Author: TheQuestioner7
Forum: Dharma Overground Discussion Forum

So hello! I've been meditating seriously for about a year and a half, although I had my first a&p event almost 7 years ago. I'm one of those people who have had a long, hard Dark Night up until I discovered meditation. I've checked out the book and I've become familiar with what it says.

When I meditate I either do a pure concentration or I do a insight-like meditation. With the insight-like meditation, what I will do is focus on an object or physical sensation and slowly I will move away from it until I don't have an object anymore. At some point I get into a very definite groove and I start to get involved int he meditation. It's a very definite shift and I've come to equate that with the first Jhana. Next I can either keep up my concentration (which is on nothing now, but it still works) and I will notice tingling sensations until I start to see light on the back of my eyelids and I get a huge mental rush of brightness and good-feelings. I've come to call this the second Jhana. Next it will go away, usually very quickly after a small climax, and then I will feel like I'm not in meditation anymore, but if I keep my concentration up then soon I feel a buildup of pressure and then I will feel a sudden shift. This shift always gets me by surprise and I can't help but think "Woah, something happened." I've come to call this Re-Observation. And then my concentration is very clear and seemingly far away, so I call it 4th jhana.

I won't always get all the way to Re-observation, but usually I do. At some point it all seems to backtrack to the first Jhana, although its all mushed together and not clear. In my mind it seems like there is a track in my mind that the energy is moving through and eventually, just as the tide advanced, the tide will recede and I come back out of meditation.

(cont')

Author: TheQuestioner7


So I think that If I continue doing this until my sitting meditations go deeper into equanimity, that I am likely to start experiencing formations (which I've had before. They're a kind of non-dual experience, right?) and from that point it's just time until stream entry.

Does this prediction sound accurate?
Do any of you have tips on experiencing formations easier or faster? I would really appreciate that.
Does this relate to any of your practices? I've never heard of this kind of meditation before, it just works for me.
Do you guys experience the big shift that I call Re-observation, or is that just me?
If I meditate about 3 hours a day, do you think I could pull stream entry off while still maintaining a social life?
How many times do you guys cycle through the jhanas in an hour? (I can do maybe one and a half)

Anything you have to say will help!
Thanks!
~Jeff

-yes
-see how all the changing stuff is happening in a space/framework/attention that doesnt seem to be changing along with it, and investigate the hell out of that space/framework/attention
-you're describing the progress of insight decently, yes.
-the shift into desire for deliverance, and then reobservation, is actually the shift into the beginning of experiencing formations (but blindly, unclearly, hence the extreme difficulty .. the clarity comes back with the shift into equanimity regarding formations). i usually missed the first shift in pressure (into desire for deliverance), but the second shift (into equanimity regarding formations) is pretty easy because the pressure is clearly off and things start becoming clearer, rather than simply more complex.
-yes
-how long depends on a bunch of other things but somewhere between 15 minutes and and 15 seconds.

make sure to keep up the quality of investigation in equanimity. pay attention to 'objects' that are easy to take for granted - like sense of space, sense of time, sense of silence, sense of the attention itself.

Author: TheQuestioner7

Thanks. I have another question. Usually when I'm in dark night I will get a buildup of tension in the background and suddenly all my thoughts will stop and I will have a sense of space. Sometimes I try to expand the space but sooner or later the background tension starts to build up again. This seems to happen the more I meditate in dark night territory. Can you relate?

And also, why do you consider the desire for deliverance the beginning of formations?

Author: TheQuestioner7

Whether anyone is interested or not, I thought I would post my progress:

Last night I started seeing formations clearly. When I was really getting into it I had an unexpected moment where my eyes shot open and all the perceivable universe seemed to blink out in a solid white vibration followed by another vibration of paler white.

I'm going to assume this was a "near miss" experience, but I want your guys opinion too. What do you think?
Any practical advice for this stage?
Can you describe any of your near miss experiences so I could compare?

Thanks, love you all
Jeff

Hey Jeff,

I don't recall an event like that, but honestly, I was horrible at noticing things in equanimity and so I am not a good authority on that at all. Advice for the stage regardless is the same as what Tarin mentioned and what's in MTCB. Personally, anytime I found myself in equanimity, I always just read the chapter in MCTB and it helped me see my stuck spot. Keep every little detail in mind that he talks about in terms of "noticing things" or "tuning into" various things; those are super important.

