Day 506 Record Keeping
Day 475 Fixed Meditation (79)
Day 421 Bodyweight Exercise (2 typewriter pushups - 79)
Day 348 Writing (editing - 67)
Day 521 Eating (80)
Great sleep, great wakeup. Traveled from Albuquerque to Houston. Missed one travel day, and the next day since I was exhausted. Actually did most of my habits yesterday except writing. Might have gotten to 4th jhana.
Day 500 Record Keeping
Day 469 Fixed Meditation (3nd jhana, beginings of 4th? -80)
Day 415 Bodyweight Exercise (2 typewriter pushups - 72)
Day 342 Writing (pitching - 66)
Day 515 Eating (75)
Day 500! A great day! Eating has rapidly gotten automatic - I had every opportunity to cheat and just didn’t. Fixed meditation has been going great, experienced what could possibly be:
Nimitta
The nimitta is a sign that some people take to be a self emergent property of a unifying mind. I was in what I think may be third jhana and thought, why not try for 4th?
I focused on my object of visualization but it wasn’t coming clearly. I kept trying and this broad round light came into my field of vision. As I “looked” at it it gradually got smaller and focused, and as soon as I focused on it it went back to being broad again. It wasn’t a mental image, it felt more tangible, like actual sight.
I thought that perhaps I had a slight opening in my eyelids. I checked and I didn’t and it continued to occur. I had a great deal of difficulty figuring out whether or not my eyes were in fact shut.
All of these things are talked about in the literature.
In several texts 3rd jhana is where people say to start the progress of insight. When I looked at the stream of thoughts I found them much more spread a part and broken up. I never knew what people were talking about when they were saying they could see the emergent and passing away process of mind objects. But I did see it more clearly - I believe this is what is referred to by the stream of dependent origination.