Driving home, realizing some slightly unpleasant tendencies in myself, wanting to review why I did what I did and learn from that, I enter a fucked up "careless" state of mind. It is equanimous to a freakish extent. I feel "something" is chasing me/bubbling up to the surface. My knee-jerk reaction is to call everyone on my contact list. Anything, anything for a distraction! But I know I'm trying to distract myself. And I know that I shouldn't. I still make the calls though but, luckily, no one answers.

I'm probably a traffic danger. I do not use a single gram of muscle that I do not absolutely have to use to turn the steering wheel. I want to sit down. Strangely, I think, I really really really want to sit down. Something is calling me. That's a cliché, but for a good reason. Something is calling me. "Sit".

I park the car, there's a nice little bush with some white flowers. I'm "external", oh-so external. The sky, the air, the space, the colors, the shapes. I cannot think a single thought but "sit".

So I sit.

And I have never sat like that before.

The three main things are (1) an incredibly interesting and intensely subtle joy of the breath, (2) at first constant but then flickering/strobing lights and (3) sheer equanimity towards anything: like the burning, piercing, wretched pain I get from sitting in a position I have never sat in before. I think my eyes are physically blinking while closed during the flickering/strobing.

45 minutes pass. I don't think I entered anything very deep since there were constant interruptions where I sat. The flickering was interrupted by very loud noises. I get up. I feel lazy. I barely lift my feet when I walk. I walk up to a friends house, hesitant to utter even a single word, and ring the bell. No one opens. I stand there. Long. I ring again. A long time pass again. Phew, no one's home.

I walk. I don't want to think and I semi-subconciously (word!) avoid sensate stimulation. It's too much and I look down a lot. Looking at a parked car... it's too much!

I have a feeling of not having pierced something that I should have while I sat. But I don't really care about that either. I eventually try to fit this event into what seems to be a "climb" of the ladder of the progress of insight. My solar plexus chakra and throat chakra have for no good reason been giving me hell the last 5 days. I really have no reason at the moment to be unhappy, so I'm pretty sure that Dark Night had to fuck up my chakras a little to make me feel some pain. And this was preceded by a strange "conk out" not long ago. And there's some hardcore, open-eyed, involuntary jhanic bliss spritzed in-between my day, quite often actually. But this all doesn't make sense to me because I don't practice formal sitting at all.


"What was that"?

My guess: A&P.

And your other thread would be part of that pattern (thinking one is enlightened).

It is certainly not equanimity, as the urge to be distracted and to call your friends shows.

It would help to know more about your practice.

If it is indeed A&P, take it easy, enjoy the ride (for it is always quite a ride!), and don't believe what you think, particularly if it "feels true" :-)

My first reaction to you calling A&P was "nah". But I'll be better than that and instead say that if this is A&P it is nothing like I thought it might be. Rather boring. Today (the next day) was pretty uneventful. I have to force myself to think if there was anything out of the ordinary. Slightly carefree. My mind feels a bit light as it hasn't been grabbing at so much today. Other than that: zilch.

I'm pretty sure what I experienced yesterday in my sit had more to do with samatha jhanas than with vipassana jhanas, but I have no expaination for the insane equanimity I experienced.

Thinking I'm enlightened is nothing new but I agree that the combination is rather suspect, as you say.

It would help to know more about your practice, such as: (1) a history of events so far, and (2) a precise description of what happens nowadays during one of your sits.