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Dharma Diagnostic Clinic, aka "What was that?"

SCARY&unsettling event on retreat- Nearly brought me to psychiatry.wtf?

Hi,

TL;DR:
In the review phase of first-path I go on mahasi retreat which nearly brings me into psychiatry, or that's what the teacher said. The event itself was strangely liberating yet feeled incomplete. wtf was it? for detailed description jump to ###

This happened nearly a month ago, but I can't get it out of my head, so I thought I'd just write it down.

some background: A&P in april 2010. Attained to SE in July 2012. (or i guess so).
after that I didn't/couldn't practice because of pain -> no walking meditation possible. that's fixed now.

I went on another 10-day retreat of the same tradition over new year- ajahn tong aka slightly adapted mahasi walking&sitting technique. very hardcore indeed. I wasn't goal oriented, I just wanted to get into regular practice again.
So I guess I was/still am in the review phase of first path. At the first day I am told to wish that udayabayayana (aka a&p) may emerge. Every day I wish for the next nana to appear.

The whole retreat was pretty intense. I expected the review phase to be somewhat gentler, but that's obviously complete nonsense. The recurring theme of the retreat is mild to extreme sadness. My impression was that all of this was about the 'suffering' characteristic. (Before, it was primarily no-self. still have to get to impermanence...)

Note: as long as I can think, I'm trying to get or do stuff to make me perfect. This seems to be common. Since I realised that it would never work out that way, I'm fighting depression. This very realization was what turned me to spirituality in the first place. After reading MCTB, I adopted the 'enlightenment is good for absolutely nothing'-working hypotheses and assumed that this kind of crises won't be touched by insight meditation. I seem to be very wrong. let's call this issue (Y).

The whole retreat is very intense. It seems to be about wanting something and suffering because of the wanting. This makes me sad. (strangely this was the first retreat on which I hardly fantasized about food though.)
On day 7 I am in Reobservation and it is quite heavy. It looks totally different than how I had experienced it before, but that doesn't mean it was pleasant. Very often, something comes up, which seems to be 'deep inside me'. Let's call it (X). It is accompanied by a heavy feeling in the torso, especially stomach and a bit of the chest. It looks like very deep suffering which cannot be resolved. At the same time, this thing doesn't show itself very much, and I don't really get to learn about it. Mostly, Reobservation shows me suffering which is 'more shallow'. Still, there does not seem to be any way out. This seemed to me like a common characteristic of reobservation.
Having lots of faith, I become very boisterous (not sure if the word is correctly translated.), in the spirit of "hey, i'll crack this reobservation. it worked twice, it will work again. this is not something in the face of which i'm losing steam."
Then I was told to wish for equanimity to arise. (I wasn't told that it was equanimity or what properties it had, and maybe this was on purpose to avoid scripting. i was actually told to wish for 'sankharupekkhayana' which i translated to equanimity.)

In the next round equanimity appeared towards the end of the sitting period. but it didn't seem to be complete. Something still seemed to be missing. There was still some form of unclear uncomfortable desire. And it's getting worse. It seems 'sticky'. The round ends.
The 2nd round was different: During walking meditation I end up in equanimity. (Incidentally after letting the mind stroll and comparing the progress of insight with its 5 distinctive phases to a game of capture the flag) But the equanimity doesn't seem to be real. Then I get sad. VERY SAD. Even more sad than on the whole retreat. And it's getting more intense.
###
Then I do the subsequent sitting. I get even sadder. I didn't know how sad you can get. The thing starts to get a life of its own. I can't help but think that it must be related to the (X) and the (Y). It gets even more sad, and turns to suicidal thoughts. I'm completely dumbfounded, never having experienced suicidal thoughts in meditation at all. (And very rarely in real life in the last few years.) I'm still following the basic instructions (noting + getting back to the abdominal wall), and the thing seemed to be somewhat distant. I'm getting more anxiety and fear that I may contemplate suicide for real if this thing ever takes over. After a short time, this 'thing' decides that it really can't live on in this way. It's just too sad a condition to exist in. This is strange. It feels as if this thing just decided to commit suicide, in a form of some unclear monologue.
Next thing I know is: my body is getting COLD suddenly. There seems to be some extra distance to the thing. Fear arises even more. Something starts pulling. It feels as if this part will dissolve now. I feel like my head is going to explode. Also it feels as if it is compressed. It feels as if some strange energy thing is happening in my head, as if it was filled with thunderbolts - not really visual though. It is very uncomfortable, even painful. It is getting more intense. I feel like I'm sucked upwards, but have no idea where this is going to end. My forehead hurts. The thing accelerates further. Fear is getting more intense.
up to this point, there is some distance to the process and I'm observing everything that happens. But then, suddenly, the thing seems to scream "NO! STOP IT!" and suddenly I'm identified with it - the distance is gone. All the time I was trying to follow the instructions, it happened just by itself. The thing seems to have successfully activated the emergency break. For the rest of the day there are two things:
-enthusiasm because it was kind of liberating
-terror for fear that it might happen again

