Daniel M. Ingram:
Nirodha comes on suddenly, without warning, and is totally encompassing, so it is not the sort of thing you could pull back from or anything like that, as it is like a sudden total pulling of the plug.
However, what you are describing is interesting. What is the setup? In what context of attainment or ability or daily practice or retreat or what?
Then maybe I was blipping out without realizing it, because even though I thought I wasn't passing the event horizon (total blip out), it would still chill me out big time.
I have never been on retreat. I got stream entry in Feb, 2nd in May, 3rd around beginning to mid last month.
When it first happened, I was in 8th jhana and perception was wobbling in and out (hard to explain) my teacher (Ron Crouch) told me to look for a spot in my head where the sinking would occur, but I never had to do this, it happened without trying, my mind went right to it. The spot is about an inch back from the 3rd eye chakra. The first time it happened I was really freaked out, but very chilled out afterwards.
Nowadays I am cycling like crazy and it doesn't always show up and I don't try to force it. Every sit is different it seems, sometimes I have partial cycle, full cycles, sometimes NS happens on its own, sometimes I go up to the tippy top of the PL jhanas. My sits consist of absolutely no intention to do anything at this point other than let things be an observe. Daily life feels very paradoxical. Like I know what the answer is, and I already have it, but I don't have the keys to unlock it yet. Can't quite figure out what it is that is left, if you know what i mean.