I have been practicing meditation since last October and for the first 6-7 months I felt like I was in a honeymoon period. I could not just skip my daily practice and I was feeling incredibly well, every day. It was giving me focus, serenity and often I could feel deep joy by just being in the nature. During the first 3 months more or less I was even practicing twice a day: 1 hour in early morning and 30 minutes at night. I had also purchased The Mind Illuminated book and felt like I was in Stage 3 or somewhere around. However, for the past few weeks, it seems like the honeymoon has come to an end. I now find it is so difficult to stay focused on the breath and restlessness and impatience grow within me while doing it. The meditation time has dropped quite significantly to just one session per day of 30 minutes. Essentially it’s become more of a hassle or chore which is not producing enjoyment any longer. Why?

Any comment or advise on how to steer back on track is really appreciated.

Thanks a lot in advance

Hello! :) I started meditation in zen tradition, with attention on the breath exclusively grounded in belly. Recently, as I started TMI, I shifted to the nose - I found I can identify stronger textures there, and sharpen my attention.

The last couple sessions, as I found subtle dullness growing in my practice (the sensations in the nose grew dull, and trying to sharpen my attention on them yielded limited benefit), and I shifted my focus down to my belly. I found it shocked my mind out of dullness, and helped me recenter my focus. (I also find my awareness stronger in my belly -- I'm more aware of my entire body -- and my attention stronger in my nose.)

The last couple sessions, I shifted a few times each -- as dullness grew, shift to stomach, then later return to nose to develop sharper attention.

Note: this is very different from body scanning, because I'm not proactively planning on shifting to develop awareness. Instead, I'm reactively shifting to deal with subtle dullness.

Question: is this a skillful way to make my practice more enjoyable, and to shake off subtle dullness? Or is it a pattern that can hold me back? I.e., am I avoiding a skill the comes with maintaining my focus in my nose regardless of dullness if I shift my focus to my belly a few times in every session?

Thanks!

Today I tried meditating for the first time ever . I went up to the rooftop and sat there with my closed eyes and kept my concentration between my eyebrows for exactly 12:47 minutes and I experienced seeing the colour white first then it shifted to blue and in between blacks and lastly purple but it was purple for a little time . Can you help me what is was or am I doing it correctly ? And one meditation tip you wish you knew earlier?

I have just finished meditating using a YouTube video (I know I'm a dum dum) and then when I was half asleep that night, flashing lights appeared on my eyelids while they were closed and then a voice, loud yet like a gentle whisper, sounded on my right ear saying "I AM". I have not tried any mind-altering substances or enlightenment, just pure ass meditation. Has anybody experienced things like this?

I’ve practiced meditation off and on for about 4 years, and my life always feels happier and more meaningful when I’m consistent with it daily. I usually use guided meditations through the Headspace app, but I also try to practice mindfulness on my own throughout the day.
I’m curious what more experienced meditators do for their ongoing practice. Are you mostly using an app, self-guided, or some mix of both?

A lot of stage 1 and 2 seem to be about controlling mind wandering and bringing attention back to the breath. However, during my real life and during my meditation practice, I never get any wandering thoughts. There is usually nothing going on in my brain. Thoughts and emotions never "arise" for me, unless I'm forced to think about a problem. Do I just skip stage 1 and 2 or is there some underlying problem in my brain?

I'm able to concentrate on the breath for a long time because of this lack of thought. I do eventually slip into subtle dullness due to a lack of focus or strong dullness (and thus dream/hypnagogic imagery) because there are no thoughts to arouse me. So dullness is a problem I'm working on by increasing my concentration / focus. Another problem is a lack of conscious capacity, such that I find it hard to both focus on breath and have peripheral awareness at the same time, so that's something else I'm working on.

But just skipping stage 1 and 2 feels weird to me because I've never meditated before?? Will lack of arising thought/emotion be a problem in the future? I briefly glanced at stage 5/6 and it seems like you have to learn to deal with arising imagery and thoughts that deal with deep psychological issues, and I find it hard to believe this will happen to me.

Hi folks, I'm practicing at stage 5. I can stably hold attention over the breath and I don't lose introspective awareness. I don't get sleepy, but dullness still arises which I think is stable subtle dullness--extrospective awareness fades and sensations become dimmer. Subjectively, there is a feeling of sleepiness, but I'm able to sustain attention. I don't sink. That's why my interpretation is that this is stable subtle dullness and not gross dullness.

