Howdy, everyone! I love this forum so much. Long-time lurker.

I first meditated in 2018. I only did it once that year, but it left me with a blissful afterglow and the sense that meditation was important. I'd do it off and on over the following years, but really committed to a regular practice in 2022. Reading Mindfulness in Plain English was motivational, particularly the talk about the part of us that is always rejecting reality, always tensing, always defending and controlling. After hearing Daniel's interview on the Ten Percent Happier Podcast, I read MCTB and fell in love with his approach.

I started noting. I'd do my best to track the breath, noting "breathing" about every 2 seconds. When something distracted me, I'd note that too. I was comfortable going on long tangents, noting random stuff that happened without returning to the breath. I was also practicing throughout daily life.

In July 2023, I went on a 7 day retreat at Deer Park Monastery near San Diego. (That place is nice—super mushroomy, no Noble Silence, no concepts or frameworks, few dedicated practitioners, but cheap, with places to hide away and meditate, and beautiful grounds and helpful monks.) A monk told me to open my eyes as I sit, and this resolved my dullness issues. I reckon I hit the A&P—experiencing reality as super fast and immediate and being totally hyper.

Fear and sorrow soon followed, but it took me a few months to realize it may be the insight stages. I continued noting. While walking, I would use the sensations of my head as a noting anchor. I actually really hated noting with an anchor, and looking back, I probably didn't need one. It felt too contractive. I also hated watching the breath. I eventually dropped the anchor and went wherever the mind took me.

I remember a remarkable session where I started sitting, but spontaneously got up and threw myself around my apartment for an hour, contorting my face in hyperbolic grief, fear, anger, etc. It was all experienced as not-self, with the help of Ken McLeod's "Look at it _____" noting . During this period, I was generally miserable, although this is confounded by it also being my first semester of law school.

I began to experience weird, violent, highly powerful rips of energy enter my sense field and rattle around. I resisted them at first, since it felt like they'd "hit" me and destroy me. But they were harmless, and so I relaxed. It's almost like they were teaching me that there was nothing that could be hit, nothing that could be destroyed.

I also experienced all manner of involuntary movements: swaying, flinching, gasping, convulsions, burying my head, pouting, planting my hands on my face like The Scream. I had to repeatedly resolve: "For the sake of my respiratory system, I will stop gasping."

After a while of that, I would break into Equanimity and feel okay. The fear and anger would abate. And then return. And then leave, and return. The A&P would also recur—during those times, I'm sure some of my friends wondered what I was smoking. Once settled in Equanimity, I dropped noting and just watched the mind without labelling it. I was able to settle in the gentle flow of it all, without controlling where attention went, and then reality stopped and restarted on October 17, 2023.

It felt like I was in a crowded restaurant with a bunch of noisy conversations, but suddenly, everyone started whispering. Thoughts would still come and go, but they didn't yank me around like before. Even though it felt like I had "learned" a layer of the mind, a new one presented itself. I was being tugged along, moment to moment, by non-verbal attraction and aversion. Wanting this, not wanting that, being this, trying not to be that, avoiding this or grasping for that. I had an intuitive confidence that if I watched this process for long enough, it would be put to rest. It was painful! With enough time, I thought my mind could understand that. 

I kept watching the mindstream. One day, I was just laying on my bed, watching the mind, when my body got up and started doing little chores on its own. I realized that I didn't ever need to exert any control at all, and that life would continue on. This allowed me to shed a lot of resistance and guilt about my productivity. Every day no longer needed to be a wrestling match with my mind. I did not need to resist the vices I hated. I could just surrender. 

I went through the insight stages again and had another cessation on November 14. Sometimes, in daily life, I felt like the concept/image of my body would detach from my actual location, and, like, crawl around on the floor or roll around. My senses would stay normal. One day, while studying, I decided to try surrendering while in the very act of studying. Something clicked, and I experienced 10 minutes or so of seemingly no contraction. I didn't keep studying, of course; I walked around outside and checked stuff out. Everything was happening spontaneously with no obvious sense of control. I don't think it was a perfect non-dual experience, though. 

