Mondsee

Day 46 Days in a row: 3 Start time: 9:15 a.m. Finish time: 9:30 a.m. Location: Room at my old flat Technique: Do nothing Eyes: open Highlights: Nonstopping monkey-mind. Thoughts about career, sex, past relationships and strategic plan on when to try psychedelics for the first time.

Day 45 Days in a row: 2 Start time: 12:20 a.m. Finish time: 12:35 a.m. Location: Room at my old flat Technique: Do nothing Eyes: closed Highlights: Slow pace of thoughts. Had many insights on ideas for presents and also a profound feeling of appreciation for a friend of mine who had never seemed so valuable to me.

Hey @Lynnel , thanks for your comment! See... the only two techniques I actually use are mindfulness meditation and do nothing. Personally I would like to be able to do a mindfulness meditation every day and work towards raising my awareness more "actively", but there are days in which a do nothing meditation just feels more natural to me. I don't decide what technique I'm going to practice until I'm sitting and I've taken some deep breaths and recognized the direction in which my mind naturally wants to go. What is the technique you use? It sounds like you are a bit more advanced, how did you get to that point? I'd be interested in your experience!

Day 43 (Report from Monday the 28th) Days in a row: 1 Start time: around 4 p.m. (maybe) Finish time: around half an hour later Location: Garden at J.G.'s house Technique: Do nothing + mindfulness meditation Eyes: open, closed at the end Highlights: Maybe the most beautiful meditation I've had. I sat down next to a friend of mine under a tree in the garden and melted into nature. I picked a yellow flower as a focus point and let my mind free, and it started labelling some of the external stimuli (hear, feel, see). I had no major distractions, and reached an amazing state that felt as if I had reached a perfect balance. At some point I thought I could stay there forever, but my friend finished his meditation and told me some words, so I decided to stop there too and give him my attention. Finishing that way felt very organic (compared to waiting for an alarm to ring) and everything appeared more "real" or more "alive" after it. Day 44 Days in a row: 1 Start time: 9:25 a.m. Finish time: 9:40 a.m. Location: Room at my old flat Technique: Do nothing Eyes: closed Highlights: Monkey mind all the way through. I could feel tension in some parts of my body. I thought about things that I have to do, about things that I should have done and how my peers are accomplishing more in their lives than I am. Deep down I could feel myself observing those thoughts and knowing they don't mean anything, but on the surface they felt very real. Towards the end I wanted the meditation to end to be able to stand up and go and do something.

Day 42 Days in a row: 4 Start time: 12:30 p.m. Finish time: 01:10 p.m. Location: Balcony at my parent's house Technique: Do nothing Eyes: closed Highlights: Super comfy meditation considering the length of it. At some point I thought that I could stay like that all day long, but if I wasn't going to do it was because "I had other things to do", and I kept repeating that same phrase several times as a mantra, kind of savoring the lack of meaning of it. At some point I disappeared, I was still thinking stuff, but I wasn't aware of absolutely anything, I wasn't observing my thoughts, nor was I conscious that I was sitting there meditating. It was almost as if I had fallen asleep during the meditation, although I wasn't sleeping. I reminded myself to raise awareness more after that. Also, at some point, the shape of my hands became very very confusing, it was as if I couldn't remember the position of the fingers in my hands, and I couldn't know in which position I had them. During all that time I didn't move them, I just realized that I genuinely couldn't understand the shape of my hands at some point, as if they were things I had never seen before.

Day 41 Days in a row: 3 Start time: 11:00 a.m. Finish time: 11:35 a.m. Location: Balcony at my parent's house Technique: Do nothing Eyes: open most of the time, closed for short moments Highlights: Extremely interrupted meditation session. I had to take a phone call from my father at the middle of it, and towards the end my mother started looking for me all over the place, until she found me meditating and told me "we are leaving in 15 min!". The rest of the time I had random thoughts and was able to maintain an awareness state of the fact that I was thinking stuff

Day 40 Days in a row: 2 Start time: 12:20 p.m Finish time: 12:50 p.m. Location: Balcony at my parent's house Technique: Do nothing Eyes: open Highlights: Sitting in half lotus. I thought about many different things including why I felt bad for not have been accepted in a job I applied for, about my ex-boyfriend, about friends and how it is necessary to find a balance between working to survive and not doing anything and just being, because if we dedicate to just "be", then we will die because we won't have a structure sustaining our lifestyle of just being, but if instead we work just enough to sustain as much time as possible to "just be" then we will be able to do that for much longer. I also thought about how things that don't come easy are good for us because they let us know if we really want them, if we keep fighting to get them. I thought about how failure is better than no failure, because it means that we're trying something. Every now and then, I reminded myself to be aware of what I was thinking.

