| | Hello,
Note: this is a pretty long story, so if you aren’t interested in the dark night part and want to skip to what I think was my stream entry, skip down to the asterisks (***).
I’ve recently discovered Daniel Ingram’s amazing book and this website. Wow, what a difference it makes finally knowing the stages of insight map!
Here’s my story. Four years ago, I had what I can now clearly identify as my A&P event. It felt like my head was exploding with waves of incredible energy. I was doing concentration meditation on the breath at the time, but I moved my awareness just a tiny bit off my object to “something else” closer to my forehead and then it busted me open.
After that I started doing the concentration practice about an hour a day and it felt great. I didn’t do much mindfulness practice though. Once in a while, I’d hit a sudden and intense fear, but I didn’t know this was expected so I usually just stopped meditating at that point and let it pass.
About 6 months after that experience, I went on my first silent meditation retreat. On the retreat we did breath concentration practice for the first two days, which was easy for me by this point, I hadn’t hit first Jhana, but was definitely in access concentration. Then we switched to an insight technique of noticing the most prominent sensation body and aversion/attraction to these sensations. I hadn’t done this type of practice before. After a full day of doing the practice, I was struggling with lots of body pain (stage 3). At night, I was lying in bed unable to sleep because of my soreness, and my awareness was moving around my body in a very concentrated beam, like a narrow flashlight. It went to the tense spot in the back of my neck which felt like a dark opaque ball and I just sort of kept shining the attention there until it pushed inside the ball and dissolved it. Then my whole spine felt like it was getting wider, I felt very peaceful and the pain totally went away. I imagine this was A&P again, but this time with a different object. Then I stood up and took a breath that seemed to go on and on endlessly. I felt extremely relaxed and lazy as this took place (dissolution). After I exhaled that super-breath I felt a sharp drop in my diaphragm and I became very afraid. It was fear unlike any I’d ever known and there was no escape from it. I thought I was dying, and immediately bought into the story that I’d done something to rupture my diaphragm or my lungs. I quickly began to panic and eventually went and woke up one of the instructors. She tried to reassure me, but she didn’t explain the maps or anything, I don’t think she had a clue about them. Then I broke through to misery and started sobbing in her arms.
The next day, I felt very strange uncomfortable sensations all through my body, but at the same time, I had moments where my body felt totally in flow, like I’d suddenly become a master martial artist. During sitting practice, that day, I felt my body dissolve down to my thighs. Nothing above the knees was there, even when I tried to feel it. This freaked me out but also felt pretty cool. I suppose this is associated with dissolution. Then I hit fear and stopped practicing for the day. I took some long walks, but even without consciously trying to practice, I couldn’t help but be very aware of everything. The night, a knot in my lower abdomen dissolved while I was going to bed, and I hit a massive wave of misery. This time the misery was much, much worse than the previous night. I’d never felt so emotionally shattered in my life, and I must have sobbed for half an hour. I must reinforce the fact that as this was all happening, I had no fucking clue about the stages, and none of the teachers seemed to either. They tried to be reassuring, but they gave me no framework for understanding what was happening to me. I only just learned about these maps in the last week after dealing with the dark night stuff on my own for three and half years. The next day, I left the retreat. However, things continued to go down hill.
For the next 2.5 years, I struggled with panic attacks, crying spells, and extremely strange sensations I couldn’t even adequately describe. I developed terrible insomnia, and tried every kind of healing and spiritual practice I could think of (other than more vipassana). I’d been so scared by my experience on the retreat and so disappointed with the teachers and how they handled it that I simply thought vipassana was crappy and dangerous. Also, I have issues with a lot of the philosophical/dogmatic side of Buddhism so I just steered clear.
However, I didn’t stop spiritual practice. I did all kinds of things like shamanic journeying, devotional practices, ecstatic shaking, lots of New Age stuff, body work, tai chi. The list of what I tried goes on and on. One of the most helpful things for the fear stage was doing exposure therapy with a trained psychologist, it essentially forces you to practice facing fear until it doesn’t bother you any more. I sort of hit upon similar strategies for the misery, using a lot of love oriented practices as well as therapy and and non-verbal grief expression in a supportive group.
The disgust stage may have showed up for me in various shamanic journey’s as gruesome dismemberments. In the shamanic tradition seeing a vision of your body being torn apart or other wise demolished in horrible ways is supposed to be a gateway to power and great gift. With this mindset I was able to embrace the complete destruction of my spirit body.