After a third trip through the insight stages, I had another cessation on December 2. This time it happened while I was washing my hands, rather than in formal meditation. Everything did itself, it seemed. Even the emotions. There was still a sense of subtle control, though. 

The next day, I went down to sit and couldn't find any contractions to investigate. This made me nervous: how the heck do I meditate now? I proceeded to massively over-effort my meditation for an hour or so. I hung out with my girlfriend later that day, and I was tense. We were walking down a hallway when I lost the ability to move in anything faster than slow motion. I couldn't think normally, either. Just locked up. It wasn't until I said goodbye and left her building that normal movement returned. I decided to stop juicing the effort so much, and just went back to my normal technique. Within a few days, the remaining contraction bubbled up and became obvious.

About a week later, I was meditating and had another non-dual experience, this one seemingly more centerless and easy. While in it, I ran into my buddy and proceeded to act all goofy. I had to lean on him to walk at a normal pace, but I was able to run on my own. At one point I kind of sunk to the ground and didn't get up, and he asked me why I'm on the floor, and I told him I didn't decide to be on the floor. I was able to get up not soon thereafter, though.

I was able to navigate my finals by just watching my mind. I didn't try to really "take control" at any point. I think that helped keep me sane. My behavior was still not up to my ideals, but it happened on its own. 

The difficult stuff about my experience was no longer the emotions. Rather, it was this burning sensation present in every moment. It was a non-verbal resistance to all experience, a rejection, a greed for something else, a fear, a desperate defense. I had a crushing grief that everyone else was secretly suffering just as much as I was, they just didn't know it.

One day in December, I felt totally depressed. Just hollow. No vigor, even though I was out with my girlfriend and her family. I was sitting in my car afterward, reading this site, when I read a post by someone claiming fourth path. They said that their path-moment came when they realized that "There is no fundamental difference between: an acute lack of self in the fourth jhana; a vague sense of self while zoning out on a long driving trip; and an acute sense of self while shameful" (paraphrasing). My mood suddenly did a 180, everything felt really nice and pristine, and everything seemed to completely do itself. This lasted for maybe six hours. I think I had been really frustrated by being unable to abolish that "vague sense of self" mode, and so this let me let go of that resistance.

I woke up the next day feeling like shit. Everything still seemed to be doing itself though, so I started to believe that I had "done it," and that this was just what it was like. I started looking into Actualism (heh heh heh). I went on another 7 day retreat in January, planning on learning the jhanas because, again, I thought I was "done." Within an hour of that retreat, though, I realized I was very much not done. I pivoted to insight. 

I was doing "drop the ball"/"do nothing" practice, which was nice, but too low-energy. I felt zoned out. I started watching the mind again about half-way through and felt reinvigorated. I felt pangs of fear—not like the hum of the Fear ñana, but more like "slowly falling into the cosmic woodchipper," as Sasha Chapin puts it. 

Toward the end, I would watch the mind and my vision would suddenly become much more panoramic, but then quickly contract again. I went through that pattern many times. "Watching the mind" felt very effortful, like I really had to hold onto this super fast zipping-around thing.

It's April now. The effort I expend has become much more subtle. It's dawned on me that it's really about knowing the moment as it is, however it is. It's not about trying to change the moment by clenching onto some elusive thing. Or vaporizing the moment through ultra-vipassana. My vision is quite panoramic, the non-doer dominates, there is a good amount of space, I don't try to control stuff. I think I've been having a cessation every few weeks.

These days, my practice feels like it's about learning to trust that abiding in presence is truly and always safe.

Since middle school, I've had an urgent feeling of inadequacy regarding my work. It feels like I'm not working hard enough, and so doom is around the corner. 

Recently, I had an essay due, and I had this vivid experience of being totally powerless to work on it for a few days straight. I would surrender, that wouldn't work. I'd try to grip and control as hard as I could, and that wouldn't work. I'd rest and rest and rest and then try to work, and that wouldn't work. It simply seemed impossible to work on this thing. I had to wait until the panic hammer dropped. And once it dropped, I began work effortlessly and spontaneously, and the thing wrote itself.

