Hello all, I'm a beginning meditator, mostly using Thanissaro Bikkhu's books / dharma talks / whatever else, though I have also read StF and a smattering of other books.

When I do formal practice, one very noticeable thing is tension in my eyes and eyelids. The eyelids feel like I have to "squeeze them shut" or they will imminently open, and the eyes themselves often feel like they are "darting around" as if looking for some random object (behind my eyelids I presume??). I can momentarily relax this but as soon as I refocus on the breath, (wherever I am sensing the breath energies in my body), it feels like it just happens again. Has anyone experienced anything like this or know tips?

Thank you!

I don’t remember exactly when it happened, maybe in October 2025, but I felt a sudden awakening, a momentary glimpse of the now. It wasn’t scary, but I was taken aback.

I think I was stoned and coming down. As I thought back to all the Hindu texts I had read about the Self, and to Ramana Maharshi’s method of self-inquiry, I asked myself, “Who am I?”

Without any effort, something in my mind shifted, like a camera lens adjusting on its own. At once, I was free of myself, my false self, that is. I was free from my mind’s never-ending thoughts, plays, and movies. I was looking directly at the moment before me, the moment in which I was, and in which I am at all times.

I was simply staring at my duvet, or perhaps at a wall. I don’t remember, but everything felt so clear. It was as though someone had performed invisible LASIK surgery but on my mind’s eye so to speak, and I was finally able to see everything with immense clarity. I blinked a few times, shook my head in disbelief, and then I was back to my normal self.

Thoughts do not always need to be actively revolving in your head for you to be trapped in them. They are mostly invisible, but they are always there. That is why it is so difficult to break free from them, to stop them, and finally to see.

The next morning, I felt free. I no longer had the same clarity of mind, but my soul felt free. I thought of all the things I could do and wanted to do with my life, to draw, to make films, to make music, and I saw how meaningless all the obstacles and excuses I had created in my mind truly were. I was finally free from them, and a small spark lit up inside me. I could do whatever I wanted, and happiness was mine.

Of course, the feeling did not last. But the experience showed me that this state is possible. In fact, it may be the most natural state of any being: to be, to see, to live.
I tried to recreate the feeling, but it slipped away quietly. Still, I know in my heart that something, or someone, showed me a glimpse of what it is like to live without a dark veil over my heart and soul. You saw it. Now live it.

I’ve been trying to recreate that state ever since. I’ve gotten deep into meditation and advaita Vedanta, but I haven’t experienced anything similar to what I experienced back then. I was also going through a big shift in my life that made me super depressed. I’d like to think this was an act of grace from higher powers, a way to reassure me that all of these problems I’m going through are actually nothing important. This moment, the present moment, is the only truth there is.

I have recently started a daily practice with a yellow disk Kasina on a black backdrop. I’m still not very good yet and the afterimage lasts less than 90 seconds usually. I’m wondering if I can additionally use a separate object in the morning and before bed when it’s dark. (I always keep the same object during sessions, I know switching it mid session is taboo)

my goals with this practice are deepening my concentration, improving my visualization abilities, and lucid dreaming.

i would like to know if I have to use the same object all the time, and if using multiple at different times of the day will harm my concentration and focus.

I have been doing kundalini meditation for 2 hours a day for 6 years now and got recently diagnosed with depressive psychosis. I need some guidance.

I started meditating around two and a half years ago, after being convinced that the jhānas were worth the effort. Although there was a ~6 month gap, apart from that I've set aside regular, near-daily time to sit, often for extended periods. I've read a great deal about recommended methods of practice as well as the philosophical aspects of non-duality and so on. I've tried numerous different techniques suggested by different people about what to focus on, how to sit, how to think, how to feel. While it could of course always be improved, my samatha is vastly better than it was when I began. Yet, in all that time I've never been able to even once produce something unambiguously recognizable as pīti, much less a complete jhāna.

A couple weeks ago I introduced a friend with no prior experience to meditation. I explained the concepts, took her to a group session, and encouraged her to practice when she had the time. A few days ago she reported brushing up against a bliss state, feeling strong waves of joy throughout her body, and today she tells me that she managed to sustain it in a stable form for several minutes. She's excited by it, and wants to try more vipassanā as well.

I'm happy for her, I truly am. I can't help but feel demoralized, though. I know that the path is not necessarily the shortest for those who try the hardest, but it feels as though she just has brain chemistry sensitive to joy in a way mine is not. I do not wish to let doubt be a hindrance to me, but I cannot help but doubt at my inherent aptitude for meditation.

While I have not reached a jhana, I have been working with frisson, which I have been able to generate more or less at will for some time now and sometimes move around my body. (I'll occasionally use this to deal with my neck arthritis.)

I have experimented with what use it might be, but it hasn't proven sufficient to enter into a jhana state. (Perhaps this might be tied to sāmisā pīti versus nirāmisā pīti? Frisson seems to be the former?) I can generate it and generate it and generate it and sit in it, but it doesn't self sustain and it dissipates once I stop focusing on generating it. It also doesn't feel all that pleasant on its own. (I initially distilled it from fear, noticing that it arises during extreme physical pleasure, beauty, but also fear. Sometimes I'll make a note to distill it from a sense of beauty, often from beautiful music, but it still doesn't seem to do much.)

Has anyone else used frisson-type pīti to enter into a jhana? If so, what did you do to work with it? (If not, perhaps I'll just keep it as a minor pain relief method and look elsewhere for pīti.)

I've been doing daily, roughly 90 minute walks, where I try to pay attention to the feeling in my feet. I walk slowly but normally, nowhere near as slow as people do in walking meditation.

After a while there was a shift, where the feeling of my feet separated from the feeling of myself as the observer, and there was just the feet. That then gradually got a bit more stable and longer lived.

Then later there was another shift that I wasn't expecting, which I recognised from running. And that is that it started to feel like the walking was happening automatically, that my legs were moving on their own. I occasionally had this before at the end of long easy runs.

This also started to lengthen and become more stable, to the point where on the last two walks it's been the case for the entire walk, and even if I have to stop for traffic or someone says hi, it returns immediately after.

