I thought I had a slight idea of this map model, and what you're saying ripping to shreds what I considered.
Don't worry about it, I said it before but it's worth repeating: We've
all been there at some point, I could link to at least three practice threads I've posted on here which have ended with me saying "Ah, looks like I was wrong...ok, back to square one". It's really not a big deal and, in my experience, leads to a deeper and more thorough understanding of the whole thing.
And even then I don't understand, is stream entry relatively mundane compared to full enlightenment or is it half the puzzle?
Stream Entry is something which permanently changes your entire experience of the world in a way which defies description. It's a complete perceptual shift, but at the same time it seems so completely normal in this paradoxical way where you realize that it's never actually been any other way. As far as "full enlightenment" goes, I have no idea what that could even be. The ideas I had in the past about what "full enlightenment" could be have been blown to bits repeatedly over the years, so don't cling too tightly to anything 'cause it
will change.
Are the dukkha nanas something half the world population are stuck in or is it only for those who have already traversed millions of hours of meditation?
One important thing to remember about the maps is that they're just outlines, they're not the territory they describe. The "dukkha ñanas" are only found within a specific conceptual model, but the same phenomenological descriptions those words symbolize are found within other non-Buddhist traditions under such names as "Dark Night of the Soul", or "the nigredo stage", or "Crossing The Abyss". Anyone who's experienced a profound spiritual insight or a glimpse of how the illusion of a Self is created will almost certainly go through a period of dissolution as their old paradigms and conceptual understandings are broken down, this is evident in pretty much every single tradition and is why it's not incorrect to say that many, many people are probably going through "the dukkha ñanas".
Reading posts on this forum a lot of people talk casually about themselves as being third and fourth paths while lots of people say that stream entry is tremendously difficult so I'm finding it really really hard to get a perspective on things.
Bear in mind that a lot of us here have come from long and intensive practice histories, I only found this site and MCTB after having gotten stream entry but not actually knowing what the hell stream entry even meant!

Don't stress, you can only work with your own experience. Take tips and advice, see what others are saying and how they're describing things, but you'll only ever know your own immediate sensate experience and it's the only place that any of this stuff can truly begin to make sense. What to remember is that all of this is completely possible and that there are ways to go about it which make it considerably more efficient.
Before reading any maps seriously, all I could be sure on was this, in June I could lay back and within a minute be tuned onto a state where any Bach piece was transformed into heaven's music itself, more sublimely than any hallucinogen could have done it (I had experimented with these years earlier). The afterglow of this would last an hour or so, where I would walk in the countryside and It would be like a fantasy chivalric romance.
After two months of this self indulgence I came into a buzzing brick wall and found it tremendously hard to concentrate or focus. The whole of existence was a nightmare, anything at all was seen as disgusting or disturbing and there were real desire for deliverance moments. At the time I knew it was because of no objects but my relationship to existence itself, but still I didn't know where to turn. I read the Ingram book and decided I was in reobservation because of all these bad feelings, and then after it subsided and I felt pretty chill, although I fell back once or twice I thought it was equanimity. This is the last month or so, what I thought was the equanimity business. I thought I could access all four jhanas too, and that this might be stream entry and I might be cycling. So it is hard to read that I am probably at the very beginning of something, I am upset that I deluded myself otherwise. I feel like there are a billion places in the last couple of years which I could call peaks so these maps just throw me in a mess.
Right, so you've crossed the A&P and hit Dark Night. Good. Once you've crossed the A&P, you'll cycle from Mind & Body up to Equanimity until you hit Path, after which every sit will begin in the A&P, you should be able to hit fruition and have access to the arupa jhanas.
You don't need to be upset, it's a complete waste of time. Seriously. When I first found these maps, I spent a long time trying to align my previous experience with them until I realized that, regardless of what's gone before, awakening can only happen now. All the stuff you've experienced prior to now, while it's important and will have provided a decent baseline to work from, is no more than a memory, a mental formation and not the actuality of your experience as it is now. Some of it will just slot into place, you'll recognize some profound insight from before but this time you see it clearly enough to allow the full realization to occur. Either way, don't waste your time on feeling shit; investigate those feelings, look at what they're made of and how they come together to form an experience.
