My off the cushion reports from the last few weeks are pretty intense – the more concentrated I’m able to get in meditation whether that’s through metta, concentration, or insight practice – the more interesting changes I’m noticing on the day to day.
Of late, as in perhaps the last week and a half, I’ve been noticing a much stronger empathic muscle. This happened the same day I had a sit in which the hear space broke down into a “click click click” like individual frames on a film strip – which I assume was an insight into impermanence.
The energetic feelings on the day to day vary from mild/tolerable to nearly unbearable moments where I feel nauseous. This happens all the time and at unsuspecting moments – though I do notice that if I intentionally “tune in” I can feel this intensely pretty much all the time.
Back to the empathy though. I started to notice that the energy has an emotional flavor to it, which is really just the best way I can explain it – there’s a sense of tenseness, anxiety, excitement (very similar to anxiety), peace etc – I have already noticed these different states on the cushion. Noticing them off has been a very interesting experience.
Especially interesting is noticing them off the cushion in relation to others. At work, I’ll have conversations with people in which I’ll feel this piti/energy/whatever rise up, and have a flavor to it. Each person feels a little differently (I’m assuming it’s their own unique set of emotional makeup and experience etc), but underneath it I’ve noticed there’s a distinct recognizable energy of emotion of the same frequency I’ve noticed while sitting. I’ve noticed that despite what people say to the contrary, I’ve been able to fairly clearly pick up on the energy of their emotional state. Maybe all this noting is working – and I’m able to better identify these subtleties. Yesterday I was able to get confirmation on recognizing underlying anger in a friend who initiated conversation by saying out great everything was – and ended by complaining about how upset they were about something going on in the office.
The majority of the time I recognize there’s “something” there, but I can’t really unwind the specific emotion out. It usually breaks down as an initial pass into either “anxiety” or “equanimity" then in see-space I’ll notice that I’ll sometimes have one of those cloudy formations flash with an energetic association I’ll recognize as something more specific – like anger, fear, joy, sadness, etc.
This is quite technical and in reading it back I sound like a total crazy person – but this is what’s happening, so I’m just reporting it like I see it. 🙂
the Good Heretic 