Hello all,

I'm wondering whether I'm experiencing the negative effects of the Dark Night or if I'm just having some standard life problems... or both, perhaps?

I've had some experiences that I've related to others here and were described as probably A&P events. Those I've had sober. I also had some interesting experiences while under the influence of MDMA.. like incredible mind power when I sat and meditated for a few minutes. I felt like I noticed every single moment of those in- and out-breaths. But I don't know how drugs factor into the insight equation. (And they're not the main focus of my insight practice.)

In any case, recently I've been in some of the best moods and some of the worst moods of my life, often in the same day. I'll be getting to work, feeling great, (literally) seeing things more sharply/clearly than before I started meditating.

Then my mood often degrades during the day. I think it stems from my job, mostly, in that I'll find it very difficult to focus on what I'm doing. I'll waste time, then end up having to stay later to do my actual work, which annoys me further. This triggers other negative thoughts. I'll just generally get internally very angry and raging (I can be in a terrible mood but still not really manifest it towards other people), to the point where any thing will set off more negative thoughts.

The bad moods pass, though. Meditating helps actually. Last time this happened, after about 15 minutes of... 'lazy' meditating (I oscillated between focusing on breath, noting, and focusing on internal energy, kind of haphazardly..) the negativity diminishes.

That's not to say my meditating always has this effect. When meditating from baseline (neutral mood), I can often get very impatient, want to get up, feel like I can't meditate properly, etc. When I hear the timer go off it's often a "ah.. finally that's done." and I have to recover for a few minutes afterwards cause the session was so difficult.

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Anyway, looking at my description, it seems like the bad moods are mostly just life stuff. But I wanted to ask because I still don't fully understand how the dark night manifests. Some things from MCTB description of it spoke to me. I have, for example, had the feeling of just wanting "it" to stop, to "let go" of something, to be "done" with it, not meaning for a particular bad mood to go away but for the whole insight quest thing to be done. That reminded me of Desire for Deliverance part. Other times while in the bad mood I wonder if I'd still feel this crappy regardless of whatever life situation I was in.

But while meditating I haven't noticed so much the vibrations, and nothing as intense as is described here, for example: http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/650374 . That said he was on a retreat while I meditate ~45 minutes a day only.

EDIT: Also want to mention that the reason the 'mood swings' have caught my attention is that for the previous years of my life that I can remember, I haven't been a very emotional person in that way. My friends all describe me as remarkably unperturbed. Then again, they still would, even though this has been happening lately, so maybe I'm just good at not letting it show. My calmness only deepened once I started meditating, but now it's come to this situation. I can recall a handful of times when I've been really upset, but now it's happening on an almost daily basis. I also don't recall being in such wondrous moods ever before, except while under the influence of MDMA.

Not only my job has triggered this. Another time was when I had to take a 4.5 hour bus ride, then a 1 hr subway ride. Not a lot, and normally doesn't upset me, but I got into a terrible mood. So once again, triggered by something unpleasant that wouldn't necessarily make me go off like that normally.

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And as always the end advice is to keep practicing.. and to get back to work right now, heh. But if anyone has helpful tips/comments, they are most welcome.

Yep, that sounds like dark night. It sucks, hun?

I've failed on many accounts during the dark night, I guess if I have any suggestion is this:

if...
someone tells you something and you find yourself thinking this person is bad or stupid, or this friend isn't being a "real friend",
or...
you get anything along the lines of "felt negativity" which you can't quite justify,
then...
1. doubt the meaning implied by the feelings; don't let it govern your life; take refuge in solid common sense and good reasoning when making decisions (even things as innocuous as "I need to talk to my friend about what he said" can be missing the point that what he said wasn't so bad, or it was not directed at you, or didn't mean what you made it to mean)
2. investigate the feeling; really look it in the eye, see how it feels with great attention to the minor and major shifts, mental speeches, etc.
3. Be your own best friend, make a resolution of optimism: "this is just dark night, it will pass"
4. In one expression, if you've read MCTB, make sure you don't let the dark night "bleed through" into your life.

I have done some really stupid things due to not following that advice :-)

Take care,
Bruno

Heh it does indeed! I guess my follow-up is... there seem to be many people going through life this way that don't seem to have a spiritual bone in their body. Are they going through a dark night as well, but don't realize it? I guess that question boils down to, what's the difference between depression and the dark night, and there are already a bunch of threads on that that I can look into.

Thanks for the advice! A recurring theme I see is "investigate the feelings." That sounds easy to do now, hard to do when gripped by them, but I will do my best! I think I can manage the no bleed through pretty well... I have desires to say things to people, or to explain the whole process I'm trying to go through or what not, but I've refrained from doing so. I dont think it would help either party.

I personally have bad experiences with precisely that. In the end people don't understand what changed perception even means. Although (1) people who have went through depression will have an understanding of Dark Night, and (2) people who took LSD or some such will understand what you mean by "changes in perception."

About whether Dark Night and depression are the same thing, that is a good question.

Usually a lurker, but two cents for what they're worth:

I found my first major dark night utterly terrifying. But if you're in this for the long haul there will be many more, and it helped me to try to approach it as a bit of a science experiment. Consider that by observing/investigating you are learning skills that will be useful for the future cycles. Like the difference between watching a horror movie and being swept up in it, versus watching it like an anthropologist - oh, isn't it interesting how this pattern happens, then that one, how the music and sound effect are used to manipulate the audience, etc. What are the patterns, images, feelings, sensations? Do certain sensations generate certain images or feelings or vice versa? Are certain things recurring? Are they the same each time they recur? Different? That sort of thing. Easier said than done at first, of course. Writing notes also helped me a lot. I jot notes after every sit.