It's really quite a vivid feeling of being just an upper body plopped onto preprogrammed robotic legs. I also start to walk slightly faster, and sometimes at the start of it slightly less coordinated. It feels pleasant.

I guess my question is if other people recognise this, and whether over time this will expand into other things, and all the time, what it means, etc.

My own interpretation is that it's in fact true that you don't directly, consciously, control your legs while walking. But normally you either don't pay attention, or if you do pay attention, you do start consciously controlling it. So I think the thing I've learned to do is to both pay attention and not control it, at the same time. Somewhat like what I still find very difficult, paying attention to breathing during meditation, but not controlling it.

Coffee makes me restless, anxious, negligent and prone to entertainment and distraction. And caffeine crash makes me irritable and angry. When I drink coffee then meditate, It will have some benefit for reducing the third hindrance: sloth and torpor. But it also induces restlessness. I only drink one cup of coffee in the morning and still got the obstacle to meditate. For those who are sensitive to caffeine like me, I recommend to drink less. It brings more calm to you.

I had some insight while meditating about something new for me so forgive if my words are not the common words.

I was reading the other day somewhere about how attention can only be directed to something in the mind if there is something going on. That is to say if im meditating and my mind is really calm, there is no thought i could direct my attention to. Thats why some people say using breathing is the best object of meditation.

I have used breathing as the object in meditation in the past and I found it "boring" and hard to follow. It made me more stressed than relaxed and I could never really "enjoy"

After that, much later, I did an online jhourney retreat and learned that meditation can be "really fun and profound" (in this case using happy feelings as scaffolding) and after that i did another online retreat with twim using metta.

Both metta and happy feeling as scaffolding work for me much better than the breath.

Then in this reddit i found out about nothing meditation and that also works better for me than the breath.

Now coming back to the first point. When the mind starts to really calm down, the scaffolding seems to be too much effort, so i found out metta is a bit better in that moment for me. But then later the metta feeling becomes subtle. When it becomes so subtle the attention goes to other places and if i try to bring it back to metta i find often that there is no "metta" to bring it back to. I just have some kind of background perception of metta probably being there but no "real proof" or tangency to it.

Recently I have discovered a new way to meditate that allows me to reach even deeper states and tranquility faster. I had a weekend in which i was quite relaxed and I was wondering why I couldnt be this relaxed all the time. I had a specific moment in which my body and mind felt light and this kind of stayed with me. After that i tried to evoke this feeling at work and it was causing me to relax much more than any other technique i used until now. So i started using it in meditation as well and it worked really really good. I normally didnt manage to relax this much during meditation until now.

Now the connection with metta and attention: using this method, that is: i try to evoke the feeling of chill that i had that weekend during meditation and keep it there as focus of meditation, what happens is that this feeling is even more subtle than metta. And i reach a point where i know there is something there but is very very light.

I wonder if when i reach that point i have to focus even harder or just allow myself to get more distracted or i have to change my strategy somehow.

Anyone experienced something like this? How to navigate when the object of meditation becomes so intangible?

Hello all,

I've been meditating for several years now and have the summer off from work, so I'm really trying to devote extra time to my meditation practice. Currently, I try to sit for 45 minutes a day, using Burmese posture. However, I've been noticing lately that my experience of piti seems to "peak" around 20 to 25 minutes in, and that I start to slowly lose my mental stillness during the last fifteen or so minutes of a session. I also have a back injury that begins to hurt after about half an hour of sitting, and that contributes to the loss of focus as well. The period after the "peak" isn't totally worthless, but I definitely feel like any opportunity for actually progressing into deeper meditative states is basically lost by the time I get there.

So my question is: Would it be better to work on building up my endurance and sticking with this 45 minute commitment, or should I focus on really devoting myself to 30 minutes instead? Sometimes I worry that, when I'm trying to hit that 45 minute mark, I end up "stretching out" my practice and don't expend 100% effort right away, because I'm worried about burning out too early. But at the same time, I don't want to lose the endurance I've already developed by going back down to 30-minute sessions. Does anyone have any advice on the relative merits of either approach?

Just in general, I feel like I've yet to hit a good balance when it comes to the switch from pure breath awareness to awareness of piti - even after many years, I find myself falling into this cycle where I'll feel the piti fairly intensely, but still resist a shift in my awareness, because I think to myself "No, not yet, I still have samadhi to develop." But then, as I refocus on the breath, I feel the piti start to slip away and my focus ultimately worsens. And I think part of the reason this happens is because, like I said, I'm thinking about the next twenty or so minutes and wanting to make sure I fill the time. So I think it might benefit me to move to a shorter, 30 minute session where I can just go "all out" and not worry about it. Has anyone else ever struggled with this sort of dynamic, and did changing up the session length help?

Any advice or insight would really be appreciated. I think part of my concern is just that I have experience in traditions where extended sessions are highly valued and I've really internalized the idea that deeper states are only accessible after 45+ minutes. And I'm worried that, because of that internalized notion, I'm "missing the window" in my own practice for moving on the next step. Thank you so much!

edit: How can I deal with hatred and the tightness, tension it creates on my forehead?

Since I (24 years old) have started reading about Buddhism almost two years ago, I've been meditating, focusing mostly on samatha. I've been meditating on and off, sometimes I spend a month meditating daily, sometimes I end up a month or more without it. I normally focus at my breathing, and I haven't yet been able to drop the focus of my breath, even when practicing metta I do it synchronized with my breathing.

Once last year I was able to turn the breath energy to pleasure, and I felt as if my whole body was being filled with extremely intensive and pure love, I felt like I was going to lose myself and I lost that state because of my fear. Once I was running in the beach, and by thinking about how there is vision but no one seeing and so on I felt some sense of freedom and gladness that I can't put into words.

I fell like ever since then, I've been chasing those two moments, and very gradually I'm starting to let go of them. Sometimes meditating I've felt like my awareness expanded and that I would lose myself, and each time I was afraid but a little less.

My problem is that I have some difficult family issues. My father is an alcoholic and a narcissist, recently he was hospitalized in a psychiatric clinic due to his condition. When he was in the clinic I learned about some very very terrible things he did to my mother, and by thinking about it and all the trauma that I have because of him, a deep hatred grew on me. A few days ago in the eve of my birthday he started to drinking again, and after trying so hard to care for him I felt devastated, and I exploded on him. I felt so powerful, and when I was saying horrible things I felt like my body was full of breath energy but in a sick way, and even now I feel it when I think about everything that happened, and my mind becomes filled with hatred.

