Hi, I've been reading this forum for a long time and I am very grateful for huge amounts of useful information. I've finally decided to post because I'm somewhat unsure where am I and what I should pay attention to next.
I've become interested in meditation half a year ago, and about 4 month ago started to practice Vipassana on breath, on and off. 2-3 month ago I've thought that I was making no progress because concentration was lacking, and decided to try to work in this direction. Right now concentration meditation goes as follows:
- I pay attention to breath in abdomen. In 2-10 minutes depending on initial state I start feeling effects of breath also in head, and then in interval of 2-3 breath cycles feeling of breath and abdomen start to connect. On last third of out-breath there is a wave of pleasure, sensation of breath goes to hands and legs. The wave establishes itself and lasts for 3-10 breath cycles. It's possible to prolong it a bit more, but there is no point. It looks like it's 1-st Jhana.
- Effect of intense pleasure disappears, and what is left is feeling of comfort. It feels like laying down to rest after 7-hour walk. Attention is firmly fixed on breath. (2-nd Jhana?). Sometimes there are distracting thoughts and I fall out to the very beginning, it happens mostly in first 20 minutes of a meditation session, after that the state is rather stable.
- Thoughts and sensations come to focus, breath is still felt, but is on periphery. This stage is short and subtle, I don't always note it. (Is it 3-rd Jhana?)
- Pleasure disappears, maybe it's still there, but attention is tuned out of it. There are thoughts, sensations. They do not generally distract, they are just there. The first time I got there, there was a thought visualized as text: "4-th Jhana. Wow!". Despite of "wow" at the end, if it was read aloud, it should be pronounced with most indifferent expression possible (4-rd Jhana, equanimity?).
After 4-th state is attained in meditation session, it's easy to shift between those states.
Those states match typical Jhana descriptions, but there are things that lead to doubt:
- I cannot stay in 1-st state for more than a minute, it always converts to state 2 by its own. Futhermore, it feels like there is no point in trying to stay in it, and even slight aversion to it in spite of its pleasant aspect. 2-nd state could last much longer, but it's simply pleasant, not euphoric. There is warning in MCTB that those states are very comfortable, and a lot of people are caught in cultivating them for years, and for me it's hard to relate to it.
- In 4-th state some distracting thoughts do arise. When I detach from them (shortly, after 1-4 breath cycles after their appearence) I find myself in 2-th state, sometimes 3-rd. And it's natural to shift back to 4-th.
- I hear sounds and feel sensations perfectly well. If there's something urgent, it's possible to react immidiately or better after a minute to allow slow transition to normal state. Still, default is non-reactivity. In some Jhana descriptions it's stated that no external sounds should be heard, so I doubt are these Jhanas or not. Lately while staying in 4-th state for some time I've started to feel something about space, and it seems to start to mask physicall sensations, but I'm not sure, since feeling is very unstable and tends to oscillate.
- Generally the process feels like falling asleep, except attention is kept fully awake. I guess I've experienced something like those states before I've heard anything definitive about meditation, but they were much more unclear because of pre-sleep slowness and proliferation of random thoughts. So, in practice, it's often useful to try to induce a more "sleepy" state while staying awake and watching it.
- There are no visions, no visuals, no sounds and no other colorful effects. I've heard once clear bell sound which shouldn't be there, and that was all of it. Well, maybe those effects are common but are not required.
- First time I got to 4-th state very fast, first time without experiencing 2-th and 3-rd. But even now 3-rd state is very fleeting.
- The process took much less effort than I expected. About month on/off practice of about half hour a day to get to 1-st state, than at somewhat like 1 hour per day: 2 weeks to stabilize it, first occurence 4-th state in one more week, another 2 weeks to get stable 4-th state and move between those states easily.