Day 39 Days in a row: 1 Start time: 11:25 a.m. Finish time: 11:50 a.m. Location: Balcony at my parent's house Technique: Do nothing Eyes: open at the beginning, then closed Highlights: Very comfortable meditation sitting in half lotus. I didn't feel any physical discomforts whatsoever and I had very positive thoughts about friends. Some were memories and some were stories of my mind. I had to remind myself a couple time to remain aware of the thoughts.

@Afonso I'm working at it! Thanks for your words of encouragement

I read about this eating style and thought some of the things that it suggests might be good, but I was skeptical on some others. Have you heard about it? Do you practice it? What is your opinion on it?

Day 38 Days in a row: 1 Start time: 02:45 p.m. Finish time: 03:05 p.m. Location: My room at my parent's house Technique: Do nothing Eyes: open Highlights: Sitting in full lotus I had random thoughts during the entire session, not focusing on any topic in particular. I had stomach ache and I managed to start seeing that pain as something that didn't cause me suffering. It was as when you are in a museum and you see something and you don't like it that much, but it's not as if that thing is causing you to suffer. The same happened with my left leg during the last minutes given that it got numb, and I would just see it as something that wasn't mine and therefore wouldn't cause me to suffer. All touching sensations became really interesting because after contemplating on them on a while I couldn't explain what those sensations were and how one sensation was different from the other.

Oh, so... this question is unrelated to the comments above. After your awakening, did you have people who knew nothing about consciousness work tell you "hey you seem different?", "what happened to you?" or stuff like that? Could they notice in any way you had awoken or did it remain unnoticed for the rest of the people?

Day 37 Days in a row: 4 Start time: 10:10 a.m. Finish time: 10:45 a.m. Location: Balcony at my parent's house Technique: Do nothing Eyes: open Highlights: It started as a weak meditation session, with a slow pace of monkey mind, but monkey mind nonetheless, i.e. I was jumping from topic to topic all over the place and even to short mindfulness meditation moments. This continued until the end, but brought me to an insightful thought. It is a little bit difficult to put in words, but it was that I am everything, both my body and also everything surrounding it, and that it isn't "me" (i.e. my body) which moves around the world, but that it could be that the entire world moves around my body, and because the only constant there, is my body, that is the only thing I can find at any moment, then I think I am the body, but in fact I am everything moving around the body, and the body too. To use a metaphor it's as if the universe was one single thing (which might very well be, but that isn't the point, just bare with me). So the universe is one whole single thing, but the Sun is convinced it is the Sun and it lives in the universe, sometimes it goes and visits Mercury, sometimes it visits Venus, and some others it goes and visits the Earth, but in reality it is everything moving around that center which is the Sun, and the Sun isn't actually a separated piece, it is both the Sun and everything around it. The confusion arises because at any moment, no matter what is around, it can always find the Sun, so it thinks that it is the only thing that it is. So that was my insight, with my body being the Sun in this metaphor. Note: the metaphor was only to explain and not part of what I thought during the meditation

In order to do this (flatten the illusion of language) it is helpful to cut and unite words in random places such as "thef actthatyouc an'tfin dmed oesnotmeani donotex ist". Now read it word by word, as if it was a language you do not speak. Do you see now how it is just a bunch of sounds? we give it sense, but in fact it doesn't mean anything.

Day 36 Days in a row: 3 Start time: 19:50 a.m. Finish time: 20:20 a.m. Location: My room at my parent's house Technique: Mindfuln Eyes: closed Highlights: Sitting in half lotus I focused my attention on the sound of the A.C., noticing how I was that because that sound was no different than the sound that my breath was making. It felt like me just for a few sparks of seconds, nothing very significant. Some distracting thoughts crossed my mind several times

@Azrael I am assuming that most of the people who know you don't know much about consciousness work. Have they noticed a difference in you? Do they tell you something?

