Last night made an intention to awaken in the middle of the night and meditate. I did awaken, and I tried to meditate while lying down, but I was not alert enough. The meditation was lazy and intermittent, and eventually I fell asleep.
6am: 30 minutes sitting meditaton, whispered noting. For first 12-15 minutes, noted pain (joints, abdomen) and nausea a lot. Then, not much. Seems to be becoming easier to note and let go of thoughts.
11:30 a.m. Julie called and cancelled our meditation date because she was swamped with work. I didn't meditate.
6pm: vocal noting while walking to bus stop.
9:30 pm: sat in attic. Some metta, some noting. Restless legs symptoms were really unpleasant and prompted me to quit earlier than I otherwise might have.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Monday, May 14, 2012
Meditation log 05/14/12
7am: something like 20 minutes self-metta, 20 minutes noting.
9:30 am: 30 minutes vocal noting while walking to Trip's office
11:00 am: 20 minutes self-metta on bus ride. Then 8 minutes vocal noting while walking to office. In the middle of that, I stopped to buy an orange juice ($1.99) for the woman who always panhandles asking for $2.
5pm: 20 minutes vocal noting while walking to bus stop
8:30 pm: 10 minutes self-metta, 18 minutes vocal noting. Unpleasant; wanted to stop. Unpleasantness centered around sensations in right throat/torso and wanting them to resolve or go away.
Fear level stayed low.
9:30 am: 30 minutes vocal noting while walking to Trip's office
11:00 am: 20 minutes self-metta on bus ride. Then 8 minutes vocal noting while walking to office. In the middle of that, I stopped to buy an orange juice ($1.99) for the woman who always panhandles asking for $2.
5pm: 20 minutes vocal noting while walking to bus stop
8:30 pm: 10 minutes self-metta, 18 minutes vocal noting. Unpleasant; wanted to stop. Unpleasantness centered around sensations in right throat/torso and wanting them to resolve or go away.
Fear level stayed low.
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Meditation log 05/13/12
Approx. 2am: Partially woke up and popped immediately into an alert and focused mental state. This is something that happened routinely in the winter, but has happened very rarely since then. I practiced noting for some period of time between 20 and 90 minutes. It was effortful and unpleasant, but I felt motivated. The sensations in my right torso felt especially unpleasant, and I wondered whether I might be noting them sloppily. I frequently used the words pulsing, tension, anxiety, throbbing, pressure, tingling, unpleasant, aversion. But these seemed to miss the wrought-up unpleasantness I was experiencing. I had a lot of thoughts about how this experience, and the experiences of yesterday, might mean that I'm progressing through the dukka nanas. At first I became distressed by these seemingly inappropriate story-telling thoughts, but then I remembered that I could just note them. After some time I decided I'd done enough hard work, and that I could fall back to sleep. But instead of falling back to sleep, I kept noting. Finally I made a firmer decision to fall back asleep, and did.
7am: 30 minutes self-metta. Then 30 minutes of very quiet vocal noting (Eric was next to me sleeping).
7pm: 30 minutes very quiet vocal noting while sitting next to Eric. Quite unpleasant. Vague nausea and other unpleasant roilings in the body connected with the tensions in the right torso/throat. Among the most unpleasant meditation sessions I've experienced, outside of those where I've struggled with irritation at breathing/sniffling sounds. Am I in the nana called misery?
8:30pm 35 minute run with quiet vocal noting. Fear level upon approaching or hearing other people was at about 5% the level it was at yesterday. Maybe yesterday I was in the fear nana. Had intestinal discomfort.
9:45pm 13 minutes self-metta, 17 minutes noting (vocal/silent). Not quite so unpleasant as at 7, but restless legs. Noises that had brought an intense fear reaction yesterday didn't startle me at all.
7am: 30 minutes self-metta. Then 30 minutes of very quiet vocal noting (Eric was next to me sleeping).