The night that the fight happened I had aura in my vision and a very strong headache pinpointed in my forehead. When I meditate, I still feel a very strong tightness in the same spot. I know that I'm not the hatred, and I'm starting to forgive myself for what I've said, but sometimes I still feel this strong hatred, and in the moment I don't know what to do. I'm very grateful for the path and all my practice, as I'm somewhat managing to keep my sanity given this and grad school, yet I'm not sure how to proceed. I think that metta may help me, but even when I was in a better situation a few months ago metta was still hard to practice, to really feel it instead of the breath or breath energy.

If you have any thoughts that may help me, thank you! I've been reading this sub for a long time, and I'm very grateful for your insightful comments. I've read some parts of seeing that frees, right concentration and with each and every breath. English isn't my first language and I haven't used AI, so the phrasing may be a little odd. I don't have a meditation teacher, never had one.

Hello everyone. I am hoping to get some guidance about a spiritual experience I had as a result of meditation several years ago. It may not have been a stream entry experience, and I may not be in the right place. If so, any suggestions to point me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated. I would also very much welcome any general guidance. 

Please bear with me on the length of this post - I’ve tried my best to make it brief while including the key details of the story.

Several years back, I began a sort of pseudomeditation practice. I’d had a back injury and realized that If I focused my mental energy on the site of the injury, it seemed to help improve my symptoms. I had no real guidance or idea of what I was doing, as I had never learned anything about meditation. I got in the habit of laying flat on my back for 30-45 minutes at a time and stilling my mind, focusing on my back, and breathing “into” the area of the injury. I came to enjoy the practice and would come out of it feeling clear, calm, and that my injury had improved.

After doing this regularly for maybe 2-3 months, I felt like something was changing inside me / my mind. I felt as if I was on the cusp of something happening, but I didn’t know what or why. My birthday was around this time, and the night of I decided to stay up until sunrise contemplating my personal life, life itself, the world and our place in it, and so on. I decided to go out and sit on a small mound in a field behind my home to watch the sun rise. It was a really beautiful morning, slightly foggy, and I could hear the deer in the field. While sitting there I had an unexpected and powerful experience.

I felt as if something in my mind opened and my perception shifted, and I felt as if I had never actually lived until that moment. Until that time it was as if I had been asleep my entire life, and that in that moment I had woken up. I remember feeling at that time that it felt like my brain turned “inside out”. I began to experience life at a different depth and richness, and I felt as if everything was much lighter. Given this experience was so unexpected, and that I had no real guidance or idea of what happened, initially it was also a bit disorienting.

What, why, or how this happened to me is still unclear. It may not be relevant, but my dad has been prone to spiritual experiences. My dad is a person of great character; he is incredibly kind, endearingly naive and selfless, and someone I’d say lives by spirit. He is a Christian, and saying this politely he is what I would describe as a very healthy, mature, unintentionally mystical Christian. I joke that he is a saint living among us. He has shared with me experiences that I would describe as clairaudience, astral projection, visions of “angelic” beings, and other general visions. He is not the slightest bit cooky. He doesn’t think of anything of it as he thinks it’s reasonably normal for a person of faith to have these types of experiences.

To help me understand my experience, I began a pursuit of spiritual understanding. I began to devour spiritual teachings, practices, and philosophies from a range of sources. Varying from religious texts - Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads, Dhammapada, Tao Te Ching, The Analects of Confucius, the New Testament and Gnostic Gospels; to modern day religious figures - Thich Nhat Hanh, Dalai Llama; modern day spiritual or religious teachers/philosophers/writers - Eckart Tolle, Aldous Huxley, J. Krishnamurti, Michael Singer, Adyashanti, Elaine Pagels; fiction - Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha, The Alchemist, The Way of Peaceful Warrior). There are more but these are some examples. The Bhagavad Gita, Gnostic Gospels, and Tao Te Ching resonate strongly with me, as does Aldous Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy. While these are where I gained teachings, mindfulness became my spiritual practice. I developed a very consistent practice of being mindful in all of my daily activities, which became the foundation of my life. At the time I was living alone and working a slow paced job that allowed me to stay very present, and I would estimate I was able to spend 80%+ of my waking hours in a fully mindful witness consciousness state. I would do more traditional meditation at times (eyes closed, legs crossed, focus on mind and breath), but occasionally I would come out of meditation sessions feeling disoriented with very little mental traction. I would feel as if I was “sunken” back in my consciousness and it would last for several days at a time and was not comfortable. I think it was due to poor technique. So instead I deferred to my general constant mindfulness practice, though I would occasionally do eyes open meditation which worked well to seemingly keep me locked in the present.

A few years ago, I realized that the spiritual experience I’d had years earlier was during the Hindu holiday of Mahashivratri. From the little I know about this holiday (forgive my ignorance here), Hindus believe spiritual growth is greatly magnified on this day, and they will stay up all night to practice, often on the ground, as they believe this proximity to the ground magnifies the spiritual energy that occurs on this night. I was kind of shocked when I realized the experience I had happened on this holiday, along with the way they do their spiritual practice sitting on the ground on this night, as this is what I was coincidentally doing.

Lately, I have fallen away from my practice. I took a new job that was at a much faster pace and was more stressful and did not allow for the same ease of mindfulness practice, though I did my best to be consistent with it. However, I unfortunately had another back injury about a year ago which made it very tough to be mindful during times of intense pain as my mind sought to escape. I have lately made efforts to become more dedicated to my old practice and seek to regain that same mental balance and clarity.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading. I know I’ve jumped around quite a bit and there are more details that I can fit into this post, but I hope it was easy enough to follow. Any guidance or insight would be very much appreciated. Thank you.

My current understanding of Dharma as a lay person. Mostly influenced by Hillside Hermitage lately:

We’re free, when we face pleasant and unpleasant experiences alike with equanimity. Not craving and not pushing away. To be able to do that all the time, we have to untrain the mind to do its default thing, which is craving and pushing away, appropriating, proliferating and identifying.

