Hey,
I am relatively new to insight practice. I've only known the basics of what it is for a year, and I've only been practicing consistently for about three months.
Although I have only practiced insight meditation formally for three months, I beleive that in the past I may have got myself into soft jhanic states. Maybe I did, maybe I didn't. I don't know. Basically, I started paying very close attention to all physical sensations while walking, and doing so after synchronizing my breath with my gait and stabilizing my gaze on some distant semi-constant object(or just the same place in my visual field).Whatever I was doing, I think that I had some A&P's.
Anyway, I started doing this sort of walking meditation very methodically every day about five years ago. I kept it up for a few months at a time, but eventually lost the discipline after becoming so attached to it that I rendered it ineffective.
For the past three or four years, my experience seems to match most descriptions of The Dark Night that I've heard of(although I must admit that almost all of the info I have on this stuff came straight form MCT

, with the exception of things like visions of one's own corpse and stuff like that. Apparently that's a by-product of intense insight practice at high levels of concentration, right? Im not sure.
Since I started doing insight practice near the end of February 2012 my experience has changed significantly. I think that some of this is due to the fact that I've matured emotionally, but most of the difference seems to come from the practice.
Hmmm... Where do I start? A year ago I was living at a big Yoga retreat center on a beautiful campus up in the mountains of New England, eating very good healthy food, being exposed to loads of new stuff, and hanging out with a bunch of fit yoginis(the gender ratio is about 4 women for every man, and I'm a straight guy, get it?). Sounds good right? I was completely miserable. With very few exceptions I was unable to really enjoy anything I did because I was in such a state of struggle and internal friction; hopelessly attached to things like exercise, which in addition to building my confidence and making me feel good in the conventional sense, used to be "meditative"
I lived like that for several years. Then I heard About the dark night and thought "is that what this is?"
This is no longer how I feel. Many unpleasant things that were a problem for me at that time are still going on, but now I feel that I am abiding in a state of peace that is not disturbed by them. One thing that I should mention is that sometimes I fear that I am hiding in indifference. Perhaps that is true to a certain extent SOME of the time, but the feeling is like "oh dang here's something I used to get upset about, but it doesn't bother me. Is that Okay? I guess it is..."
Now, as long as I meditate every day, I am not bothered by my psychological "stuff", but my attention is significantly broader and sometimes I experience phenomena as vibrations. Not all the time. It depends on how I'm practicing, but I find that if I stop what I'm doing and take a minute to check in with what's going on, I can perceive the sense field panoramically and in a way that sort of scintillates. This is especially true with bodily sensations and in the visual field. I notice that body feelings are made up of little blips, that colors seem to include aspects of all other colors, that edges of objects or lines seem to be buzzing but not in a way that changes their shape or position in space relative to each other, and that I am VERY sensitive to retinal imprints left behind when I stare.
Sometimes I drop into this state very deeply without even trying. Other times I have to work at it. Samatha stuff is challenging and seems to run against this general current of impermanence I feel now, but it's actually a little bit easier than it used to be.
There have been a few times where I stopped practicing for a couple of days in a row and I noticed that I experienced anxiety, sadness, and disgust in that order. Specifically, things got murky and one day there suddenly arose a deep primal fear. It happened while I was having a comfortable conversation with my parents. Instead of automatically attributing it to my current situation, I followed insight meditation advice I've heard and just sat with it. After examining it fully for about 45 minutes, it passed completely. Then there was some down time that lasted from late that afternoon until the middle of the next day. I became extremely melancholy and began to wonder what the point of existence is. Misery is the one that really gets me, so it kind of kicked my ass. After half a day of that I sat and meditated some more. I realized again that the sadness was not due to anything specific in my life. Content was not responsible for it. I then goy really annoyed. I was like "FUCK THIS!!!" I got some good food and then ran around outside for awhile.
After practicing for another day or so, I got back into what I suspect is the stage of Equanimity.
Then, very fascinating things began to occur. I sat down to meditate and felt irritated. Concentration was difficult, so I started using binaural beats("The Dive" by Holosync/Centerpointe, does anybody have experience with this?). That helped a bit, but after a while I just sort of realized that it wasn't necessary and that the act or searching or striving was annoying me. I shifted my attention to the investigation of investigation itself and a sense of wonder arose.
At this time I was sitting in a room with a mirror on the wall. I looked around the room, and wherever I let my gaze rest for more than a few seconds, I was overcome by the feeling that there was no seperation between "myself" and what I was looking at, but in a way that didn't exclude the background. It seems like the act of stabilizing my gaze brought on an experience that was like a dissolution of boundaries between forms. I think was having unitive experiences with throw pillows. I got up and began to stare at myself in the mirror from across the room. Fear and wonder arose together. I got closer and stared deeply into my own eyes. I felt a very complex wavelike sensation roll up my neck and into the back of my head. The "wave" was made up of very intense vibrations that occured faster than I could count and they felt like both cold and pressure, like my head was contracting into my body. As I stared at myself in the mirror, I thought "what IS that?" The image staring back at me looked small and scared. I imagined it aging; hair greying, skin becoming wrinkled. It felt a bit like the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The cumulative imprint on my retinas made everything look just like a field of undifferentiated flux.
Then the thought "is this it?" popped up. I began forming future oriented thoughts and I guess buying into their content, getting exctied that I might be on the brink of Stream Entry. As soon as that started the whole thing unraveled. The experience reversed itself and ended exacly as it began, but backwards.
Now, when I meditate well on impermanence for at least twenty minutes, similar experiences arise. The same chilling/contracting wavelike sensation occurs with a sense of awe and anticipation, but the anticipation seems to defuse the process and it ends quickly. It happened yesterday in the break room at work. I happened this morning in a meditation room. Each time it happens it becomes less exciting but my resolve to fully investigate it grows.
What's going on? Does anybody feel confident that they can give me an explanation of what's happening, or even better, recommend a strategy for dealing with it in practice? Obviously the title of this thread implies that I think I'm getting right to the brink of my first Fruition. Do you think my analysis is correct?
At this point I understand that continued practice is the most important thing. I also am beginning to realize that my experience of the present moment as it actually is now contains all I need, but in a way that is more direct and less theoretical. The desire for an explanation of this stuff has waned considerably, but I still figured it might be good to ask the community. Honestly, I can still detect a desire to be somehow recognized for "my progress"
If you can, please use your own thorough experience of insight territory to poke holes in my reasoning and set me straight. Perhaps I'm running into a consequence of fixation on maps. Any thoughts?
With gratitude for this resource and for all that I've discovered.
-Andy
PS: It's funny that in MCTB Daniel described the difference in vibrations between earlier stages and The Dark Night as being like switching from Elvis to complex dissonant jazz. That's exactly how my taste in music has evolved through all of this.