I've been afraid that this surrender stuff is the cause of my procrastination. I've somewhat quelled this, at least on the not-unconscious level, by repeatedly seeing that contraction doesn't help.
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All I've ever wanted to do is control my behavior. That's why I got into meditation, really. I thought it'd let me work harder, be kinder. I really care about being moral! So it's very frustrating when I don't meet my standards for morality—mostly in the form of not working hard enough.

Yesterday I realized that I was operating on the assumption that what "I" cared about was what the anxious voice in my head cared about. That there was a conflict between "my true desire" and my body which petulantly refused to follow my values. Rather than make any conclusions about my "true values," I could simply accept not knowing what I actually want, be present, and see what happens naturally.

Thanks to Bahiya Babe for encouraging me to start this log. 

That's great detail! You really seem to have a natural sensitivity to the anatta stuff. 

I'm curious about the cessations you mention. What are they like? What ceases?

​​​​​​​

Hi Martin, thanks for reading.

My first few cessations were not so remarkable. I'd be engrossed in meditation, and then suddenly, in the next moment, I was left with the sense that time just skipped. It felt like waking up from unconsciousness; like the mind restarting. I have no memory of the gap. 

More recently, my cessations have gained a "what the fuck" factor. For one, I remember watching one thing happen, then the next, then I saw something much more complete and alarming, and then the next moment felt like "returning from nonexistence." Like I forgot who I am, and it takes a second to remember. 

It's totally possible that the feeling of "returning from nonexistence" is 100% fake and scripted. It all just happens so fast. But as far as I can tell, the practice instructions are the same regardless, so I'm not too concerned.

Thanks! That's helpful.

​​​​​​​I'm just curious about the different ways cessations are experienced. 

What was experience like after this first cessation, day by day, how did you feel, what was different about experience?

During subsequent insight stages, what was different about passing through them from the first time?

Sorry, I can't reliably recall how I felt on the subsequent days. The paragraph about the whispering restaurant captures my day-before to day-after experience. In Equanimity, I was able to watch sensations directly and see them flux, and that became my baseline after the cessation. Vision was more panoramic, I think.

After that point, dark nights were less about being in an angry/anxious/sorrowful mood (and being identified with that mood) and more about putting up with the discomfort of the raw ñana sensations in the body and in 3D space. 

Ok, there was nothing significant about the week after the first cessation, besides this whispering restaurant situation? How do you experience the Nanas or Jhanas? What was your experience of meditation like? 

See, I think cessations while important are also fairly nebulous. I never view reported cessations, on there own, as evidence of anything, it's what follows them that I find to be most diagnostic, in my own experience it's really not the cessations that I'm after.

I'm definitely reading a lot of a&p, dark night and eq stuff but it's hard to know. I hope you keep posting. Keeping a log over the last year or so has been of great benefit to me and I really think it's a wonderful addition to a meditators practice !!

Keeping a log is very powerful because we can transcend any reliance on dharma lingo and through shared communication arrive at a deeper understanding of practice and where we're at. 

​​​​​​​One more question. If you're having a cessation every few weeks. What is the build up to that like? 

I wouldn't say that there was nothing significant about the following days. Rather, I can't recall with confidence; this all happened quite quickly and it all blends together. The restaurant analogy was my attempt to describe a dramatic shift in my mental software.

I do remember sitting down and trying out concentration meditation soon after the cessation and getting a pretty intense body buzz. On a separate day, I tried it out and "I" melded with the nice sensations so that my head felt like a bliss-brick. I'm not sure how that'd be categorized. I quickly went back to insight and haven't made a serious effort to cultivate the jhanas. 

I just updated my last message with another question. I shall add some more here too !!

​​​​​​​What is your experience with the jhanas? Do you find you have access to them? Can you sit and call them up? Have you explored the formless jhanas?

@bahiyababy
The ñanas are much less obvious than they used to be. They don't dominate attention. Fear feels like a subtle hum of terror-sensations. The A&P is harder to miss—it feels like a sudden explosion, some half-real currents of energy swirling around, a little extra energy and enthusiasm and pleasure. If I'm tired, though, my body can feel a little weary of that energy, like a slight burn-out. I think I've experienced Misery as heartbreak-y feelings somewhere in the field recently, but I can't recall. (I don't really track these things, sorry.) Sometimes my hands or lips will feel huge—that's Mind and Body, right? I've experienced the A&P to Fear cycle in the run-up to every cessation so far. 

