Hi All,

First time poster and I’m looking for some personalized advice. I know this is complex stuff and there is no “right answer” here, but I’m hoping that your experience may be of benefit for my path, and I appreciate anyone who is willing to share their perspective on my situation and what steps I should take from here. This IS a bit long, but I think much of what I’m going to provide can help to flesh out the context of my background and may help bring more specific ideas for what I can do to move forward in this situation.

As a teenager, I had many intense experiences and life-altering insights with entheogens. I presume these pushed through the A&P, and lead me into terribly difficult and confusing Dark Night territory. I didn’t allow the Dark Night to not bleed over into my day-to-day life, and I have made many choices since then that have mostly exacerbated these issues. I have been unable to “play the game” of our culture and society and have spent most of my life in a lifestyle that is different than expected, and has been quite isolating (though that has changed a good deal the last 5 years or so).

Anyhow, I spent *many* years on a “spiritual search” and felt like I was truly onto something of great importance (and that I was pursing something much more “special” than the prizes available in the carnival of the conventional world (and, yes, I see the folly in this mindset now)). I explored many traditions and practices, and I became especially enamored with “nonduality” and any expressions of it that I could find: especially Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ramana Maharshi, Dzogchen masters, Zen masters like Bankei and Huang Po, etc. I spent many years deeply immersed in these materials and had many insights into this terrain of subject/object, duality/nonduality (and the nonduality of duality/nonduality). While I loved the insights arising from this paradoxical nature of life, I also felt confused by continually holding these contradictory viewpoints (which are both true, to an extent, in their own way/terrain).

Along the way, I ended up sitting four different 10-day Goenka-tradition Vipassana Retreats. I served a course as well. I was not familiar with the maps at the time, but believe, based on my readings here that in my first course I passed the A&P. Much of the rest of my time on these retreats were spent in Dark Night terrain (up to Re-observation). However, near the end of one retreat I did progress into Equanimity, though I quickly slipped back down within a month or so of inconsistent practice.

I later came across the maps discussed here and I attempted to shift my practice into more of a noting practice. I decided to sit a course in the Mahasi Sayadaw tradition, but during this course I did not have a good idea of what I was doing and I did not feel supported in my questions of trying to understand the technique. Besides this, I was usually stuck in the content of my mind stuff, I was definitely putting forth too much effort, and I was not compassionate to myself at all with all of my struggles. I believe I left the retreat in Re-observation territory and I decided to call it quits for the foreseeable future on formal practice and long retreats. I felt so terrible and despite my desire for deliverance, I gave up as I saw no way forward and no way back. I thought if I stopped everything then I had a chance to feel ok-ish again. I figured that the search for something else than this was the cause of my issues and stopping all of my effort-ing was the solution for me at the time.

I haven’t continued my practice in either Vipassana tradition and have spent the last several years mostly doing my own form of a kind of choiceless/open awareness practice and inquiry into the nature of the formless Being/Presence of Awareness which is knowing all appearances as they arise. However, I’m clearly still very much in Dark Night/Fear/Misery/Disgust/Desire for Deliverence/Re-observation territory, stuck in the contents of my thoughts about it all, stuck in a sense of deep confusion about how/if there is anything I can actually “do” to move forward (when there is no “me” and yet it still seems like there is), and have come to the belief that with this map theory, then without at least finishing up one path, I’m not sure if I can truly “move on” and feel decent about my life.

At this point, I am extremely familiar with the Dark Night (at least in terms of the thoughts and emotions of it), what it entails, and how my *relationship* to appearances seems to be the core issue that I cannot understand in a way that would resolve these “negative” feelings. While I believe the search itself is itself the trap (for anything to be different, to find some resolution to the appearance of duality (which is always going to appear that way), or to no longer experience a sense of a separate self), I can’t shake the feeling something is still most definitely “wrong.” I attempt to accept things as they are, and while I can for a little while, the old patterns inevitably arise. Especially one in particular:

If I hold my attention in a specific way, I can feel a vibratory sensation at the center of my being, which is yet also diffuse, that is extremely unsettling and disconcerting. It is a kind of formless panic/existential anxiety which I believe is the knowledge that “I” don’t exist and everything that exists is empty of an independent/substantial nature. I forget who said it, but it reminds me of the quote that goes something like: The bad news is that you’re falling through space, but the good news is that there’s no ground that you’ll hit. I sometimes attempt to move into the sensation-level, immediate experience of this vibratory, hard-to-explain, sensation, and to do so without the story or narrative. I try to merely observe and see what I can about its nature. It is intense and disturbing, but I also want to believe “so what?” as the issue/problem is all conceptual and the sensation of it itself doesn’t seem to be nearly as disturbing when at that “level” of experience. However, if I sit with it for long enough, it seems to radiate out ramifications for long afterwards (sometimes for several days), and throws my mind/commentary/narratives for a significant loop and pushes the Dark Night material to the forefront with force and intensity. I’m not sure how to proceed here.

Anyhow, to wrap this up, as I mentioned above, I’m now looking to take up a regular, consistent practice to move through the POI. I believe I can see some of my mistakes from the past (especially with regards to over-efforting, judgment on progress, and especially *being overly immersed in mental content and conceptual insights*), and am hoping to take a much more balanced and centered approach to attempt to at least get first path SE.

