Alan Smithee:
Doing this type of practice one is getting into vipassana jhanas, which have different qualities in terms of their affect on the attention wavelength (e.g., narrow, wide, expansive), feelings of piti in the body, different degrees of pleasure, etc.
During practice I was residing in high EQ, sort of at the level of the field of awareness, and I was actually doing some "aware" thinking about the different splits that have occurred at the Dharma Overground over the years, when I got a sensation between the eyes that seemed to spread down into my limbs, I felt even quieter and had some light pleasure in the body, I felt even more "isolated," so to speak, even more equanimous, and I wondered, is this a soft samatha jhana?
It's a goal in Taiji the ability to command at will the ignition of the Niwan (center of the brain, at eyes level) and let the energy pour to the arms/hand. But that's pretty advanced. I haven't experienced that, but general energy flow in the heat, pulse, vibration and wave modes. Some of them are amazing but none of them are pleasurable. So what you experienced was probably some fusion with vipassana jhanas.
I tried shifting attention to pleasure in the body, which cause a short gush of semi-sickly sensation to arise, but then I started thinking: "Is this a soft samatha jhana? How would I be able to tell the difference between it and regular dreamy, pleasurable high EQ? What is the qualitative difference between a vipassana jhana and a samatha jhana? And do pre-stream vipassana practioners occasionally shift in samatha jhanas while in EQ?"
I didn't have an overwhelming experience of bliss but then I seem to recall others saying that the degree of bliss is dependent of lots of factors and that one can be in the 1st samatha jhana with great variations on the levels of bliss.
Many people here in DhO chart all meditation experiences within a two-dimension map: vipassana (X axis), samatha (Y axis). In my (pre-SE) experience, moving in any direction during the session in this 2D map is the standard modality. In fact, if that drifting doesn't happen then you are probably applying willfulness, which is highly unrecommended in High-EQ. Check about that at
Shargrol's post compilation or Daniel's MCTB2 chapter in EQ (
I did a summary of it in my practice log). Also check
Niel's practice log for more about the willfulness/knowingness thing. Regarding 1st samatha jhana in EQ, it could well be "4th Jhana - 1st subjhana" in Daniel's terminology, or alternatively "11 ñana - 4 subñana".
Metta!
