Hello Everyone,
This is my first post, though I've been lurking (i.e. reading obsessively) on the site for several months now. Despite having many questions and actually "joining" the site a couple months ago to ask them, I have avoided posting mostly out of a superficial self-conscious anxiety and difficulty in making a coherent post about my experiences without writing a novel. I'm finally biting the proverbial bullet, thinking that perhaps getting my thoughts in writing will help put them in better perspective. Gaining some wisdom/insight from you all would be great too.
I've got an upcoming Goenka retreat in June that I'm on the fence about attending, mostly because of fear from reading DN experiences and my apprehension of putting my family through a DN-fueled neurotic breakdown. I'm reluctant to name drop, but Eric O's recent posts illustrate exactly of what I'm afraid. I'm hoping his experiences settle quickly and wish him the best with quickly gained progress; my fear is that a similar thing will occur to "this me" and I'll hence be incapable of transcending these stages in a time frame that is measured NOT IN months or years.
Now, pardon the cliche, but the glass-half-full part of me believes that I may be currently experiencing what MTCB refers to as the 'dark night yogi', having begun gaining insight inadvertently into the DN nanas many years ago while experimenting with a variety of completely undisciplined and unguided contemplative practices, mostly involving the use of psilocibin mushrooms and other psychotropic substances like cannabis that lasted a year or two. Around this time (college-age years, doing the college culture thingy) while/soon after diving into these practices, I began a period of experiencing intense fear and anxiety; daily, mostly middle of night but not always...classic "panic attack" symptoms. My current meditation practices have helped me understand and realize more about this anxiety and fear from a phenomenological perspective: dull pain and nausea in the guts, increased heart rates and (what feels like) quickly elevated blood pressure, a desire to flee and/or pace and/or "do something", heat radiating up my spine and intensifying in my neck with accompanied perspiration in this area of heat, sometimes it transforms into anger or hopelessness with those accompanied sensory phenomena. Over the years I have used various techniques of "coping with"/treating these conditions, starting with daily booze intake and an SSRI/benzo cocktail, eventually "realizing" that the alcohol was exacerbating the situation and thus ceased its consumption (~7 yrs ago). This was followed by (a couple years later and a few years ago) the desire to not be dependant upon these other drugs for my "sanity" so I titrated off them as well (except for an occasional/once-a-week half-mg of clonazepam when I can't manage to mindfully experience these sensations without attachment and when sleep is of paramount importance due to a looming work deadline that needs focus or something like that). I replaced the drugs with attempts at 24/7 mindfulness, rigorous exercise (brazilian jiu jitsu), and seated meditation practice. I'm not "completely without" the fear and anxiety, not even close, especially in times of great stress, but things have improved considerably over the years.
So, back to the optimism with regards to my situation. The optimism is rooted in Daniel's (and many other's) story of dark night yogi-hood along with the section where he posits (and please excuse me, I'm paraphrasing from memory) that very few individuals whom actually begin a serious effort into insight practice are not at least in the first nana of the Dukkha Nanas.
The pessimistic side of me, however, is criticising this perspective/theory as an attempt at what is very clearly just confirmation bias; only seeing the correlation between "my personal story" and these others' stories in order to explain away my psychological problems. I chide myself for thinking I may have realized something during those years and that I should just resign myself to the fact that I'm a classic case of mental illness resultant from neurochemistry and psychological "stuff". That I will have to either give up my "goals"/desire for awakening or deal with the horrific episode dark night that will inevitably ensue if I continue my practice. In times of greatest fear, I decide to "give up", only to find myself soon after being mindful of breath or on my cushion later that day...something "in me" or "in my brain/heart/pick-a-metaphor" won't allow me to stop my practice. So it goes...
These competing and diametrically opposed positions also have me questioning whether or not I should cancel my reserved "seat" at the Goenka retreat (despite this diatribe, this dilemma is more or less the "point" of my post). If I am, in fact, rocking a dark night paradigm then my notion is "go for it Adam, use this as an opportunity to perhaps blast past this proverbial demon your mind has been carrying for over a decade...hey, maybe you'll get to 'desire for deliverance', or even equanimity and you can use the momentum to power through the rest of the first path...hell, maybe you can attain stream entry and fruition" (please forgive my crude use of the Theravada maps, they're not really of great importance to me, but I think they help illustrate the point of my fears of a this particular place on the path). However, if my situation is that I actually have no knowledge of any of the mapped insight stages then I can't help but think that it would be remarkably unkind, even cruel, for me to potentially push myself into a position that has the possibility of causing my family (wife and two kids) so much suffering for an indeterminable amount of time, sometimes years. That it would be better for me to cancel, gain insight the slow way, or simply give up (yeah right, my stubborn character defects alone probably won't allow for this). I really want to find a teacher locally (Salt Lake City area), but have been either unable to or procrastinating. There are a few people I want to meet and speak with, but time and circumstance has made these meetings difficult to accomplish.