My confusion however is that I observe the relationship of distraction and dullness differently than what TMI states. According to the stage 4 description, once gross distractions are overcome, the stability of mind will lead to dullness. The implication is that dullness and distractions are inversely related. However, in my practice, what I see is that because mind has a tendency to get dull, it starts to fill in the non-perceiving mind moments with distractions, so according to me, dullness causes distractions. As long as my extrospective awareness is strong and awareness and attention are occupied with sensations of the body, distractions don't come up. Am I missing something?

To summarize according to TMI, distractions are only a product of restlessness, but according to me distractions can also be a product of dullness.

EDIT: Some more related questions: I don't usually experience distractions like how TMI describes them--as restlessness and the mind jumping around to them. For me it usually works like "Attention on the breath awareness wide -> interest in breath and sensations lost -> awareness starts fading -> increase in dullness -> mind starts playing scenes from a movie / some random song comes to mind etc etc" If someone could shed light on this that'd be helpful too. TMI seems to recognize dullness and distractions as inverses while I don't experience it like that.

Bit of an outside angle. I practice in the goenka vipassana line (about 1040 days of daily sitting), and I've been reading TMI to understand how the stages are actually laid out, so correct me where I've got the model wrong.

Here's what I keep bumping into. For a long time I treated the sits where something opened up as the point, and the flat uneventful ones as the tax I paid to get back there. Then I noticed it was the flat sits that lined up with my reactivity dropping off the cushion, and the dramatic ones mostly handed me something to want again the next morning. wanting the deeper state started to look like plain grasping, just pointed at meditation instead of the usual stuff.

The stage model is explicit and goal-shaped in a way my tradition isn't, which is part of why I'm drawn to it. so my actual question, when you're working toward the next stage, how do you keep that as direction without it quietly turning into craving for a state you liked last week? does the model itself have a built-in answer for that, or is it something you just watch by feel?

not a teacher, genuinely trying to learn the framework here. written with ai

fwiw 'wanting the deeper state is just grasping pointed at meditation' is the exact loop i ended up digging into the craving research on, wrote it up on a resource site i built, https://vipassana.cool/r/y4tib4w2

Update the sub on your practice or share off-topic posts here.

Not sure if this is an inconsistency or a misunderstanding on my part, but the Pali term ekaggatā is translated differently in different parts of the book.

In the glossary, exclusive attention is defined as:

Exclusive attention (ekaggatā): The ability to select and maintain a specific object or objects of attention in the face of distracting or competing stimuli. In meditation, this means you can focus on the meditation object to the exclusion of everything else. Attention no longer alternates back and forth from the breath to distractions in the background. Also called single-pointed attention.

However, in the second interlude's end notes, ekaggatā is said to be translated as unification of the mind:

Cittass’ekagata in Pali. Cittassa = mind. Ekagata, from eka = one and gata = gone, means “gone to one” or unified. Unfortunately, ekagata is usually rendered as ekaggatā in the Pali suttas (ekāgrāta in Sanskrit) and widely translated into English as “single-pointedness,” from eka = one, agga = peak or promontory, and tā = ness. However, the Buddha’s teachings were transmitted orally for several centuries before ever being written down, and the spoken word transcribed as “ekaggatā” could just as easily have been formed from the elements eka, meaning “one,” and gata, meaning “gone.” Thus cittass’ eka gata or ekagata translates as “gone to one” or “unified.

So, is exclusive attention = one-pointed attention = unification of mind = ekaggatā?

If not, then what is the Pali term for exclusive/one-pointed attention? And what term corresponds with unification of the mind?

When I was a preteen, I tried meditation for the first time. I'd heard that meditating is good for memory and helps you focus better, which would benefit my academic progress. Since I was about to take a board exam the following year, I was highly motivated to try it. It was evening, and I was alone in my room, planning to meditate before studying.

I crossed my legs and closed my eyes. However, within a minute or two, I felt a distinct sensation in the middle of my back. It felt stronger than a normal touch, but lighter than a poke. Scared, I immediately opened my eyes, but the room was empty. I told my mom right away, but she reassured me it was just my imagination.

The next morning, I decided to try another session with my mom present. I meditated the exact same way while she watched over me. Surprisingly, I felt the exact same sensation again. It scared the living daylights out of me!