7pm: 30 minutes very quiet vocal noting while sitting next to Eric. Quite unpleasant. Vague nausea and other unpleasant roilings in the body connected with the tensions in the right torso/throat. Among the most unpleasant meditation sessions I've experienced, outside of those where I've struggled with irritation at breathing/sniffling sounds. Am I in the nana called misery?
8:30pm 35 minute run with quiet vocal noting. Fear level upon approaching or hearing other people was at about 5% the level it was at yesterday. Maybe yesterday I was in the fear nana. Had intestinal discomfort.
9:45pm 13 minutes self-metta, 17 minutes noting (vocal/silent). Not quite so unpleasant as at 7, but restless legs. Noises that had brought an intense fear reaction yesterday didn't startle me at all.
Meditation log 05/12/12
I'm going to try using this blog also as a meditation log, and note log entries in the subject line. These entries may be less interesting and less articulate than other entries.
4pm: Sat mindfully with Eric while he prepared for me to work together with him. This took longer than he expected. Strong feelings of fear and anger came up. Excrutiating and paralyzing, as is typical.
6pm: 35 minute run with vocal noting. Beautiful weather contributed to positive attitude for most of run. Noted fear each time I heard human voices or approached a human. For last ~12 minutes of run, mental state shifted to sad/gloomy/angry.
8pm: Set timer for 45 minutes sitting meditation. Intended to do vocal noting the whole time, but felt tired and sleepy and had a sore back after 30 minutes, so switched to metta at that point. After about 10 minutes of vocal noting, I began cycling through sensations of sadness every 90 seconds or so. This is something brand new. I don't usually feel sad, either while sitting or in every day life. My throat quivered a little, my head dropped, a tender feeling developed in my chest, and my voice became weak and high-pitched as I noted, "sadness ... sadness".
After this sitting, I did some stretches to relieve my back while continuing metta practice. Then ...
9pm: About 40 minutes of metta meditation. As usual, various thoughts and sensations distracted me from time to time, but my concentration increased over the sitting period. Tried to be gentle with myself about being distracted. Noticed, as usual, that I felt I didn't deserve good wishes and well-being, and kept telling myself that, yes! indeed! may I be free from terror! May I be filled with lovingkindness!
4pm: Sat mindfully with Eric while he prepared for me to work together with him. This took longer than he expected. Strong feelings of fear and anger came up. Excrutiating and paralyzing, as is typical.
6pm: 35 minute run with vocal noting. Beautiful weather contributed to positive attitude for most of run. Noted fear each time I heard human voices or approached a human. For last ~12 minutes of run, mental state shifted to sad/gloomy/angry.
8pm: Set timer for 45 minutes sitting meditation. Intended to do vocal noting the whole time, but felt tired and sleepy and had a sore back after 30 minutes, so switched to metta at that point. After about 10 minutes of vocal noting, I began cycling through sensations of sadness every 90 seconds or so. This is something brand new. I don't usually feel sad, either while sitting or in every day life. My throat quivered a little, my head dropped, a tender feeling developed in my chest, and my voice became weak and high-pitched as I noted, "sadness ... sadness".
After this sitting, I did some stretches to relieve my back while continuing metta practice. Then ...
9pm: About 40 minutes of metta meditation. As usual, various thoughts and sensations distracted me from time to time, but my concentration increased over the sitting period. Tried to be gentle with myself about being distracted. Noticed, as usual, that I felt I didn't deserve good wishes and well-being, and kept telling myself that, yes! indeed! may I be free from terror! May I be filled with lovingkindness!
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Pulsing ... releasing ... feeling ... allowing ...
