My meditation practice now

Below is a status report I just wrote for my meditation mentor, Beth Resnick-Folk.

In December I formulated an intention to make 2013 a year of silence. This is how it's happened so far: I've been taking most weekends in silence, but not any weekdays. I've done silent weekends enough times that it now seems like the new normal. I tell my housemates my intention, then keep my weekend as free of commitments as possible. Often there are 1 or 2 low-key scheduled activities, like shopping at the produce stand or helping an elderly neighbor do some household task (I'm part of a volunteer network that does these things). The rest of the time I mostly spend in my attic. I do a mix of meditation, inner child & trauma recovery work, hatha yoga, and reading, as I feel called to do. My priority is to be gentle with myself.

As for my meditation: sometimes I do concentration practice, and sometimes I do noting practice.  And occasionally I "just sit". Noting has mostly seemed boring lately. I didn't realize how boring it had become until I had a session a couple weeks ago where I had a couple of insights, and that reminded me of how interesting it can be.

My weekday sitting practice is fairly irregular. Some weekdays I do not sit at all. Most weekdays I practice between 15 minutes and an hour. Occasionally more.

Sometimes when I'm walking I'll do Bentinho's "drop your stories for 2-5 seconds" practice ... over and over again. It's remarkable how, when I drop the stories, all suffering ceases, and sensations that had previously seemed unpleasant are perceived as neutral. Pretty handy!

I have 4 weeks of vacation this year, and I had in mind that I'd do a 2 week retreat in the spring, and 2 weeks in the fall. For the spring, I decided to do Tina [Rasumussen] and Stephen [Snyder]'s retreat because I have such positive memories of the first time I did 2 weeks with them. I am trying to go in with no expectations, though. In particular, although it's a jhana retreat, and although I attained jhana the last time I did the retreat, I don't have my sights set on jhana this time. The jhana they teach is much more difficult to attain than what Kenneth [Folk] teaches. The previous time I did their retreat, I pushed myself pretty hard. This time, I intend to take a much more gentle and lenient approach. This retreat starts March 23 -- in 12 days. Lately I've been doing concentration practice almost exclusively in preparation for this retreat.

Occasionally, while doing concentration practice, I've practiced Kenneth's jhanas. I'm fairly confident about the first four, but the second four I'm quite uncertain about.

I have a gentle intention to resume dedicated noting practice on my return from this retreat. I'll see how I feel after retreat.