I make some pretty big claims in this post, so I understand and appreciate your questioning. But as far as I know, my place on the maps doesn't really make a difference technique-wise, right? 

Edit: Also, have you had any experiences with procrastination on the path? Or, more generally, being afraid of losing motivation for something as you surrender?

That's a great question. Yes and no, in my opinion, what is most important is regular dialogue and pointing out instruction and that can largely be done with minimal mapping. Technique can change a lot over time, if often in just very subtle ways. At some point "do nothing" might be enough, we might consider that an advanced practice, yet, a month later we might find ourselves needing to do something more directed, more fundamental. It all shifts and changes. 

On the other side of things there are specific techniques, or even approaches to meditation that I have found useful throughout the stages. Get peripheral during the DN, read Shargrol's EQ stuff when in EQ, etc. The nice thing about keeping a log here is you don't always have to rely on yourself to map (or not map). There's always weird stuff, like the weird meta darknight that can happen in equanimity and beyond first path the sort of fractalling Nanas can be pretty odd. 

By what I've read you've done some great meditation. That's awesome. I commend you for that. I think few people really go this way and I'm always delighted to see people make a commitment to practice. 

I'm not much of a diagnostician. So I'm not actually trying to find out where you're at "on the maps" as much as I'm trying to find out "where you're at". If I thought I could deduce where you are on the maps I would undoubtedly be wrong as I almost always am when I map myself.  

Yeah, it's natural. 

The loosening of attachment can have some very odd effects... but most of the odd effects are fear about losing the attachment or astonishment that we managed to live so long obsessing over such a silly thing. 

I am currently procrastinating !! ;) I have been for months

This is an interesting area. On one hand, it is logical to be afraid of losing motivation for something as you surrender, on the other hand, there is nothing to fear on the other side of surrender (that being the point of surrender).

If motivation for practice decreases proportionally with suffering, there is no problem. I think many people practice, learn/change, and then move on to another life focus. That's fine. If a person doesn't prefer awakening, there is nothing inherently better about being awakened. This does not apply when someone is stuck in an unpleasant part of the POI. A person in that position would want to keep going. But, if suffering is greatly reduced, then the motivation to get it all the way to zero might not be as high as the motivation for other pursuits. Rob Burbea talks about this a lot. (If anyone is interested, I will hunt down one of the talks.)

The thing that keeps me meditating and enquiring is the beauty of it. Meditation itself can be ridiculously beautiful, like a trip to an art gallery. But, in particular, the off-the-cushion stuff, of seeing the world unfold, grows in richness as practice deepens. Seeing both the projector and the screen with increasing clarity is like receiving an unending series of tiny, beautiful gifts. I think that, if you turn to that side of it, motivation will take care of itself. 

Bahiya and Martin, thank you for the beautiful and insightful replies. 

Hey folks. The doubt-wave has subsided, and I'm feeling very safe in presence. Things are often more vivid than I thought possible. Sometimes the dualistic tension is quite annoying. I had a particularly strong Disgust experience a couple days ago.

I recently joined Twitter and found some quotes on the theme of surrender.

Adyashanti
"The desire to control is, ultimately, our unwillingness to just be awake."

"Life sustains itself. Let go of the ego and life takes care of itself through you."

Alan Watts
"No amount of anxiety makes any difference to anything that is going to happen."

Joe Hudson
"Shame is the lock that holds the chains of bad habits in place."

Kali Banks
"Give up the idea of having problems."

Robert Adams
"Never be frightened again by anything. If I can make this perfectly clear to you. Never allow anything in this world to ever frighten you. Allow things to unfold as they may. Just watch and observe, hold on to the truth. Happiness will come of its own accord."

"In Western psychology, we're told that you never give up. We are taught to keep on fighting. But there is nothing to fight, and the only thing you're giving up is your ego. Western psychology has never gone beyond this. Therefore they do not know of life beyond this."