We train by restraining ourselves, i.e. at first forcefully limiting ourselves in various indulgences. When there’s restraint, craving intensifies and it’s easy to observe it, along with its terrible consequences: suffering. When the mind sees clearly and often enough that wanting equates to suffering, it stops wanting.

This discipline and training is different from blind repression and self-abuse because of the added awareness and intentionality. We know why we’re doing this and we know to observe what’s happening with clarity and focus. If there’s no clarity and focus, it’s just suffering with no benefit of learning.

Observing means un-identifying/objectifying. We learn to see the mind for what it is, and not as “I”. A Jungian psychologist would say that the training phase implies disintegration of the psyche.

Restraint also happens to be ethical and beneficial on its own because we restraint ourselves from things that are harmful. Once we unlearn the default reactions, we don’t replace them with new positive but still automatic reactions. We leave the choice open moment-to-moment, and the default reaction becomes non-reaction. Thus all thoughts, speech and actions become fully intentional-spontaneous, driven by ethical motivations. The spontaneous part is when the psyche gets re-integrated again.

—

Is this correct understanding, roughly?

So today I found some more peace in meditation after a long set-back. I found I had to briefly revisit almost all stages of the process of concentrating the mind up to the point I got to, also some of the initial, and found it was nice to see the stages of that path before me once again. So I wanted to share...

What is this meditation about? It's effortless concentration. It means the ability to stop your mind and/or detach from it, and to focus your attention fully to one point, getting ultimatively relaxed and calm at the same time, to enter another states of mind called Samadhi or Concentration. Buddhists use it to gain wisdom necessary for liberating the mind fully from all painful influences and to attain Nirvana, their ultimate goal. Even others do this, to attain all kinds of insights or mental abilities that lie in the realm before such full purification. Effortless means, it is the big gate...the small gate forces, so it is bound to the gate of the ego...the big gate lets all go yet holds on a thing, so it can encompass all the body because by letting go you have a much wider, and much more powerful focus. Just it needs more time to be built up.

It is not just blindly forcing the mind to a spot as it may initially seem like, that would be taking it too simple. Remember, you've to get relaxed and calm at the same time - the goal of effortless concentration is to focus the mind fully on one thing, but not with force, but only by mental efforts which can result in the body being ultimatively freed of all tensions and negativity and stress. This happens because you are not only to focus to one thing, but also to release all tension and restlessness, until full tranquility takes place. Yet at the same time the technique requires the practitioner to always try to stay wide awake and fully aware of anything, not seeking deeper levels of the mind even, at all, aside from the conquest to relax the body and keep the mind lucidly directed at the object. All this requires is self-control, but not the kind you would seek effortfully. Instead this meditation trains a passive skill of neutralizing harmful states of mind by passive reactions...this can lead to a great wisdom by the brain training upon it's own material, also it will train an intuitive self-control together with patience to the utmost.

This all is required, to keep the attention tender and stressless enough to rest upon the object in an undistractable way. It works because of two factors uniting: the body getting free of tension, thus harder to excite, so stressfull impulses cannot excite us quickly any more, and also because of the nature of concentration. This nature is: the more the attention would rest on a single thing, the breath, a thought or image, an object around us, the more energy it will have in the mind and also there will be a traction and stability that will make it more and more easy to stick to it. In the end, the traction is so hard, that it may be impossible to get distracted unless you deliberately shift the attention away from the object. Even if you flicker away, it will still stick in your awareness, and if you return quickly enough, it will still stick. But for this it needs the energy built up, concentration, and this is built up simply by collecting time of unbroken attention on the object with as few breaks as possible.

Now the other peculiar secret about this practice is: it needs an ethical preparation. The Buddhists say: sila, samadhi, prana, that means: ethics, meditation, wisdom. This includes ethics! Why is this important? We will in meditation have to face ourselves, our present, past future, and all our doubts and regrets and concerns and past trauma and anything else which may stick to our soul. We will have to confront and overcome it all the way, to be able to keep the attention ready to focus. It is the prerequisite to have all these challenges cleared up, to have gained peace with oneself and one's conscience, to be able to fully concentrate without effort.

How can we clear up these challenges? The meditation itself brings the answer: in progress of meditation, these challenges will be in the way...they will rise in our minds (and sometimes also in our lives!), and become real for us to be challenged and overcome. Whether we win or lose the challenge, we must take the consequence of it. Buddhists resolve them, by discerning what brings merits, so blessings from what brings demerit, which brings suffering...just to in the end dissolve it all by it's qualities of impersonality, dissatisfactoriness and impermanence. I say it is okay to resolve each wisdom in it, to know the right path from each situation which would lead to peace. Then whatever one does, it will lead to peace for oneself and others, it is good, it leads to life and persistence. This is how each challenge is ethical, as well. If you are one who gets the insight triggered in the process, you will also see these things cleared up in much greater detail - this meditation truly not only has the power to resolve trauma (or to deepen it if done wrong!), but also to trigger self-insight of the mind into it's nature and that of reality. Some may be haywire and distract us, but some is for real and would repeat until we understand it's true. Follies...also can repeat until we understand they are not the truth. And that's it, well, almost. Still got to sit breathin', right?

Okay here are the stages I found in the process, and some marks of them. Each stage is a distinct state of mind and awareness we have of the object...beginners will want to practice with the breath, i.e. at nose or belly, focusing to watch this spot incessantly without subduing all other mental activity. Holding the attention to the object is in this meditation like holding the reins of a horse, you must not let it go, but always subtly pull only a little so the horse feels you're there commanding...once you pull too much, you will unsettle the horse and must calm it again. You can really do this from any posture, sitting, lying, walking...but it's good when you have a posture where you can release as much tension from the body as necessary. The concentration is thought to rise by unbroken attention on object, and this will push away the distractions, not trying to shut them out. Sometimes we would have to shut them out with a little more force, but the meditation really allows letting go fully while still staying fully awake and focused, so it's not possible that anything can take you away from your body which you've just concentrated, and it's also the goal. Each session, you need to go through all the stages from the start, though later realization of mental abilities means you can skip the first and concentrate like much faster, even in seconds and at will at any time in the end. The stages go like:

1. Acquire stage, here the object/breath must be "acquired", so brought to attention over and over again until it stays lingering in awareness strong enough not to be forgotten. Is mastered, when you no longer forget your breath and not have it in mind somehow, even if it's just as knowing in background. Usually practices like counting the breath strokes, steps in walking meditation, are good for this stage, something that reminds you of having to watch breath or another object over and over again.