Soon, the sitting ended and I took a break. Pain in the forehead and I'm totally agitated. Someone speaks to me, and I can hardly answer, and my voice is strangely out of control. I'm shivering and feeling very cold. The perspective changes all the time. In one moment I look on things and the perception is strangely luminous, direct, natural and free of suffering. I am under the impression that this must be an outlook of how 3rd or 4th path must be. It is definitely different from the A&P-like corruptions of insight. In the next moment the perspective is gone. I'm not sure, what has changed, but suddenly it is uncomfortable and "back to normal". craving arises for the natural state as experienced before. I notice that the craving IS suffering. suddenly it drops and the perspective changes back to "free of suffering". this dynamic repeats itself a few times.

I try to do 2 more sessions, but I'm so agitated that I can hardly concentrate on the task. I go to sleep.
The next morning, all the enthusiasm is gone, but the terror is still there. I try to meditate nonetheless, but it goes horribly wrong. I don't get the fear under control. I wake up the teacher who tells me that this is basically my own fault because I'm grasping at the fear. She is right. This is a really dangerous game of the mind:
-a part tried to enlarge the fear in order to recreate the experience of the day before
-a part tried to reject the fear, thus enlarging it
-a part was interested in communicating with the fear and trying to talk to it
The teacher told me I would find myself in psychiatry if I didn't do what she told me.
Part of me didn't like this advice, because it was still too attached and fascinated by the event. Suddenly I heated up and got angry, then I cooled down very much and was frightened and thought I would through up. Didn't happen though.
The rest of the day, I did very short sessions, and went for a walk several times. All the time I tried to get aware of the body posture. It was complete hell. I had severe doubts that I would ever come out of this again. (Also the mind talked me into believing I might have gotten myself into the pit of the void which didn't exactly help to cool me down either.) I didn't (and still don't) know what would happen if the fear took over. I was afraid of losing control anyway. Sometimes I directed the mind back to the body several times per second for a long period of time without losing track. After doing this for 16 hours it calmed down without returning. Never felt that relieved. A bit of forehead pain still there.
After that I found myself in equanimity. Lost motivation to really push the practice further, was really just happy to have survived. At this point, I'm still in equanimity - Didn't practice more than 50 minutes a day.

Observations since the retreat ended:
-(Y) seems still to be there but has lost a lot of relevance
-Not much has changed, really. In the first few days of the retreat, desire would often come up, suddenly the brain starts to rewire itself, and the desire is gone. The same happens with accompanying thoughts. (I had similar experiences after stream entry.) It is, as if some old behaviour comes up, but the mind has a new standard and instantly discards it as bullshit. The behaviour tries to reinforce itself but after a few seconds loses the battle, never to return again. That's my impression.
- Some more unspecific suffering seems to be seen through, but the feeling prevails that a process has begun on the retreat which must be ended.

Questions: What the fuck was that event? Did you experience something similar? It seems to be similar to the instant-enlightenment-experiences which Eckhart Tolle and probably a thousand others have reported, only that it aborted before it was finished. Or maybe it wasn't. I couldn't find anything in MCTB about it.
Is it dangerous, if that happens? I fear that it may happen again and leave me even more destabilized or even dead. Probably that's baseless. Nevertheless I'm a bit reluctant about going on retreat again. The resources permit it, but right now I am as curious as I am scared.
The teacher wouldn't discuss what it was. She merely remarked I had learned a lot from the experience of liberating myself from the panic. She is very right. Also she didn't seem too surprised or managed to hide it very well. Maybe she gets those reports every 2 weeks, I don't know.

Comments would be appreciated. I feel totally clueless. I have more faith as ever in the technique, but I want to avoid unnecessary risks.

RE: SCARY&unsettling event on retreat- Nearly brought me to psychi
Answer
2/6/13 4:45 PM as a reply to bernd the broter.
Hi Bernd,

Comments would be appreciated. (...) I have more faith as ever in the technique, but I want to avoid unnecessary risks.

I went back to read your SE thread and I related to Mario's feedback re: probably not SE and that that would not matter-- your intention, effort and practice are there and that's what bears fruit regardless.

