Elijah Smith:
Hi All,
I was doing open awareness meditation tonight (shikantaza style) and started to feel myself moving towards A&P (for the first time). I started to pull back because I read the disclaimers on moving beyond that stage and felt it might not be good for me right now (I start a very intense graduate program in a couple months, prone to anxiety). I am wondering, if this comes again, should I just let it happen? Would this type of experience be counterproductive given that I have to start working 80 hrs a week in a couple months? The ego death (seeing no self in thoughts, sensations, etc.) was actually frightening, mostly because of the disclaimers I've read.
Let's turn this around and think about this in a more productive, concrete way. Because IMHO, reports of "the dark night" are overblown.
How old are you? On a scale from 1 to 10, how would you rate your emotional maturity as compared with your peers? Do you consider yourself a "reactive" individual (do you tend to overreact to things)? How sharply do you differentiate what's happening in your head vs. what's happening in reality? Are you prone to mysticism or belief in occult/supernatural causes?
By and large, people walk around the world thinking their happiness or unhappiness is being caused by things beyond their control. They have a tendency to scapegoat. "Patriarchy makes me miserable." "I have an artistic temperament, and that's why I can't get a job." "Merc is retro, so don't expect me to pay attention." "The relationship failed because she was a psycho."
It's not much different when people start meditating, except now the issues are past lives, dark night, "I'm enlightened so I can't feel anger," etc.
I've done a lot of crazy, destabilizing shit in my life. But even the most intense dark night experience I ever had - which was on a retreat - was more annoying than anything else, at least as far as the sensations composing the experience go. The problem is, like anything else in life that's frustrating, it invites our neuroses. It begs them to come out. Dark night is not at all special in this regard.
The way that it is special - especially if you do it in a setting where you can really dig into the experience - is that it gives you a front row seat for the way the ego tends to construct and deconstruct itself and move around in the face of frustration. It has the potential to make you a more mature person - assuming it lasts more than a day, which sometimes it doesn't.
So you see, you can avoid "going into the dark night" if you want, but all you're really putting off is looking at the mechanism behind the neurosis which is going on all the time anyway. But if you can be both clinical and passionate about understanding your experience, getting in up to your elbows can be pretty rewarding.
It's probably a lot less risky overall than a lot of the stupid things we do in life, so why not go for it?