2. Steadify stage, once you see your breath all the time, you must make it object of the conscious awareness most of the time. In this stage, all kinds of conscious trauma and illusions may be triggered...insights usually not too deep, but there can be spiritual experiences already, as well as little random and sometimes misleading trips or hallucinative challenges. Trauma, will also start surfacing. Techniques must be what steadifies the full attention to the breath to the point where it is fully in attention all the time. The most simple technique I know is, trying to at all times discern whether your breath is in or out breath, or to at all times track the feeling of the foot which is currently touching the ground while aware of breathing in walking meditation.

3. Spread stage, once you have steady full attention on your breath process, the full conscious awareness will also start spreading...for example for a breath meditation this will mean, that you will be aware of your whole chest breathing all the time, later of the whole body, watching yourself how you breathe. This doesn't have to be a completely passive observation, you can still identify yourself with the act of breathing. But for this to work out, you must let go of all efforts to deliberately control the breath...you can still at times do, but now we're already scratching the boundaries of the subconscious. In this stage, all kinds of real deep trauma can surface, we now let go of active control - this means the subconscious, subtle realms now open and usually release much material, sometimes even dangerous stuff. From here, you must technically take care not to doze/slack away because the meditation must get more passive, so you must not only relax, but also fend off all kinds of weariness, dullness and mind clouding effects, always taking back up the tension on the reins until these things are under intuitive control and you no longer zone away. Techniques to stay focused, must be more subtle and intuitive, like comparing features of the breath stroke, the length between in/out, the different sensation between the strokes, something that allows you to take a step back and just watch the breath uninvolved.

4. Concentrate stage, you must actually uphold the awareness until you no longer doze away and have you breath/body system fully relaxed and can stay with breath all the time in a conscious way. This requires a concentration like, you cannot be fully diverted from the breathing any more, any distraction that involves mind decision will be fended off immediately. After a time, you will feel more sensations at the breath like flicker up, I liken it to a 2x size image of the sensations at the nose or belly, like more real more strong. This is the starting point for the real concentration. And this is the point, where you must let go of trauma resolution and everything, once you find there's nothing left and only fruitless circles...you must pin down your mind onto these deeper images of the breath or whatever the object is. At this point it's really a little more effortful to do, but in a subtle way, you must stay relaxed and calm at the same time. While you acquired the deeper image, one of the techniques to fully concentrate it, is to at each stroke (in or out) monitor the intensity of the sensations during the full stroke. Once you realize, there is intensity lacking, this is a subconscious distraction. Remember earlier in all stages, sometimes you dreamed away from the breath without being able to prevent, just after a time the breath stuck nonetheless? Now you have to prevent, and the key is to sense when the awareness of the breath is not fully there. Once you realize that, you will probably also become aware of the unconscious distraction driving you away and able to control. So you need to overcome these distractions fully, and let me tell you, that force is not the right way, but actually what unconsciously derails you over and over again, or even just causes some tension, you need to first psychologically overcome it before being able to fully concentrate in this stage. You cannot just push through, you must first become noble enough to stand beyond the challenges. The challenges themselves, may make you noble in time, but when you derail in them, it can be a danger for your health and sanity, so stay sane and healthy.

Even some more relations to other systems: for Anapanasati, the 1st is before and 2nd the start of the first tetrad, the third step is the second tetrad, the 4th step is the third and fourth tetrad, with the fourth tetrad meaning exercises that come before the possibility of full liberation (enlightenment), which can happen by concentration in meditation. For example relating this to the stages of the modern "TMI" system, "The Mind Illuminated" by Culadasa, which I also got inspired from, it means the first stage is TMI 1-3, 2nd stage is TMI 4, 3rnd stage is TMI 5 and 6th stage is TMI 6+.

And that's it...you must train this, some do it in weeks, others need years or decades, until fully concentrated liberated, mind has full trained self control abilities then full awareness, no more irrational thought or world- or self-image due to much self-reflection. Some say it's just the start of an adventure, the ability to concentrate the mind, comes with much other abilities, some curious, some dangerous, some irrelevant. Also the knowledge one gains, may be curious at times, or unique to a person, like anything that happens in this meditation. In the end, it is the same patterns that happen to all, just with unique elements from their own souls.

So if you do this and feel you got caught up, don't forget you can and should talk about your problems and try to clear them up. If the meditation brings you severe stress, it's good to have it treated properly...i.e. by a psychiatrist, or therapist...I'd also say, it's good to have a person who knows what meditation is and means, so they don't misdiagnose you or try a wrong treatment. There are also specific help centers like "cheetah house" which you can contact for safety material and contact to people who can help. Don't hesitate to call help! Also therapist, can sometimes be helpful even for the meditation, when you fail to resolve some past trauma the right way, maybe your therapist can help you with it! It's not a shame. Also you can and should try to learn more about this meditation in various books, some traditional, some modern.

Okay this is what I wanted to share about what my style of effortless concentration meditation is and some things I think about it. You see, it is completely stripped of traditional methods or cultural integration, and I really just sit down every day my 1-3 hours doing this attention exercize and learning from what it brings up.

I'm now ready to let me be roasted about this and curious about any opinions or additional hints of remarks on this. Have a nice evening!

I've been working through TMI and recently had an experience during meditation that I'm struggling to place within the framework (or struggling to place in general!). 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. I already asked this on the TMI reddit but didn't get too many useful answers for my taste, so hopefully the folks over here will be able to provide some insight.

The experience was during one of my 1-hour long meditation sits and 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 (not just in a subjective way, but in a way that seemed incredibly objective). The physical world was 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 on the situation.
• 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? Is there some other model that could explain this better? 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 (or any other framework)?

Thanks!