I suppose this brings me to the point where I should give details about my practice. I'm a complete noob, having started doing basic, seated Anapanasati practice just under a year ago and have since been tweaking and adjusting technique based on the various dharma books I've read. I sat (and still sit) 45 mins to an 1.5 hrs per day over one or two sessions. Perhaps three or four months ago, I realized that my concentration skills were mostly crap and I was still dominated by "monkey brain" thought patterns. I felt like I had attained access to jhana on several occasions, but at any given sit it sure was hit-or-miss. I really wanted to get more "bang for my buck" with my time on the cushion and thought that improving my concentration skills could not hurt. Also, having signed up for a 10 day Goenka retreat, I felt like I better get my concentration as dialed as possible in the upcoming months to make that time worth while. As such, for the past few months I have since decided to focus solely on concentration practices. I devoured Shaila Catherine's books "Focused and Fearless" and "Wisdom Wide and Deep" in an attempt to figure out how to improve my concentration skills and better understand the relationship between concentration and insight practices. Though based on what I've read on this site, I'm clearly a slow learner, I'm happy to say that my concentration has improved considerably. And although I am of no experience level to diagnose with certainty, I feel like now I can gain access to jhana practically at will with the right external conditions, with less than ideal conditions (a closet at my work, for example), I can gain access within 5-15 minutes. I am almost certain I have attained first samatha jhana on at least three occasions, once quite deeply (though it only lasted a minute or two) with a very clear nimitta present and all the jhanic factors present, "piti" being dominant (again, forgive my crude use of the terminology, and don't forget these are novice interpretations of the phenomena...I can go into actual phenomena if anyone thinks it would add value to the post). Lately, I've been trying to do a short amount of insight practice after "emerging" from concentration, usually noting or sometimes observing my abdomen while breathing, but feel like I have no real clue as to what I'm doing...aside from some wildly jerky-type phenomena from my visual senses when I open my eyes, I've not really gained any insight during this time...it'll come though, sorry for yet another digression. In addition, I try to supplement my current seated practice with an attempt at constant mindfulness: I'll cycle between sensory noting exercises, mindfulness of breath, or mindfulness of thoughts. Oh, and take these terms "constant mindfulness" with a grain of salt, it's more like "ah, be mindful"...mindfulness ensues for a minute or two...lose it...2 to 30 mins later "remember"...repeat. Pathetic, I know, but the effort is there...I told you, I'm slow...but I'm trying

My internal dialogue is laughing right now because when I sat down to write this I intended (or did I?) to break my DhO discussion board cherry (please pardon the crude expression) by posting a question about my concerns with doing meditation practices with my young kids; only to have my current narrative spill out of me like a tipped over bucket of sewage. My meditation practice with my kids will have to come another day, haha...what a selfish bastard I am.
I know that I posted very few, if any explicit questions in this post. I'm hoping that one or more of the wizards on this site will read this, understand where I'm coming from, and offer advice or perspective. I am not afraid/opposed to answer personal questions or have my teeth kicked in, so feel free to hammer me for any glaring problems with my rationale, logic, conclusions, practice strategy, etc...
O, what I would give for a crystal ball revelation that my pre-stream-entry Dukkha Nanas experiences will come and pass in a matter of minutes, hours, or days. I would give even more for the knowledge that they're here and have been here for years now and that things are only going to get better, or only very mildly "worse". I can't abide the fact that once propelled into the dark night, that I may have no option than to gain this knowledge of suffering for years to come. I'm terrified to put my family through that or, worse, put them in a position where their best recourse is to leave me (this last point is very likely unfounded, but in the interest of full disclosure...)
Thanks all. SINCERELY, thank you all for what's being done on this message board. I can't properly express how wonderful a resource all you and the DhO are to my path.
-adam