Dream Walker:
What you have gotten so far is totally fantastic and sounds like it has changed you for the better in many ways. If you are at 2nd path I'd love to point out some things to help you get to third but it won't help much if you are misdiagnosed. What is your current daily practice?
Thanks very much D, I am grateful for your help.
[I don't know how to write shorter; apologies]
My guess at being on the 2nd path is solely based on the fetters model. Until I read MCTB a couple of months ago, I didn't even think I'd experienced a true Jhana. Most of the material out there doesn't even mention Jhanas, and when it does, it is always spoken of in such hushed reverential tones that I thought this was far beyond my ability. Somewhere along the line, I think from Ajhan Brahm's book on Jhanas where for the first time I encountered details of Jhanas I picked up the idea that to be in a Jhana means to be lost to the world. He describes a student who was thought dead and brought to the ER to be defibrillated and he still didn't wake up from his Jhana.
I've only lost track of time like that once or twice and never for more than 30-40 minutes and I'd have certainly noticed if I was wheeled away to the ER.
MCTB was the first book I'd read that said if you put in the effort you are going to get jhanas and progress. That it's not some cosmic 8-ball that depends on your karma, good birth and other factors outside your control. Now this gave me confidence to trust the ten fetters model because I could certainly see I was ticking the boxes on that list.
Of course, I know now that I too have experienced Jhanas. For example, the magick and visions and such are their byproducts. I just hadn't figured out I was having them. In the last couple of days that I have been reading DhO posts regularly I seem to be getting a hang of what are termed Jhana experiences, A&P experiences and the like. Their range is certainly wide. I've certainly had them; heck I'd say I've had them all the time, almost every day or every week for the past 2-2.5 years. It's just never as wild as the descriptions, and I am never very keen on paying attention to them, viewing them mostly as a distraction from concentration.
Even my fear phase of the Dukha ñana which I always remember when I encounter it is mostly either a comical or an annoying interruption. The physical symptoms of fear emerge without any accompanying fodder from my brain because my brain is almost always empty. Of course they are quick to feed on anything in the external environment. So far I have been lucky to have only had them when I was alone in a quiet place. I just wait them out usually, except at the last Goenka retreat when it happened on days 3&4 and prevented me from meditating properly. I tried some breathing nadi yoga and it helped; but it came back on the 4th night preventing me from sleeping. I sincerely prayed for it to go away so I could keep meditating. I kept viewing in my mind's eye the image of a holy symbol, and suddenly a beam of light emerged from the symbol and pierced my heart and then the energy shot up with great force from my heart chakra to my crown chakra, and then all of a sudden it was over. I was calm, rested, still vibrating heavily, but I was able to meditate and then sleep peacefully.
I still don't have a good sense for what the dissolution, fruition and advanced stages are like. I am looking to read a good description, and I will re-read MCTB a few times. All I know is I've had helluva lot of strange experiences, but in general I tend to go - ok, the jazz is all nice, but what is the net effect?
And that I've seen in my kindness, compassion, near total loss of anger, no hatred or desire for conflict, great diplomacy, no interest in perpetuating self view, total cessation of boredom and loneliness, understanding of human emotions, and therefore of the world, total positivity with no room for any depression, non-reaction to pain and other unpleasant sensations, near total lack of addictions, lack of laziness (though I may appear lazy when I am in a meditative haze), great reduction in or control over sexual desires and so on. The list is long, and it only seems to get added to - and I've had most of this for 2+ years. So it doesn't appear to be a flash in the pan.
A couple of things that seem to be happening of late:1. A great increase in frequency of what I think are called
kriyas or
hypnic jerks, though they could also be
kundalini related. Basically an orgasm like shiver up the body often coupled with a sudden exhalation of breath either through the nostrils or mouth and sometimes also accompanied with a movement of the limbs in a controlled arc of motion.
The motion is predictable since it is always one of a few movements. A simpler version of this has always happened to me over 3 years whenever I haven't meditated for a while - the shiver then would be barely perceptible. That was certainly a kriya I think.
Since the last 3 months it happens multiple times a day. The movement is more elaborate with limb movements and jerks that can wake up whoever is sleeping next to me if I am in bed. I can faithfully reproduce this every time I do a Vipassana body scan, I can sense the tension building up and then boom, it jerks. I wonder if it isn't my neural centers getting overloaded with sensations, because when I do a body scan I become aware of a cacophony of sense information. Yet I've had very profound body scan experiences with swirling balls of fire going wherever in my body my mental gaze went and it never jerked then. The jerking in fact prevents me from doing body scan Vipassana, limiting me to concentration practice.
I can't really focus on mind elements any more because at least on days like today, my mind is so empty I can't find a single mind element to focus on.
2. No mental images at all when meditating. Until last year when I closed my eyes to meditate I would hit a phase a few minutes into the session where images of people would flash before me. Many unknown, some known, some who I'd seen on TV and then this would have to subside for me to delve deeper. These days there are no pictures, I seem to go straight into deep meditation - maybe 4th Jhana?.
The process is like so: I concentrate by observing breath, and slowly my head tilts forward on its own until my chin is firmly pressed on my sternum, and my tongue is automatically pressed hard against the roof, and my eyes are facing downwards. Then I know I am in a deep state of meditation where everything is still. It's just dark, calm and sensation free. I can still tell what is happening around me from the sounds, but I don't have to. I use this state to reflect on the dharma. Many dharma questions get solved for me by contemplation during this state.
My problem is I can't discern one Jhana from the other, I just have no sense of jhanic topology. I usually have a current favorite Jhana and seem to keep hitting it by default. There almost seems to be no agency to my meditation most times. I close my eyes, and whatever happens happens.
Spontaneous meditations:I have a habit of spontaneously sinking into meditation whenever I sit with nothing to do. Sometime last year there was strong bilateral ear pain for about three weeks that no doctor or MRI scan was able to reveal. I think it was due to some kundalini experience. I was waiting in the crowded waiting room of the ENT clinic, and I sank into deep meditation, even stopping my heart for a good minute or so. I woke up when my name was called to quite a few odd looks from the others in the room. I tend to watch out for this habit now whenever I am in public.
On thinking back, when in University 13 years ago I was insanely sleep deprived and I had stood on my feet and slept at a bus stop for 5 hours. I remember leaving University at 3PM and reaching home at 9PM with very sore legs. I had remained perfectly still, standing for 5 hours. Now I am not so sure it was sleep; maybe it was spontaneous meditation. In any case it didn't happen ever again until I started meditating 3+ years ago.
My daily practice:Maybe 1 hour daily, sometimes more, sometimes less. However I tend to meditate now and then when doing something, and even when speaking. I tend to meditate more when I am on my own, or in long plane rides and such. I know I should be meditating more; and I am working on it.
Thank you so much for reading and helping, I really must learn to make my posts shorter if anyone is going to read them.
Much peace and love,
May all being be happy.