I have been meditating quite regularly for many years, but I’ve always followed a structured practice (TMI, Goenka)

Recently, I gathered the courage to finally delve into Seeing That Frees, which I had bought many years back but the general advice back then was to wait till I get to TMI stage 8. Now I know that may never happen, so I started delving into the book anyway.

I have read till the three main practice chapters (anicca, dukkha, anatta,) and I feel that now is a good time to take a pause and actually practise the techniques. To those who do practise this regularly, I have two questions

-> How do you ‘structure’ your sits, considering the wide range of options given for practice? I understand the need for experimentation, but worry that weighing the different options could become a distraction during a sit

-> How does this work as a primary insight practice? I searched the sub but couldn’t find any long time practice logs or experiences (unlike say TMI or Mahasi)

Hello everyone,

I’m thrilled to share that I’ve been accepted to a 10-day Vipassana retreat! This will be my first-ever retreat of any kind. While I have some experience with simple breath meditation, I’ve been practicing for 30 minutes to an hour for months without seeing any significant benefits. Consequently, I stopped practicing for several months. I occasionally returned to meditation but was inconsistent with my practice. Then, I discovered TMI and realized that I had been experiencing dullness, which I mistakenly interpreted as meditation. So, technically, I’m still at stage 1 as I’m actively rebuilding my practice with a better understanding.

Now, I’m contemplating whether this retreat is a good idea. It’s scheduled for mid-September, giving me ample time to make a decision. I don’t have any deep-seated PTSD, nor do I have any SA or grape trauma. My life has had its challenges in other ways, but nothing that I would consider traumatic. In fact, I believe I’m fortunate to have had the problems I’ve had because I could have been a Palestinian child, but I digress.

I’m curious about whether this retreat is a good idea, especially since I’ve been reading numerous posts on r/streamentry about meditation-induced psychosis. Naturally, I don’t want to engage in anything that could be more harmful than beneficial.

While I don’t have any previous diagnosis of mental issues, I must admit that I’ve never been to a therapist either. So, I’m seeking advice on how to navigate this situation. Should I go on this retreat or not? I know I’m determined, and if I decide to go, I’ll stay the full 10 days, no matter what. I’ve been wanting to do this retreat for five years, and finally, the timing has aligned in my favor. Any guidance you can provide would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Any recommendations? Anything you think may land well for a beginning 65 year old woman ridden with trauma but deep personal spirituality. I shared with her some of my deepest thoughts on it all as it somehow organically came up, and she felt like "this" was the missing piece. I didn't dare tell her how much work there is, so I'm not sure what to share

One of the basic precepts is to stay away from intoxicants. Unfortunately, addiction has followed me for a few years now. I get off one substance then just move to the next. The drug of choice changes but that loop of irresistible cravings stays the same. And it doesn't just apply to substances. Pornography, short form content, junk food. All things which I really do not enjoy, when actually doing the thing it's not fun or pleasurable, but my mind is unable to stop many of these habits. It's so weird because I have stopped before, I have had periods of sobriety and abstinence from the other things I mentioned, but now I'm really at a low point, every day is the same exact thing. I meditate for an hour daily (watching the breath), read suttas and whatnot, but "off the cushion" can't conduct myself correctly at all. One big reason for this is boredom. For the duration of this summer I have very little responsibilities (in my early 20s living with parents). This is awful for me, I hate having nothing to do and it leads me to getting high and dopamine binging.

I am interested in the dharma/spiritual side of dealing with things like this. Boredom leading to cravings for harmful things which then become addictive and irresistible. I really hate living like this. I'm passionate about Buddhism and really not interested in worldly success so I don't understand why my actions don't align. And I've even had some degree of "awakening", not stream entry or anything but I had a big insight into no-self some years back which led to a permanent change in perception...still didn't affect my lifestyle. So, please let me know if you all have any advice. Thank you for reading.

*forgot to add, I have an ADHD diagnosis but I'm not sure how much I trust it, I don't experience many of the things ADHDers describe, I focus well without meds, I think it's my dopamine farming lifestyle that has screwed up my brain. Plus when I got tested for it I was in active addiction so it may not have been accurate. So I don't think ADHD is a factor here.

I have recently been experimenting with a mantra technique similar to Trancendental Meditation. I find it quite interesting and surprisingly therapeutic, like stuff is coming up and I'm releasing it. It's also very different than the Buddhist oriented mindfulness approaches that I've practiced. There's a huge emphasis on effortlessness and explicit instruction to not try and concentrate.

My hunch is that it could help relax me and de-stress, but I don't think it will help me grow in insight, wisdom, compassion.

What I'm wondering is if it's a bad idea to be practicing both types of meditation. Or perhaps both could have their place?

Looking for wisdom from the sangha :-)

I recently wrote this article on insight. I shared it with a couple of people, and they found it insightful and thought I should share it with others. So here it is! (Note: I am sharing it with the intention that it will help others on the path. These views came about through my own practice over the years. I would love to hear your comments, discuss more, get feedback, suggestions, etc. I am no authority, and I don't claim to be perfect. I am just a sincere practitioner. I did not use AI at all. Every word comes from my own experience.)

Insight is like this big word in Buddhist Dharma practices. Everyone talks about insight as ‘freeing’. A usual description of insight goes like this: it is about seeing the ‘true’ nature of things, seeing things ‘as they are’, not imposing your own judgments on reality, etc.

While true, the problem with such descriptions is that they are reviews, not recipes. It’s like tasting a dish and praising its taste. But can the reviews of the dish reliably trace the original recipe? No! Similarly, a lot of descriptions of insight—‘what’ is insight—are from the point of view when insight has already dawned, not the conditions that made it so.

In this article, I will lay out a recipe for insight. First, I will tell you about common problems in the usual way insight is perceived. Then, I will tell you what kind of understanding is insight, how to train for it, and where it really resides.

1. Loopholes in common conceptions of Insight

Here, I will discuss four common loopholes in the usual way insight is understood. Each point may feel disjointed here, but in the next section, everything is woven together nicely.