"Peak experiences" are too common to use as landmarks, they're temporary experiences which, although amazing and revelatory at times, are only a peek at what it's like to experience the world from that perceptual baseline. Use them as reminders to incline the mind towards that way of experiencing and see what it is that makes your immediate mode of experience different to that. Awakening isn't the peak, it's finding yourself at what looked like the peak but eventually realizing the top of the mountain was obscured by clouds; some people park their asses there, some continue the adventure.
Five or six times in the last year and a half, I have had these hour long events where I felt like I was dying, the sky and the clouds seemed to be flowing through my mind, the last two times accompanied by mad bodily twitches (I have considered the possibility of these being so-called LSD flashbacks but I have rejected it, I had several 300microgram trips some years ago but I never lost control or messed up or anything. Infact it was the panoramic way my mind was temporarily taking things in that got me into this thing..).
I'm familiar with LSD and would agree that these aren't flashbacks, although there's a strong possibility that your experience with hallucinogens has 'primed' you in some way for getting into insight. I know a few people who attribute their initial crossing of the A&P to LSD, and I was experimenting with it myself in an insight context not too long ago, but these symptoms all sound like 'kriyas' and are common in the A&P.
If you didn't reply to this post I would have assumed the I had attained path and today had cycled through A&P very strongly and am now in the dark night again. I only make such grand assumptions because I have seen so many on this form talk of stream entry as not so much a big deal, just go on retreat for a couple of weeks intense.
This is why it's worth asking questions, especially if you're not familiar with the conceptual models used to describe these things. I got stream entry almost by accident, but it was 'cause I was actively investigating the impermanence of all phenomena, however I'd also been practicing in other traditions for about 12 years prior to that so, much as it sound like it's not a big deal, most, not all though, people on here who claim to have attained 1st Path and beyond have been at this in one way or another for a long time.
It's just that I have had what seemed to be a killer dark night in august, it seems hard to swallow that I am nowhere near it. I am a student with few pressures and there was no other clear reason why I should be able to access ecstacy on cue whenever for two months then by in gigantic hell for a month. I don't think I have mental illness...
This is just normal cycling, I don't think you have a mental illness either so try to take a step back and see this from a wider angle. In daily life, your perceptual baseline and overall emotional tone will change as you cycle through the ñanas, this is perfectly natural and is worth looking at more closely 'cause it makes it much easier to work with and learn from. When you sit to practice, you'll start from 1st ñana and go as far as it's possible for you to go based on your current perceptual baseline.
It's not that you're nowhere near it, it's just that you seem to have this idea that you just cycle through these stages once and then hit Path but it's not the case. This is what I mean about how easy it is to get confused if you're not familiar with the maps and the technical side of things, there's a lot to it but always remember that they're just conceptual models and not the experiences they describe.
If stream entry is as grand as the whole opening of the crown chakra business and a million suns meeting a million moons, then I havent attained stream entry. I would have assumed the was a description for full enlightenment.
Drop the ideas about "full enlightenment" 'cause it's really unhelpful and will just set up unrealistic expectations. This could be described as a process, not an event, it's a continual unfolding of reality as it is in all it's luminous, empty, transient splendour, but trying to conceptualize it before you've actually experienced it will lead to more confusion.
my practise is mostly concentration, serenity and all that. I have tried watching the breath but I end up just sitting doing nothing. I have tried staring at my face in a mirror absolutely still, until my face transforms from one to another every ten seconds. I don't know if that is an insight or concentration practise, but I did that a lot before what I consider to be my A & P event in June.
Yeah, I know what you mean about the mirror thing. This is actually a cool way to access jhana-like states, the way your face changes is kinda like the way it works when you're doing concentration on a kasina, or external object. It's a concentration practice though and will almost certainly have helped or at least allowed you to incline your mind towards that way of experiencing.