I think early-mid EQ is very, very tricky. As you noted, there's often clinging to EQ. I sure did. It's natural: it's like finding a life preserver in a stormy sea. It's only when that life preserver itself seems dissatisfactory that a person becomes willing to say, "okay. this can't be it. I'd better keep trying."

I think what you've described in this post is part of the mind's construction of its "high EQ". There's a ton of facing hard DN in that terrain, and it's that facing/surviving of hard challenges that builds the mind's equanimity. It is that equanimity that is then able to lift the mind out of DN reliably over the next months. Once the mind has several months (or some amount of time) of being able to lift itself out of DN into EQ, then mind naturally gives up on needing and getting SE as a desperately-sought cure to the "dark night of the soul" stages; the mind knows it has equanimity for this. And EQ is built with each hard cycle. Finally, during very calm sits in EQ, when the mind is not having to withstand DN territory, the mind is able to just enjoy the sitting job watching of its object, such as breathing. There is literally no expectation or assertion: that is a high EQ and that is when the mind is placid enough to see some plain aspects of its nature, like cessation.

The teacher wouldn't discuss what it was. She merely remarked I had learned a lot from the experience of liberating myself from the panic. She is very right.
That is quite a feat to sit get through your event there intact, curious and cautious. My feeling is that it was part of a DN loop, clearly an important one that gives your mind some history that it could basically handle its own ramping up/hysteria. But you and changes in your life as you sincerely feel and consider them are the best judges of what is happening, in my opinion.

RE: SCARY&unsettling event on retreat- Nearly brought me to psychi
Answer
2/12/13 2:09 AM as a reply to katy steger.
Hi,

After the would-be SE last year I didn't meditate at all for 5 months. But the retreat started at the A&P.
Doesn't that mean that it really must have been the real stream entry?
Or is it actually possible to script oneself to A&P without going through the first three stages?

Whatever it was, after you mentioned it I'm currently seeing how I'm both clinging to the equanimity and how I'm not so satisfied with it. In a few weeks I will ramp up practice time again and see how it evolves.

RE: SCARY&unsettling event on retreat- Nearly brought me to psychi
Answer
2/12/13 5:29 PM as a reply to bernd the broter.
Bernd!

After the would-be SE last year I didn't meditate at all for 5 months. But the retreat started at the A&P.
Doesn't that mean that it really must have been the real stream entry?
Bah, ignore me. You know best for yourself. And there's no need to decide this (although I'd say the first 5-6 months have both aspects of probing teachers for info/confirmation and some inexplicable joy). Also, I think if the possible SE event occurred last July then see what's changing in your mind by this July. I agree with many who've said this: these sorts of shifts take a year to basically unfold.

I totally agree with you that there's a tendency not to formally meditate for a good while after this event. Maybe a little roll-up-the-mat syndrome.


Whatever it was, after you mentioned it I'm currently seeing how I'm both clinging to the equanimity and how I'm not so satisfied with it. In a few weeks I will ramp up practice time again and see how it evolves.
Sticking with this 4-stage model offered by the Theravadan community, I think we can all expect to revisit these nanas until, and I speculate here, the big finale. Each nana and each stage has its dissatisfactory component, even the stage of equanimity, else we'd all stop there.

Also: I like your pie/pi shirt.

RE: SCARY&unsettling event on retreat- Nearly brought me to psychi
Answer
2/13/13 9:50 AM as a reply to bernd the broter.
In a few weeks I will ramp up practice time again and see how it evolves.

Also, about your concern for risk. I understand: there are times in meditation where breath gets very reduced and the only way this is known is that the mind can come out suddenly from meditation on a giant in-breath that the body naturally and automatically triggers. So I can only say that I think death in meditation is extremely rare, but it has been reported in young and old. A friend told me her elderly father died in zazen, but he was resuscitated by medics.

The other caution is, of course, take no caffeine to effect a long sit: high caffeine intake and long hours are somewhat associated with psychotic breaks/hospitalization. I think Bhante Yuttadhammo has a YouTube video on this.

I think knowledge of SE will be clear either way to you in a few months or by a year out from the initial experience as a quite settled interior understanding. That said, despite the conviction, I personally continue to hold doubt around any meditational experience just to keep from reifying it and building a story; it's a little procrustean, but it keeps me in check.

So good luck with your practice.

RE: SCARY&unsettling event on retreat- Nearly brought me to psychi
Answer
2/13/13 1:26 PM as a reply to bernd the broter.
This is similar to what happened to me during sesshin. It is the subsconscious mind which emerge due to the opening of the normal mind. I felt better now from the experience and more in touch to the more subtle level of fear that I normally suppress. Hope you can use the experience to relate to your past habits and be more aware of them in the present.

metta.

