Hi everyone,

I've lurked here on and off, returned from a concentration retreat at IMS ~2 weeks ago which was an intense, awesome and transformative experience. I'm really curious about what people's thoughts were. I'm familiar with Daniel Ingram's work having read some of it during my early days of getting into meditation. My main practice style out of retreat is in the vein of Rob Burbea and is probably 90% samatha using energy body/breath/metta and 10% vipassana (typically after a good deal of samatha has been established). I really love emptiness teachings, I find them to be the most profound and interesting things to come out of buddhism. To be frank, I'm not looking to "eliminate suffering" but explore this idea of emptiness and freedom more and more through meditation. It's been a rich avenue of practice for me. 

Pre-Retreat:

Pre 2019: Mostly psychedelic experimentation, more or less grew out of that after a while.

2019-2021: Lot of varied practices and engaged in psychotherapy (traditional talk, somatic, IFS). The psychotherapy was incredibly healing - I'm not perfect but some things don't have the same hold over my life that they used to which feels great. On the practice side I did TMI, metta, TWIM, forgiveness until I found Rob Burbea's work and that's been my main practice mode. Had 3 psychedelic experiences as well but those were all in service of psychotherapy that I was in at the time. Did a couple of home retreats focused on metta + concentration, and a home insight meditation retreat from spirit rock. Had some interesting meditative experiences but nothing like my retreat below.

2021-present: Almost stopped practicing entirely since I went to a very high workload Masters, graduated and got a job, and started focusing on developing my new hobby (pottery) and psychotherapy (jungian). Maybe 15 min/day 3 day/week of a random practice I felt like doing. Pottery/art feels like meditation for me now which has been a blessing in my life as well.

Retreat

Day 1 - Day 3: Concentration on the breath instructions are provided. Concentrating feels super good easy and almost effortless really quickly which I'm surprised by. The breath feels juicy, delicious, and so so much fun to just pay attention to moment after moment. I also take to retreat settings quite rapidly and am having a ton of fun giving up worldly pleasures, it's incredibly freeing. Walking meditation however feels like a chore, I'm much less concentrated while walking and it largerly feels like a distraction from sitting meditation which is where I'm having the msot fun. There's a really pleasant body buzz that's starting to develop and intensifies when I move my attention to it, I suspect it's a low grade version of piti. Curiously, as concentration deepens, fear is beginning to emerge as well.

Day 4: I'm having so much fun concentrating on the breath, I decided to do a 2 hour sit immediately after lunch. I eat light and start sitting. Meditation is going great but around the 75-90 minute mark (not sure wasn't keeping total track of time), some sort of "energetic explosion" happens in my body. This is the 1st inflection point in the retreat. My skin is all pins and needles and energy starts spewing out of the top of my head. This scares the shit out of me, I switch to metta but I'm pretty shook by the experience. My sleep becomes totally awful.

Day 5 - Day 6: I switch to metta, meditate only as much as the instructions have and no more. I start eating a lot to ground my body. My skin feels cold, clammy on pins and needles and I'm feeling some pretty high grade fear which subsides by the time it's Day 6. If I do the final meditation + chanting at night, it's highly energizing and I'm left awake for 2-3 hours afterwards. I'm worried I've turned myself into a basket case

Day 7: Hinderance of dullness is huge, likely due to how taxed my system is. I'm constantly falling asleep during meditation and honestly it's not the worst thing. I'd rather fall asleep than be terrified all the time. Towards the end of the day, a low grade fear starts to show up and I'm frustrated. I thought it had abated but now it's back. My perception is starting to shift, the external world is starting to shimmer, look simultaneously enhanced texturally but boundaries are hazy at the same time. I go to sleep after using metta to calm myself down but wake up in 2 hours totally full of fear. I look at my room and my room is shimmering and my normal sense of self feels like it's dissolving (?). I get out of bed and walk to the bathroom and waves of bliss pour over me, but the feeling of fear is still there. I break noble silence and grab Seeing that Frees from my car to calm down and see if there are any tips on dealing with this fear.

