| | I'd also be interested in hearing what others have to say on this as well, since it interests me. The "Chronic Dark Night Yogi" phenomenon seems more prevalent than I think anyone realizes (just browse the internet fringes a while), and a lot of folks have just ended up living in the dukkha nanas without realizing it. It's not nearly as impractical to speculate either, considering how damaging and alienating these things can be to our everyday lives.
In my own experience, I think I've been through the A&P at least three times--either in dreams or waking visions--but never during meditation practice. So it had a much different nature than "I was sitting and really tense and then flew into the 6th jhana", more like, "I was doing a lot of ritual work and standing on my rooftop on day minding my own business drinking a beer, felt like something was about to happen and then I saw these lights and faces"
I tend to experience a lot of physical phenomena sitting, or at least, to have to work through a wall of them before things settle down, which suggest to me I am not that far along, although I do run into very difficult mental states sometimes.
It can feel like being stuck in a goddamn mental tape loop of deep frustration with just about everything... there seems to be a response, "if I can just change this and that and this and that" etc. that "I" will be okay. Usually if I tune out from this a little bit I can notice that this is a mind-state, and lot of fabrications, overlying a broad spacious feeling. This is about the limit of my understanding. This also arises more often when I am not formally meditating. So again, I don't like to say, "i am in nana 3.1.2" or whatever since frankly I could just be some dude with a bad attitude going through difficult Three Characteristics manifestations.
Again, I'd like to hear from others and practice advice. |