Today (not unlike recent previous days, a slow evolution is happening) a constant pulsing in the right throat. Something more open than usual ... my psyche is allowing instead of constricting ... comes with a slight nausea in the right chest ... waves of pulsing slight nausea (but not so nauseous as to be quite unpleasant). My head bobbing and waving and rocking as it's done since my Sept/Oct retreat (but had never done before then) ... maybe I am re-learning how to be a mammal, how to move spontaneously. More and more I'm allowing myself to respond to things (how my work is going, what people say around me) and observe the response ... keep noticing new ways to open and feel where previously I'd automatically constrict. Always, fear ... but the fear isn't stopping me as it used to ... I keep finding places where I can allow myself to feel, where before fear would stop me.
What an adventure.
I'm somewhat inspired by reading Christopher Titmuss last night, where he said (as many Buddhist and other writers have said) that with mindfulness all of life is an adventure. You can always notice your responses to things.
Lately I've been very sensitive to my officemates throwing things into the trash. Every time I see or hear it, I feel repulsed and I tense up. I suppose I imagine I am being thrown into the trash? Will try to look at the discomfort.
What an adventure.
I'm somewhat inspired by reading Christopher Titmuss last night, where he said (as many Buddhist and other writers have said) that with mindfulness all of life is an adventure. You can always notice your responses to things.
Lately I've been very sensitive to my officemates throwing things into the trash. Every time I see or hear it, I feel repulsed and I tense up. I suppose I imagine I am being thrown into the trash? Will try to look at the discomfort.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Terror at completing a task
A few years ago I started noticing difficulty acknowledging my accomplishments. At the end of the work day, no matter how many tasks I'd accomplished, I'd look at the list and think, "well, that's not really anything special, that's not really enough." And then a couple years ago I started noticing a similar sense of denial upon finding an orienteering marker.
So I started taking a closer look about a week ago. Stopped myself short of trying to combat the denial with cheerleading ("Look, you've really accomplished a lot!") and just felt the denial, the discomfort, the blockage. It, too, is terror! I look at my accomplishments, and I start to tense up in the right torso. And when I "feel into" that tension, let it unwind ... I have a mental impression of a "grown-up" standing above me and to the right, shaking her finger at me and scolding me, using the word "you" a lot.
So I started taking a closer look about a week ago. Stopped myself short of trying to combat the denial with cheerleading ("Look, you've really accomplished a lot!") and just felt the denial, the discomfort, the blockage. It, too, is terror! I look at my accomplishments, and I start to tense up in the right torso. And when I "feel into" that tension, let it unwind ... I have a mental impression of a "grown-up" standing above me and to the right, shaking her finger at me and scolding me, using the word "you" a lot.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
May I be free from terror.
A month ago I did a 3-day Brahma Vihara retreat, and since then I've been practicing metta daily. Metta, or lovingkindness, is a wishing well for other beings and for oneself. I've been practicing self-metta almost exclusively, to build self-compassion.
Metta is practiced by reciting phrases of well-wishing (usually silently). A powerful phrase for me the past week has been, "May I be free from terror." As a result of the concentration skill I developed on my long retreat last year, metta practice quickly generates for me a pleasant feeling in my upper chest, a kind of soft, tingly glow, which provides further motivation for practice.
This morning I did more metta practice than usual: about 10 minutes after waking, then during my 20 minute bus ride, then during the 15 minute walk to the office, and then on and off during our hour-long lab meeting.
Then, a little later, when I began a new project, I did so with less self-flagellation and more anticipation of fun than usual, and my impression that this was a result of the metta practice. I was less inclined to terrorize myself.
Metta is practiced by reciting phrases of well-wishing (usually silently). A powerful phrase for me the past week has been, "May I be free from terror." As a result of the concentration skill I developed on my long retreat last year, metta practice quickly generates for me a pleasant feeling in my upper chest, a kind of soft, tingly glow, which provides further motivation for practice.
This morning I did more metta practice than usual: about 10 minutes after waking, then during my 20 minute bus ride, then during the 15 minute walk to the office, and then on and off during our hour-long lab meeting.
Then, a little later, when I began a new project, I did so with less self-flagellation and more anticipation of fun than usual, and my impression that this was a result of the metta practice. I was less inclined to terrorize myself.
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