Day 8: I've basically slept only 2-3 hours the previous night but am completely wired. My day is filled with anxiety, I'm trying to calm it down using mindfulness, metta and while they attenuate the fear, as soon as I stop the practice it comes rushing back. Somewhere in the middle of the morning during my walking meditation I just give up. It seems like this fear isn't going to go away so I figure why bother continuously fighting it. This is the 2nd inflection point in the retreat. At this point the whole world opens up and I'm surrounded by beauty. I feel as though I'm looking at everything around me for the first time. The texture of everything is so rich, beautiful and varied. I literally feel like how I imagine Adam must have felt waking up in the Garden of Eden. Just absolutely dumbstruck by the beauty of the world and feel like I'm looking at God when I peer out at the world. I practice a lot less and just relax, I'm wary of pushing my system too hard

Day 9: Last day of the retreat, jonesing to go home

Post Retreat:

Just a smattering of random things that have happened since the retreat ended

• Hanging out with my mother-in-law was oddly fun and really heart opening (she's ordinarily someone who irritates me a lot). I could see how much she loved her kids
• Wept with compassion reading about 9/11, both for the terrorists for feeling they were compelled to do something like that, and for the people that died that day. The whole thing was so heartbreaking from every angle. 
• Watching a lot less porn naturally. This was already on the downswing in my life but now I don't have to try to not watch porn.
• I care a lot less about my career. I'm a high skilled tech worker who had some grand ambitions but that all just seems totally pointless. Still like my job but I'm not as invested in moving up
• Lot more metta felt for my family, and also on zoom meetings for coworkers randomly (lol)
• Meditation is really fun again. I practice for 30-45 minutes at least once a day. I try to keep some gentle mindfulness/metta going during my day to day activities as well
• Vision (and other senses) will randomly feel very high definition. I would say that probably 20-30% of my waking state is spent in this "high def" mode

My personal analysis:

Having read MCTB, I suspect I hit A&P but I'm curious what others think since there was an evolution over the course of the retreat. Some parts of the retreat felt pretty "dark night-ey" but I'm not sure if that was just general fear of perceptual shift rather than what is observed from a hardcore noting practice.

I'm not manic (well I consume a lot of dharma now, but I'm not going crazy meditating or making weird decisions), and have no dark night symptoms to speak of so I suspect I've returned to baseline with the exception of the above mentioned persistent effects.

Questions:

1. What happened during my retreat? Any guesses? Curious to hear others thoughts on this.
2. Should I start looking for a teacher in the style I'm interested in (Rob Burbea)? I feel like I'm practicing and progressing happily on my own using Seeing that Frees as a resource but I'm open to the fact that I might have huge blind spots

Thanks for reading, I know that was long post.

1. Yes, classic A&P on day 4. Because of the poor sleep, it's hard to say exactly what happened in the next few days. Could be experiences of Dissolution nana and Fear Nana... or it could be your energy was depleted and you felt like crap.

2. It's always great to have a teacher. In martial arts they say that it's much better to have a good teacher in a style you don't like than a bad teacher in a style you like --- pretty true for meditation, too!

Thanks shargrol, that's good advice. I'm going to email a teacher this weekend then .

Interesting to note that people who practice in Burbea's style... Also experience the POI when they go on retreat, and no matter how much shamatha they put in, it still feels like shit !

Also interesting to note that different forms of practice styles can lead to effects usually associated with other forms (ie, POI doing concentration, or the reverse, etc.)
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If that is what happened, obviously. But your report ticked all the boxes I expected in terms of progression...

​​​​​​​Best wishes !