Trent

yes i can. note the stopping, note the silence, not the space, note the intuition to expand it, not the background tension, just keep going, letting whatever happen happen while remaining persistent and consistent. oh, it may help to poke around and see if you can find a fascination with this part of the process, and if so, note that too.

i consider desire for deliverance to be a point where formations become evident, because of something dan (ingram) pointed me to, a passage in the visudhimagga that groups nanas 9-11 (desire for deliv, reobservation, and equanimity) together (also see mtcb chapter 26, under the section 'inklings of one more model'), as well as mahasi writing (in 'practical insight meditation') about how formations are perceived in reobservation, just not clearly. this led me to take a better look (after i already had solid mastery of the cycles) at how the transition into the late dark night happens and i saw it for myself. practically speaking, how this is useful is in understanding how a serious practitioner falling back from equanimity can still practice *as if in equanimity* - that is, by investigating the entire formation at once. doing so (investigating the entire formation at once, including its deeply visceral aspects) will produce good results whether or not one is technically in equanimity regarding formations, so long as one is close enough.. and anyone who's hitting that territory regularly clearly is.

near miss

note the urge to predict, to game, to interpret, to be done with the **** thing already, whichever are relevant/applicable, etc..

white (and paler white) vibrations are part of the perceptible universe! but wtf is this perceiving itself? if you're not curious as hell by now you should be. make sure to include the sense of attention itself. wtf is this perceiving thats happening?

Author: TheQuestioner7

"note the urge to predict, to game, to interpret, to be done with the **** thing already, whichever are relevant/applicable, etc.."

All of the above.
****. I completely screwed up and fell into these traps yesterday. I felt like I was going insane for a while. Now I'm pulling back to regroup and gain my sense of humor. I'm going to just focus on my curiosity from now on. The only good meditation periods I get are when I'm genuinely curious and enjoy myself, so from now on I'm only doing that.

I'm back at work now so progress will be slowed some, but I'm still putting in about 2.5 hours of insight and 30-45 min of concentration practice. I want to nail this thing.

If I'm successful, I want this thread to be a source of motivation for everyone who's trying to get stream entry.
Wish me luck.
Jeff

they are not traps if you note them. you dont have to stop predicting/gaming/interpreting/etc to get stream entry .. perhaps just have to stop doing it for long enough (perhaps).

good luck

BEGIN QUOTE
I noticed in my last session that there is always a subtle visual representation of the sensations I try to observe including the breath sensation.
http://kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/thread/3126235/Amr%27s+Case+Study+Thread?offset=20

Lately I have been experiencing regularly certain states where I start being able to see quite clealry when the feeling of self, of I, arises. There are images that arise in the back of the mind that accompany a sensation (particulary in the chest area) and these seem to give the impression of a self. When it is observed it seems to dissapate very quickly for a moment or two and reappear as another image (usually of my physical state or even just a generic male face and the state of meditation becomes more concentrated and I guess I fall deeper into equanimity. That´s how it feels. I just kept doing this in every sit. I observe every moment that the self seemes to arise as an image.
http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/98741

...half way through the sit I got lost in something. Something about an image of the breathing...
http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/90268
END QUOTE

I started to see this kind of images arising as a feedback to a previous sensation (I remember after a sound, and maybe a physical sensation). Just a glimpse, no more than few times, and it was quite new for me, and even unrelated to my meditation goals.
I believe I passed A&P (without the Event) but still didn't noticed the passing away of the knowing mind in the dissolution phase (dissolving thoughts? yes, but the knowing mind, this sort of an alerted Watcher, is always there).
So for me this dissolution of the knowing mind, the GONE! ala Shinzen Young was the target.
Are these images arising the pretty misterious FORMATIONS? Even after re-reading the Daniel chapter on Equanimity, I think I need also a definition for formations.
And all this stuff came out with an inclination to lucid dreaming during meditation. I wasn't sure it was a sort of a hindrance to move away from. 'Proper' thoughs before dissolving ended in a kind of lucid dreaming, with the feeling that the stream of consciousness was no more than a dream. Hard to distinguish between dreams and the wandering mind's thoughts. A persistent eardrum buzz, and A LOT of 'auditory' thinking (voices).
I mapped all of that into the dissolution nana, but I really need an hint about where I am and if all this stuff is useful for the practice.
I post it here because I like this thread and I feel connected to it somehow...

Dissolution can mean many things, and so read the definitions carefully.