Checking through Mr Ingrams book once more about the A & P event, he says one of his friends got his while on drugs, randomly. While consciously never considering dharma or existence properly, that is what got me focussed on figuring out this existence, which if I forced a map onto, during and after a massive trip, could be an A&P event....I don't think that was though.
I'd say it's highly likely that it was an A&P Event, based on what you've described so far. Check out the chapter "Was That Emptiness?", there's a lot of good stuff there which might help you get a better understanding of this.
2011 - June - Had massive psychedelic trip (my fifth), due to boredom with worldy things. I debunked something for good on that day, whilst intoxicated. I felt like a saw people's faces for the first time. I didn't see my mother as my mother or my father as my father anymore. They were just creatures who happened to be at this place and this point in time and I didn't have any special link to them besides biology. I had empathy with them as everybody else, but they werent just cardboard cut outs anymore. From this point in I started reading lots of books on theravada, zen, yoga.
2012 - January-February - Was fundamentally discontented with life. Every person, including myself seemed to be like animals, hardly conscious, reactive, going through the motions, preparing for something which never comes, not questioning the fundamental state of affairs. I lost a lot of who I considered friends because this was the only topic I could get into, rather than chasing a pretty girl or networking to move up the greasy pole.
I had no idea of what formal practise to do, just through sheer fed up-ness with life I observed it. I felt I had little to lose so I just watched everything. Stared at a point in space until the room started to melt or twirl. Such events were quite frightening, like parts of me were dying.
February - May - I don't really recall what I was doing...I was still doing everything open-eye at this point, as that's how I started. I was interested in perspective and panoramic view. Just observing. Dry insight perhaps? Just looking at my reality as hard as possible, sitting in my chair, hearing people walk around the house and just being the ambience. It seemed like an eternal nightmare. Aside from the rare events I mentioned earlier, where I would almost jump for joy with random people in the street because it seemed that the sun and the whole world was rendered with my head and I was one with it (no one has ever considered me mentally ill by the way...hehe).
June - big breakthrough, I managed to start closing my eyes and getting to jhana. After sitting still for a few minutes I would have purple pulsations and then be in it hard. Greatest times I've had aside from those rare single hour spontaneous events.
August - Brick wall, stopped practising, the whole thing was disturbing and tiring but I kept forcing concentration and got through
September - Left dark night, felt sooo good. I could have given up the whole work and just relaxed. In the concentration practise, after an hour of muddy jhana transitions, I would get to a very very peaceful state which I considered to be the fourth jhana. This felt a little like a dead end. Since it got rather still I sillily considered an experience in it to be stream entry. I fell back to re observation after relaxing too much.
August - Anyway I've said the rest earlier, I tried to investigate fourth jhana in equanimity, and I was in bed when the smooth experience happened.
This is crossing the A&P and then cycling to Equanimity and back down, but there's no evidence of Path. There can be little moments of where things seem to drop out completely while you're in A&P territory and also in Equanimity, these can be tricky and can make it seem like a fruition occurred.
Anyway, I think I cycled to A&P postpath which was a billion times stronger than the first A&P though similar in style, and I think I am right now as I type, in the darknight, after achieving path though. Or I might be near the very very beginning and be very dearly mistaken, which would be better to confront if it was the case but I truly don't know.
Again, this is where not being familiar with the ins and out of the maps can throw people. Post-Path, you're in Review and won't start the cycle for 2nd Path immediately so your suggestion of being in the Dark Night of that cycle is a non-starter. If you're continuing to practice then your concentration will improve which, in my opinion, is what's led to a clearer experiencing of the A&P as part of that recent cycle. If it seems like the A&P, as you said "similar in style", then it's almost certainly the A&P but your familiarity with it opens up more of the subtleties of that stage and can seem more "Whoa!".