That's a lot from one data point. :-)

There's quite a few data points on this website. We've definitely learned that people who think that think/hope they will avoid difficult experiences by doing samatha, metta, TMI, or anything other than vipassina... will go through the progress of insight just the same. The ethic of DhO/MCTB is to be upfront with the real risks that a meditation practice contains ( 35. How the Maps Help – MCTB.org ) so I understand why Olivier was inspired to point that out.

​​​​​​​Yup, if someone goes into a retreat with a consistent daily practice, then by consistently and gently practicing 10+ hours a day... between Day 4 to Day 6 they are likely to go through A&P. 

Imagine a world where this information was in the retreat brochure!

I was mostly noting that Oliver mentioned "people who practice in Burbea's style," by which Oliver might have intended to say, "at least one person" but it could be read as meaning many or all people who practice in Burbea's style, especially considering the wording "no matter how much shamatha they put in, it still feels like shit !" There may be many practitioners who put in a lot of shamatha and did not feel like shit. Or, perhaps, put in some unknown requisite amount, which the OP did not put in and, as a consequence were able to avoid feeling like shit, in which case, the claim of "no matter how much" would be an overgeneralization. You would really have to talk to all the shamatha practitioners to be able to make a claim like that. In fact, it is quite commonly claimed that putting in a requisite amount of shamatha makes it possible to avoid feeling like shit. So Oliver's statement discounts all of these claims. That is the generalization I'm pointing to. But I should point out that I was basically ribbing Oliver gently because I know he was just making a quick observation and not arguing. 

For example, I did not go through dark night. There are many others who have considerable experience and who have experienced major lasting changes in perception without going through dark night. 

Also, I'm not saying that it is not common to see reports of ecstatic openings followed by disorientation, anxiety, and low energy in many mediation traditions. But the great majority of traditions do not interpret these as stages of insight. The POI view is a minority view. 

I really do not feel that it is the case that all practitioners "will go through the progress of insight just the same." For one thing, were that the case, everyone would arrive at the same place and yet, as we see on this website, that is usually not the case. 

In short, it is certainly true that a pattern can be seen in many practitioners that overlaps with the POI, at least in places, but after years of observation on this website and elsewhere, by conclusion is that it is demonstrably not universal. That does not make it any less valid or useful but it does mean that it is worth evaluating, from time to time, whether the many nails that are seen are seen, in part, because we are holding a hammer :-)

I don't think Burbea would argue that one wouldn't go through negative mind states on the path - I'm paraphrasing his argument here but the gist is that it's likely that if you catch it early and work with it properly, it can be a feature rather than a bug. He has some pretty good material about working with challenging mind-states that can arise in meditation.

Personally, I think I pushed past the boundary of what I was comfortable in terms of perceptual shifts on this concentration retreat. I was using his techniques as samadhi got deeper and things got weirder all the time and they were working quite well. In my 2 hour sit, I basically got super cocky, said fuck it, and sent it, going as deep as I possibly could into concentration which then led to...above.

Sorry Martin, maybe I jumped in too strongly. I see your rationale better now. 

I'm curious about your thoughts on what happened on Day 8.

To me that was the most significant, momentous and "transformative" part of the retreat. It really gave me a ton of confidence in myself, and also in the dharma leading "somewhere" as well. 

It's also what I would credit with all the positive changes in my life that have persisted in, thankfully, a non-manic way.

 Yes. I do not see myself as particularly attached to a "POI hammer", honestly.

And yet, there we are, seeing that pattern repeat, over, and over, and over again.

What that entails for individual people in the details is infinitely varied. Just like the experience of puberty is infinitely varied and will lead to infinitely varied outcomes. I am not saying that there aren't outliers in terms of not going through painful episodes while engaged in this general area of human development. Just like some go through puberty with 0 friction (some do !)

And yet... if one looks carefully... there is some form of structure there that...

I am a fan of Burbea, have listened to 100s of hours of his talks, read his book, got involved in the foundation that was created after he died (Hermes Amara Foundation). And I think he probably should have been more aware, or made his students more aware, of the possibility of that developmental pattern. 

