| | Great response; exactly the kind of data point I was interested in seeing!
Not getting too into the dilema of whether or not I experienced SE a while back, working from the hypothesis that it was, I can relate to your experience. For me, there was a similar driving itch in practice. It was a duality between my meditation life and my conventional life. There was a tendency to feel as though all the problems in my conventional life would just vanish in a cloud of bliss upon gaining path. However, upon what I suspect was path, rather than solving the issues of my conventional (or meditation) life, the issues were seen in a different light. It seemed as though the angst about the issues was the problem itself. That is to say, I was experiencing all my issues and shit as a problem occuring to an agent, and that I was working under the premise that if I could just pop the SE cherry, the issues would disappear with the self. But since there is no self to actually remove, and never was, the issues, and the experience of self, was largely unchanged. What did change was the relationship between self and the issues. Although there was much initial relief for months, I realized that the issues were still there, the sense of self was still there, and that my breakthrough was not some magical get-out-of-suffering-free card. Shit still smells like shit, and it is unpleasant.
In accordance with what you report- I was greatly relieved when the relationship between self and outside conditions changed, and a lot of stress did seem to be permamently dropped, but even within this realization of the nature of sensations, the sensations themselves don't disappear. Identification with all the patterns of sensations does seem to be much less and the sense of self doesn't have the same constricting, asphyxiating, deterministic quality, but nevertheless, even if I can come to terms with sensate patterns and accept seeing them... they still suck.
Said in another way, the side of "self" seems diminished, and the field seems more uniform and integrated, but there is still a sense of suffering in the field that is tied to an even more elusive and ill-defined "self" side. There isn't the same interest in rearranging and eradicating sensations- they are just sensations doing their thing so the desire to change them and the stress associated with that is reduced. But there is still a tension within the field, where the ill-defined "self" side of sensations is still seemingly affected by the way the field is playing out. Whereas before the goal was to transcend the reality of sensations and patterns, now the problem is clearly in the relationship to the field, how there is a fake quality to this relationship, and what I am doing to actively support this delusion that there is some "other side" that can possibly transcend the field of experience. So the trajectory of practice seems much more clear- to integrate all sensations and stop investing in the artificial side that poses to own and receive experience. This is good, at least, to have a clearer understanding of the root of the issue.
Whereas pre-breakthrough, the meditation consisted of working with aversion and attachment to beliefs, pleasant and unpleasant sensations, just building up mindfulness to see sensations play out without getting frustrated or bored, now practice seems much more vague, much harder to pin down what it is I'm trying to do. It's like equanimity towards sensations was acchieved to some extent, but now there are much more formless and non-local sensations that I have difficulty tracking down. I'm getting more abstract now, but it seems like the field was filled with artificial divisions between all the patterns of sensation. Then, the breakthrough involved seeing some of those dichotomies break down and seeing the whole field in a more uniform way, a way that didn't habitually give so much energy to feeding aversion and desire, separation and division. This was nice (honeymoon period perhaps) and I didn't really worry about much at all. But then the new threshold seemed to make itself clear, the limitations of the realization. I would explain this as patterns that still occurred, stress that still resulted. The quote "suffering less, noticing it more" comes to mind. I view it as cutting a tree down starting from the very top. Things open up and you make progress, but the tree is still alive and well, and the roots are still in place. And it continues to grow if not tended to.
While I view stream entry as a permanent shift in how the field of perception is processed, the principles of causality still apply, and a minor step in integration does not even come close to dealing with the root of the dualistic split. The more aware and open you are to the patterns of sensations that the field consists of, the better of a position you are in to deal with the aversion and desire, and artificial division between the patterns, but on the flipside, the more you are aware of the suffering that was previously ignored or "shut out". Suffering less, noticing it more. It places more responsibility on you to continue to work on dealing with the patterns of sensations that are poorly perceived, the ones that seem more vague, the ones that still imply a self in relationship to the rest of experience.
I'm getting long winded now! I guess the point of this thread was, in a way, to gather data to support the idea that stream entry (and possibly beyond) aren't necessarily a cakewalk where you're naturally sucked into a linear dharma-track where things just fall into place and make sense, with great bliss and all that. Not that there isn't some truth to it, but I sometimes get a sense of a "dharma-lite" version of things where the hairier aspects of the process unfolding are left out, where confusions and suffering are a sign pointing against progress.
It feels good to write this all out; it definitely helped me sort out my own progress and remind myself of what I am attempting to do. Let me know what you think! |