wylo .:
1. Is this a fair assesment of equanimity? (...)
It seems consistent with it. It doesn't sound like High Equanimity, but somewhere a bit below that.
One way to look at Equanimity is that it's a state of concentration that happens without you trying. If you have a grip on what concentration is like, then you can ask yourself "is this like concentration meditation in some way?"
When you concentrate to a fair degree, your issues come to seem unimportant, things are pleasant, when worries come up they tend to go away soon afterwards, etc.
2. Does cycling up through dark night etc etc happen post stream entry and beyond? By all accounts it seems to, if so, when does it happen (if its even possible to answer something like that)? Almost immediately? After an initial "honeymoon period"? (A+P??), And if so, whats the fundamental difference before and after SE?
Cycling generally happens immediately, though potentially there could be post-path phenomena (bliss, whatever) that make this murky.
I'm not sure if there's a fundamental difference (depends on what you have in mind by "fundamental").
3. It seems by all accounts that the time length of these cycles vary alot, I hear people going through the whole progress of insight in one sit? Are they doing this during another cycle? a cycle within a cycle? Am I looking into this WAY too much?
Just it sometimes confuses me how people say they were in so and so for several months, yet at the same time you hear of people expecting to go through the progress of insight in one sit.
The cycles can be fractal-like, so there can be a big Progress of Insight cycle that takes months to work through, and yet there can be smaller cycles that one works through in a day, or an hour, or whatever, embedded inside of the big one.
I found that knowing this was useful, but trying to work out the details / specifics wasn't.
4. I still cant pinpoint if Im experiencing emptyness, im getting closer and closer to analyzing whats going on.
Is this a fruition/cessation?
- Sitting for lets say 30-40 mins, very deep jhana like state, incredibly relaxed,and peaceful, concentration very good (from the very start now since I think* I got SE) , and basically almost a lack of concentration, not that I would be lost in thought, but almost a cutting out of anything at all for a few seconds, and absolutely no acknowledgement of it until afterwards. And even though its impossible to tell how long it happened for Id be confident it was literally a few seconds, based on how it feels after, and even in terms of actual real time by the clock.
- (very dodgy analogy here) The after feeling would feel like I came out of a daydream, but obviously I have absolutely no memory of what I would have been daydreaming about? So basically a daydream consisting of complete blankness where I was only aware of it straight afterwards?
Everything you're saying is evidence for having attained MCTB 1st path, at least.
5. If you were busy throughout your day, is it possible that these would be occuring without you knowing (maybe a slight "hmmm I think I may have had a cessation a second ago)? Especially if you are not from a technical/trained/meditation/insight background? Are they that unnoticeable ? Or would it be really obvious like "Holy crap I just had a cessation!!!"
Seems possible to miss them.
6. Is it possible with enough investigation, experience and attention to pin point exactly where you are in a cycle, like all the time? Or would even experienced people here find it very tricky at times.
Have you ever just been down about something and it be nothing to do with cycling?
I think it's rare to have a strong and clear guess as to where you are (in the Progress of Insight fractal), but common to know where you are (in a single cycle) if you use technical criteria (= the way things vibrate).
People get happy or sad all the time without it having anything to do with the cycles. But, if you're sitting and meditating all day and shifting between different moods throughout the sit, there's a fair chance that cycles are playing a role, rather than any of the normal things that might shift your mood around.