Sorry sorry, your questions, is there a significant difference in the way I see the world...I can't say, I don't know how dramatic the difference is meant to be. I'm more in the here-now. But now I think I am in dark night again I am feeling disturbed and uncomfortable. It's more psychological than perceptual. Some smoke and mirrors in my head have been dropped but since I can see so much darkness remaining it doesn't seem like much of an achievement.
I'd be quite confident in saying that you didn't get Path, but that you're cycling as normal. That last line in particular is something I've heard a lot of people say who thought they'd gotten "enlightened", only to find that they'd barely opened the door. As before, no great shakes and so don't go thinking "Aw shit, I've made an arse of myself now" 'cause nobody's likely to think that other than you. There's no fun to be had in getting into these negative thought loops, just look at them for what they are and see what it is that feels embarrassed or let down or annoyed.
Of all the above, the one thing I can be most sure about, is that in the last few days I could enter four jhanas, albeit slowly, and they were not all just manifestations of the first. I have felt and watched the shift into each, and became acquainted with them. Sorry for all the vagueness, I'm not a technical practitioner that's for sure. I mention the massive a&p experience today as how else could I go from equanimity right to a&p without intervening dark night?
Could you describe, as well as you're able to, how each of the four jhanas feel to you?
As far as the progression from A&P to Equanimity goes, the speed and intensity at which a person passes through Dark Night depends on a lot of things. My partner went through the main Dark Night of a Path cycle in a matter of minutes, for some people it might take months or years, but it's quite idiosyncratic and also dependent upon practice as well as a host of other factors.
Thanks a lot for reading...shame there's no surefire way to see exactly where I'm at. I don't suppose there's a trick that only stream-enterers could do?
You're welcome. Here's the list of criteria Daniel gave me when I asked the same sort of questions:
Criteria for stream entry are straightforward, but seeing if they actually fit is a complex process and can vary depending on the training and talents and conceptual frameworks of the person being evaluated.
Big things:
1) You should be able to get into some sort of altered/meditative state at will within about 1/2 a second just by deciding to investigate something or look at reality carefully or incline your mind that way 100% of the time you try this.
2) Once you become familiar with the insight stages as described, you should be able to sit down in a brief version of 4th, progress down in to 5th, hit the Dark Night, progress to Equanimity, and then, maybe, depending on a number of factors, get a Fruition: note: not everyone can do this last part, even if they are a good meditator. Some can and some can't. Criteria for a Fruition are given in MCTB, as well as common mimics listed. Even if you are a stream enterer, if you haven't exercised this ability or done it only once, it may not be that easy to do it again until you have had some practice and maybe not even then. This is particularly true of those who have come up in other traditions where that particular ability was not the focus of practice.
3) Your life should be completely different in some ways: problem is, the A&P can do this on its own, so this is insufficient criteria in and of itself.
4) Talk with someone who has stream entry about this, particularly someone who is familiar with the variability in presentation and abilities that can occur.
5) Try to have repeat Fruitions: incline, incline, incline, and practice. Resolve, resolve, resolve and practice. Pay attention. Learn to navigate through the Vipassana Jhanas, learn their qualities, learn how to shift to each new level and know what they shift was and how it occurred: this is the foundation of the solid practice that causes progress and clarifies what was what.
I have no idea if you actually have stream entry, but do the experiment for yourself: see if you can get real, honest-to-goodness Fruitions or at least progress through the stages of insight up to Equanimity sit after sit, and watch for the changes, and, again: talk with someone about this: as trying to figure out things across traditions is complex. Best to get in touch with someone who knows the magickal frameworks you are coming from so they can translate that into vipassana terminology, if only for communication and criteria application purposes.
Helpful?
Welcome to the DhO,
Daniel
Ask whatever you like, it's a complicated process at first and there's a lot of wishful thinking that can come up. No matter what though, you're welcome to ask away, make mistakes, get confused and get annoyed 'cause you won't be the first or the last and it's through these things that we learn more. I genuinely don't think you've gotten stream entry though, based on what you've described and comparing my own experience over the years it sounds more like A&P followed by cycling, which is a good thing as some people don't even get that far!
T