I'm going to try to keep this succinct, but I can provide more information if anyone needs.

I'm feeling a bit stuck right now and I would really like to "get to" stream entry. Briefly, my history is like this: I went on retreat in November 2022 and climbed up through a textbook Dark Night, hitting what I still consider Equanimity just a couple of days before I left. I spent the next year just calmly noting at home. At first I hit a recognizable EQ state quite frequently, but then it trailed off. I went on retreat again in November 2023. This time, on day two, after I'd been noting a lot, I sat down and did nothing and instantly slipped into that EQ state again. I tried to reach for that state again and again over the next two weeks, with a wide variety of results. One day, after considering the fact that awareness happens by itself without any help from me, I slipped into an easy state of open awareness where every experience was available to me. i also started noting the characteristics and sensations I associated with the special EQ state, with the result that those basically don't happen anymore.

I had a cold for two days, and I spent those two days noting my ass off in my room, with the result that I had a variety of weird experiences (hallucinating that I was touching a cloth or hearing beeps, seeing with my eyes closed, that kind of thing).

Some time during the second week, I noticed how intense my desire for realization was, and I had one really intense and unpleasant session where I just paid attention to that desire. Something shifted in that sit, and a physical tension in my neck disappeared, and since then I've completely lost the feeling of "oh, that worked, that must be the trick -- I'll just keep doing that until I get a cessation." (Sorry, that wasn't well articulated, but I think those of you that have gone through this will know what I mean.)

Since I got home from that retreat, I've been continuing to sit every day. This morning's sit was typical: I closed my eyes and just let things happen. Staying with experience is basically effortless; there are no distractions during the sit. There's a constant battle between making and not making an effort, and the effortful piece of me is completely visible to awareness. The sit feels mostly good, although toward the end of the hour I usually feel a few shakes and spasms in my body that are quite unpleasant. The desire for cessation never goes away, although it isn't the all-consuming desire it was before the retreat.

I would really like to wake up and I feel like it's tantalizingly close. Is there anything more I should be doing? Does it sound like I should be making more of an effort, or less, or what? Again, I can provide more information if needed.

Thank you, everyone, for all the help I always get on this forum.

Welcome Ram,

When we're meditating like this we can give a lot of energy to certain patterns, particularly around outcomes and fruits of the path and so on. My advice, based on everything you've said, is to actually practice actively relaxing your desire for cessation, actively relaxing any need to effort. I know it may seem counter intuitive but that's the way onward and outward. 

Also, try if you can to relax any need or dependence on knowing where you're at. It's actually easier to come to know all the phenomenological stuff through practice and repeat experience over time. Experience is quite messy and can surprise us and will more often than not refuse definition. 

​​​​​​​There are others here who may be better at diagnosis but my advice is always to keep a log of your practice. It's the easiest way I think for people to interface with your meditation and offer pointing out instruction. 

​​​​​

Okay so I've been in EQ ish territory for the past maybe like 1.25 years. For a good chunk of that it was spent cycling between the DN and EQ, and feeling stuck. Lately (post some retreat, and some patient consistent practice) things have been going smoothly (like things seem to change week over week in interesting ways and the territory seems to go deeper).

My overall thoughts are that EQ actually gets fairly shortchanged as an important part of growth. Like the A&P is so exciting, and the DN is so miserable, people love to talk about these. Then because its right before SE, people just want to go through and get SE so they can talk about that! But EQ is there to teach you good lessons - be patient, be here now, your salvation isn't in the future or the past, you can be EQ with pleasant or unpleasant things, what really is no-self getting at, etc.

I think there is also more going in EQ than a lot of the maps make out. It's rather complex. Like there are many different types of EQ that I jumped on as 'oh this is it' - spaciousness, formlessness, no objects, cotton ball like objects, flowly objects, somehow very "ordinary" seeming EQ, etc. And there is a lot of apparent 'cycling' where a strong sense of self will come into existence, and then go out, and then things are nice so we think we are close, then the self comes back and we get discouraged. But sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly the self keeps getting more deconstructed, and somehow the EQ keeps getting deeper.

So the advice I'd give you is, when things feel shitty, try to relax and just be present. When things feel nice, just notice them. Try to have some fun figuring out what a self is, or these weirder objects like 'curiosity' or 'effort' or 'attention' are. Meditation at this point isn't going to be some crazy different thing to what you were doing before, just the same types of questions and investigations but a bit more gentle, with less effort, and more broad.

Thank you very much for that advice. Distilling it down, the advice basically seems to be: reduce effort as much as possible and accept whatever is happening in the moment. Which is great advice!

In my sit this morning, I simply did this, allowing everything to arise and being aware of any sense of effort, self, control, resistance, etc. I found that the sit was much smoother simply because my resistance was less. I never lost the stream of experiences in the moment. One thing I really noticed was that my attention really wanted to "see" everything as it happened, but I noticed that my awareness was catching everything anyway. That's an interesting conflict that was really noticeable this morning.

Jameson Barbary Tranta, thanks for your advice particularly. I was looking for a good vacation spot. Chernobyl wasn't one I was thinking of, but I have a feeling it will grow on me.

Ram that sounds awesome. It is really, very genuinely - despite all the complex dharma and views - about relaxation. 

​​​​​​​Do consider logging your sits !!

Hi Ram

Could you please answer the following questions.

1. What brought you to awakening practice
2. How many years in total have you been practicing
3. How many hours cumulatively have you practiced
4. What are the different types of practices you have done over the years - use standard terminology as short hand, will ask for clarification if required
5. What is the hour split between these types of practices
5. Can you layout a meditation journey in terms of the practices you have done - did you begin with something? then graduate to something else? ... and so on
6. In the last one month - what are the types of practices you are doing, what is the relative time share of each practice on a daily basis

7. You mention 'noting' could you please describe what you do in detail. If I wanted to replicate what you do, what is the instruction set you would share with me

​​​​​​​Thanks.

We will also need the following:

1. The city of your birth
2. Your mother's maiden name
3. A biographical sketch of your life from birth to the present moment
4. All the religious institutions that you have visited
5. The names of all your teachers
7. Your top ten movies



(Just having some light-hearted fun with Adi Vader's information request.)