. I’ve had convulsive bodily movement issues as well. But not as intense as you’re describing. I think I’m going to skip my “what to do in meditation” advice and make a different suggestion…. specifically I would look into doing some sort of body based therapeutic intervention such as Somatic Experiencing. A number of Culadasa’s senior students and teachers are also practitioners of Somatic Experiencing. My actual experiential knowledge of this body based intervention is limited but what I do know seems like it might be super helpful for you. So checked it out and let me know what you think

Be well

Matthew

[Matthew ImmergutMember]

Hi Samuel

As Blake said, the amount and intensity to which involuntary movements happen varies significantly. For some, they are super intense…. I’m one of those people. For others, such as Culadasa, they are minimal… as I can recall all he had was some thumb twiddling. Thus I understand your concern and think it’s wise to be prepared and at the same time realize that you may not experience anything beyond what you’ve described above.

One thing I would suggest if they do become intense is relax and back off on watching the breath so intensely. Intensity of focus seems to increase involuntary movements in my experience. You could even just drop the breath completely and move into an open awareness… which you may be doing in Dzogchen practice. Then return to the breath but don’t be so concerned about discerning details. Just have a gentle and general sense of the movements of the breath, enjoy the stability without the intensity.

Hope this helps
Matthew

[Matthew ImmergutMember]

Hi

Yes, it’s possible that it’s connected to your practice. If so, there’s lots of good advice above. But it’s also possible it isn’t connected to your practice. It’s just hard to say on an online forum what’s going on with you in particular. Thus it can’t hurt to be cautious, to monitor your anxiety, to back off on practice to see what happens, and if possible speak to other practitioners and teachers in person. If it persists it can also help to speak with a therapist – ideally one who has meditation experience or some spiritual practice.

Be well

M

[Matthew ImmergutMember]

Orhan

Other than sound seeming like a good meditation object for you, I’m not sure of its significance. Thus all I can really say is use sound as you see fit … whether you’re hearing it in the context of formal meditation or daily life.

Be well
Matthew

[Matthew ImmergutMember]

Hi Orhan

Sound has also been a prominent feature of practice for me. Some type of internally generated sound is often one of the “signs” that concentration is deepening. If I turn attention to the sound, concentration tends to deepen even further to the point where “I” can be enveloped in a kind of soundscape… which is quite pleasant. It’s interesting because sound becomes highly tactile – the soundscape becomes a feeling scape. My sense is, for some people, using sound as a meditation object can be highly effective (which seems to be what you’re saying above “… it works”).

That said, I don’t think what you’re talking about is exactly the same as I’m describing. You seem to be talking about a sound that’s always present and you’re just becoming sensitive to it as the mind quiets. Is that correct? Or is it related to the depth of concentration in practice? In other words, when you sit down and concentration increases, does the sound intensify?

[Matthew ImmergutMember]

Hi Bobby

Shaila’s comment is quite interesting and it might be a strategy you take up for dealing with Piti. However, she is talking about a practice for entering Jhana. In the tradition she’s coming out of it seems the constantly changing sensations of the breath aren’t a useful object for absorption. Instead, the breath is used only up to a point and then the sense of “fixity” (not sure that’s a word) is used as the object. Whether the breath itself is or isn’t a good object for absorption is an interesting conversation and I encourage my dharma brother Jeremy G to jump in here if he’d like to expand in greater detail.
I want to focus on Piti

I’ve had intense piti in various forms (from extreme bliss to super unpleasant convulsions) for years. I’ve used three strategies for dealing with this:
1. Let it mature according to the directions of TMI that Judith outlined. For me, this worked sometimes and other times it hasn’t.
2. Practice all four of the whole body/pleasure Jhanas. Or at least the first two. The pleasure Jhanas in TMI are drawn from the work of Leigh Braisington. I highly recommend a retreat with Leigh if possible. I did a month long with him and it helped immensely in dealing with disruptive forms of Piti. Leigh also has a book available.
3. There may be some subtle grasping that you may need to look at. You seem to hint at this when you say, “I’ve been reflecting though if there is perhaps something I am actively doing that is causing the increase in agitation, perhaps something in the way of how I am relating to my experience.” What I’d suggest doing is whenever the piti is just beginning or if you’re in the midst of it, just notice if you can detect some grasping at the experience… grasping for the experience to arise, to change, to mature, to stay, to break into bliss or, in some instances when it’s unpleasant to get away from it. This type of grasping can be very subtle. If you detect it, then do your best to let go and simply allow whatever is happening to happen.

