Things that have and haven't happened after 200-300 hours of meditation

Around 18 months ago I decided it was probably worth taking this meditation thing seriously. This was mostly after reading stuff from the Jhourney people, Sasha Chapin, Nick Cammarata and that general sphere on twitter / substack. Hearing the "No this is actually way better than you think and also doable" message repeated a lot from a cluster of people who were clearly smart, grounded in reality and curious about exploring the space was enough to push me over.

This is a sort of retrospective, journal, speculations and thoughts of where I am now. I'm partly writing this to get my thoughts down to look back on for me, in the genuine hope that in a year or two I will look back and say “oh wow I really didn’t get it”. I’m also writing this because there is an oversupply of "the unbearable waves of pleasure then collapsed into nothingness and I saw that all my suffering was unnecessary" writing and an undersupply of reports that aren't that (spoiler alert).

Prior to this block of more consistent practice I'd half heartedly dabbled in meditation, mostly Sam Harris' Waking Up stuff. Never consistent enough beyond the opening month to get much out of it, and it felt static and repetitive in a way that I didn’t really like. For this period I was conceptualising it like exercise, something healthy worth doing but not really believing there could be any major shifts in wellbeing.

This from Sasha Chapin's Substack is basically what I was thinking and going for:

I don’t think people really understand what is possible here. I think they conceive of meditation as a useful vitamin that will increase calm and openness, and they think of more meditation as taking a lot of that vitamin.

This is when I started to realise “oh there is a lot more here”. I read Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, Science of Elightenment, Right Concentration and started listening to talks (a lot of Burbea).

I came in pretty hot and dabbled in a bit of everything. Do nothing, body scanning, Burbea’s energy body breath, MCTB impermanence stuff. This was also when all of this was shiny and new and exciting, I'd read about some new meditation that someone thought was amazing and try it that evening. I got very little out of this initial period. In retrospect I should have been much more systematic about giving something a week or 2 of dedicated practice before shifting, and for someone starting out I'd recommend something like that (which is advice I only feel comfortable giving since it’s also what more advanced practitioners say).

The work I did most consistently was with Micheal (@plus3happiness on twitter). This was a series of exercises directly pointing at emptiness and not-self. This was great, and I think it was a really solid place to start. Through this I got some small element of self to drop away.

Here is something I wrote about my experience then:

When I sit and try to observe thoughts sometimes the thoughts are just happening but then when I remember I'm meant to be observing them it's almost like "pop" here's the me/observer now to observe. Which is non-sensical because of course the thoughts are still being thought without that sensation of observer so how can there be a permanent me thinking them. Again I get it intellectually but doesn't stop the observer appearing as soon as I look for it.

This "pop" of the little homunculus appearing in my head stopped, doesn't happen anymore when looking at thoughts, and that is still gone. (To be clear, I'm not claiming any real deep insight or change here.)

The first few days after this thing dropped away things was unambiguously softer, lighter, more open. Some deer walked right up to me and my daughter while we were having a sandwich in the forest and didn't notice us until they were super close, which could probably go in the category of "weird synchronicities" or "radiating openness" although I still get a little tension even writing something veering into woo like that.

Through all this I was still pretty fascinated with Jhana and there were more and more reports from people having their mind blown at Jhourney retreats, and so I moved into trying to do that more consistently. I mostly worked with stuff from Brasignton (his talks and Right Concentration) and Burbea, particularly the "practicing the Jhanas" retreat.

Early on here I spent a bunch of time here just bouncing off metta and the kind of "cultivate a positive feeling and concentrate on it" Jhourney instructions, since that seemed the smoothest route in.

Despite really, genuinely, to the best of my awareness wishing people well, there was no feeling or sensation there strong enough for me to perceive and to latch onto. I have tried Burbea guided stuff, imagining looking after a frail puppy, visualising a warm glow spreading over the world. I have tried to just find a nice happy memory to focus on and cultivate happy feelings1. Nothing really worked.2

This almost certainly is, fundamentally, a skill issue.