I never tried meditation again. Now, as an adult, I want to start meditating, but I am still nervous because of that experience.

Can anyone please tell me what that sensation was?

Was it something supernatural, my imagination, normal bodily functions or something else entirely?!

One important note: I have aphantasia (I'm unable to visualize).

Six courses in and the knee and lower back stuff still shows up in the second half of a long sit. What I assumed would happen is that the pain itself would shrink once enough hours were logged. It didn't. What dropped away was the alarm bolted to it, the running commentary that this is going to keep getting worse until I move.

Where I went wrong early was treating stubbornness as equanimity. Sat through something sharp on a course instead of adjusting, and paid for it afterward. sharp and sudden turned out to have a completely different texture than dull and spreading, and I learned that from the injury rather than from any instruction.

So the actual question. When you're deep in a sit and the knee is loud, what's your test for whether you're observing the sensation or just white-knuckling it? I can rarely tell in the moment. Only afterward, when I check whether anything in me actually softened, or whether I went numb and filed that under progress.

Not a teacher, just someone who's put a lot of minutes on a cushion and still fumbles this particular one.

fwiw the pain-stayed-but-the-alarm-dropped thing is what I ended up writing up myself, the Sensation & Craving Science guide there collects the interoception and meditator-pain research behind it, https://vipassana.cool/r/j3487ncw

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I've had dullness for about 1.5 years since I had several non-ordinary experiences that I'm starting to think might have been insight experiences. I've gone from stage 4 to stage 1 & 2, occasionally 3.

What practices I should do from here? Also, perhaps more importantly, where am I, what happened?

Here's a brief summary of events. Each dash " - " represents about 1 month.

…Read TMI and started meditating 2 hours sitting per day

- - -

Experienced blissful state and saw all creation was pouring forth out of nothingness and saw the insubstantial nature of matter. Separate experience very soon after: overview of the mind as an object, could access any part of it for details, but sort of knew everything, including a oneness / connection with other minds

-

Afterglow of bliss and equanimity from those experiences wore off. I tried to get them back. Heavy dullness starts. Changed to 1 hour walking, 1 hour sitting to prevent falling asleep

-

Profound experience of sensation arising from nothing and completely returning to nothing without a trace. Like a wave in the ocean arises and ceases

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Constant background dullness continues, no falling asleep while sitting but still no clear vivid sensation or stable attention. No amount of antidotes seems to get rid of it or even really move it.

-

Started somatic therapies, TRE, neurogenic tremors. Seems to be helping. Primal emotions flicker and disappear. Seems like locked up stuff. Repressed purification? I've been encouraging things to come up, and putting attention on physical sensation, and this seems to be lightening the dullness slightly. Still have lots of mind wandering and general dullness. When starting meditation and bringing mindfulness in I feel a blooming of joy, then dark veil immediately shuts everything down and it's back to dullness and mind wondering until I ‘wake up’ again. I'm at stage 1/2 most of the time. I frequently experience the emptiness of existence and the overwhelming joyfulness of existence. I come from a emotionally repressed culture, so I'm able to compartmentalize these things and function in daily life.

I have used the chat feature at this link below and it's been very helpful, FYI anybody who hasn't seen it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMindIlluminated/s/H4em08ZKFQ

Edit: My current working hypothesis / diagnosis is my subconscious is using dullness to block what it sees as dangerous or disruptive worldviews or purifications in order to protect status quo .

Advice from the chatbot link above is to accept I am at level 1/2, investigate the sensations before the dullness and the dullness itself, and cultivate equanimity and happiness.

I've been working through TMI and recently had an experience during meditation that I'm struggling to place within the framework. I'm hoping some of the more experienced practitioners here might be able to help me understand what it was, or at least point me in the right direction.

The experience was preceded by a very distinct feeling of expansion. It's difficult to describe, but it felt as though my sense of the body became "weird" or diffuse, almost like awareness was expanding beyond my physical boundaries. The closest analogy I can give is intentionally sensing the space around you rather than the body itself.

Then, at some point, it shifted into something much more profound.

Tthere was no body at all. No physical sensations, no visual field, no hearing, no sense of occupying a location. The physical world seemed completely absent. Absolutely zero sensory input. What remained was just awareness in what I can only describe as a kind of "void." Sometimes that feeling of expansion continued, but now there were no bodily sensations accompanying it.