Hope this helps
Matthew

[Matthew ImmergutMember]

Hi Charles,

I’ve attached an older draft version of what’s in the book. This should help until you get the book.

M

INVESTIGATION OF MENTAL OBJECTS
This practice involves maintaining exclusive focus on the breath as you non-discursively investigate mental objects with metacognitive introspective awareness. This kind of purposeful activity helps counteract feelings of boredom due to the dryness of this Stage, while deepening our understanding of how the mind works at the same time. Observing the breath has become quite automatic by now, and this practice requires only a partial shift of conscious power from attention to metacognitive awareness. Because you’re maintaining exclusive attention on the breath, pacification of the discriminating mind continues.
By this point in your practice, mental objects such as thoughts, memories, and emotions rarely enter consciousness. When they do, they are easily noticed. To begin with, observe the three primary forms that thought takes: self-talk, visual images, and mental kinesthetic “feelings.” Thoughts are often in the form of words, phrases, or sentences, and can easily become long inner dialogues. Other thoughts take the form of images, such as when you think of cooking dinner and have an image of your kitchen. Memories are often verbal or visual as well. You’re doubtless quite familiar with these kinds of thoughts. The third kind, kinesthetic thoughts and memories, are when we “feel” ourselves doing something, as in the memory of picking up a phone and dialing. Emotions also fall in the kinesthetic category. Just as you can have the kinesthetic memory of picking up a phone, you can have the kinesthetic experience of an emotion like jealousy.
In the course of this inquiry, you’ll be especially aware of “symbolic thought.” The words and phrases that appear as inner self-talk are obviously symbolic, standing for something other than themselves. But so are mental images and the mental representations of physical sensations – like the urge to scratch your nose, for example. One of the things you may also notice is the incredible speed of symbolic thought. It’s so fast that individual thoughts, especially the components of individual thoughts, such as a particular word or image, are fleeting and hard to identify.
In those intervals when symbolic thought is absent, we can legitimately say, “No thoughts are present.” Yet, as you keep observing, you’ll start to notice a lot of mental activity in peripheral awareness that is pre-verbal, pre-image, and pre-sensate. This reflects the ongoing conceptual activity of the thinking/emotional, and is what gives rise to symbolic thought. We’re not ordinarily conscious of non-symbolic conceptual thought, but it starts to leak through when conscious experience is no longer dominated by symbolic thought.
Times when thought seems completely absent are well worth observing too. When the mind is engaged in the present without grasping, neither looking to the future or the past, then joy, happiness, and energy arise. [Insert Margin quote 158]This often happens during walking meditation (see Appendix A), or with any ordinary kind of concentration where we become totally immersed in the present. It happens here in Stage Seven, too, but can easily go unnoticed. Being fully aware of joy and happiness directly counters the dryness of this Stage, and promotes unification and pacification of mind.

