I have just come back from a two-week retreat and I'm feeling great. I was hoping for a bit of advice about what I should be focusing on now. The short version of the question is: what steps can I take to give myself the best chance of getting from EQ to SE? The long version is below, including a fair bit of practice history and a description of my latest sits.

So this was my third retreat at this particular Mahasi center. On my first retreat there, in 2022, I had a fairly uneventful first week of just noting like crazy, followed by a second week that was an unmistakeable and horrific haunted house ride through the dukkha ñānas. On the second to last day, I hit EQ, which was a huge relief. It was quite a solid EQ as well; the first time I got there, I sat for about two and a half hours straight just enjoying the peace and pleasant jhāna-like feelings. I assumed, based on MCTB and Practical Insight Meditation, that when I got to EQ I was basically just a few sits away from cessation. Yes, yes, I see now why it was so funny for me to think that. For the following year, I spent every meditation session gently noting until I got back into that distinct EQ state, then just calmly watching it until either it or the meditation session ended.

On the second retreat, in 2023, I spent the whole two weeks exploring EQ. The sort of special state that I had been experiencing quickly faded as I noted its characteristics, but I still had the basic quality of being able to stay with experience without needing too much effort to avoid distraction. The major accomplishment in this retreat was a significant weakening of the desire for enlightenment and the kind of drive to keep finding the next trick that would work and solve everything. For the following year, I just kept sitting, trying to reduce effort and soften tensions or resistances.

This year, I was unmistakeably in EQ by the first or second day of the retreat. I spent the whole time taking a tour of all the different tricks my mind could pull on me, like extremely vivid daydreams, misery, desire for deliverance, total mental chaos that was hard to follow, restlessness, sleepiness, all of it. In most sessions, there was a similar process of having some kind of weird mental or physical experience, thinking that I should be accepting it but still resisting it or feeling like I needed it to go away, then having a sudden instant of clarity that I had to just be with the experience followed by nothing changing but everything being fine. By early in the second week, the majority of my sits had at least a dip into what I still think is probably High EQ (ease, effortlessly staying with experience, thoughts feeling very loud and easy to distinguish from other perceptions, a broad awareness of everything that's happening, a general feeling that everything is going great in the meditation and the world). I was mostly able to do much longer sits than usual during this retreat, including a daily 90-minute session first thing every day that would have been unthinkable even the day before the retreat but felt easy even when I spent the entire time in a Reobservation storm.

The four meditation sessions I've had at home since then have all been very similar: I sit down and watch the breath for a little while to get centered, then gently intend to just be with whatever happens. Then for about an hour I need no effort to constantly be aware of whatever is happening, including pain, bad feelings, whatever (although those have become vanishingly rare). The only real hindrance I'm conscious of experiencing is a desire for stream entry, which I am able to note at least. It's still pretty easy to sit for the full hour, and any feelings of restlessness or boredom are easy to note and move past. I find that I have a lot of desire to meditate whenever I can, which feels like partly a feature of having been obsessed with enlightenment since I was a kid and partly a feature of the stage.

So here is my question: assume for the moment that I have read all of MCTB and all of Shargrol's posts on this stage of the path, and that I am implementing the advice therein (which as been tremendously helpful). I am aware now, more than ever before, that "I" am not doing anything and the mind just has to unravel itself in its own time. That's all well and good, but I'm wondering what I can do to facilitate that. Without slipping into the sort of finding-the-trick thinking that I said I was past two paragraphs ago, is there anything I can do to maximize the chances of stumbling on that first path fruition? My practice for the forseeable future is an hour sit every morning, trying to have micro-hits of awareness whenever I can remember throughout the day, and some occasional extra sitting practice when I get a chance. Does anyone have any advice beyond that about how I can arrange the circumstances to be conducive to waking up?

Thanks very much, everyone.

 Sounds really good. I can hear the wisdom/maturity in your write up, like you've been through a lot of ups and downs and are really well settled in practice.

Well, I'll say that I hit SE off retreat at home, just sitting in the ~hour before I went to sleep. I had been doing retreats earlier that year, but didn't land it on retreat.

In a way, sometimes the whole retreat environment can make it hard to settle into EQ. There are so many reminders of how special spirituality is and how rare a retreat is and so many ideas/theorys/stories about the dharma filling your head, and you can't help but think "I only have X days left...."