*** In May of this year, I did a three day self-organized meditation retreat at a lovely Anglican Convent (I’m Jewish by the way). I was mostly focusing concentration meditation on the Divine Beloved. I sort of made a practice that combined the teachings of Hafiz, Ramakrishna, Hasidism, and put these together with my own irreverent sexual politics. Anyway, I can say that samadhi on the divine beloved is fucking awesome, a lot better than metta in my books.
At that retreat I had a particularly vivid shamanic journey, which certainly took me to equanimity, and I think may have involved stream entry. You might be skeptical about my memory of this event, but I wrote a very detailed account of it in my journal the following day. I was not aware of the stages of insight map at this time, so it’s pretty remarkable how well the stages of the journey I describe in my journal match up with the stages of insight map.
After a day and half of meditating on my Divine Beloved, I entered into a visionary space. I did not consciously direct the images that arose after I entered into the visionary space other than to focus on knowing my Divine Beloved so I’d say it was closer to an insight practice than a concentration practice. I started out with a spirit body, travelling to a temple with 5 statues of God-forms I’d seen previously. Then, I travelled through a portal at the base of the throne of the King God, and entered onto a vast infinite plane. I saw my body dead with a spear through it, and saw a beautiful person who was my Divine Beloved. He told me to leave my body behind and come with him so I did. We walked along the flat empty plane until the ground dematerialized, and the body of the Beloved together with my consciousness was the whole of my field of awareness. The Beloved told me to enter inside his body so I did. My awareness passed into his body like another doorway.
After entering into the Beloved, the images ceased and I became very aware of the inner voice with which I was thinking. I saw how I identified with it, but that it was not essential to do so. I set it aside, and as I did so there was a great surge of energy through my body (A&P?). Then I heard the voice speak, but now it wasn’t my voice, just a voice speaking, although I somehow knew it was the same voice, I had just cast aside. Then I was in silence for quite a while just noticing, and there arose a great awareness of suffering, images of floating corpses and so on. Yet, I felt I had boundless compassion available to face the suffering, as if I was seeing the suffering of the world the way God sees it. I focused on the awareness of this suffering until I penetrated inside the awareness of this suffering, and then I ended up somewhere else. There was a distinct feeling of lightness and peace, like the calm ocean waters that lie out beyond the crashing waves (Equanimity). In that formless peace, saturated with compassion, without awareness of any object specific object, there suddenly arose a very beautiful and poignant feeling in the area of my heart. I sensed that this was the very essence of the Beloved (my meditation object), but now it was beyond all specific form, just an unspeakably beautiful field of raw feeling. A profound joy and contentment settled over me as I contemplated it. I gained the insight that I was experiencing the primordial dualism of Lover and Beloved. I resolved to travel inside this pure feeling in my heart, to bring these two together and then I did so. I felt myself pass through it to the other side, but then I can’t remember anything of what happened on the other side (nibbana?). Some time after, I emerged back in a glorious new God-body and my Beloved once again was in human form. He led me back through the stages of the vision and I re-grounded and returned to my physical awareness. I felt amazing after this. I was joyful, laughing, just so up that nothing could bring me down for quite some time. My life definitely improved considerable after this point. The dark night stages still occurred spontaneously but it was as if their negative aspects were attenuated. I was able to be more effective in terms of pursuing my practical goals and keeping a busy schedule than I had been since the first retreat.
Now that I know about the stages of insight map, everything makes a lot more sense to me than it did. I’m starting to observer the cycling that happens several times a day in the midst of my daily life. Anytime, I get bored and there isn’t a lot of external stimulation, I start cycling. I’m not always sure what the object is, but I think my default object in ordinary life situations is probably body sensations. I’m pretty fast at getting through the fear and misery now, and neither one really bothers significantly any more, although they are still clearly present. In daily life, when I’m not trying to meditate, I usually stop cycling after I reach disgust. I suppose the disgust just kicks my attention off the object unless I try to keep it there. It’s not as easy for my to get to equanimity with body sensations as it is with the Beloved, but I can do it. I’m pretty certain I’ve never passed Equanimity with body sensations.
I’d love to hear your thoughts, suggestions, etc. In particular, I’d love to hear from experienced folks about whether the vision I describe was likely a stream entry.
Second, I’ve read that once you have stream entry, then you automatically start at A&P, however, is that only for the object upon which you got stream entry or for all objects? Whenever I put my mind on the Divine Beloved, I’m immediately filled with blissful spiritual energy, but with body sensations or the breath I still have the body pains initially (although I can get passed them pretty fast).
Third, I’m going on another three day retreat this weekend. Would it be best to use my time to try to get stream entry with a wider range of objects (body sensations, breath, et al), or would it be better to try to get additional fruitions using the Divine Beloved, or should I split my time between both. Any advice would be great! |