From here I've tried to go deeper by paying attention to space, but it's still difficult for me to get hang of it. And I've tried to switch to Vipassana mode and back. When in 4-th state and I try to pay attention to physical sensations, all body starts to itch, sometimes very strongly, and that sends me 2-nd state described above. I've also tried to see what 4-th state consists of, and it seems like to be some dynamic mess of thoughts, some mental forms difficult to describe and a lot of sensations on periphery, all much like content of can of worms, always in motion, constantly shifting, and it wouldn't be pleasant if perceived in a normal state. In 4-th state it feels mostly indifferent with slight negative tint. It's easy to shift back to pure 4-th state, which is in comparison very stable and immovable.
Vipassana part is somehow much less clear. Four month ago I've been sitting trying to do some insight practice. I didn't felt that I was getting what first three nanas were about, though I've got some intense itching. Also I could percieve tingling just about anywhere at rate 10-30 tingles per second, knew locations in real-time, but couldn't place sensations on a single timeline, since they occured too fast. Then I've had someting resembling A&P while sleeping: strong electrical tingling sensation in forehead that distributed to top of head, then back, then spine, it lasted about 5 seconds total. I've mostly woke up. I thought that it could be related to reading too much DhO about A&P two days before

, as nothing else happened and nothing was changed. After that I've started doing concentration practice...
And then something strange happened. That was the main reason I've finally decided to ask for advice, because 1.5 month passed and I still haven't figured it out. I've got stuck in state that felt like access concentration for 3 days (and I got to 1-st concentration state as described above just 1 week before, and it was still unstable). So there was concentration directed at anything that came into view. For example, I got locked on some letters at computer screen at work, and sat looking at them for an hour. How they are, how they exist, how they begin to float if stared at continuosly for 5 minutes. Very interesting, indeed. Same thing about other things. That was accompanied by profound aversion to saying anything at all. It was very difficult to speak. Still, I did, when I absolutely had to. Other thing was complete indifference towards mostly anything. And disgust toward people I really like. They and relations with them felt like empty, worthless and stupid. More feelings I experienced for them just before that, stronger the repulsion was. Those states may look like Dark Night, but it's commonly accepted that concentration in this states is very poor, and it's really difficult to concentrate. But this was not the case, I could sit very well (and I did sit), and as stated before, I spent most waking time in some forced concentration state I couldn't get out from. More accurately, I felt that I could, if there were enough energy, but there weren't, I was unprepared. After 3 days the state disintegrated and only calmness was left, no worries about anything. Before I've had some non-critical private stuff going on for about a year in background. Those external problems didn't disappear, but lost their significance. Afterglow lasted about a week. After that those problems returned, but it felt that they are smaller and more manageble. So... I don't really know, if this case had anything to do with meditation, or it was some other psychological process to resolve that background stuff... And I haven't read anything similar.
I should add that I have natural tendency to "halt" when confronted with some difficult problem. First I try to solve it by reasoning and when I see that it fails or I get stuck in a loop, thoughts just stop, what is left is the problem, feeling of it, some parts of thoughts torn apart and floating, view of interconnections from above. Now it looks suspiciously just like some Jhana state... People say that I "hang" and am absent for some time... Often solution emerges in this process, sometimes in very rough form and must be further processed through reasoning... It was noticed that I functioned that way at least since 8-9 years old. So, maybe if presented with DN or something else existentially bad, I would tend to "lock down" and not resurface until some resolution comes, I don't know.
So now I don't quite know where am I and what should be done next.
- If states 1-4 were really Jhanas, than I could try to look for space while in 4-th state and go to the Boundless Space. If they were not, than I strongly misunderstood them and should try to make corrections and restart process from beginning. Or if they are just shallow Jhanas, maybe I should try to get to harder versions of the states. But, main goal is to get to insight, so...
- If I didn't made any progress in insight, I should start Vipassana from paying close attention to physical sensations, but that seems counterproductive, since it tends to downgrade concentration state. Or I should pay attention to equanimity of the 4-th state, if it really is 4-th Jhana.
- If I somehow got through A&P and Dark Night, I should again pay attention to what comprises equanimity, but before that carefully reread corresponding part of MCTB. But this is very improbable from my point of view.
I guess general solution would be to just continue to practice and find for myself what works and what doesn't, but I'll be very grateful for any comments about all of that.