---
title: Why Can't I See Through This Wall?
date: 2011-05-20
techne: :done
episteme: :believed
---

*At times I look back on attainments and ask myself what life was before them or what working up to the change felt like. This post is an emotional core-dump for that purpose.*

I sit down and the world shifts. Everything flickers. I look at a wall and it flickers. A little plush sheep, it flickers. I hear a car outside, the sound flickers. Everything is unstable, keeps popping in and out of existence, at high frequencies. Rarely, things [flange][Flanging].

Few thoughts are in my head. I'm quite content. I don't get distracted by thoughts anymore when trying to concentrate. I just get bored. Because I can't see through this fucking wall.

And this is not a metaphor. I sit down to meditate and stare at the wall. There's a [Kasina][], but really, I don't care. It blips out of existence soon enough, merging with the wall. I stare. It blips in, it fluctuates, the wall throws a few waves, occasionally the whole visual field moves as if someone was carrying away the screen in front of my eyes.

I don't care. [Jhana][] arise. Maybe even some happiness. It matters not to me. I ignore it, push it away. Because I want to see through this fucking wall.

It shifts again, it try modifying the intensity of my concentration, but it has no effect. Flickerflickerflicker, wobblewobblewobble, shiiiift. That's all that happens. I get bored.

Why do I even think I can see through this wall? Well, ok, that's not really what I'm trying to do. But that's what it feels like. Really what I'm doing is trying to trigger a buffer underrun. I want to pay attention to something while there isn't actually anything scheduled to be investigated. Whenever a sensation arises, "I" dislocate. At first, it felt like "I" was getting pulled to wherever the sensation arose, noticed it, then snapped back to the default somewhere behind my eyes. This is false. Really the sensation has its own space around it that it instantiates. As such, "spatial awareness" is part of the sensation, not of the actual act of paying attention. Or in other words, abstract space is itself a sensation and not always there.

Even motherfucking space flickers. Oh, a nice relaxing wave goes through some muscles. My spine straightens. I don't care. You flicker too.

In between each flicker there's a gap. It's really fucking short, but there's a gap. I try to perceive it, but I just get the wall or abstract space or some happy little bliss-wave instead. Go away, I don't like you, I want the gap! There's one thing that doesn't flicker and that's what I'm trying to catch. I picked the most solid thing I could find. *Looking at a wall*, pretty solid sensation. But "I" constantly dislocate and now the wall flickers. Sometimes I count each time the wall is actually there. I just go "t-t-t-t-t-t-" because even "tick" takes too long to think. I want to see what's there when the wall isn't there. Enormous pressure builds in my head. My eyes are shaking. I get triple vision. (That's when you get double vision, but you also have an afterimage that interferes with it.) I feel like jumping up and strangling someone. Or something. Maybe this wall.

I try to calm down, pay some attention to the body, to the breath. Breath doesn't flicker so badly. Muscle contractions don't flicker much and they feel good. A bit of pressure goes away. Then I hear some bird outside and wham my attention jumps "breath-bird-breath-bird-breath-bird" flickerflickerflicker. Gah. Back to the wall.

My attention widens and narrows arbitrarily. Depth perception sometimes goes offline for a bit. My eyes constantly lose focus and twitch. My visual fields keeps moving upwards even if I don't move my eyeballs. Light levels morph, the wall becomes almost black sometimes.

I don't care about any of that. I just want to see through that wall.
