Patrick said:
[...]My little i's (I've long thought of them as "drunken monkeys") have been objecting vehemently to my EE practice; from this I conclude that EE must be a very good thing for the I AM that I seek. The monkeys, though not exceptionally creative at this point, are persistant:[...]
[t]he latest effort has to do with the headphones I've used from the start: they suddenly hurt my ears! Therefore, the monkeys whisper, you would be wise to suspend this business indefinitely until such time as adequately comfortable headphones can be secured.[...]
My feeling at that time was that the "pain" was an imaginary thing, conjured by the little i's or "drunken monkeys" of the mind as a distraction to inhibit or discourage daily EE, and I persisted with the headphones for three days, until I began to perceive the increasing "pain" as real pain. It seemed a peculiar sort of pain though, in that poking around my left ear (where it seemed located) after EE produced no residual feeling of discomfort.
So, I thought, peculiar and perhaps imaginary as this may be, it still possesses a reality sufficient to be intrusive and distracting; I began using external speakers for EE, anticipating a "stupid me, problem solved" ending.
This was the case for another 3-4 days, no pain--must have been the headphones. Then I happened(?) to read a Cassiopaean Session transcript that discussed anticipation and began thinking about anticipation of an outcome of an event or activity as a possible block to accurate perception of the actual thing. I then thought back to my halfhearted embrace of the idea of the headphones as the culprit in the pain issue, and my anticipation that dispensing with them would settle the issue. Good grief! am I needlessly complicating this thing? At any rate, I thought I could try to do with as little anticipation in my life as possible and resolved to try to have no expectations when starting EE daily, to simply observe to the best of my ability what was really there.
One thing that was really there was this pain again (without headphones), and right at the very beginning of the meditation section. It quickly came to me that to continue to view this as an unwelcome interference
was to anticipate what I imagined the results of the meditation might be if this pain, actually present and real enough, weren't present. I began to be able to calmly observe it's arrival without undue distraction and watch it leave, by degrees, later.
This left ear pain feeling always became noticeable directly before meditation, starting during Beatha 2 days weekly and during late stage pipe-breathing or WB during the shorter practices and subsiding completely after no more than an hour of completing meditation. The entire duration of this after it's reappearance was about 8-10 days (declining in intensity over the last 3 days of the period) and it's been absent now for 5 days with or without headphones.
I found, toward the end stages of this, that I could detect remnants of the pain after meditation by vigorous movement of my lower jaw, and it's actual location seemed to be in the hinge mechanism of the jaw, and not the ear at all. Searching "pain" on this topic (EE) provided several participant reports of something similar, and I initially felt pretty silly for doing this search later rather than sooner. My feeling about it now is that everything happened in the order necessary for me, individually, to learn; my embryonic self-observation efforts were exercised and I was engaged in a lot of helpful thinking on the subject of anticipation (info available in various threads on the forum and:
http://cassiopedia.org/glossary/Special:Search?search=anticipation&go=Go).
I've tried to objectively explain this series of experiences and perceptions, and a detached summary leaves me with this: 1) guy experiences pain in left ear but thinks pain is imaginary product of drunken monkeys in his mind 2) then believes pain possibly real (product of headphones) 3) removes headphones...no pain for days 4) reads about anticipation...pain returns w/o headphones 5) pain remains and is observed to be real(?) but in different location than originally thought 6) pain leaves...not felt with or w/o headphones.
Mad ramblings of a lunatic? A strong case could be made. No shrinks for me, though, as I'm seeing a world that appears to be a perpetual ruin in the making, largely run and populated by the sane, and thinking that maybe being a bit off-kilter is not a bad thing.
A little over three months of EE and my more recent beginnings of self-observation have helped me to see a number of subtle aspects of my mental landscape (most of them unpleasant) that are going to require will and effort to understand and it looks to be an adventure. I don't know if EE is serving as a guide, a catalyst or a goad, but it seems to be helping me to a state that's more receptive to knowledge if not, in fact, more knowledgeable.
I have no idea what the pain, real or not, meant or didn't mean and am not actively concerned with that; it was what it was and it's importance, if any, will become apparent at the appropriate time. I've read the C's say that learning is fun! many times, but I don't recall them saying that it would be neat and orderly...or painless. So, faith.
Thank you for your thoughtful replies to my previous posts.