Good luck.

Thanks for the advice! I've started jotting notes after every sit, too. usually during the sit i'm like 'meh not sure if anything "interesting" is happening...' but afterwards if i write it all down i realize there are things i'm noticing.

Hmm is it possible to be in good moods during the dark night? =P. I've heard one guy's description as that of almost drowning.. like you try to keep your head above the water (not get absorbed in it) but you sink often. i say it cause I'm in a pretty great mood right now! it's easy to forget how terrible i was feeling 2 nights ago. if I look closely at it it does have some negative hints, though, which perhaps I try to ignore..

I don't know. For me it varies. It's been the case sometimes that the experiences during meditation sessions are extremely uncomfortable or disturbing, but as soon as I get up and go about my day it's not on my mind anymore whatsoever. There's been a few times where it bled out a bit and I was overall impatient, grumpy or irritable. But that's been relatively rare, to my surprise. It might be very different for each individual. If it does bleed through, I generally try to do a light sort of noting practice intermittently during regular activities, just a few moments here and there noticing what I'm feeling, etc. and that may help.

Yeah, I really think all the dark night negativity is stuff that's bound to come out one way or another. It's definitely beneficial to be hyperaware of it.

Hmm well now I am pretty sure I'm not in the dark night.. mostly cause i read more about A&P experiences, and i haven't had anything close to that (like incredibly incredibly fast noting, vibrations, energy, perceptions, whatnot.) about all I had was some interesting but pretty light visualization of a rotating frog one point after i just finished meditating, and one meditation experience where i did feel my perception speeding up without me necessarily doing anything about it. but these didn't "blow my socks off" like they were blown when taking MDMA for exapmle.. nothing like "the obvious signs of that [A&P] event" in any case, like in the MCTB.

Alrite time to stop worrying about this.. i'll just take notes after each meditation and looking back at it in a few months (after many more hours of insight meditation), I'll probably be able to figure it out.

Hey Beoman,

I wouldn't be so quick to decide that whatever you experienced was not the A and P Event. Daniel suggests that an extreme, mind-blowing experience is 99% likely to be the APE - I don't think that he was necessarily suggesting that the opposite is true, that the APE is is 99% likely to be mind-blowing and extreme.

If you spend some more time looking through practive reports here on the DhO you will see that the intensitiy of various path experiences tends to vary considerably - including the APE.

It very well could be that what you experienced was the APE, and that you are in fact in the Dark Night now.

It's hard to say. Keeping analysing your experience and keep up a dialogue here and you'll figure it out.

All that being said, leave it to more experienced practitioner's to help you diagnose your experiences, as I'm still a beginner. I just wanted to chime in since I hate to see you rule out a possibility prematurely.

Best,
Adam

I just wanted to add a couple things that might be helpful.

First, the single best method for dealing with the dark night, IMHO, must be Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT.

Also, there is something called the Sedona Method, aka The Release Technique, aka Letting Go. This method is magic and just may have saved my life.

Using these 2 tools has made it possible for me to essentially avoid ALL manifestations of the Dark Night through consistent practice.

Please, anyone suffering with DN stuff, check these out. They helped me immeasurably. CBT also helped me to lose the fear of going crazy that I used to associate with practice.

CBT basically gives you a map of the landscape of irrational thinking that arises in the human mind. The Sedona Method teaches you how to simply let go of negative mind states in the moment. Negative mental states aren't all powerful! You really can learn to just let them go. I did.

The two best books to read, by far:

The Sedona Method by Hale Dwoskin

and Feeling Good by David Burns.

Please try these.

Thanks for the advice. I won't fully rule it out. I definitely don't know with enough certainty to rule it out, in any case.

In the interest of keeping up a dialog here's a summary of my notes for a 58 minute meditation i did just now.. (meant to be 1 hr but got up cause leg was hurting).



in any case i think i'm becoming less worried about where i am, and more focusing on actually meditating, which is easy for now cause I'm noticing cool things for the time being =).

get used to meditating whatever bodily position (or state of movement) you're in. learning to sit still is of great value, and observing some things that you are more likely to observe while seated and still is also of value, but if your leg hurts enough that you must move, move. however, do not stop meditating. you missed two precious minutes bursting full of potential because you stopped meditating, not because you got up. resolve to not miss those minutes from now on no matter what and you'll see more returns.

tarin

Thanks for mentioning that. I noticed that too, that I shouldn't miss out on those moments.

I think I must just practice meditating while moving more. when my leg started to hurt, i didn't get up immediately, but noted it for a while first. then i decided might be good idea to move, so i just moved my leg, while trying to still meditate. that messed my posture up so i got up and tried to walking meditate.. but by then i had lost focus pretty much. So yeah you're right - I have to work on that, thanks!

Just reviewing my old posts as some of the stuff makes sense now... I believe the good moods were Mind & Body, which seems to be a permanent (and very enhanced state) when taking MDMA. The bad stuff was probably Dark Night )though I still don't remember the first A&P or A&P Event), since as soon as I hit Equanimity I stopped having negative reactions to all those things.