Yadid Bee:
Hi Lee,
Thats for the report.
Could you please share some of your practice background from before you went on this intensive practice period?
And also, could you please share the way in which you practiced before you got stream entry..
Thanks

Hi Yadid,
Sorry for the delay. I'm going into substantial detail detail here hoping its value will out-way any personal indulgence in "my story"
I've been drawn to eastern religion and the idea of enlightenment since I was a teen. When I was 18, I read Siddhartha in one sitting and had a shift in consciousness. I thought I was enlightened for about 2 weeks but that faded. I didn't find a formal practice until about 20 years later.
I started serious Buddhist practice in May of 2007 inspired by Daniel's interview on Buddhist Geeks and his book. I practiced 1-2 hours a day following the breath as best I could until I could maintain a some semblance of concentration. After 4-6 weeks I seemed to find a nice pleasant sweet spot and guessed that to be Access Concentration or first nana. In July 2007 I went on a 7 day visit to Bhavana with the goal of crossing the A&P. I focused on noting and worked to note continuously all day long. It was very challenging and I was over-efforting and struggling with thoughts of judgment and self-recrimination whenever I would catch myself off. Around the 4th day after 3 days of pushing myself too hard, I had a spontaneous thought "you are so hard on yourself". At that point, I broke down. I saw clearly how my burning ambition toward whatever I was obsessing over would drive me to be a major jerk to myself and to others. I began to weep and sob deeply for many minutes. After, I held practice more lightly. I suspect I went through some early stages in the progress of insight but did not cross the A&P.
Next I went on a 14 day retreat at Tathagata Meditation Center in San Jose. Here I did all Mahasi noting. It felt I was floundering for the first few days not able to concentrate or get anywhere. On the third day I started working with Daniels technique to note sensations as fast as possible. In walking meditation I would note "lift, lift lift lift, move move move move, touch, touch, touch, touch touch" working diligently to see every frame of sensation. I did the same kind of noting with the rising and falling in sitting meditation. The evening of the third day the ability to see the individual frames became easy. I was flooded with happiness, bliss, energy and the ability to see 20-30 sensations a second. I remember doing walking meditation crying in bliss and joy at the ability and the intimacy of seeing sensations so fast and so close. Fairly classic A&P stuff. I enjoyed this stage over the next few days. A few times, I spontaneously fell into what I guess to be the second Jhana. My mind would suddenly see this place to relax into that was incredibly pleasant and stable state filled with rapture and bliss but didn't require much effort.
On the afternoon of the 8th day the dark night came despite not having an A&P Event I could clearly recognize. I don't remember the individual Nana's clearly. I do remember starting to look more deeply at my beliefs, judgments and thoughts about the world. They were just as impermanent and insubstantial as the phenomena I was watching in A&P but somehow that realization hit much closer to home. I began doubting and disbelieving all my ideas and preconceptions about life. The distinct sense that there was nothing to believe in, no where to rest, nothing to stand on dominated my thoughts. I became obsessed with staying utterly in the moment. I would force the mind in the present moment because everything else was bullshit. I noted with great effort attempting to banish even a moment of wandering mind. As the day progressed, things started to get more physically unpleasant. During walking meditation, I began experiencing disorienting waves of vibrations running through my face and chest giving me vertigo and making me feel sick. I wondered if I was going to faint or fall to the ground. This Dark Night phase lasted from about 2PM until I went to bed at 10PM.
The next morning, everything seemed ok, effortless, easy. The storm had passed. My ideas, thoughts and beliefs were still impermanent, unsatisfactory and insubstantial but I was ok with that. On the 10th day, equanimity deepened and I began to have some interesting perceptions. In sitting meditation, a loud sound would arise that would startle me, but my experience of it was sound vibration interacting with body vibrations generating fear vibrations. And all the vibrations felt pretty much the same. However, my meditation sessions were very inconsistent. Many sessions had excessive wandering mind and spacing out. I didn't care much to put effort into practicing, but I didn't have a feel for effortless practice yet. Occasionally I would have a profound equanimous sit, but often I would laze into the pleasant sensations of concentration while I let the mind spin off on new content. And equanimity provided plenty of new content for the mind to spin on. One challenge for me in equanimity is tremendous creativity often arises and I get enchanted by the new ideas
The next few days I spent in equanimity and wallowing in content and then the retreat ended. Equanimity mostly persisted in real life. Over the next year I did 3 different retreats. Two of which I got back to Equanimity but stalled there or would cycle between the Dark Night and Equanimity. Then I started my Sabbatical mid January 2008.