RE: SCARY&unsettling event on retreat- Nearly brought me to psychi
Answer
3/13/13 12:03 PM as a reply to Jin Lin.
Thanks for your answers! I just came back from another retreat of the same type, yet with another teacher. This one succeeded in explaining me how to label the lifting/lowering/sitting/touching in a dispassionate way(before I had been using some 'force' because I didn't know how to do it correctly), so I've been much more balanced on this retreat. Maybe it was this mistake which had caused me to freak out before.

The retreat again started from A&P and was designed to get up to fruition (they won't talk about fruitions directly, but it seems to be this.). This time I managed to get up to high equanimity with formations arising (or I think it was formations: the center point seemed to always switch sides and wouldn't stay anywhere. this was exciting.). Unfortunately, soon after that, I began to get very unstable and ended up in strange states where I seemed to have lost control over my own actions. Also, I felt a bit like going psychotic and lots of panic started to come up. The teacher made me then abort the process, so I couldn't finish it. It was certainly the right decision, because I nearly couldn't even fall asleep after that. The next day I felt like on a hangover.

What I thought was strange was that the teacher also said that nobody could complete the process off-retreat: too much concentration would be needed, and this could only be built by sleeping less or not at all (plus some adaptation of the walking/sitting cycle which emphasizes walking). I'm quite confident that the ajahn-tong folk know what they're doing, but their method (adapted mahasi noting) sure seems to differ a lot from what is typically promoted here. Does anyone know on what ideas exactly their system is built up?

RE: SCARY&unsettling event on retreat- Nearly brought me to psychi
Answer
3/14/13 2:58 AM as a reply to bernd the broter.
It is very hard to critique people's practice well from just a few posts, but some things stood out and so these comments may be of relevance:

1) Resolutions during initial training except of the most general nature can be really counterproductive, I find, as it relies on will rather than organic development of direct perceptual insight, and that is not what causes insight to rise, where as direct organic perceptual development is.

2) There is very little mention of the Three Characteristics or much fine direct sensate investigation.

3) It seems very caught up in maps and in just trying to get through stages, rather than simply doing the bare, simple, straightforward techniques that cause those insights to arise and the maps to unfold as they were supposed to.

4) Are you sure you got stream entry? Was there a Review phase? Were there repeat Fruitions? Was there a Mastery phase? It is the Mastery phase that spontaneously generates new territory for new practice...

5) It just keeps seeming like you were trying to force things rather than doing the basic work that actually made the stages unfold.

6) It is possible to complete a progress of insight in daily life, just more difficult.

7) Losing control over ones actions is a sigh of progress, so long as what you mean by that is noticing that actions happen on their own (no-self), rather than meaning "losing control" as in "losing it" as in "doing really crazy or inappropriate things", which is totally different.

8) You need a good teacher who will talk with you in plain and honest language like a friend about all this stuff, as I think you really don't get that good technique, good investigation, good emphasis on sensate awareness, good emphasis on Three Characteristics lead to insights, and balancing the 7 Factors of Enlightenment makes things a whole lot better, and yours clearly weren't balanced.

9) That said, you sound like quite a trooper, so with more balance, present, sensation-sensation-sensation-based investigation, rather than push-to-the-next-stage-based effort, you may do very well, and it sounds like you may have hit equanimity, so that is good.

My thoughts this evening

D

RE: SCARY&unsettling event on retreat- Nearly brought me to psychi
Answer
3/15/13 1:54 PM as a reply to Daniel M. Ingram.
Daniel M. Ingram:

1) Resolutions during initial training except of the most general nature can be really counterproductive, I find, as it relies on will rather than organic development of direct perceptual insight, and that is not what causes insight to rise, where as direct organic perceptual development is.

I should probably added that on the first two retreats I did in this tradition, no resolutions were made. It seems like I was only given them when I was ready. Also, I was told about the meaning of the various nanas only afterwards, so I really don't know why I had to do the resolutions at all. Also, I was told to forget about the resolutions after making them.

Daniel M. Ingram:

4) Are you sure you got stream entry? Was there a Review phase? Were there repeat Fruitions? Was there a Mastery phase? It is the Mastery phase that spontaneously generates new territory for new practice...

Since I couldn't continue to practice after the would-be SE for several months (injury made walking meditation impossible) this is hard to judge. As far as I can see, no cycling occurred on its own, and no repeat fruitions. So I guess it wasn't SE as described in MCTB. However, it had the following characteristics:
-it occurred when I had absolutely given up on 'achieving' fruition and just did the practice
-it was preceded by everything flying around without centerpoint for a few seconds (formations?) and then a short moment of what seemed to be conformity. Some seconds after the 'cessation', a warm bliss wave appeared.
-some basic error seemed to be entirely gone, which had been bugging me for 2 years prior. For the next 2 months, I felt like no more work in insight would be necessary. After that, some more suffering has become obvious, but some permanent insight into no-self remains.
-In the 2 subsequent retreats, the focus seemed to have shifted: Anatta seemed less important, and dukkha MUCH more so. Also, both times I started at A&P.

