| | I had the following experience, and was able to repeat it four, or so, times, thinking it was stream entry.
After about an hour of meditation, my entire existence seemed to resolve into sensations, kind of a cloud, with no solidness. I was working hard to establish the three characteristics of the cloud and its contents. The cloud then steadily, with some continuity, began to collapse into nothingness, and continued to disappear, with the sphere of nothingness growing to encompass all. I was able to exit partially and reenter. The entire process is, with some effort, reproducible.
I have been working intensively with Ingram's book for about eight months, and previously, with Goenka for 5 years. I felt I was pretty deep in to the "Equanimity" stage, when this series of events took place. I was striving for stream entry at the time.
Ingram's Guide to whether I had attained stream entry has convinced me I have not reached that level. In particular, there is no discontinuity between the cloud and the nothingness state, though the transition is pretty quick, and complete. Further, I had no clear experience of the three doors, nor a clear sense of insight into the three characteristics. I have not felt a separation of watcher from "watched" since the "disolution" stage, so I felt no change there.
Can you tell me what this was? And give me some idea of how to deal with it? "Attachment," has me wanting to repeat the process, since it may be stream entry, and it seems to be a clear growth step.
with metta, Terry |