CLOSE FOLLOWING
This practice is a more intense version of the following the breath technique. Only this time, you want to identify even more thoroughly the many distinct sensations that constitute the “breath at the nostrils.” Set your intention to follow the microscopic movements of sensations. As you focus in more and more, you might discern half a dozen or (many) more different sensations for each in- and out-breath.
As you continue to examine these sensations quite closely, your perception shifts and you’ll start experiencing the breath as jerky or pulsing, rather than smooth and continuous. The “jerks” typically come at about one or two pulses per second. At first, it may seem like it’s just your heartbeat you’re feeling, or that your heartbeat is somehow affecting the breath. You can investigate this by intentionally expanding your scope of attention to include both your heartbeat and the breath sensations. If you can’t clearly perceive your heartbeat apart from these pulsations, then put your finger on your carotid artery, focusing attention on both your pulse and the breath at the nose. Continue to maintain exclusive attention and introspective awareness, of course. You’ll eventually discover that the pulsations of your breath don’t actually coincide with the beating of your heart.
Once you’ve satisfied your curiosity, look more closely at the content of each “jerk.” You’ll find continuous change occurring within each one, as though they were made of very short clips from a motion picture. The changes consist of recognizable sensations like warmth, coolness, pressure, movement, and so forth arising and passing away. Yet as you probe deeper, you’ll start detecting subtler sensations you can’t easily label. You’re now reaching a much finer degree of discrimination. If you continue, at some point your perception will shift again; instead of pulsations within which there is continuous change, you’ll experience what feels more like a series of still frames, occurring at about 10 per second.
Here, we’re giving the mind an activity to perform that produces novel experiences. What makes it useful for our practice is that we can only sustain this investigation by staying vigilant and highly focused. Any slackening of attentional effort or vigilance will lead to disrupting distractions.
If you’re lucky – it doesn’t always happen – perception will shift one more time. The still frames will dissolve, becoming something too rapid for the mind to clearly discern. You’ll then experience the breath sensations as the rapid flickering on and off of separate moments of consciousness, or simply as vibrations. [Insert Margin quote 159] Some meditators interpret this experience of “momentariness” as the universe continuously coming into and going out of existence. That description is quite accurate in terms of a persons’ subjective universe. When this happens, there’s nothing the mind can recognize or hold on to, so it naturally recoils from the experience. The mind jumps back, so to speak, to a place where things are recognizable once again, where it can apply familiar labels and concepts to what is being experienced. This is an Insight experience.
If you can re-enter this “vibratory ” experience, you can gain a clear Insight into impermanence. You may realize that all there ever was, is, or will be is an ongoing process of constant change that cannot be grasped or clung to. “Things” don’t actually exist. “Process” is all there is. Then, if you can overcome the mind’s resistance enough to go in and out of this perceptual state repeatedly, it will become an Insight experience from which you can gain Insight into emptiness. [Insert Margin quote 160] First, you’ll observe how uncomfortable the mind is with that level of perception and how desperately it wants to “pull back” and organize this experience conceptually. Then you’ll realize at a very deep level that the familiar world of forms is shaped entirely by the mind’s attempt to “makes sense” of an “empty” reality. Dharma teachers often speak about the world as being merely a projection of the mind. This direct experience of the mind creating meaning out of emptiness allows us to understand exactly what they’re referring to.[Insert Margin quote 161] It’s not that the world doesn’t exist. Rather, the world you perceive, your personal “reality,” is nothing more than a construct of the mind.
These realizations happen if you’re really lucky, but there are two significant caveats. First, if you spend a lot of time doing this practice, you’ll have a spillover into your daily life. You’ll see everything as impermanent, which can really throw you off. Familiar feelings of certainty and purpose disappear, which can produce a sense of hopelessness, even despair. Things lose their usual importance, and life can seem pointless. And it’s all the more disconcerting because these emotions have no logical basis in conscious experience, and seem to come from nowhere. In fact, they are produced by unconscious mental processes trying to assimilate your meditation experiences. In the Theravadin tradition, this state is called the “knowledges of suffering” (dukkha ñanas) and is in some ways comparable to the “dark night of the soul” in the Christian mystical tradition. (See the section on Insight Experiences and the Attainment of Insight in the Sixth Interlude for more on why this happens and what to do about it.) These insights into impermanence and emptiness can create aversion to practicing, but stopping your practice is probably the worst thing you can do in this situation.
The second caveat is, don’t count on having these types of insight experiences. Some people never experience sensations dissolving into a field of fine vibrations. Others don’t recoil from the experience, but actually find it delightful and intriguing. If you fall into that the latter group, you can expand your scope of attention to include the whole body, experiencing it as a shimmering process of sensation too subtle to describe easily. Remember, the purpose of this practice is mainly to help you overcome the dryness of Stage Seven, and to continue strengthening exclusive attention and mindfulness. It’s a creative way of applying your abilities to help you practice more productively. There’s a strong possibility it will produce Insight experiences, but it’s not guaranteed. If they don’t come now, rest assured, they will come later!

