John Power::
When I reach early A&P, the breath first goes fast and then it gets slower and slower, and then fast again and then slower, this cycle is a sign of early A&P.
Eric M W:
Yup, the breathing pattern is definite A&P.
I suggest you be careful. The A&P Event can come and zap you without warning, then you're in the Dark Night whether you like it or not. If you really don't want to deal with shittiness of the higher insight stages, the wisest course of action is to stop vipassana altogether and indulge in concentration states. If your mindfulness is high enough to hit early A&P, second jhana should be relatively easy for you to access, once you get the hang of ingoring the 3C's.
When I first read MCTB, the descriptions of the Dark Night sounded frightening, so I decided that insight practice wasn't for me at that time in my life. But, a little noting practice couldn't hurt, right? Later that night, I had a hard time falling asleep, and then I had a vivid dream filled with bright lights and mythical content. Reality exploded. Since I wasn't very familiar with the maps, I had no idea that anything important had happened. I hit the Dark Night and got my ass handed to me, and I've been dealing with the complex consequences for two years now. Trying to raise a family, work, and balance meditation is not easy.
Learn from my mistake.Hi Eric,
I think I had some A&P experiences years and years back (mid 1990s) way before I ever did any meditation retreats (that was the speculation of a few here when i mentioned it like 4 or 5 years ago). But that was all v different phenomena to what I've had in more recent times:
I described in another thread some experiences of being on retreat such as seeing bright lights and really really wild and "violent" shaking, body contortions, twisting and general flailing about of the arms and head. Daniel pointed out A & P symptoms. What I neglected to mention was also exactly as described as in the breath speeding up rapidly or slowing down markedly and sometimes stopping altogether for quite a while (easily a minute plus sometimes). So, that was 1 & 1/2 years back on retreat and also on another retreat more recently. Plus these symptoms still occur daily off retreat.
I've also experienced a lot of DN crap for years probably. This is unanswerable I guess because it's so individual and depends on what anyone does or doesn't do on or off retreat of course... Just makes me think thought as to how long can these A & P experiences can continue for?
On retreat it has gotten so hectic at times that a 1 hour sitting is a real work out! I'm a lot better at "controlling" it than I used to be but it's still very much an effort.
Piers