I also have been working, full time, for the past 2 years, as coordinator of the phenomenology, and also theoretical foundations and state of the art EPRC projects. 

Recently, I've been spending my time reanalyzing tens of scientific, clinical and academic papers that contain phenomenology of meditative, psychedelic, etc., experiences, into a gigantic phenomenology inventory, and the likes.

I also have spent an inordinate amount of time in the past years, as my day job, basically, reviewing the mystical/spiritual/etc. models contained in the main religious traditions (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Greek schools, Folk religions, etc.), and beyond that, in some secular or non-affiliated practice traditions like classical phenomenology, transpersonal psychology, mbsr, psychonautics and the likes.

All this to say I am usually pretty meticulous in my approach to things, and bring some nuance to that king of phenomenology stuff.

Which leads me to seriously doubt your claim that : 
That, to me, is simply counterfactual.
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I have no personal investment in the POI, though I was pretty obsessed with it before SE. After SE that model stopped making as much sense for me, and that lead to much deeper perspectives and whatnot.

And yet, and yet...

Since then, I have met MANY people, who seem to be going through the developmental sequence that is pointed out in the POI... Through various methods and paths... And the degree of similarity in the hardhsips they experience, which I and other family members have experienced too... not to mention thousands of people having reported that on this very website throughout the years...

The prevalence of that pattern is still incredibly striking to me, in both direct empirical evidence, and countless traditional accounts.

I can poitn you to an inordinate amount of traditional texts beyond buddhishm that describe this precise pattern, if you wish. 

Which does not mean that all experiences should be interpreted through that lense, by a long shot - in fact, the majority of them should probably not.

But in the present case, I think it is a possibly useful model to account for the OP's description of their retreat experience

I do believe, as shargrol said above, that it would be a great benefit to humanity, if every single person who teaches techniques that may lead to this sort of territory, said so in the retreat brochure.

In fact, it is simply a question of ethics and public health, that this should be the case.

I recommend marinating in the content of the EPRC White Paper's section on ethics, informed consent, and emergence.
 
ps: The name is not Oliver ;)  
 

Day 8 was probably a glimpse of Equanimity. 11. Equanimity – MCTB.org  That very clean and pure feeling of being in the world without conflict or ambition. (Some people like to label it with terms like "Rigpa" or "presence", so those ideas might be interesting to you.)

Agreed 

Sorry about the name typo, Olivier. I'm dyslexic, so I often misread and misspell words. 

I have great respect for the work you are doing at EPRC. Thank you for that. I would imagine that this would strengthen the views that you hold and I can see that you have good reasons for holding them. And I agree that it would be good for practitioners to be warned that meditation may lead to those sorts of issues.

​​​​​​​I also think it is generally helpful to the mediation community to be upfront about how little we know and how many outcomes there are. For example, if someone were to get into their heads that the POI was universally applicable, they may try to meditate their way through mental health problems that should not be tackled in that way. (I know that you are fully up to speed on that problem, I'm just mentioning it as an example of how overreliance on a model can be an issue.) Also, there are many helpful experiences and much useful knowledge that lay without the narrow confines of the POI. (Here again, I know that I am not saying anything that is new to you.) In short, I am just doing my bit for pluralism and anekantavada and, as such, the fact that we don't completely agree can be seen as a feature, not a bug :-)

 I think we are in agreement on most points raised here !

Yes, POI not universally applicable - that would be extremely reductionnist.

In the present case, I do think that it's a useful framework for the OP's account, though... Of course, I may be wrong.

(No worries about the name spelling, that is a very common mistake )
 

Imo, the "energetic explosion" sounds like the first jhana to me. The after effects (enjoying meditation, waves of bliss, feeling more compassion for people) also sound a lot like it. However, the not being able to sleep and fear and feeling like you were dissolving is not typical of jhana. There's a fear stage of insight, but I would think that would have come a lot later, especially since this was a concentration retreat, not an insight one.