So I would say simply enjoy the low-stress opportunity to become intimate with your mind while at home. For me, morning sits tended to be rather intellectual in flavor, evening sits tended to have this wonderful no-worry intimacy ---- plus it would clean up my mind from the day's worries before going to bed. I naturally favored the evening sits and those seemed to work well for me. I would get clean, switch into pajamas, my wife would go to sleep, and I would sit for an hour or so in the mostly darkness until I was basically falling asleep while sitting up. Then I would mindfully get up and go to bed, sort of continuing the meditation as I went to sleep.

None of this is required, I'm just giving you a feel for the kind of not-hair-on-fire(!) practice that seemed to work for me for EQ/SE.

Yeah, basically enjoy looking at your mind, how things appear to arise, appear to stay, appear to leave --- and notice that we can never quite see where things arise from, where they stay, or where they go to. The inability to pin things down isn't the fault of the meditator, it's the actual nature of the mind, it's the so-called emptiness. So use home practice to be curious about the vivid-yet-empty display of the mind.

If the mind is clear and vipassana-ing, great. If it is flowing and jhanaic, great. In general, you can lean a bit toward letting jhana happen --- at this point your mind naturally knows how to vipassina and what you want to deepen is the simple, plain, restful, intimate deepness of the mind.

But of course the mind will do what it will do, so as always it's like riding a horse -- just letting the horse run and using only enough effort to stay gently balanced in the saddle.

​​​​​​​Best wishes!!

 


 

Not much to say generally beyond what Shargrol has laid out. So in case my ramblings on some specifics aren't helpful (and even if they are), return to the above. 

Some tidbits to maybe consider and try out:

You say that the only real hindrance is the desire for SE, wich you can note at least. Gently try to clarify that. A hindrance is a hindrance only if it is not perceived clearly. So, while going wide and panoramic is the general way to go in EQ, in my own practice, when I came upon such opaque areas, I tried to be open to the sensate components. How do you know that it's a hindrance? What sensations are indicative of that? No need to drill into them with a microscope laser, at this stage it'll likely open like a flower if you just gently investigate, if you let it open. Just turn towards the whole thing of desire for SE as hindrance while thinking you're beyond looking for tricks. Gently go meta once more. 

See the sensations arise, roll through. Part of the dance. The subtly achy quality of desire coming in waves of sensations in the see/hear/feel. Rolls through, is part of the dance. Wondering what to do to maximixe accident prone-ness coming in waves of sensate patters. Rolling through, part of the dance. 
Gently keep on keeping on, patiently trying to be more inclusive regarding all the sensations rolling through. Desire for SE, cleaning the kitchen, mindwandering. Rain, shine. Just rolling through, part of the dance. 

I know you know all that in principle, but asking what you can do to be more accident prone is still an arising of wanting to control. Wich is totally fine, really is, but maybe then it's about smiling to yourself and including the meta game of "knowing all that but still looking for a way to be more accident prone" into the dance.
It's just part of what reality is doing, isn't it? 

Do you have time to go on walks? Not walking practice in the strict Mahasi way, but just walks in the neighbourhood. It may be interesting to give room for just walking around and being curious about experience, of just enjoying the walk, as a counterbalance to the formal practice. A lot of sight/sound/touch happening on a walk in the neighborhood that is literally a big change of scenery. Maybe there'll be mindwandering rolling through, maybe trying to correct for that, maybe even forgetting the practice while just being engrossed in experience. All rolling through, part of the dance. All good practice.
Just what reality is doing. 

If you have access to jhana, going deep into it on the cushion and then going on an easy walk may be interesting. These are just some things I found helpful. In the end, it was keeping on keeping on, going through all the tinkering, bargaining, going into strong concentration again, enjoying, seeing new opaque stuff that needed more technique and gently technique-ing it, and going through subtler iterations of all of that until it was seen as just part of the dance. And then it happened one day when I least expected it. 

High EQ is often more the coming down from the phase where the world and practice is super ok, when the "all of that is fine, totally fine" subtle golden haze subsides and things feel very mundane again, more mundane than we normally associate with the panoramicity of EQ. And this will just happen on its own in the course of gently keeping on keeping on, going with all the gross and subtle and subtler waves of wanting, of trying to figure out, of the mind games of pretending to not want, knowing not to want, feeling to be beyond looking for tricks but still looking for a way to do... something. And then being fine with it. And then the wanting arising again. All rolling through, part of the dance.
Also not you, also not a problem. Just what reality is doing. 


And the last thing that comes to my mind: Always takes more reps that we think it should. That's probably one of the most useful things I have read in all of the online dharma material. 

Solvitur ambulando. Just keep going.

really good advice pixelcloud!