My first Sabbatical retreat was 3 1/2 weeks at MBMC. I intended to stay 3 months but my back gave out on me. Initially it was very difficult. The center was very hot, very loud and had mosquitoes with no screens on the windows. Regardless I did the best I could. By this time, it was very difficult to track progress. I felt I was bouncing all over the Nanas. I was also struggling with content around quitting my job and ending a 10 year relationship and feeling like I was getting nowhere. There were some definite periods that resembled A&P, Dark Night and Equanimity but they were jumbled and seemed out of order. I speculate this may be because I had gone up and down this territory many times by this point.
Eventually the Sayadaw (Thurzana) left and a new Sayadaw (Panathami) came for a visit. Panathami met with me for 25 minutes and heard my report and proceeded to give me a long intense speech about just focusing on noting rising and falling and nothing else and to give heroric effort. I was so sensitive and his presence was so strong I did just that. Unfortunately more effort and narrow focus was not what I needed, but I pressed and forced inspired by his strength of message. I regressed over the next 2 days and my body rebelled. It seemed I was replaying knowledge of mind and body and knowledge of cause and effect again and again unable to break out with the way I was practicing. Then my back gave out and I decided to leave retreat for a week to recover.
I spoke with Vince, Daniel, Constance, Tarin and a Teacher I had worked with back at IMS. All helped to reinforce that I just needed to keep practicing and get it done. I went back a week later and started mixing in some Adyashanti dharma talks as well as some self-inquiry (who am I) with the noting practice. This time right effort seemed natural and easy. I fell back into a solid groove quickly. On the 5th and 6th days I was having some solid sittings where thought became easy to note and penetrate. At the end of the 7th day during lying meditation I was tuned into the stream of impermanence in the breath though I was able to see vibrations throughout the body quite easily. I also started to notice pleasant tingling rapturous sensations. I noted pleasant, rapture. I was probably noting 1 in 10 or 20 objects that i noticed. I also started to notice the other factors of awakening. Mindfulness was strong sensations were intensifying and energy was rising. Concentration was strong, equanimity and tranquility were strong. I noted all these. I noticed sensations of spaciousness, I noticed sensations of expectation. I noted these as well. As the intensity strengthened I was utterly determined not to get sucked into thought, sensation or anticipation. I stayed with the intensifying experience noting and noticing everything I could. Then as the crescendo of experience started to peak, there were 2 unknowing moments. Something seemed to have happened but I didn't know what it was.
Then reality warped back and my state was completely different. The intensity, energy and rapture were gone. There was an intuitive sense that something had happened. I asked myself "was that it? was that stream entry?". I examined the mental state. Seemed quiet, maybe too quiet. Something seemed different. Like some annoying stuff that the brain normally does, it stopped doing and I intuitively sensed that it wouldn't be doing "it" anymore. But I couldn't really put my finger on what "it" was. Also, obsession with attainment and goals in practice literally dropped away. In fact, I felt like taking a break from practice even though I had only been there a week. Somehow with the lack of desire for attainment, intensive practice seemed much less appealing. I reached out to a few people and relayed my experience as there was no Sayadaw at the time. Basically the response I got was maybe, maybe not. I practiced half heatedly for a week then left retreat again. Over the next few weeks I didn't notice review fruitions and I didn't notice cycling so I wrote it off as something other than stream entry.
A few months later I started noticing an odd phenomena. At first I thought it was me being startled or falling a sleep and jerking awake but it wasn't that. It didn't happen when I was really sleepy. It seemed to happen when my attention was soft and there was no efforting or grasping. Often, it would come just as a very light dreamy state fell over me. Now I didn't notice the entrance to the event because I only seemed to get it when I was spaced out and not looking for it. But what I did notice was a sense of reality or consciousness re-engaging. I wasn't seeing reality drop out directly but it was obvious that there was a drop out when reality would come back in. I began to suspect these were review fruitions. I spoke with Kenneth, relayed my possible stream entry story and these weird moments of reality re-engaging itself and he seemed pretty convinced that I had experienced stream entry and was having review fruitions.
As mentioned in my other posts, when I started my next retreat at Forest Refuge, the first few days were filled with many review fruitions. And after completing path at FR, the fruitions became much stronger and easier to spot. I usually experience it as all 6 sense doors stopping and starting but when it starts, sensations are either too strong or to weak for a moment and then consciousness either quickly shifts up or down to the right level of intensity. Now off retreat I can still see them but they are much more subtle. I don't have as much control over them as many post stream enterers do but I'm learning.
-Lee