Hello Molite,

What kind of retreat are you going to in August? What technique(s) will you be practicing?

IMS in Barre called Awareness,Insight and Liberation based on instructions of Mahasi Sayada

http://www.dharma.org/meditation-retreats/retreat-center/retreat-description?id=452
 

Mahasi's technique is very powerful (in my opinion / personal experience) but, as a dry vipassana technique (as little concentration as needed), it can definitely bring about stronger Dukkha Nana effects than if you blend in some samatha. I am not familiar enough with U Tejaniya's approach to comment on it.

As for avoiding the A&P, bad news is I don't think you can really. There is a "junction point" between second jhana (even very soft/lite versions of it) and the A&P, meaning that, if you get to second jhana, you are basically unlocking the A&P too as a bonus (and vice versa).

Good news: What you can do is work mostly or exclusively on concentration until the retreat, so you can do some samadhi / samatha / jhana practice if things get a bit rough. Culadasa believes that you can avoid the Dark Night altogether using his techniques. I believe Daniel is more pessimistic about it, but everyone agrees that concentration helps, so go for it, it can't hurt.

Do mention your experiences and worries to the instructors before the retreat starts.

Hope this helps,

n

Yes that is helpful moving forward

Do you think based on my post I may have already been in the Dark Night?

I wouldn't exclude it, but it is hard to answer without knowing you well. I am fairly confident that, if you practice well on retreat, you may be able to answer this question yourself with a greater degree of certainty than you can now. At least it was like this for me