Daniel M. Ingram:

3) It seems very caught up in maps and in just trying to get through stages, rather than simply doing the bare, simple, straightforward techniques that cause those insights to arise and the maps to unfold as they were supposed to.

5) It just keeps seeming like you were trying to force things rather than doing the basic work that actually made the stages unfold.


When I took the basic course in this tradition, I didn't know anything about the maps, but still made it to low/middle equanimity. In the later retreats, after reading MCTB, I initially had trouble to treat arising expectations as just sensations - but that got better very soon. Other than that, knowledge of the maps seems not to have altered my practice significantly. It's true though, that with increased faith I seem to be prone to overdoing it.

Daniel M. Ingram:

2) There is very little mention of the Three Characteristics or much fine direct sensate investigation.


All three characteristics showed themselves in rich abundance. However, I have no idea how to do 'direct sensate investigation'. This is how Ajahn Tong technique works:
1)mindful prostration for 'warm up'. no noting here.
2)walking:
-note "standing, standing, standing"
-note 3x"intention to walk"
-note "lifting", "forwards", "lowering". <- this is the 3-step. later it goes up to 6-step.
Whenever some distraction comes in:
-stop and stand on 2 feet
-note "stop, stop stop"
-note whatever came up. don't get lost in noting - one teacher told me to note generally not more than 3 things.
-go back to above
3)sitting:
-note lifting
-note lowering
-note sitting
-note touching (one of 28 points in order)
distraction comes in =>
-note "hearing, hearing, hearing" (or whatever it was) and go back to "lifting"

Is this different than what you call "direct sensate investigation"? The teacher told me that we don't really do anything. We would only "create the conditions (balance of concentration and mindfulness) so insight will come".
He also said something like: "People who don't know this technique well will usually try to note lots of things, thus getting entangled in games of the mind, and thus not make any progress. It is VERY important, that you cut this as soon as you note it and come back to the walking."

Daniel M. Ingram:

6) It is possible to complete a progress of insight in daily life, just more difficult.

7) Losing control over ones actions is a sigh of progress, so long as what you mean by that is noticing that actions happen on their own (no-self), rather than meaning "losing control" as in "losing it" as in "doing really crazy or inappropriate things", which is totally different.

8) You need a good teacher who will talk with you in plain and honest language like a friend about all this stuff, as I think you really don't get that good technique, good investigation, good emphasis on sensate awareness, good emphasis on Three Characteristics lead to insights, and balancing the 7 Factors of Enlightenment makes things a whole lot better, and yours clearly weren't balanced.

9) That said, you sound like quite a trooper, so with more balance, present, sensation-sensation-sensation-based investigation, rather than push-to-the-next-stage-based effort, you may do very well, and it sounds like you may have hit equanimity, so that is good.


By 'Losing control' I meant that it really felt as if it happened without me being able to stop it. At one point I became very fearful and didn't quite know what to do, but for some reason I continued. I felt like remote-controlled by means of a voodoo doll (didn't do anything bad though). One round later, I became very unstable. The next day, the anatta was much more integrated and seemingly natural, which felt quite liberating. In hindsight it was probably my mistake to get in this, because I inadvertently ignored the teacher's advice to be more careful with the condition of restlessness.

As to the balance, the teacher told me that my practice was actually very good, and "all the conditions were there". He said I built up very much concentration very fast, and if it happens too fast, people can't handle it. (sleep had been shortened to 4h/night to enhance concentration further) So, obviously I wasn't ready for that much concentration yet. He said that I would get stronger with every time, so next time I would get further in the process. So, probably this means that the equanimity wasn't there enough - when I realized that my practice was much better than on the last retreat, I started to overdo it (higher intensity, shorter breaks). I hope the lesson is learned by now...
I didn't think about the 7 factors and realized that I don't have a clue how to intentionally get them in balance. I guess I'll better reread the chapter about them, so thanks for the hint.

Teachers who would talk about everything very openly would be very nice, I agree. Sadly, Ajahn Tong folk don't do it, although they seem to me to be quite skilled. The teacher also seemed to notice that I was prone to overdoing it. Towards the end of the retreat, his favourite words became "Easy. Easy!!!" (:

Daniel M. Ingram:

My thoughts this evening
D

thanks a lot!