I am currently unclear if the skill issue is analogous to a "my deadlift sucks" situation where the solution is "go watch some more form videos and do many more deadlifts" ie. keep experimenting and stick with it; or a "my deadlift sucks" situation where I shouldn't even be deadlifting until I sort out my hip flexibility or something ie. figure out how to actually feel an emotion or work on not getting distracted every 3 seconds. At any rate I was somewhat frustrated with all this, and despite conceptually loving the idea of sitting there and radiating love and goodwill to all. I decided to put this kind of practice to the side for a bit and try some other concentration.

Following the breath concentration instructions from "right concentration" I had some successes, and got the closest to Jhana 1. Twice I had quite intense piti spreading across my legs, but it faded as soon as I tried to switch to concentrating on it, and I'm pretty confident the issue was messing up the "just pay attention to it but don't *try* to make it stronger". Unfortunately, I fell into a bit of a rut trying to recreate the exact conditions to get the piti to come back, and contracting around waiting for it and looking for it, which of course is the opposite of what I’m meant to be doing. This experience was really good in the sense that it was strong direct, experiential evidence that this is a real thing since the piti matched the textbook descriptions people give.

I picked up TMI around the end of 2024 on the recommendation of one of the teachers I have been sporadically working with. I get it's a pretty narrow scope but for me it's been great, I like the way things are laid out and very technical.

When I decided to do it, I pre-committed to sticking with this for 6 months, and I've month to month been progressing pretty well (even if week to week is pretty variable).3 Currently my practice is more or less exclusively this, I'll do around 45 minutes- 1 hour per day, split between some walking, and 1 - 2 sits. It varies a lot depending on schedule and what else is going on. The only other thing semi-regularly in there is Yoga Nidra which I’ll do a few times per week as a special treat when I feel like something cozy and nice, or if my partner wants to do something together since she enjoys that.

I spent one weekend on solo retreat a few months ago just doing full breath concentration which was a bit of a wash to be honest. Something happened where I constantly felt like my natural breath was too shallow and I couldn't get enough oxygen which was slightly unpleasant and distracting. Nothing too crazy or scary just not ideal.

Anyway that's the summary of what I've done, here's what's changed!

Baseline wellbeing is unambiguously up!

Something Sam Harris talks about that has stuck with me is the half life of negative emotions getting much shorter. I guess you'd call this one of the mundane mindfulness benefits. If I get pissed of at someone, or annoyed, I can notice that I'm on some level making an *effort* to constantly re-up my annoyance. Once I catch that it will fade away pretty quickly.

If my child is being difficult, I catch frustration rising and just being aware of it is enough to stop it escalating. I've never been the particularly anxious type, but I can notice now anxiety pretty quickly breaks down into "thoughts" and "a clenching of my gut"and once it notice that it fades pretty quickly.

I feel probably 10-30% nicer in my body on an average day. I'll just automatically notice "Oh that breeze is quite nice" or "that stretch felt really good" or "ah that was a really enjoyable deep breath, I needed that".

I can just be with my thoughts pretty happily. This is huge for me. I used to get bored incredibly quickly. I'd put on a podcast to walk down one flight of stairs to take the bins out, and if i was alone would be scrolling in any spare second. I'll pretty happily just exist without external stimulation now, letting my thoughts wander.

This is a weirder one but I also now just kind of assume I’ll eventually get “there”. Some sort of comfort in the intellectual belief that I will eventually get to this amazingly blissful state so great I can’t even conceptualize it now, and the random bullshit doesn’t matter as much.

Things are still pretty mundane and this is honestly kind of disappointing.

There hasn’t been any mind blowing experiences or truly blissful states or complete dissolving of the self, which is most of the experiences I read about. This is probably warped expectations based on the people who have these experiences writing about it, and the people who don’t not writing about it. Still, I did come in with some hope (and probably also expectation) that getting to these things would all be quick and easy. I’m also very aware of the contradiction in talking about all these benefits I’ve seen and then saying how disappointed I am but there you go.

I’m still pretty confident I will figure out how to get to these things, and “a few years of 45 minutes a day while working full time and raising a kid plus you get a bunch of other benefits” is still much better than “years of dedicated practice in a cave” so I’m still relatively optimistic.

I really enjoy talking about this stuff despite being a total noob, so don’t hesitate to ping me with any suggestions or questions.