| | Day 2:
I'm still not quite sure if this is it, but I'm more and more inclined to think so.
There haven't really been any "fireworks" or anything like that. I hear a lot of people speak of massive intensity after stream entry, but I haven't particularly been overwhelmed by any experience since the event. I already know I'm susceptible to scripting, so I'm still considering this possibility.
Experience has seemed very clean. There is definitely a sense of not being worried about insight stuff, in contrast to the past few weeks (and months) of vipassana practice. I feel fine just going about my day, like a normal guy. In the past, I've often gotten a very disconnected, absent feeling in the nana of dissolution. The head has seemed fairly empty, as far as physical sensations go. It feels open and hollow. This is a fairly constant thing. There's a sense of being the watcher of my life now. I don't know if this is the witness or what, but there's a definite 3rd person feeling going on, which hasn't changed. When I close my eyes, the whole field of experience seems extremely open, comparable to dissolution, as I mentioned. It's not quite as spaced out though. It's more just empty, like "no one is home".
Besides last night, I haven't been able to induce any fruitions. That is, assuming yesterday's events were indeed fruitions. Every now and then, out of the blue, I'll start to feel pressure/gravity/flickering in the 3rd eye area. Vipassana does indeed seem different. When I sit, A&P stuff comes on within seconds, and I feel like I can quickly progress up to equanimity, and dwell in each individual nana, seeing their distinct qualities. This is in contrast to before, where the dukkha nanas were really just a blur of unpleasant stuff. There's also a new sense of familiarity to the nanas, like it's old territory, like something I own. This was most clear while going through the dukkha nanas. There was never a twinge of uncertainty, of "suffering", of being in a bad place. It just felt like I was viewing them, sampling them, just gliding through them. I felt like I could intensify them, as though they were jhanas to steep in. This is especially true for fear and reobservation. I've read the advice to just sit and see what happens, so I also tried to sit, just doing nothing except watching. The A&P happened within less than a minute. I wish I would have tried sitting and not doing anything beforehand to see if this is new, but I think that it indeed is new. The perceptual baseline backdrop seems like a hybrid between dissolution and equanimity. Concentrating is easy. I haven't really tried for jhanas since I've been hanging out with friends, doing Christmas stuff, spending time with the family, etc...
I walked out my front door today, and what struck me was the change in perspective. My thought was along these lines... "wow, this looks exactly like it did when I was a child!". It's almost like having a nostalgia trip, pursing it, and then finding yourself right "at home", back in "those times", something like that.
All the subtleties do seem to point to stream entry (besides clearly experiencing a fruition and a blackout). The reason that I still have a bit of doubt is because I don't really feel the intensity that people speak of. I do consider the possibility that I'm just in equanimity, but the subtleties do point to something that has changed. |