Dissolution as an insight stage (5th one, after A&P), happens quite on its own naturally after the A&P and usually doesn't last that long and leads quickly to Dark Night stuff, and may hardly be noticeable.

Dissolution as a term to refer to an insight is not some stage of high clarity in which one notices the vanishing of the sense of subject, and instead is a vague stage of generally pretty "bad" feeling practice or you may not even really notice it at all, as not noticing much is its hallmark.

Lucid dreaming stuff is an A&P hallmark. Dissolution as an insight stage tends to involve heavy, deep sleep rather than lucid dreaming.

Buzzy stuff is A&P or later Dark Night, not Equanimity or Dissolution.

Equanimity doesn't tend to involve lucid dreams either, though more likely than Dissolution, but less likely than A&P.

People spending a lot of time wondering if they are in Equanimity are unlikely to be in Equanimity, as one of the hallmarks of Equanimity is being ok with wherever you are and not caring so much about mapping or applying terms to something that in that stage is just fine.

Your question needs more specifics and more temporal context (what came before and after) and more about what practices you are doing and how you are looking at things, as I get a sense that there is this wide mix of Tibetan Dream Yoga, Shinzen Young's stuff (Modern fusion of Shingon and a whole lot of stuff), some Burmese Vipassana Terminology a la Mahasi Sayadaw, and more that is leading to some confusion. While broad exploration is fun and interesting, perhaps consider stripping it down a little but to focus on one more coherent stream of things to get you your first real breaks and then try broadening out as you need to then, just a thought.

Helpful?

Thank you Daniel, SO helpful!

I add something from my post in the Kenneth Dharma site, which seems more meaningful after your reply:

"After deep meditation session there is always something going on, this time I was in a A&P (easy noticing, bliss, the good stuff) but after a while the sense of an happy Watcher faded and I was no more than a process going on with no self. I had only the time to notice that I was observing anatta in real-time (which I believed develops only after fruition) that a real fear of losing myself arose, I tried to recollect a strong sense of a Watcher at all costs. The good thing was that this fear too arose and passed away. This was the first psychological side effect in my meditation (other than piti&sukha ), I believed I was exempted and could experience the dark night as only an energetic process..."

I dont'know if it really was the fear stage, but now I'm pretty sure I'm always dealing with the A&P territory and boundaries since this march.
The reason why I was thinking of being in equanimity is that sometimes I end in a jhanaic state which is more spacious, quiet and delightful than the A&P/2nd jhana. So I started to believe it was a soft fourth jhana.
I was able to distinguish four different restful state, but maybe I'm only bouncing between 1st and 2nd.
In fact, trying to travel up and down the jhanaic arc, I noticed that this soft 4th jhana could be the second as well...

About the jhana thing, 6 months ago I had the weirdest jhanaic experience, a very one-pointed concentration (different from the lazy one that is my usual habit), a sense of space and the head becoming bigger and bigger, like a balloon, and a more 'mental' component (promptly, my indulgent self-assessment sorted it out as a formless one that I could label as INFINITE HEAD...).
This stuff returned only once 2-3 weeks ago, and during my last two meditation sessions. Now it builds up out of nowhere, at the beginning of the meditation, and I'm just locked in (but there's no more fun), even with lazy concentration. When it fades gradually the head deflates... and I'm out of meditation.

About the practice: last year I went to a 10-days Goenka retreat, but after a while I abandoned the sitting posture and developed my own lying-down meditation, which is choiceless awareness-like, with a natural focus on physical sensations (Goenka legacy) and sounds (it is very easy and fun for me).
When I discovered Shinzen Young teachings (thanks DhO) I just tried to add this flow/gone alertness.
I don't use noting ala Sayadaw because I feel unconfortable with 'procedures' (like Goenka's body scanning).
So my practice is kind of home-made, I don't know if it is consistent enough to progress.

My aim is to practice only Theravadan shamatha/vipassana. This lucid-dream-like-state during meditation came on his own, I'm not trying to provoke it.
I wasn't sure how to interpret the melting of wandering mind&lucid dreaming and the images arising after sensations, which are new stuff. Is it a sign of progress of just 'stuff'?
There is also this 'muddy' state, a wave/stream made of dissolving thoughts, physical sensations, images arising, confusing but somehow 'deeper' than A&P.

Any suggestions welcomed.

Umberto [Edited for further details]