Adam M:
Thank you all very much for your help and support, in this thread and all your efforts in DhO - has been an invaluable resource to me. Us lurkers may not contribute much, but we're out there, learning, practicing and appreciating this forum. Special thanks for those in this thread in this utterly unusual time in my life.
It has been about a week since my possible-SE event. Report so far:
- I feel fundamentally different, changed, in a way I cannot remember ever occurring before. This is a very big deal for me... yet it is hard to point to specific things or provide evidence which is not purely subjective.
- I still suffer, I still fuck up, I still drink (I drank a lot before).
- I semi-spontaneously gave up smoking (after resolving to after the event) - and to my partial astonishment it seems to be working, with surprisingly little suffering.
- I don't want to *explicitly* meditate. It seems wrong to do anything other than just be...
- When I do nothing in particular, I default to something like insight meditation... choiceless awareness, whatever. This is very very awesome.
- Something like Review seems to be occurring - I build up to spontaneous A&P like events several times a day (e.g. on train, focusing on work etc.), which seem to be closely followed by dissolution, dark night shit etc. Though this is all very unclear to me, and I worry I am scripting.
- No fruitions to be seen. I don't know what a fruition is, or how to recognize one.
- Mindfulness/equanimity in everyday life is totally different. I suffer, I see the suffering, I see the resistance to suffering. Sometimes it goes away, sometimes I just keep watching it. But I can see, clearly, that it is not me, its just something I do.
- As a former misanthrope, my metta has spontaneously jumped (relatively) through the roof. I am very happy about this.
- I feel like a line in the sand has been drawn - before and after that day.
- Mindfulness seems inescapable, even when I feel terrible. For this I am ecstatically happy
My diagnosis: Stream Entry.
Would very much appreciate any and all thoughts on where I am at, and what I should practice. Especially if I am deluding myself in any way.
Metta
P.S. any guidance on post-SE stuff would be very welcome. What is second path, what is it like? How to optimize for it? How do to know it has begun? What am I in for if that is the case...?
Hi Adam,
I'm in a similar situation. I had the first "event" after waking up to take some antacid at 2:15AM on 12/27. After I laid back down there was a quick build up to it, and it seemed to come in 3 waves. The next day I went over the MCTB "Was that emptiness" checklist and came up with a lot of "maybes", but no "nos". It seemed there was a discontinuity, so I decided it was a fruition. Since then it's happened four more time, the most recent being Fri 1/6 at the breakfast table after sitting for 45 minutes. Now during this last one there did seem to be a thread of continuity that ran through it, so at that point I decided they were were all A&Ps instead of fruitions. However, I've never had anything resembling a flurry of A&Ps pop like this before.
But over the last week I have noticed, as you have cited above, my default state is choicless awareness. I don't have to tune into it or look for it; it's just there. My general level of mental chatter is way down too; thing are very quiet. Keeping the mind where it's directed is easier on and off the cushion. This makes me lean toward stream entry.
I had access to jhanas before any of this happened. I had made some good progress with that using the KFD jhanic arc practice. I'd gotten up to 5th seferal times. Since the "event(s)", 1st and 2nd seem deeper/harder, but they have tended in that direction as time passes anyway. I can't just advert to any one I choose; to get to 3rd I still have to get to 1st then go through 2nd. I don't seem to be cycling, which is something I do have some experience in from the KFD jhanic arc practice as well, so I should be able to pick up some signs of cycling if it's happening. I've tried just sitting and going up the jhanic arc, but don't get a fruition in equanimity and then re-emerge at the A&P; instead I fall back down in reverse through the dukha nanas. If the things above I'm now calling A&Ps are not fruitions, then I'm not having fruitions (I've tried just calling fruitions up to no avail).
The misanthrope yielding to some metta you mention is also something I've noticed while walking around, which is is very out of character for me.
So at this moment as I read what I have just typed here, I'm leaning toward my being in some new deeper level of equanimity I haven't tasted before, as opposed to stream entry. It's still relatively early--something could yet happen today that would make me change my mind again.
I hope this has been of some help. Thanks for listening. Any and all comments will be appreciated.
Eric