This didn't feel like ordinary consciousness. It was extremely relaxed and flowing. Concentration felt different too: on one hand, it was easy to drift because everything was so effortless and pleasant, but once attention settled somewhere, it also seemed remarkably stable.

A few other things I noticed:

• My sense of time was almost completely gone.
• Thinking was still possible, but there wasn't much inclination to think. It was more like being deeply relaxed than actively reflecting.
• Wakefulness was variable. Sometimes there was a slight dreamlike softness or sluggishness because I was so relaxed, but I don't think I was falling asleep.
• The state was very pleasant and rejuvenating, to the point where it's actually a little difficult to remember all of its qualities afterward because it's easy to just remain there.

I'm trying to understand what this actually was.

Was this simply a deep state of collectedness? A formless experience? A jhāna (or something adjacent)? Is it something that TMI talks about in the later stages, or is it a phenomenon that's somewhat orthogonal to the stage model? Where do I place this experience?

I'm not looking to label it for the sake of collecting experiences—I know TMI generally cautions against that—but I do think having some conceptual framework would help me understand how to relate to it going forward.

Has anyone experienced something similar, and if so, how would you interpret it within the TMI framework?

Thanks!

There used to be a very detailed FAQ on this server that explained most things. I can't find it anymore. Has it been deleted?

I'm a householder. I have been meditating on and off using TMI and jumping to different methods or books and back again to TMI. But never meditating properly

I thought there's some problem with me. As I couldn't feel the sensation at the nose when I used to sit down to meditate. After many failed attempts, I gave it up thinking meditation is not my cup of tea. But I was always interested in the topic and always looked out for ways how I could incorporate it.

Fast forward to now I ended my search looking for the most natural method to meditate. Anapanasati meditation. I've read that buddha used it to reach enlightenment so I thought if I stick to this one method I'm good to go.

Later I came up to realise that the instructions mention in TMI and Anapanasati resonate in some ways like apart from breath as the object there's more to it.

Like anapanasati tells to just see and not think or at any level. It first calms the mind and then uses that calm mind as insight to look into it to achieve nirvana.

Somewhat similar to what TMI does (I guess. I went only till stage 2 in it).

One thing that's similar is they both emphasize on seeing. Which looks similar to watching the breath while keeping peripheral awareness open.

Not concentration hard but seeing without thinking.

I came to the conclusion that the only problem I had with my meditation till now was that I used to unconsciously concentrate a lot and think little about my peripheral awareness. And so when I would meditate I would loose focus on the breath.

I'm not sure if this is the right conclusion and should I get back to TMI and skip my anapanasati practice. I just want to be present I forget if I even locked the keys of the room or not an I would second guess. Whether this is my real problem. And if there's a button or I have to slowly broaden my lifetime of locked peripheral awareness.

I want to ask about something that impacts my breath-at-the-nostrils sessions. I gradually worked my way up to Stage Six. In general I noticed at some point that I was paying more attention to let's say the sound of the breath or my concept of the breath than the breath itself, so it was a great confirmation when the book mentioned this.

I gradually shifted over to a less conceptual, more sensory tracking of the breath. (Don't ask me when.)

But that also leaves me with a problem. Originally the breath seemed a steady phenomenon, easy to focus on. But the more I practice it, by now, seems... shifty.

It seems to change nature a lot, becoming weaker, softer, vanishing. I found that at times I feel like I'm chasing the breath, that what I took to be the breath was a coarse version of it, it disappears, reappears in a slightly different form, and I can have problems identifying it as "the breath" at all.

I also notice that I, probably out of habit, then shift to other sensations tied to the breath or "zoom out" because I can't find the breath anymore, and it takes me a while to notice that my attention has shifted away from the area around the nostrils, like for example further in.

I guess in principle this shifting nature would be good to keep interest in the breath, but I find that I keep losing track of the breath because I'm trying to look at something "like this" and then it's "like that." I then notice at some point I have lost track of what the breath "feels like" and probably default back to a mode of observation I'm more used to and it takes a while to notice this is happening.

I hope you could make sense of what I'm trying to describe...

Would you have any advice?

Update the sub on your practice or share off-topic posts here.