My questions:

1) Given my specific proclivities and struggles, what type of a practice do you believe would beneficial for me to make progress on the map(s)? Given the suggestions in MCTB, I am leaning towards a Mahasi Sayadaw noting practice, but I also wonder if that would be “too dry” for me. There are so many different practices that I’m a bit overwhelmed by all the options and am unsure of what to do. Should I just focus on noting? Should I instead focus on jhana practice? What about Dzogchen or something like that instead? Suggestions would be appreciated.

2) Depending on the practice suggested above, what would be a good center or two that you’d recommend that I explore to potentially go on retreat? I’m going to first focus on quickly building up my daily practice (sitting multiple times a day), but I’d like to go on a retreat sometime soon to get some condensed, focused time to attend to all of this. I have the space in my life at this moment to do so, and would like to get on it before the circumstances of my life change such that I cannot go for a potentially longer retreat somewhere.

​​​​​​​Anyhow, thanks for reading this long post. I’d love to get a variety of perspectives on what you see in this story of “mine.”

My honest advice is simple: 1) a very gentle yet consistent noting practice, and 2) assuming you are in the USA, a retreat at IMS (Insight Meditation Society – Tranquility. Wisdom. Compassion. (dharma.org)).

Noting practice shouldn't feel like it is manipulating or changing anything in your experience, it should just feel like you are applying a verbal label to what is/has already occurred. I experimented with "fast noting" and found that it just didn't work well for me and burnt myself out on a retreat. For me, I just note something on each outbreath (so only 8 or 10 notes every minute) and that works perfectly for me. Each breath is like a calming sigh, aaaahhh..., and I calmly make one note. 

Many people have "blindspots" and aren't able to "see" certain aspects of their experience mindfully. Some people have trouble with emotions, some people have trouble with sensations, some people have trouble with thoughts. It's very important to train your weakness intentionally, otherwise it will continue to slow natural progress.

For someone who gets hung up on thoughts, it's very important to spend some time with an  intention like "for the next 10 minutes, I will calmly an consistently note the general category of thought that appears in my mind. I will note one thought on each outbreath." ... or something like that. And then note the general category of thought (planning thought, comparing thought, mapping thought, catastrophizing thought, worst-case-scenario thought, utopia thought, achievement thought, etc. etc.). Again, with noting you don't try to change what happens, but you stay mindful and objective about what is occuring. You could say it keeps you a bit "meta", you take on the position of being a witness to your thoughts. Then they are a lot less sticky, they cause less friction. And you get insights directly into your own thinking mind and how dukka is needlessly created. 

Noting is great for people who have a deep desire for meditation practice, but it is also guaranteed to put us face to face with our own karma -- and dukka.  The only way to really gain insight and develop beyond where we are is to see our imperfections very clearly. We don't need to "fix" anything, because the same flawed person will be doing the fixing! But what happens is that when the mind sees our bad habits and suffering very clearly, it simply has no appetite for continuing to feel/think/act that way. But this takes time because our first instinct will be to attempt to make the problem go away, to change our thoughts/feelings with some philosophy or technique, to force a change. Unfortunately, our mind is in very many ways a stupid lizard, not really capable of "thinking our way past our problem", instead it learns slowly over time by repeated exposure --- but then suddenly it "gets" the problem and changes drastically. It's hard to explain or convince someone of this abstractly, but meditators will see this in their own life and realize that this is how meditation works. 

On retreat this all becomes very clear. We have nothing to do but sit and walk and eat and sleep and pee and poop and shower and brush teeth... yet retreats can be suffer-fests! But if we can see whats happening, we'll notice that our own ambitions, drives, egotism, vanity, insecurities, etc. are causing all the problems. And then we can really study how this happens in real time. A lot of the time it boils down to 1) we think something is a bigger problem than it really is, or 2) we think that we are not enough as we are. When done correctly, retreats can teach us to be much more skeptical of our worries and much more accepting of being a normal flawed human. But most of us don't let go of spiritual perfection ambitions that easily.

Ironically, when we are skeptical of worries and accepting of ourself, that is often what allows for clear seeing and insight and becoming a slightly less flawed human. Mediation is very sneakly like that. It can't be forced but it does actual deliver as promised.

This info might be helpful, too (see the "insight" stuff and the "toolbox" stuff) Shargrol's Posts Compilation (shargrolpostscompilation.blogspot.com)

Shargrol - Thank you so much for your words and perspective, and for the compilation site link (I am finding a ton of helpful info there!).

It seems clear that many of my "suffer fest retreats" were at least somewhat due to my mistaken views about the level of effort needed, attempting to have certain experiences, and not accepting my confused and flawed humanity. Your words regarding training more of an instinctual concentration with intention versus training effort/force really strikes home, as does using a slower pace of noting, and being more accepting of my faults.

I'll dig deeper into your suggestions on that site as well as read through Practical Insight Meditation and, with practice, formulate a noting practice for myself.

Since I'm in the US, I have been looking into retreats at IMS, Insight Retreat Center, and more. I appreciate the recommendation on that front as well.

I look forward to getting in some more time on the cushion with these methods and hope to have more specific, practice-focused questions soon.

Thank you again.