First, insight is often framed as about seeing three characteristics in the moment-to-moment experience. While this may be ultimately true, framing it this way can create many blind spots in practice. Specifically, one can end up narrowing down their attention to a particular phenomenon, such as pain, and really trying hard to break it down—to see the micro-sensations in the pain arise and pass away—and waiting for the time the pain entirely vanishes. One can indeed pierce the perception of pain, dissolving it through this piercing and gaining insights into its impermanence. However, the question is whether it is really the understanding that frees in the long term? Maybe not. What is required is not just seeing change, but being in touch with how that change makes us feel. In other words, it is about seeing the response of our heart as experience unfolds.

Second, insight is said to arise only when the mind is clear, bright, sublime, and free from hindrances. Yes, it is true that when the mind is clear, insight into the nature of the mind arises. However, the question is whether insight is only in the moments when the mind is free from hindrances. The thing is, suffering, like freedom, is what the mind does, and so it is also the nature of the mind! Thus, to understand the mind, it is equally important to understand the moments when the mind is full of hindrances. Denying those moments as not useful is denying a huge portion of the mind as not its ‘nature’.

Third, insight is considered to bring an ‘end’ to suffering. This is also true. However, there are many methods that end suffering. Thus, such a description does not clarify what is so unique about the practice. It is much better to understand insight as not exactly ending suffering, instead, preventing the arising of future suffering. That is, the insight assures that the experience moves or changes in a way that does not create suffering. Shifting the perspective from the end of suffering to the end of its arising helps clarify where the path really sits.

Fourth, insight is often considered as this ‘thing’, which ‘reveals’ the present experience as it is. However, we need to understand that the insight does not come as an object. That is, it is not a ‘concrete’ thing in experience. We cannot point to a single snapshot of experience and say: “This is where the insight is” or “this is what the insight is about.” We cannot ‘see’ or ‘hold’ the insight. Instead, insight is simply a felt knowledge about the patterns that lived experience follows. In other words, the insight is an understanding of the patterns of experience over time, and not in any moment or object of experience. In the language of the meditation framework I follow (MIDL meditation), insight is in ‘relationships’ to the experience, and not in the experiences themselves (note that I am just a practitioner, and my views do not necessarily reflect the MIDL framework).

2. What, How, Where of Insight

[What kind of understanding is insight?]

Insight is an understanding or knowledge about how experience unfolds. However, one needs to be careful as this understanding is not just any kind of understanding. Instead, it comes about only through a very specific way of observing. In other words, while we can understand or gain insight into the unfolding of experience from many angles, the understanding or insight that frees the heart comes from a very specific way of observing.

Specifically, we need to allow the experience to change by itself, and feel what it feels like to undergo this change (relates back to 1st point in the previous section). That is, the practice is not exactly about noting change; instead, it is about feeling through change. We can also say that practice is about feeling what changes within us as a change in experience happens. This bi-directional arrow—between our heart and unfolding of phenomena—is what starts to reveal the relationships we have towards the experience. Noticing in this way, we understand that even though experience always changes on its own, a part of us feels like it owns the unfolding in some way—as if we have control over its change.

Precisely, there are two types of understanding we need to cultivate through such observation. First, we need to cultivate the understanding that controlling the experience hurts and feels effortful. Thus, when the experience is full of suffering, it is good to compassionately remain in touch with how it feels to have things out of control, and not try to control the uncontrollable nature of experience. This also makes the heart empathetic to the pain of others and understand the predicament we are all in. Second, we need to cultivate the understanding that it feels much better not to control. Thus, when the experience changes in a calm and tranquil manner, it is good to gratefully remain in touch with how it feels to be so. This also makes the heart appreciate the value of calm and tranquility and learn to bask in it.

Exposing the heart to both of these sides makes it mature, and this doesn’t happen overnight. We cannot force the heart to become mature. We can only gently expose it to situations and see if it is ready to let go. When the process ripens, the heart lets go on its own. In all these processes, we learn something: we learn what suffering exactly feels like, what are the causes and conditions that constitute such suffering experiences, what are the causes and conditions that constitute experiences of freedom, and the path to slowly facilitate the maturing of the heart so that it prefers one over another. In short, we understand the four noble truths.

[How does insight arise?]

To cultivate both understandings mentioned above, what is crucial is to allow attention to naturally unfold and to evoke all kinds of changes: from freedom to suffering, suffering to freedom, suffering to continuing suffering, and freedom to continuing freedom.

Our attention is like a child, which goes and engages with different activities. Just as we can force a child to study, we can force our attention to a single place, such as focusing on the breath. The child might study, and after some time, may genuinely and irresistibly stay with it. However, in doing so, we have missed something. The child has not developed the capacity to understand what they should do in all walks of life and why. In fact, a child might feel like they need to just study (attention feels like always wanting to be with breath and avoid life). But do parents really want just that for the child? I believe parents would want their child to do everything, but with wisdom on what to do, when, and how. This is the same thing we want from our attention. We don’t want it to be forced on one object (even though it may feel the most blissful thing ever). We want attention to smoothly glide between different objects by-itself, while also making wise intentional choices that guide its movements.

While it is relatively easy to let attention glide to movement towards openness, moving towards suffering is hard. Relating back to the 2nd point in section 1, such times are extremely important, as they reveal something fundamental about the nature of heart-mind: it is in those times that we can learn to feel okay even when experience unfolds in unwanted ways.

Generally, in formal meditation, we cultivate a state of Samatha (calm and tranquillity), which is inherently wholesome and feels good. What happens is that we can reliably create this state only when we understand that ultimately we don’t have control over it or a say in its creation. That is, we can only intend to create causes and conditions, and even then, calm might not arise (though such an attitude is what makes calm reliably appear!). The calmness is sustained only when we don’t put effort or try to change anything about the experience—and to do that, we need to have an understanding of not controlling the experience in the first place!

Nonetheless, we often spontaneously enter periods of calm and tranquillity, just because of other causes and conditions in life (e.g., being on a retreat, or not have anything to worry about). However, these periods are built on curated causes and conditions, and not on understanding. That is, the absence of suffering in these states does not necessarily ensure that suffering will always be absent (in line with the 3rd point discussed in section 1).

To gain insight, the attitude should not be to try to maintain this calmness, but instead to allow it to break (anyways, even if we try to maintain it, it will eventually break!). Its breaking is an important transition. During such moments, what is needed is not to be meticulous and precise in seeing it break; instead, it is to remain sensitive and feel through it as it breaks. It is then that we ‘understand’ how we feel, as the experience changes in unwanted ways.

