What was it that caused this stage to end? Was it another realization? was it gradual? does it never really end? does it matter what actions you take or is it a natural phase you must let play out?

It has been very chaotic and difficult for me lately.

The answer for me so far is that it hasn't (I'm pre-path), but twice now I've found myself in equanimity, and looked around and suddenly realized that either the pain was gone, or it didn't feel like such a big deal to me any more. I found myself spontaneously smiling and feeling that life was good, and my sits consisted of lovely, relaxing vibrations with gentle thought loops that came and went. Then I'd slip back and feel like crying, or grinding anxiety in the gut that wouldn't stop, and sits that were a hard slog full of pain, itches, and fear. At present I've just had a lovely vacation in equanimity and am now dark-nighting again, but doing it with the awareness that it doesn't last. I can say this from experience, which is easier than hearing other people tell me. The transition tends to move back and forth for most people before taking hold, but even so the state of equanimity is not particularly stable, especially if you lose momentum in your practice because you're feeling good.

The key is to keep practicing. For awhile I was afraid of practice because I associated it with the symptoms of dark night, and all I wanted was my old life back no matter how unsatisfactory. The best strategy for such doubts is to make a note of them, recognize them for what they are (doubts, not reflections of reality), and get back to your practice. I also find that dark night dissipates more gently and easily if you just let yourself endure it, go with the flow. Don't be too hard on yourself while it's happening.

There are other people here who can give you better, more complete input, but this is my experience. All the best to you!

The dukkha nanas are part of the cycling package. I would say they don't end as part of this cycling package till the later stages of awakening (later fetter model stages not MCTB paths) but they are experienced in ever subtle and attenuated ways as a yogi develops dispassion for craving and clinging while traversing the stages.

Craving and clinging to phenomena that is often associated with the dark night phases of practice are the causes of the night being so 'dark'. It gets more and more 'moonlit' and brighter till it no longer resembles a 'dark night phase' of the past but can be recognised as being that which would have triggered the darkness of before. Yet it doesn't look the same anymore as craving and aversion become attenuated and so does the mental reactions that cause one misery. No doubt towards the end of the path, where one approaches full awakening whatever that may be, the dark night will perhaps be just subtle tension of residual craving and clinging.

my year-long dark night hell ended when i went on a ten-day vipassana retreat and practiced relentlessly every waking moment because i was so scared that if i screwed it up i could end up with many more screws loose or fail to figure out my terrifying destiny/delusion of becoming some divine incarnation. best decision i ever made in my life.

it does end--it can become much lighter and easier, and it can also eventually end completely. these processes do get sped up and get resolved by [effective] insight meditation practices. finding good guidance and support helps. have you browsed the wiki section of this site? lots of info and valuable resources available. let us know what you're interested in...

welcome to the forum
jill

A retreat dedicated to mahasi noting. I was in a very peculiar circumstance, I had decided to get stream entry on that retreat and had virtually no time limit to get it done. It took 5 days.

Dark night later came back, but it was never again the unbearable nightmare it was that first time 'round.

I can relate to this. I went through a hellish DN on retreat and ended in EQ. I slipped back many times over the next few weeks and it was a bit of a slog to get up to EQ each sit. For me the emotional side was minimally noticed - some anger, short-temperedness and some recurrence of old stress symptoms. My DN's consist mostly of unpleasant sensations and tension headaches.

The DN seems to break either over the course of 5-10secs during a sit, or between sits. Many times on retreat I got up when the gong went with crushing headaches, pain, tension, itching from Reobservation only to find I'd waltz straight into peaceful vibrations much as Jane described above when I lay in my room to continue just minutes later.

At home EQ seems to have pretty much stuck for now. Though I did dip back to A&P and up through the DN just a few days ago. The sensations were known, expected and held little fear. Because of that (educated guess) they were mild and quickly over.

The trick? For me it was "melting into" the nasty sensations. Allowing them to be what they were and almost enjoying the experience. Accepting what it was and trying to learn as much as I could from some pretty rich sensations! The pain comes from aversion, so if you can turn that right around, you move into EQ --at least in my experience. Though this seems to match up with what others have reported and what I've read in MCTB.

I came back to mention that I have had quite a lot of DN content show up in EQ but it's so so mild -- same stuff, different way of looking at it. Nikolai had posted the above, which says it so much better!

In MCTB Daniel refers to the "inklings of another model" in which he says Reobservation and EQ could be the same stage as they often have the same content viewed differently (or something like that) and I concur. Its quite cool to experience those awful sensations again when virtually all the suffering has been removed!

I first hit the Dark Night in about 1984 or so after my first A&P.

I got to Equanimity before stream entry solidly and knew I had done it once on retreat summer 1996, then just before stream entry early 1997. I probably had other Equanimity periods before that but didn't recognize what they were.

Then numerous further Dark Nights hit during that phase of subsequent cycles through higher permutations of the insight stages, but it was never so bad as the first ones, usually lasted some number of days, really bad for perhaps a few hours each time the cycles went round again in daily life and also on retreats, cycle, cycle, cycle, year after year, but I got really good at identifying them and knowing what to do.

Then I went on a retreat in April 2003 for 3 weeks at MBMC and that was the last time they caused me any obvious trouble.

I still cycle but it is no big deal, nothing like even a small fraction of the trouble they caused initially, so functionally the answer would be 19 years after the first time I hit it.

Are there very subtle cycles or issues with that territory that I have completely missed? To keep an open mind the answer would be perhaps, but at that level of profound subtlety the Dark Night can hardly be called such, more like the wet tissue paper or something like that.

These days there is a lot more good information around and a lot more good, open, clear, helpful support, so it generally isn't taking people who tap into those things nearly as long as it did for those who came up in this stuff earlier.

See, back in the war, we had to walk barefoot in the snow 10 miles to go on vipassana retreats...

Daniel

Having gone through the stages without formal training (and thus knowledge) and only being able to recognise a few 'major' events with careful hindsight perhaps my experience is off some worth from a non-technical point.

I can only identify one period of about 4 days pre-path where DN was as horrible as described by many people. Each day got progressively worse, not helped by smoking ganja throughout the day. The key point came on the final day (after not smoking that day) where head in hands wallowing in my own misery I accepted that I was not special and should thus get over myself and join in with society. This wasn't a resentful decision of accepting my lot in life...there was not a trace of resentment, it was a surrendering of myself to the Status Quo. Something clicked and Acceptance/Equanimity is what followed (the most profound mystical experience that had occurred up to that point)...my gosh what a relief, no anxiety detectable, expansive sense of being, profound sense of deep joy without the hype of A&P.

Since cycling, most of my DNs end due to acceptance of the way things are. Having said this, I no longer am in as much of a race to be done with the less-harsh stages of DN (full body painful vibrations can still gtfo) as intent to no longer suffer is easily built here (and thus begins the swing out of the DN).

[quote=]See, back in the war, we had to walk barefoot in the snow 10 miles to go on vipassana retreats...

uphill both ways no doubt...

one piece of functional advice i can offer is.. if you aren't already doing this... try with the best of your ability to keep intact your normal, healthy routines. i realize it can totally suck doing stuff like just being there at work, hanging out with your friends, invovling yourself in any normal activity you do, or exercise routine if your mood is generally crappy. but dark night will be more difficult if you're attaching to it as something that must wholly consume your life and you start isolating yourself or changing your life around. these stages are unstable emotionally, so keeping up the stability of your normal, healthy life activities can be very helpful, whether you know it at the time or not.