A D R:
Also, I just re-read this post above and it sounds a bit condescending to me. I probably should stop posting on threads like this, because I think I am letting some of my dark night stuff bleed through into my posts. A lot of it is me trying to slam people who are asking the same type of questions I did just a few months ago...so, I am sorry.
Hey, no worries. I didn't see it as condescending. Some people are like, "Hmm... so you lost your car keys... are your car keys permanent? Are car keys self? Do car keys satisfy?". Hehe. Not that that response isn't excellent advice for vipassana practice. But anyways, I think I understand what you mean. With the combination of SE and winter break for school, everything became so guiltless, and I indulged so hard. Hell, the first thing I did was buy a cigar! I've hardly practiced at all since. I just got this incredible sense of life being just fine, like the vipassana ghosts that haunted me had departed and stopped bothering me. This massive sense came about, something like, "there is no importance nor need for validation for any of this, so I should just live it up!". Although, there is definitely a sense that there is more to do. It's just, not anything like the manic-depressive feelings that were happening while I was working towards path. The way I'm treating this whole thing is, if it's SE, it's SE. If it's not, it's not. But in any case, it feels so damn good to not be worrying about doing insight practice, not feeling like I have to, as though there were some invisible pressure to do so.
Excess excitement (often the case pre-stream entry) fuels desire to find "restful states," which are pushed to extreme(in other words, laxity neutralizing excitement). Extremes in laxity lose their luster after a while and the desire for mental clarity becomes more pronounced. Thus excessive laxity fuels attainment driven practice (in other words, excitement neutralizing laxity). Excessive excitement then fuels desire to find "restful states" and the cycle continues on more subtle and subtle levels.
This is a great quote. I will steep over that.
Some Guy:
Dissolution is still a vague concept for me, but this does ring a bell related to a friend's practice. I was inclined to think she had crossed the A+P, but it wasn't very obvious. She hit this calm "wavy" stage that seemed to induce torpor and got stuck there for a week. Anyway, your post seems to support my speculation that she was in dissolution. So, thanks!
Why do you think she crossed the A&P? Anyways, here's a disclaimer. Someone might experience the sort of thing I'm talking about simply by falling asleep, or approaching sleep. Dissolution has a hypnagogic feel to it, but hypnagogic phenomena occur every time you cross the fuzzy border from awake to asleep. And, it is definitely easy to approach that border any time your eyes are closed and you're not moving.