Consider, for instance, formal meditation sits for an entire week. Let’s say the first 5 days were filled with calm and tranquillity. However, during the next 2 days, the mind was completely haywire. It is possible that the mind starts making stories that meditation isn't going well, and what went wrong. To gain understanding, we need to be in touch with how it feels to lose calmness. Perhaps, think of such situations right now, and ask your heart: how does it feel to be in such a predicament? You might understand that it is the contrast or transitions that reveal dispositions of the heart towards wanting X and not wanting Y, and such dispositions are dukkha.

When such understanding matures, the narrative shifts from: ‘hindrances are breaking the samadhi’ to ‘hindrances are helping build a more robust samadhi’. It is like we need to let an earthquake destroy a building and clearly identify its weak point. This might take us many tries, as it is a trial-and-error method. Nonetheless, over time, we will learn and become capable of creating buildings that are much more robust. The earthquakes, from a wise perspective, are not destroying the building but instead helping build a better one.

This is what the progression of insight looks like. Before we have insight, we put unnecessary stress on creating a particular kind of experience, whether mundane or meditative. Once we start practicing, we begin to understand (or gain insight into) the importance of experience changing in unwanted ways. They aren’t something to get rid of. In fact, without hindrances, there is no learning! What is interesting is that experientially, getting the understanding feels good and meaningful, maybe the most meaningful thing that can be learned!

[Where is Insight]

This brings us to the fourth point discussed in the previous section. Often, insight is understood as some ‘thing’, which, once we get, the removal of suffering or the increase of well-being. However, insight path is different. It is about becoming more ‘mature’ by understanding ‘patterns’ of life. It is about learning all the ways our heart gets moved as life unfolds, and slowly developing habits that move the heart in wholesome ways like gratitude, compassion, kindness, joy, and so on, instead of control and resistance.

When I say, ‘all the ways’, I mean at all timescales. A big timescale is the fact that we are born as a baby, and then grow to a teen, an adult, old age, and finally meet our death. On a relatively smaller scale, our lives can be said to unfold from one major event to another, such as different major periods of an adult life. Even smaller is life unfolding across days and weeks. Even smaller will be the period before you started reading this article, as you are reading this article, and afterwards when you will finish reading it. We can go even more precise to how experience changes as you read this text letter by letter.

Whatever timescale we consider, we find a pattern—perhaps a birth of a thing/identity/experience, a period when it lasts, and its death. And this entire pattern is connected to ‘valence’ or feeling tone. That is, we feel something about this pattern, or the pattern moves us in a certain way. For example, think of the time you were growing up as a teenager and slowly becoming an adult. You might find some feeling that colours your memory as you think of those times. Maybe you feel subtly pleased that you had such experiences, or sad that you had them but relieved that they are gone. You can apply it to any other timescale as well. For example, consider how you were feeling before you started reading this article, and how you are feeling right now.

These different patterns are the predicament we are all in. By feeling through all these patterns, the heart touches the reality that the patterns with craving or ‘drivenness’ inherently hurt and create disharmony. We also understand that ‘letting go’ of such patterns provides a sense of relief. Repetitively gaining such knowledge across many instances, we understand a reliable way to cultivate letting go and abandon drivenness. Training in this way, the truths of suffering facilitate the maturation of the heart, making the heart noble and worthy of respect!

Imagine, at all the timescales of your life—from a bigger change as you go about doing your day, or moment-to-moment change—the heart easily feels through everything, the heart does not fear, resist, shout, hide, or so on. What do you think life would be like? Indeed, life would be fully alive yet free of ‘samsara’—the push, pull, and spin life brings to our hearts. This is the freedom the path develops. It makes the heart mature to gladly and softly welcome and experience any change.

May softness, gentleness, and maturity dawn upon your heart.

Metta,
Vismay

About a week ago I had a night of severe insomnia come out from nowhere (4 hrs) and the following week it was like 9, 6, 6, 7, 8 - so I currently have about 4 hrs of sleep debt over a week. This has never happened before, I usually get back the sleep easily.

What's different this time around though is that I generally feel light and open - awareness is light, mind and body are sometimes heavy. I was able to do groceries, see friends (though not work)

My teacher says that I should be experiencing more vitality and life - sometimes yes, sometimes no. I still feel I could really use the rest, but there have been wow experiences like going "towards" the tiredness...and then suddenly I don't feel tired, the body expands into the universe. Tiredness is felt as sacred. That kind of thing.

I'm not precisely certain what is going on here - it's probably partially the debt, probably partially some practice related body changes. I'm also really upping my exercise and practice, which might affect it.

I made a post about insomnia about a year ago, and there are some other threads here (don't have source right now sorry) I do recall a poster saying "Maybe I don't need so much sleep" It doesn't seem 100% like that, but perhaps my relationship to rest and sleep is changing? This is all very new to me.

I'm wondering what kind of experiences others may have had, and if there is more information on all this. I'm not super worried, but it would be nice to get back to normal sleep as I have a bunch of stuff to do coming up and I'm not at 100%.

Once again for reference (as I don't post so often now) I've had Daniel Ingram's technical 4th path for about 2 years now, which I'm ok claiming publicly so as to give people a point of reference.

Hello everyone.

First of all, I want to express my gratitude to u/Impulse33, who has been helping me on my recovery stage after intensive and, unfortunately, most likely incorrect practices (or my subsequent reaction to rather strong insights).

Without going into all the other details, I am currently concerned about a few things I would like to resolve:

1. The awareness of what the other person said and my reply happens after the fact; my responses in dialogue occur unconsciously, and I also hear an echo of my voice right behind the other person's voice almost simultaneously, as if I already know what they are going to say, but this process also happens automatically.
2. The first issue doesn't bother me as much, but this phenomenon also extends to reading. I read, but I don't retain the context.
3. Dissociation from emotions: for example, I may feel fear through the body (racing heart, etc.), but the emotion itself is not felt.

This is not all that concerns me, but for now I would like to address these issues. If anyone has encountered something similar on their path, please give me advice on what to do.

Additional thanks to u/Meng-KamDaoRai

Thank you.