Been practicing everyday for 15 minutes. I’ve been struggling with feelings of forcing and frustration. It’s like I’m trying very hard to capture a certain flavour of current time awareness or feeling good. Have any of you had similar issues?
Today’s session for 20 mins was very good. I stopped forcing so much and just let myself sit there and ramp up. For me it seems if I don’t have current time awareness (which brings with it feeling good), sensual delight feels very forced/fake and frustrates me. I’m going to play around with this a bit, as it could just be me not allowing myself to enjoy the sensual delights. One form of sensuosity that works for me is the awareness of space (as opposed to looking at specific objects). Looking at the room itself, and feeling myself in that room. In contrast to Srinath’s advice of dropping the running commentary, I feel it helps me a lot to talk myself through it. I like to give myself pointers or reminders along the way. I’m a bit scared to do longer sessions because I am so prone to frustration.
This practice has greatly improved my application of the method throughout the day. It has inspired confidence that I can feel good regardless of what is happening. Whereas before I would have to struggle and talk myself into feeling good (piss poor results), now I just tune into that flavour (feeling) and away we go. There is no “cognitive” aspect to application of the method.