Kaviji
"Surrender is the end
Of the self
That wants to barter its way
Through life."

"The closer you get to the flame
The more of yourself
You must throw into the fire."

"If you realized
That fighting it
Only feeds the pain
You would stop fighting it
And start loving it."

"It’s amazing
How much of our personal suffering
Comes from our argument
With the way we are."

Lao Tsu
"When the ancient Masters said, 'If you want to be given everything, give everything up,' they weren't using empty phrases."

"The Tao never does anything, yet through it all things are done."

"Those who try to control, who use force to protect their power, go against the direction of the Tao."

"Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?"

Jacob Black
"You don’t have to solve your problems to set down your burden."

Roger Thisdell
"First, I tried to change reality.
Second, I tried to simply understand reality.
Third, I stopped trying to do either.
And then life revealed itself to itself as itself."

Nick Cammarata
"You’re being told the story of your life, and any resistance to the present moment of experience just clogs the system and causes suffering; the story doesn’t want to be interfered with."

Edit: Two interesting experiences that I forgot to mention—

• About a month ago, I was in the Target parking lot when I totally forgot absolutely anything about who I am. It was like that normal hum of aliveness stopped cold. It felt like a huge relief! It felt like that aliveness, that "me" energy, that human energy was none other than SUFFERING. The ego quickly came back online, and I was left with a sense that it'd be just so nice to return to that void. I didn't register this as a cessation then, but looking back I think it was.
• While on my last meditation retreat, I was putting on a sock when suddenly there was absolute and eternal silence and stillness for about half a second. There was no "me" to register this experience. It just happened. There wasn't a sense of it happening; there was no time. Eternal. Silence. There was still perception in some minimal way; there was still seeing of the sock being put on. I'm guessing that was a perfect glimpse of non-duality. In the half a second later, "I" came back into existence. I started defending myself against reality again. It left me with the sense that there was a good way to go before I could drop all those defenses. And that normal experience had so much pain.

Heya. Since my last update, I've started two threads. The first is about whether all sensations are subtle forms of suffering. The second is about loosening my attachment to focused attention.

——

After school ended, I went on a 12-day retreat, during which I wrote:


I was in the Dark Night for the first five days, hit Equanimity, and had a cessation on the eighth day. While my mood improved after the Dark Night, I still retained my general exhaustion with life that predated the retreat.

On the final day of the retreat, I had a very intense A&P that co-incided with me realizing I could stop clinging to the focused mind. I still felt that I had to put in effort to investigate, but I realized that it's a gentle effort, like flowing water. Distraction wasn't a sign of too little effort. Rather, it was a natural cycle of the mind: focused, diffuse, focused, diffuse. I also realized that the sensation of focus and effort wasn't all-important. Vipassana progress happens not just in focused mind, but also in diffuse mind, where there's no effort. Both the focused and distracted states are productive. Indeed, clinging to focus, freaking out when you get distracted, and beating yourself up—that stops progress.

This insight was a tremendous weight off my shoulders. Before, no-self dominated, and daily life stuff was known to be out of my control. But I still felt like I had to manage my focus. Now, there is nothing to manage. I don't create investigation; I am merely present with it when it decides to arise.

——

Even so, I still felt weary of the world. Life was felt to be various degrees of pain with only fleeting enjoyment sprinkled in. Most typically pleasurable moments contained distinct suffering.

My daily practice was mostly walking around, less sitting. I'd have periods where practice was spotty, and for a little bit I barely practiced at all, despite being so desperate for progress. I interpreted this as the mind teaching me a lesson: hey, you don't get to call the shots—watch! That was helpful. Surrender to all things, even laziness. A lesson I have reviewed many, many times. 

The urge to try to cultivate the jhanas sometimes arises, but when I try, the mind moves back to insight within fifteen minutes. It knows what it wants. 

My technique was, and is, being present with what's already here. I don't manage my energy levels; I'm just present with what's already here. Sometimes, other techniques, like metta and mu and noting, spontaneously arise as I practice this technique.

