Spent the long weekend orienteering in the Anza Borrego desert. Thursday and Friday nights I slept through without meditating. Saturday night, awoke around 1 with distinct bodily anatta. Thought it was cool and special; wanted to cling. It would recur, then disappear, seemingly from fear. Often I'd sense it at the start of the in-breath. Got frustrated; switched to watching tension in right side of torso, tension that seemed connected to the struggle between wanting to retain the sense of self and wanting to shed it. This tension felt uncomfortable and did not become spacious with attention, and I wondered if it was the"solid pain" mentioned by Dan Ingram as being associated with one of the earlier stages of insight.
The next day, Sunday, was my 52nd birthday, and I enjoyed it thoroughly, ending with a party at our rental house in Borrego Springs.
Sunday night, awoke again with anatta--that stuck, persisted. Thought it was so cool, then found it freaky. Watching my breathing happen without feeling that I was doing it made me afraid I'd stop breathing. My eyes stung, and I feared I'd ruined them by removing my contacts roughly and without washing my hands. And I also knew that this fear was really about losing a sense of control and entering a new territory of experience. For the first time I really saw each thought enter my awareness and dissolve without my identifying with it. Just like clouds floating by, just like they say. The content was, so this is how it is. Saying good bye. My eyes opened and I was shocked to find the experience continuing in full wakefulness. I donned my down jacket, sat upright in bed, and continued. I asked Eric, asleep, to put his hand on my knee. After an hour or two, I lay down and fell back asleep. It seemed that this disidentification with the mind and body was a permanent change, but when I awoke in the morning, I felt about the same as I had the day before, with perhaps an incremental increase in disidentification.
It was a happy birthday, bookended as it was by amazing meditation adventures.
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