PLEASURE JHĀNA PRACTICE
The pleasure jhānas are a more powerful and satisfying absorption than the whole-body jhānas. As the name indicates, we use pleasurable sensations as our meditation object. The pleasure jhānas are particularly helpful in countering the tediousness of this Stage. More importantly, the state of flow in jhāna induces a temporary unification of mind, which in turn promotes more lasting unification, thus speeding up our progress through Stage Seven.[Insert Margin quote 162]
To have access to the pleasure jhānas, you’ll need exclusive attention to the breath at the nose. Both mind and body must be quite stable and still. Your subjective experience should be one of sustained stillness, stability, and mental clarity. Your breath will be slow and shallow, and the sensations faint. Nevertheless, your awareness of the sensations will be so acute it almost hurts. It’s normal to still have peripheral awareness of occasional sounds or other sensations, perhaps even the faint whisper of a fleeting thought. You know they are happening, but like the awareness of clouds in the sky, or cars passing on the street, they barely qualify as conscious experience. Even so, if you relax your vigilance, they can still draw your attention away. Achieving the flow state of jhāna will change that.
When you have achieved this level of access concentration, without shifting your attention from the breath, explore peripheral awareness to find a pleasant sensation. They can be just about anywhere, but try looking in the hands, the middle of the chest, or the face. If you have trouble finding a pleasant sensation somewhere in your body, try smiling slightly. This is very helpful and often produces a pleasant feeling around the mouth or eyes. In fact, smiling when you meditate is a good habit to cultivate in general. By the time you arrive at access concentration, the “fake” smile you put on when you started meditating will have become genuine.
Once you’ve found a distinctive pleasant sensation, shift your attention to it. Staying focused on a mildly pleasant feeling won’t be as easy as focusing on the sensations of the breath. You will even find your attention wants to return to the breath because focusing on it has become a strong habit. Practice just letting the breath sensations stay in the background while remaining introspectively aware of how attention alternates between the pleasant sensation you’ve chosen and the breath. It usually doesn’t take too long to get the hang of this. Then, attention will no longer alternate at all, becoming exclusively focused on the pleasant sensation.
Focus your attention in particular on the quality of pleasantness, rather than the sensation that gives rise to the pleasantness. Just observe, letting yourself become completely immersed in the sensation, but don’t do anything. Let the pleasantness intensify. Sometimes, though, it will fade away. In that case, allow your attention to return to the breath. Stay in access for another five minutes or so, enhancing your peripheral awareness to allow any physical or mental pleasantness to arise. Once it does, try again. Sooner or later, your focus will intensify the pleasant feeling, which, in turn, makes it easier to remain attentive.
Pleasantness won’t necessarily grow stronger in a linear or continuous manner, so be patient. As long as it doesn’t fade away, just observe without reacting. Definitely don’t push or chase after it. If you do, it will simply fade, and you’ll have to return to the breath for a while and try again.
As the pleasantness builds, you may experience unusual sensory phenomena, including strong energy sensations that can cause trembling and spontaneous movements. These are distracting and can be hard to ignore, but just hold the intention to let them remain in the background of awareness. Don’t be concerned if attention starts alternating with them, as it did earlier with the breath. That won’t stop absorption from happening. In fact, if you’re lucky, you may experience a release of this energy accompanied by strong pleasant sensations in the body and a brief period of joyful happiness. This gives you a taste of what’s to come in the first pleasure jhāna.
The pleasantness will grow incrementally stronger, in fits and starts, until it suddenly takes off. You’ll feel as if you’re “sinking into” the pleasant sensation, or as if it has expanded to consume all your available conscious “bandwidth.” You’ve entered the flow state that is the first pleasure jhāna. If you’ve already practiced the whole-body jhānas, you’ll immediately recognize the feeling. Trembling and energy sensations tend to persist in this first jhāna.
When you can easily enter first jhāna and remain as long as you choose, consider moving on to the second pleasure jhāna, following the instructions in Appendix D. The physical sensations and movements grow more stable in the second jhāna, and the feeling of happiness becomes more pronounced than the physical pleasure. While pleasure jhāna practice doesn’t have the same potential for insight as close following, it’s a far more enjoyable way to cultivate effortlessness.

[Matthew ImmergutMember]

Hi Bakary

1. I try to meditate 1.5 – 2 hours a day on average.
2. I go on retreats regularly. I’d say on average 2-4 weeks per year. This past year much more because I’m on sabbatical
3. I’ve hit lots of obstacles – pretty much every one outlined in the book and even a few that aren’t in there.