Initially, I needed to exert effort to stay present. That's still my intention. But as time goes on, that effort gets subtler and subtler, and sometimes disappears altogether. My focus object, if any, is whatever's already in experience — which is, you may realize, the same focus object as noting.  

In my early days, I was obsessed with drilling down into experience, penetrating it, grabbing that elusive something, cracking it open to reveal brilliant insights. But really, there's no need. Presence is fine. (Presence is not focus; you can be present in both focused mind and diffuse mind. If you say you're not present in diffuse mind, that means you're identified with focused attention.)

——

I've observed that meditation unwinds our dependence on the noticing mind. Before meditation, to confidently know that we've felt something, we need to notice it. This requires a distinct set of sensations to arise—the sensations associated with noticing something, with clearly holding it. But we feel so much more than we notice. When the noticing mind is dethroned as the arbiter of truth, our experience opens up. Relatively less effortful meditations allow us to feel really subtle aspects of mind. But since the noticing mind might not arise in those moments, we dismiss it as unproductive. At our peril! Precision often requires some relaxation. 

Here are some quotes about surrendering one's attachment to investigation:

Chris M., on techniques for anagamis with regular cessations:


Shargrol, same:

Someone, idk:

The world is bright, beautiful, vivid. It's all vibrations. The remaining solidity has been getting lighter, lighter, lighter. Easy. I can no longer fathom a way to "take control" of experience. It's almost all choiceless—even the sensations of deciding. Yet still, there is dualistic suffering, felt as small 3D spots of burning friction. Sometimes it feels like I'm the one applying the effort in meditation, but often, it's happening on its own. Lurking around is also a kinda-maybe-sorta identification or self that I can never precisely pinpoint or feel. 

In the last week, the body has started sitting for 30-60 minutes in the morning, before the demands of the day. What a beautiful blessing. Hopefully it keeps up. Plenty of other mindfulness time throughout the day — on the bus, walking to class, sometimes walks or sits after school. Still getting cessations. Not sure exactly how frequently, maybe every two to five weeks.

Went on a 2-day retreat before school, where I spent a lot of time in diffuse mind, but was chill about it.  My mood has improved in recent weeks. 

Can you please give a more detailed description of the cessation please? Also how long have you been in high EQ after the DN? 

Hi Papa, big fan of your compilation work. I don't think I can be more specific than my descriptions of cessation above. It seems like you're characterizing my exhaustion with life as a long dark night, but I'm not so sure. These feelings tend to arise no matter the insight stage, although the dark night certainly makes it worse. It is improving with time, though, and has lightened up in recent weeks. 

——

I just read through Chris M.'s log, and wow, what a joy. There's some weapons-grade wisdom packed in there. Taking his cue, I've found it useful to ask myself: "What's my motivation here?" A clear, authentic answer usually reveals itself. This sort of inquiry had mildly annoyed me in the past, because I assumed that this was a task for the conceptual mind and its painful tangles of thoughts and ambiguity. But the body can answer, and the body is simple. 

——

It’s difficult to describe what exactly “focused attention” is with respect to my technique. Currently, focused attention is characterized by a dot in 3D space comprised of the textures of focus. In these moments, I perceive not only the dot, but the vast spatial field in which it appears. If the dot were a color, it’d be brown. The dot tends to stay still, only moving every once in a while. The dot’s disappearance is the hallmark of diffuse attention.

It’s not like the dot is tracking any particular class of sensations. I don’t intend to focus on any one thing. I just intend, vaguely, to focus, and the dot appears somewhere. 

It’s kind of weird. Why do I need to focus? I am able to know the present moment as it occurs, whether I’m in diffuse attention or focused attention. So why bother putting in the effort to sustain the focused mode?

It’s actually not true that my object is the present moment, because in practice, I'm focusing on the sensations of focus itself. I imagine this technique is essentially the same as focusing on mu or another koan mantra. I wonder: would it be possible or productive to drop my focus on focus, and just let the mind do whatever? 

