If you really are in stage 3, I would suggest not trying to shut out or ignore your negative feelings, whether or not you’re focusing on your breath. Where are they, subjectively? What is negative about experiencing them? What are their exact qualities? Entertaining that sort of stuff can sometimes be helpful.
EDIT: My working theory right now is that the perception of “vibrations” is somehow related to the particular technique I describe, whereas the stages are more general in relevance.
My mind is more muddled than what it used to be so I cannot at this time pin point exactly what these negative feelings are. After concentrating a while on my abdomen a painful wave grips my attention and physically throws me off my meditation posture. It’s usually a general feeling of loss without an object. I call it despair. It also comes with an unpleasant bodily sensation that I don’t know a name for. The whole thing makes it impossible to sit straight or focus on anything but the emotional or the bodily pain. For those who have little experience in meditation I should point out that it actually isn’t as bad as I make it sound. I have developed a certain degree of personal distance and all these negative feelings are actually quite interesting when I experience them as mental objects instead of identifying with myself in pain. Sometimes however this distance drops to zero and then it gets really unpleasant.
My concentration is still a mess but I’ll try to find out the exact qualities of these experiences.
At the moment of writing this I’m 5 hours in to the practice. The vibrations I’ve picked up so far have been physical twitching of the abdomen, an in and out fading of the sensation of the abdomen, the abdomen themselves phasing in and out of existence and finally my attention itself setting and resetting itself. None of these experiences are very clear so I might be making them up.
After concentrating a while on my abdomen a painful wave grips my attention and
physically throws me off my meditation posture.
Try to observe that carefully every time it happens. You said that you can sometimes see negative feelings as mental objects and not “yours,” so you’re definitely on the right track. Consider ways that you may not be fully seeing them as mental objects. For example, are the negative feelings afflictions for you? How do you know? If you know because they feel as if they are, make sure you recognize the feeling “being afflicted by negative feelings” or the impression “having negative feelings present in my experiential field” as a mental object too. (This “affliction” is part of the non-standard meaning of “aversion” or “hatred” which is shared with Buddhism.) It’s a little hard to get across what I mean here, but if you see it, you’ll probably recognize what I’m trying to say.
The vibrations I’ve picked up so far have been physical twitching of the abdomen,
an in and out fading of the sensation of the abdomen, the abdomen themselves
phasing in and out of existence and finally my attention itself setting and resetting
itself. None of these experiences are very clear so I might be making them up.
Apart from the twitching, it sounds like you can perceive vibrations pretty well.
If you’re in stage three, the “lack of clarity” is related to the fact that the “fading out” is is the clearest part. (Imagine a video of the moon waxing and waning using time-lapse photography, and imagine that the waning is extremely clear and the waxing is hard to discern.) That’s simply how they present, and you may not actually be missing anything, which would mean you’re doing a good job.
If you additionally feel that the vibrations aren’t clear, that feeling is a different mental object; label it. Feeling that they aren’t clear, and simple fact of their being unclear (or reporting on their unclarity using the word ‘feel’), are different.
My concentration is still a mess but I’ll try to find out the exact qualities of these
experiences.
If you additionally feel that your concentration is a mess, that’s a mental object too.
It is very hard to improve concentration in stage three, so if that’s where you are, for now I wouldn’t focus too much on trying to get a lot better at it than you already are.
Yeah, I think you’re right. I just feel unclear or unfocused even though I actually perceive everything pretty clearly and reasonably focused. It was kind of weird to notice that. :)
I haven’t had those waves of pain after I noticed that most of the unclarity was illusory. The waves might have had something to do with being unsatisfied with unclarity and having a very clear perception of this dissatisfaction. My theory is that all this goes into a feedback loop if you don’t know that the objects of focus are actually supposed to seem unclear.
My mind cannot produce mental images (trust me, I’ve tried) so I don’t have visual hallucinations but I had this funny abstract thing. I perceived what I knew to be mathematical constructs yet they had no content or representation. It was a very strange feeling doing math with empty symbols that still brimmed with possibilities.
After getting my mind to calm down about not perceiving clearly I got a big boost in attentional width. I was perceiving vibrations effortlessly in all the senses and thoughts. I guess most of them were vibrating under 10Hz… I’m still pretty bad at getting the precise frequencies down. It was like bathing in a sea of vibration and the surprising thing was that it actually wasn’t surprising at all. It was like these vibrations have always been there and I just haven’t been paying attention to them. It was actually somewhat boring just sitting there attending to a colorless and clear perception of everything.
On the second time I achieved a wider attentional width I decided to take a look at the attender himself. That is I tried to see how I see all these mental objects as mine. It would seem that the “self” is a process that draws in attention when a new mental object presents itself. It then accesses statistics that tell how much attraction and aversion this kind of object deserves. It also carries a measure of uncertainty. Sometimes the data aren’t reliable and attention is needed to sort things out. Towards the end of the process the mental object is labeled desirable or undesirable and actions are taken to hold on to the object or to get rid of it. Statistics are updated depending on the success of the actions. The process thus reinforces itself and the statistics get more rigid on each iteration. Sometimes the process just tells you that you’re liking this thing and already trying to get it without asking much of an input. Attention can however interfere and decide to reject attractive objects or accept unattractive objects. As a result the statistics get more flexible and next time more thought is given to similar mental objects. I’m also guessing that emotions and more primitive reactions act to skew the statistics depending on the mental object. I may also be over-interpreting my meditation experiences. :P
Looking forward to hearing how it’s going.