I hope this helps

Matthew

[Matthew ImmergutMember]

Hi,

Let’s start with what you describe as fuzziness/dullness. My guess is this dullness is a defense against some sort of difficult material trying to emerge – in other words a purification. This hypothesis stems from the fact that you’re at Stage Four, which is usually when such purifications begin to emerge (see the book). Also because you’ve described a recently stressful 1.5 years. So it’s very possible that one part of the mind is trying to bring up some difficult material whereas another part is defending against it by dulling out. My suggestion: simply invite whatever is there trying to surface to surface. Of course don’t force it, and don’t create an expectation, just a simple, open invitation that if something wants to emerge you’ll let it. If nothing comes up, no problem. It might be helpful to also review Stage Four and the section on difficult material.

In terms of mixing practices, recall that the Stages do not require you to cast aside other practices. In fact, what you’re doing by practicing the stages is training the mind in attentional stability and powerful mindfulness so that the mind becomes a wieldy instrument that can engage in any practice with greater power and clarity. Thus, while it’s good to stick to a single practice and it’s good to train the mind systematically, I see no problem in setting aside time to include other practices such as “who/what is this.” What you’d do is simply set aside a time to intentionally practice this technique. Setting the intention to do this practice is the key. What would be problematic would be setting the intention to work with the breath and then, if for some reason you felt that wasn’t going well, you’d spontaneously shift to doing some other practice.

In any case, I would suggest moving through the preparations to practice and the transition to the breath, and then let the breath fall into the background awareness and bring your attention to the question, “what is this?” while keeping your awareness open. Notice that you’re still doing the same type of mental training only now the meditation object has become the question rather than the breath. And remember, when doing this particular insight practice no matter what answer the mind produces, no matter how seductive or seemingly brilliant, you keep asking this question, never satisfied with any answer the mind generates.

Hope this helps

[Matthew ImmergutMember]

Hi, so just some clarification. When you say you’ve always been strict about adhering to a practice and not dabbling, are you saying you’ve been following the 10 stages practice as outlined in TMI? Also, when you say “current difficulties” are they in relationship to the 10 stages or something else? Also, when you say “setting myself up for problems later on”, what kind of problems? That information might help answer the question of whether it’s an appropriate practice or not.

be well

Matthew

[Matthew ImmergutMember]

This is a great thread and pointing to a fundamental issue with the moments of consciousness model. Developed by the “Abhidarmists,” the moments of consciousness model did not take into consideration the distinction between attention and awareness (nor, from what I understand, the unconscious). Arguably, all they were talking about were moments of “attention,” which can only happen one at a time. Nevertheless, Culadasa brilliantly took that model and attempted to make it account for attention AND awareness. This was very beneficial, especially in terms of practicing at these stages.

However, it creates some conceptual problems as this thread is pointing out… such as Amit’s question: “As far as i understand it, you can have only one “experience” at a time. So how can the awareness be continuos and simultaneous with the attention of the breath?” This is the exact problem this model creates. There are a few ways to visualize a solution to this problem. One way is to picture two strings of beads, one attention the other awareness – after all, these two different functions are associated with different brain regions. I don’t like this solution so much, but it does give you a sense of how you could have ongoing awareness on one thread and moments of attention on another. Another way to visualize a solution is to picture awareness as long transparent beads of various lengths with smaller beads of attention inside. There are a few other variations but I hope the main point is clear – you can have one experience of “attention” at a time and awareness can nevertheless remain continuous because, in a sense, it’s running on another “track.”

So yes, the model is a bit flawed conceptually – or at least the diagram for the model is flawed and there are probably better ways for representing this issue. However, it doesn’t get in the way of practicing and still remains quite beneficial.

I hope this is clear and I’d love to hear from Culadasa as well and correct me if I’m misrepresenting the issue in anyway.

with Metta
Matthew

[Matthew ImmergutMember]

Hi Maryhill

That’s a great gift that they’re coming so soon. It can make developing a regular practice much easier. Anything you can do to link positive feelings to sitting practice is beneficial.

M

[Matthew ImmergutMember]

Hi Mary

Yes, they are very common. Everyone is different, however, in terms of their frequency and intensity. They can also be quite wonderful and energizing as well we really disruptive and exhausting. But as you progress on the path they tend stabilize into the wonderful and energizing.

Matthew

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