| | I'm still curious about where on the map I am. I can make good arguments for everything from stage 1 to 1st Path!
Katy, I enjoy that you, presumably a woman or someone who identifies as a woman, responded to my post. I considered messaging you to ask if you were really a woman. I am a woman! I am a scientist, so this site's pragmatic approach really appeals to me, and I've been sharing it with all my dharma friends, including the meditation group I've been facilitating at my workplace.
A week or so ago, my practice powered way down and became quite ordinary. No more meditating during sleep, no more getting by on 6.5 hours of sleep per night, no more insights, no more vibrations, no more thoughts like clouds wafting by, no more sensations arising and passing away like TV snow. Just watching sensation ... usually sensation doesn't feel exactly solid, but it doesn't have the TV snow or raindrop quality it used to sometimes have. I've gone back to using the breath as an anchor, because I need an anchor (whereas for many weeks I did fine with wide attention). I can still sit for long periods and can still keep attention on present moment phenomena without too much wandering mind, especially during my 1.5 hour morning sit.
If I didn't know about maps and stages of insight, I'd say that I had very powerful meditations for 12 weeks because they were powered by 6 weeks of concentration practice on retreat ... and that the power has worn off, and my meditation is going to be "ordinary" again until I power it up again with another long concentration retreat.
But I see on this forum that many folks have high-powered practices in daily life with even less than the 1.5-2.0 daily hours I'm putting in. So then I think, did I get to A&P but slide back to the earlier stages? And if so, why did I slide, given that my effort didn't slacken? Or did I pass on to the dukkha stages, and I'm there now, but just without a lot of suffering? Or ... was that little blip of nothingness I fell into 2 weeks ago nibbana, even though I never had anything resembling equanimity? Or, did I have an (unremembered) A&P event as a child, accounting for my strong lifelong spiritual bent, and have been in DN for the past 45 years, accounting for 45 years of continous low-grade dukkha ... and, if so, where would that put me now?
It's so human to be curious about these things. And, from reading on this site and in MCTB, I see that one can beneficially adjust one's practice (level of effort, for example) according to one's stage.
One curious phenomenon that perisists: during meditation or whenever I am quite mindful, even the slightest movement of my body, such as moving one finger or opening an eyelid, is followed immediately by sensations in the torso evocative of sadness or longing. Is this a response to knowledge of anicca? A big exception is breathing; breathing is not associated with these sadness/longing sensations.
After resisting Mahasi-style noting as too cumbersome ( I've done it on and off throughout my practice life, just never really liked it), I've finally decided to give it another try, now that meditation has become slow and ordinary. Last 2 days I've been noting 1x/second to start with. One reason I don't like it is that it eems easy to shift into mantra mode, unwittingly.
Spent last weekend re-reading MCTB and browsing this site. So much to learn.
As long as I'm doing a core dump ... MCTB has given me new insight on my brother's 2003 suicide. One day in 2001, after reading a book on near-death experiences, he had a joyful unitive experience while just walking down the street -- seeing himself as inseparable from all beings. A week later, he phoned me to say he'd become very depressed. He'd never mentioned being depressed ever before in his life, so I assumed he'd snap out of it. He never became undepressed, eventually became delusional, and 2 years after the unitive experience he ended his life. Sounds like he had A&P followed by extremely painful DN. Too bad neither of us knew about the maps. My parents talked to a Catholic priest who said something about possible Dark Night of the Soul, but it didn't mean anything to any of us.
Terry |