Day 35 Days in a row: 2 Start time: 8:15 a.m. Finish time: 8:40 a.m. Location: Balcony at my parent's house Technique: Mindfulness meditation Eyes: open Highlights: Sitting in half lotus. I labeled sensations under the same categories as yesterday, but had many more thoughts crossing my mind that often went unlabeled. While thinking the labelling process felt somewhat mechanical. My right leg got numb and in the end I was focusing a lot on "feeling" that.

Day 34 Days in a row: 1 Start time: 10:40 a.m. Finish time: 11:00 a.m. Location: Balcony at my parent's house Technique: Mindfulness meditation Eyes: open Highlights: Today I sat in full lotus. The posture was okay until the very last minutes in which my left leg got numb. I labelled every prominent sensation under the categories "seeing", "hearing" and "feeling", all of which included an external and an internal dimension, and "feeling" a physical and an emotional one. I was able to keep my attention into the practice for most of the time, and after a while I started seeing the sky on the same plane as a short wall in front of me, loosing the illusion of depth. That was interesting.

Like a firework (by Marco Fischer) Like a jewel

I am nowhere near being a serious consciousness connoisseur, but I can tell you that back when I was in high school, I was the mentor of a group of 1st grade, so I would spend some breaks with them. When I did that, I played with them as if I was a little 1st grader too, and not as the mentor guiding them. I abandoned my entire 19 y/o identity, and fully acted as if I was just one more of them. That is the closest I've ever been to feeling reality as magical, and as if I was experiencing things for the first time. I remember vividly a genuine feeling of excitement and fear of being found while playing hide and seek. It was as if a murderer was going to find me, but in an exciting way, as if it wouldn't have any bad consequences. Also the places at school became completely different, and if we agreed on a tree being the entrance to a magic world, it genuinely became the entrance of a magic world, and yes, I was 19.

Day 33 Days in a row: 5 Start time: 9:25 a.m. Finish time: 10:10 a.m. Location: My room at my parent's house Technique: Mindfulness meditation Eyes: closed Highlights: By far the absolutely most powerful meditation that I've ever had. I focused in what my senses were perceiving and at some point it was absolutely clear to me how the only thing that existed was the pitch darkness, not even the darkness but the space in which all those sensations were entering. If nothing but that space existed, that also meant my body didn't exist, what existed were the sensations of my body that were entering into that space, same with all sounds and smells. If my body didn't exist, and the sensations were no different to the sounds I was hearing and the smells I'm smelling, and the mental images that were crossing my mind, then why would I be only the sensation of my body? I started becoming a sphere of nothingness which was filled with different things, sometimes the sound of a bird + the mental image of a bird, the numbing sensation of my leg, the mental words of my mind, the sound of my AC and even the alarm of my cell phone going off. Before opening my eyes, I told myself "nothing is going to change, you are still going to be this nothingness, but this nothingness can also be filled with colors and shapes". I opened my eyes and the sensation lasted for a little bit, but not so powerful. Right now I actually know that I have no legs, as I can't see them right now, I only have the sensation of legs. The feeling isn't as powerful anymore, but if I focus on it, it's so incredibly obvious I actually laugh.

Do you know of any couple of enlightened beings out there? That is, where the wife and husband are both enlightened. I'm just curious.

@Revolutionary Think Why do you consider your genitals disgusting and not any other part of your body?

Cool, cool. Thanks for sharing folks! IMO they should share more what it is to share their lives with another person who knows Truth, these are for sure the least needy relationships ever, just for the pure fun! Good stuff...

Day 32 Days in a row: 4 Start time: 11:55 a.m. Finish time: 12:30 p.m. Location: Balcony at my parent's house Technique: Mindfulness meditation Eyes: open at the beginning, then closed Highlights: Long but comfortable meditation. I was labelling sensations under the categories of "seeing", "hearing" and "feeling. At some point I was doing the same but the label wasn't a word I was repeating in my mind any more, although the word labels came back after a while. I closed my eyes at some point and recognized very clearly how I was still "seeing" things, but now internally. Everything I was seeing from that moment on, were images created inside my mind, but those things still felt very real, as if they were really out there, and not only in my mind. I shake my head a couple times, when flies came too close to my eyes.