sixty ten:
Hi everyone, this is my first post. Great to find this site and reading through some of the threads
Hey sixty ten! Welcome to DhO, glad you found the place and hope you find some useful stuff here!
sixty ten:
My main question is regarding motivation to practice given some experiences I had a few years ago. These experiences were induced by psychedelic drugs, in a nutshell they revealed to me the absolute nature of my freedom. In the sense that there is no "fixed point" of reference i.e. self which endures through time. The emotions associated with this experience are extreme existential dread, despair.
Well, it's good that you can distinguish the experience from the reaction to the experience. As in any experience in life, an experience of insight into the nature of experience can be associated with pretty much any reaction ;-)
For instance, as a personal example, I have generated reactions of "wow! how amazing!" pervaded with feelings of exhileration and wonder in response to experiences of what you're calling "absolute freedom of no fixed reference point", as well as reactions of dread and misery, as well as reactions of "ho-hum, that again". In my experience really deep change comes when there has been a continuity of noticing that empty impermanence over a period of time relatively nakedly, i.e., relatively devoid of any reactions-- positive, negative, neutral-- to that empty impermanence. This equanimity and simplicity arises naturally when the very reactions are seen as more fodder for the insight into empty impermanence, if that makes sense.
Investigating the way reactions (to sense impressions, including thoughts) compound or form around a nucleus of aversion, desire or indifference is an important part of practice, as is distinguishing between simple sensory impressions-- sights, sounds, textures, thoughts-- and more complex mental-emotional reactions/interpretations to those impressions.
sixty ten:
My major issue is that because of these experiences, I have a fear of going deeply into the practice, of seeing what is really going on. Quite frankly, I am aware just how much I don't want to let go of control, of my self. So while I still meditate daily for a short period, this puts me quite at odds with pursuing real insight (especially relating to the three characteristics).
Ok thanks for listening, I welcome your thoughts

I think this is natural. There is a teacher named Culadasa who is brought up occasionally at DhO who has a slightly different approach to the path than is typical here. He basically argues that it is possible to notice the impermanent and impersonal nature of phenomena
from the point of view of a visceral belief in solid, separate self.
It's kind of funny if you think about it! In my own words I'd describe this as having a head-level insight into no-self-- you really see that "self" is partly a conceptual construct applied to fleeting, selfless, unfixed phenomena-- yet this seeing is being done by a gut-level or heart-level self that
still completely believes in itself!
This is a recipe for existential dread, nausea, misery, etc. Culadasa recommends "lubricating" the process of insight with qualities like tranquility, joy, equanimity and so on. The idea is that if these qualities are allowed to really pervade one's whole experience, right down to a visceral level, the part of one's being which believes in a solid separate self will be much more relaxed and open when confronted with its own illusoriness. Confronting this illusoriness when there is a rigid, deeply held belief in "fixed self" can set up practice as a painful struggle. Cultivating some capacity for peaceful abiding here-and-now prior to engaging rugged insight practice could alleviate or mitigate some of these symptoms, and this cultivation can be approached in many ways if you're interested. In retrospect I think this is basically how the path to SE and beyond unfolded for me do to my style of practice and the things I learned from that *prior* to explicitly discovering and engaging MCTB style vipassana and the progress of insight. My experience of Dark Night was unpleasant at times, to be sure, even to a point of nearly comically absurd intensity (which wasn't so amusing at the time), but all things considered I seemed to navigate that territory with a lot less unnecessary *extra* suffering than many who jump right into a hard core vipassana approach. Who knows, individuals vary so much and there are so many factors involved it's difficult to say :-)
Anyways, my two cents!
--Jake
P.S. I threw out a bunch of jargon like "Dark Night", "progress of insight", and "MCTB" in my response. If those terms mean nothing to you I'd suggest checking out Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, Daniel Ingram's dharma book (Ingram is the founder of DhO and this work is foundational for a lot of the discourse at DhO) which is available free online.