Jon Berghain:
Hello!
I know I didn't reach Stream Entry but I believe I reached Equanimity and now I guess I am back looking for another A&P, given what happened was an A&P. Could be some dopamine overload crap too? Fact is I don't know. Maybe you guys have a clue? Is it possible to have an A&P even if it happens in the context I was in?
hello!
You are probably the best person to judge what the experience was. Conceptualising it as an A&P makes sense, given your description, and gives you a way of thinking about the experiences before and after (in the sense of stages of insight), but in your descriptions, you haven't talked much about "insight" (into yourself, your mind, the world etc..) associated with the before, during and after experiences.
You often hear people describe their first "A&P" as under the influence of drugs (e.g. LSD or whatever). I have a naturalistic perspective on this (so bear in mind this is just my take), and so "some kind of dopamine overload crap" is probably a pretty good description of what an "A&P" is, at one impoverished level of description. So it is a bunch of neurochemicals in your brain getting released in quantities outside the range of normal experience, and A&P "type" experiences may be be triggered by a variety of circumstances and factors (which include neuropsychiatric disorders, drugs, intensive meditation etc...). But what makes considering it as an "A&P" interesting, is that rather than some kind of brain fart, it can be considered part of a predictable set of experiences (and insights) associated with the stages of insight. Specifically, insight into the arising and passing away of mental phenomena.
Glad those articles helped, as there is some good and sensible advice in there I think. In one sense engaging in intensive meditation (and with taking recreational or non-recreational drugs) is "messing with your mind" and can have profound consequences so obviously if you are bipolar you need to careful. You say that you could get hypomania "despite meditation", before yet it seems like (based on some of those articles) that (hardcore) meditation could also be a risk factor for hypomania. Could you perhaps say why you are looking for another A&P? Your description describes some (possible) positive long term consequences of that particular event, yet also you describe a lot of negative aspects to it. So am curious to know what you are looking for and if you would want to repeat something like that?