The online world is an incredible resource... and can be a source of frustration and despair. To get the greatest benefit from having online discussions (with any teacher or sangha), make sure you consider following the steps below. I see the worst way to get advice happening all the time on online sites: the person describes a simple experience without any context, and then asks "what is it and how should I practice now?" People will rarely get good advice if they go about it that way. Someone might reply... but is it really going to be good advice? If you want to get really good advice, here's what I recommend as a general format to ask a good meditation question:

(1) First, a warning: make sure you have a consistent, daily, intentional, non-heroic meditation practice before trying to seek additional information on fine tuning. A classic guideline is don't start second-guessing yourself until you have sat consistently for about 30 days in a row. Most "problems" just need time to resolve or evolve. If you don't have this kind of consistency, then any event you experience can only be considered a random occurrence that is just part of human life. Meditation advice is really only relevant to someone who has an ongoing meditation practice. A corollary to this is that while drug experiences seem similar to meditation experiences, they are not the same. Know that things that happened while on drugs can only be considered a random occurrence that is just part of human drug use. (But if a drug experience makes you want to try meditation, great!)

(2) Put your question up front: in a short sentence, describe what you were doing, what happened, and what advice you are looking for. Imagine that most people will only read this sentence, so be as clear and direct as you can be. Spend some time figuring this out. Contemplating, formulating, and asking good questions about practice is an important part of practice. You are training your ability to see clearly and communicate with the sangha clearly.

(3) Describe the past six months of practice in a short paragraph. What method have you been using?, how much time do you practice a day?, what has the typical sits been like? If sits have been changing/evolving, describe how they changed/evolved over the last six months.

(4) Describe what the cutting-edge of your practice is. What challenging aspects of meditation have you been working on?

(5) If you are going to use mapping terminology, you have an extra responsibility to describe _how_you_know/think_ you are at the stage you are claiming to be at. This applies to TMI maps, Progress of Insight maps, it applies to every mapping system. This does NOT mean simply describing an experience that is consistent with the stage you think you are in. (e.g., not "I'm calm so I'm in Equanimity"). Rather, describe how you know you have gone through previous stages in the past and how you move up and down through stages during a single sit. Also describe where your average stage is --- it's likely further down from where your cutting edge is.

(6) With this context, now describe the situation that you are uncertain about in your own words and ask your question. Don't use meditation jargon here! Just describe it as if you were talking to a non-meditator using normal words that describe sensations, images, emotions, and thoughts. I guarantee that describing things that way will give a much clearer picture. People do not use/apply terms like A&P, Dark Night, Equanimity, Kundalini, nimitta, consciousness, energy, concentration, insight, void, etc. in the same way... so it is nearly impossible to understand what you are saying if you use those terms -- use your own words!

(7) And finally, give your best guess on what the answer is. This is really important. Be brave and put your best thoughts out there. This is part of becoming a self-sufficient and independent meditator. And in many cases, this is where the real clues about what you are overlooking or confused about will become apparent. Many times people are 80% clear about what happened and what to do about it and more experienced meditators can fill in the other 20%.

(8) Also understand that simply preparing a write-up like this will sometimes give you your answer. If that happens, go with it and test it out for a while. Do the experiment!!! You'll find that you can mostly trust your natural intelligence and learn to fine tune your own practice. This becomes more and more common over time. You become your own teacher and develop into a perceptive, curious, clear-minded, investigative, experimental, responsible, independent, sane, imperfect but evolving adult. That's the goal of meditation, good job!

These points are what most experienced meditators look/listen for when choosing what to respond to online with their limited time. In practice, your questions will actually be shorter than my list above. I can guarantee you that learning to communicate and ask questions well will help you get good answers from message boards and teachers.