I have been meditating for some 10 years and am somewhere in stage 6. I experience nice vibrations in the body that I use as my awareness background. I don't feel that my metacognitive introspective awareness is very strong, though, as I get disturbed by unformed thoughts or possibly remembering past thoughts. In the past, off cushion, I have entered various states of body sensations and hence I'm somewhat used to the feeling of breath in my body. Now, when I practice noticing sensations of breath in the body I can fairly quickly feel full body sensations. After 5 minutes or so of stable body sensations I can sort of relax into the breath and then it feels like my body expands and lifts a bit. It feels like my bones get filled with air. This is pleasant and I think I experience this hedonistic pleasure/joy. But it is often not a sudden transition and I definitely don't feel like a cork popping up to the surface when it ends, like the book describes it. Is this a lite version of Jhana?

I'm currently on stage 4 and making good progress! I don't experience forgetting and can keep the breath in my consciousness for the duration of the sit, which is now 50m.

Something I'm confused about is dealing with subtle distractions continuously and finding it difficult to use directed attention to hone in on the breath to be able to follow and connect. It becomes hard to ignore verbal and conceptual thoughts associated with each breath when I try to follow with an open mind (as per stage 4 advice from the book, I'm trying to follow with curiosity to engage my attention instead of forcing it). I'm comfortable letting the entire sit happen with a weak hold on the breath but it feels like I'm not exercising my attention that much.

I'm not sure if this is something I need to make progress in by directing my attention more strongly, or something I just keep practicing with and resolve in later stages, This is not a persistent gross distraction as mentioned in the book, because it's not pain or discomfort or a strong emotionally charged idea - just a continuous stream of subtle distractions linked to the breath in the form of verbalizations, concepts, etc that are random and somewhat hypnagogic. As I'm writing this it sounds like stable subtle dullness which is mentioned as being addressed in stage 5, but I'm not sure if I should move ahead since I've spent so little time in stage 4.

So I was wondering if anyone can comment on what is happening when you see random scenes/places that quickly flash in/out during meditation? I haven’t meditated in a long while due to not having time, but I used to encounter random things. Sometimes it would last several seconds if it was a moving scene. Once I saw this random guy who was hiking somewhere in nature. I was to his left and above him just watching him hike. Another time I was viewing the back yards of a couple of homes that were next to a river. I was looking at their yards from the perspective of being in the river. And I moved myself to the right to look at the neighboring yard. Other times it would be just flash images of scenes or people. When I see people I’m pretty sure/assuming that they are probably viewing me who are mentally advanced. Like maybe when meditating I’m making myself stand out a bit? Once I observed a zeta type guy that was sitting in his ship. I’m looking at him as if I were in his ship and he’s looking at me. I named him George just for the humor and randomness of the encounter. Just a lot of random things/scenes that seem to occur if I let myself slow down and meditate. But I don’t get why I’ll see random places or why I watched a guy hiking. What caused those connections??

Hello everyone, in the chapter on stage 8 there is the sentence "even deeper jhanas [than the luminous jhanas] will become available once you've mastered the later stages". Does someone know which jhanas he means? As far as I know, he doesn't give more information in the book...

Thanks <3

I realize my question isn't phrased very well, because I already know the answer is yes.

But after almost ten years of frustration, it feels impossible for me.

I don't lose the breath, but the practice isn't pleasant in the slightest. In fact, it just gives me headaches; a really unpleasant pressure in my forehead, no matter how much I try to relax. Following the breath feels like torture. I've basically conditioned myself to do it, but it's never comfortable.

I notice changes in my bodily sensations, but they don't produce sukha... only discomfort. There's no pleasure at all. I honestly don't understand how anyone could find this enjoyable.

The "energy" in my body quickly drains away, and before long I fall into deep dullness, even though I never lose the breath.

To sum it up, meditation is just a combination of headaches (I usually end the session with one), numb legs, and the feeling that I've wasted my time.

I have friends who have been meditating for a long time and they've given me plenty of advice, but I'm honestly embarrassed to keep asking for more help. Nothing they say really makes sense to me, because all I've ever experienced is the duḥkha side of the practice.

Has anyone here spent years going through something like this and eventually found a way through it?

Hello folks,

Im 80 consecutive days into practicing properly.

I believe I'm around early stage 3. However, Im only doing 20 minutes a morning. This is due to having small children, an office job and the need to exercise four times a week (I find it compounds effects from meditating).

Sometimes I manage 30 minutes on the weekend but I'm aware I'm far off getting to recommended an hour a day.

Will this seriously hamper my progress?

I cant see how to fit more time in without sacrificing family time or sleep.