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Dealing with the Dark Night

Candle Flame for Re-observation

Candle Flame for Re-observation
Answer
7/17/11 3:13 AM
Here's an interesting trick.

I taught this insight retreat, and as often happens, Re-Observation was accompanied by strong feeling of wanting to leave the retreat.

In an effort to keep this from happening, I decided to change gears radically and switch him to candle flame.

The practice was as in MCTB with a few specifics added for retreat: practice was as continuous as possible, chair was used to facilitate longer sits with less pain and bodily sensations to help concentration on the visuals, walking periods were just for a few minutes and only when a break was finally needed from the candle flame and sitting, and no schedule beyond waking up at 4:30 and going to bed at 10:30pm beyond showering and eating (two meals: breakfast, lunch). Basically: look at the flame, feel a shift, close eyes, see red dot, red dot gets stronger, red dot is replaced by spinning, shaking red dot with spinning yellow star and green/purple spinning outside, that is replaced by black larger thing (in this case he saw a square) and then attention is turned to the outside stuff around that. This done again and again had really good effects.

Basically, it was fun, a complete change, involved concentration strong and verifiable enough to avoid most content/dark night stuff, and had measurable landmarks for progress and interesting visuals.

About 4-5 days of that was followed by switching back to hardcore vipassana on anything that seemed to be center point or a core process using choiceless awareness with the one caveat to try to make sure to see what was being missed that prevented stream entry from arising, using the concept of a 3D grid or cube and noticing that all sensations appeared to happen in space on their own as just more objects.

The effect was to make Equanimity arise and nicely developed, as well as provide confidence, a new set of skills and perspectives, and make the whole thing much more workable.

As they say, further research needs to be done, but this approach worked well enough that it should be considered on retreat in this context and for this set of circumstances.

RE: Candle Flame for Re-observation
Answer
7/18/11 3:01 AM as a reply to Daniel M. Ingram.
Hi Daniel, and thanks for this. I appreciate the call back to basic practice, always. And I love this technique, and if it works for you it is a terrific way to slip through some real gnarliness.

For me, at the crunchiest points of what I think of as dark night, which is the maximum of Disgust, the directed attention and sheer practicality of any technique, or any use of the will or directing of attention, just make things worse. The worst of Disgust is usually disgust with whatever i have been trying to do, whatever I think I have been accomplishing, and so any technique or application of effort just tightens the knot. The only good thing for me here is that the Disgust and the desire for liberation become a perfect flame; nothing will do, nothing is worth doing, and any glimmer of an ambition burns up. If this goes on for more than a single session, the main problem is as always just being decent to people, but at the maximum of Disgust compassion flows naturally from the conviction that we're all equally fucked and there's no sense making things worse for anyone. There is really nothing worth doing, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and as things arise, in all their obvious miserable inadequacy, they burn away. I always feel like I have an infinite amount of misguided misery-making crap to burn, at this point, and there is a real clarity about the fact that there is nothing to do that doesn't make more crap, except let it burn. I just stop doing anything, including-- at the absolute max-- "breathing." So far, it always turns out that the next breath comes along on its own, and I just let it. It is impossible to feel gratitude for it at this point (gratitude for the breath is one of my fundamentals), but it is what it is, and that is enough (since nothing is enough). And there is a point amid all this, crap arising and crap passing away, breath coming and going, where quiet comes (a hopeless quiet, but a dstinct relief from Disgust), and then peace (a fairly clueless peace). In prolonged episodes, the peace is initially very fragile and will evaporate at the first whiff of Anything, but it does help with continuing to be decent to the rest of the sentient beings. And in the longer run, it stabilizes into a working Equanimity.