If you really are in stage 3, I would suggest not trying to shut out or ignore your negative feelings, whether or not you’re focusing on your breath. Where are they, subjectively? What is negative about experiencing them? What are their exact qualities? Entertaining that sort of stuff can sometimes be helpful.
EDIT: My working theory right now is that the perception of “vibrations” is somehow related to the particular technique I describe, whereas the stages are more general in relevance.
My mind is more muddled than what it used to be so I cannot at this time pin point exactly what these negative feelings are. After concentrating a while on my abdomen a painful wave grips my attention and physically throws me off my meditation posture. It’s usually a general feeling of loss without an object. I call it despair. It also comes with an unpleasant bodily sensation that I don’t know a name for. The whole thing makes it impossible to sit straight or focus on anything but the emotional or the bodily pain. For those who have little experience in meditation I should point out that it actually isn’t as bad as I make it sound. I have developed a certain degree of personal distance and all these negative feelings are actually quite interesting when I experience them as mental objects instead of identifying with myself in pain. Sometimes however this distance drops to zero and then it gets really unpleasant. My concentration is still a mess but I’ll try to find out the exact qualities of these experiences.
At the moment of writing this I’m 5 hours in to the practice. The vibrations I’ve picked up so far have been physical twitching of the abdomen, an in and out fading of the sensation of the abdomen, the abdomen themselves phasing in and out of existence and finally my attention itself setting and resetting itself. None of these experiences are very clear so I might be making them up.
Try to observe that carefully every time it happens. You said that you can sometimes see negative feelings as mental objects and not “yours,” so you’re definitely on the right track. Consider ways that you may not be fully seeing them as mental objects. For example, are the negative feelings afflictions for you? How do you know? If you know because they feel as if they are, make sure you recognize the feeling “being afflicted by negative feelings” or the impression “having negative feelings present in my experiential field” as a mental object too. (This “affliction” is part of the non-standard meaning of “aversion” or “hatred” which is shared with Buddhism.) It’s a little hard to get across what I mean here, but if you see it, you’ll probably recognize what I’m trying to say.
Apart from the twitching, it sounds like you can perceive vibrations pretty well.
If you’re in stage three, the “lack of clarity” is related to the fact that the “fading out” is is the clearest part. (Imagine a video of the moon waxing and waning using time-lapse photography, and imagine that the waning is extremely clear and the waxing is hard to discern.) That’s simply how they present, and you may not actually be missing anything, which would mean you’re doing a good job.
If you additionally feel that the vibrations aren’t clear, that feeling is a different mental object; label it. Feeling that they aren’t clear, and simple fact of their being unclear (or reporting on their unclarity using the word ‘feel’), are different.
If you additionally feel that your concentration is a mess, that’s a mental object too.
It is very hard to improve concentration in stage three, so if that’s where you are, for now I wouldn’t focus too much on trying to get a lot better at it than you already are.
Yeah, I think you’re right. I just feel unclear or unfocused even though I actually perceive everything pretty clearly and reasonably focused. It was kind of weird to notice that. :)
I haven’t had those waves of pain after I noticed that most of the unclarity was illusory. The waves might have had something to do with being unsatisfied with unclarity and having a very clear perception of this dissatisfaction. My theory is that all this goes into a feedback loop if you don’t know that the objects of focus are actually supposed to seem unclear.
My mind cannot produce mental images (trust me, I’ve tried) so I don’t have visual hallucinations but I had this funny abstract thing. I perceived what I knew to be mathematical constructs yet they had no content or representation. It was a very strange feeling doing math with empty symbols that still brimmed with possibilities.
After getting my mind to calm down about not perceiving clearly I got a big boost in attentional width. I was perceiving vibrations effortlessly in all the senses and thoughts. I guess most of them were vibrating under 10Hz… I’m still pretty bad at getting the precise frequencies down. It was like bathing in a sea of vibration and the surprising thing was that it actually wasn’t surprising at all. It was like these vibrations have always been there and I just haven’t been paying attention to them. It was actually somewhat boring just sitting there attending to a colorless and clear perception of everything.
On the second time I achieved a wider attentional width I decided to take a look at the attender himself. That is I tried to see how I see all these mental objects as mine. It would seem that the “self” is a process that draws in attention when a new mental object presents itself. It then accesses statistics that tell how much attraction and aversion this kind of object deserves. It also carries a measure of uncertainty. Sometimes the data aren’t reliable and attention is needed to sort things out. Towards the end of the process the mental object is labeled desirable or undesirable and actions are taken to hold on to the object or to get rid of it. Statistics are updated depending on the success of the actions. The process thus reinforces itself and the statistics get more rigid on each iteration. Sometimes the process just tells you that you’re liking this thing and already trying to get it without asking much of an input. Attention can however interfere and decide to reject attractive objects or accept unattractive objects. As a result the statistics get more flexible and next time more thought is given to similar mental objects. I’m also guessing that emotions and more primitive reactions act to skew the statistics depending on the mental object. I may also be over-interpreting my meditation experiences. :P