I forgot to mention: I just finished up a remarkable procrastination bender. I had two assignments due this morning. I hoped to complete them yesterday, but I didn't touch them all day; instead, I browsed the web, walked around, and meditated. My bedtime came and went, and I still hadn't started. I ended up staying up until 3 a.m., at which point working became imminently necessary, and so I started working. Didn't sleep at all, but I got both assignments done. Thankfully, I enjoyed a midday nap at the pretty gardens on campus.

This body of mine is a funny one. Just another reason to let go, I think.  

I'm getting the sense that there was never anything that needed investigating or uncovering. Investigation is just a task used to preoccupy the mind so it doesn't cling. The full breadth of reality was always there underneath the clinging.

​​​​​​​Just a way of seeing it. 

A couple hours after my last post, the mind dropped its intention to apply effort in meditation. Everything is simply as it is. No object, no method, no control. This isn't something I was able to do in the recent past, but it's happening now. Sensations of effort still sometimes arise, but they do so on their own, and there is no attempt to invoke or sustain them. Let's see if this ability sticks.

Still going strong. I'm so happy about this shift. Now that the intention to investigate has dropped, the remaining little patches of stuckness are so obvious. It feels inevitable now. 

It is harrowing to contemplate the magnitude of suffering in the world. Past, present, and future contain endless seas of restlessness, desire, and pain. Even if I seal the deal here, I am viscerally aware that the collective consciousness will remain mired in an infinitude of samsaras. I think about this often. I bemoan my limited capacities. 

I don't really know what this word means, but I think "trauma" has a distinct texture to it. It's that feeling of being trapped in something truly horrible, clawing at the walls of existence for an escape that you can't grasp. In recent months, a sense of trauma has been arising. Not for me, exactly, but for the collective consciousness—the aggregation of our individual lights of awareness. It's dissatisfaction, seeking, grief, despair, sickness, ad infinitum. When I personally feel helpless, stuck on the railroaded track of exhausting perception, that helplessness sometimes takes on a timeless flavor. Like, that helplessness has always been there, I have always been seeking, for eons and eons, life after life. And, in a sense that's just as real as anything else, that's true. Because how can I distinguish, in any real way, between myself and those that suffered before me or those that will suffer after me? Nibanna is not the end.

​​​​​​​Almost everyone has felt pain far greater than that of which they will speak. We're taught to hide it, to keep quiet, to disassociate, to stay positive and not burden others. 

Congrats on the shift. It's nice to feel nice. 

There were a lot of interesting things shared towards the end of that positive valence thread. I still suspect there's useful stuff to meditate on there. 

When the time comes. You should keep a regular practice log. Moment to moment stuff. Just the sits. 

The middle length discourses are a great gateway to the suttas. 

Seeing that frees... 

Etc. 

​​​​​​​Best of luck. 

Thanks for the sutta recommendation! I've been wanting to read them for a while.

​​​​​​​You're right, lots of powerful stuff in that positive valence thread—still processing the replies. I don't feel called to log daily sits, but if something interesting happens, I'll post about it. Wishing you the best.

You don't have to log daily but it can be useful to log in a day to day kind of way if you want people to engage with your practice. 

I have no reason to doubt your claims but it can be hard for people to engage with them without the more detailed phenomenological data set that comes with regular logging of sits. 

So, in the future, if you find yourself wanting people to engage with your practice journey or if you're ever a bit lost in the paths then it can be really useful to keep a humble, regular, this is my practice today, this week, type log. 

The demons of the middle paths are attachment to feeling good, arrogance and over estimation of progress. So the kinds of ideas being discussed in the positive valence thread carry a lot of weight. So too will the work of the Buddha. Middle length discourses is where I wish I started. At some point too you can get into seeing that frees and start working towards emptiness and refining your fundamentals. 

It's a great time to double down on the dharma... It's also a great time to take a break. 

If the powers show up then learn to ignore them. Even if you want to explore them. You must know how to let them go. Attachment to the powers is another one of those demons. One I have seen ruin people. 

​​​​​​​Anyway... Nice !!

Thank you for the good guidance, Bahiya. There's definitely room for me to up my phenomenological reporting game. I'll keep careful watch for those attachments as best I can, especially since I'm not working with a formal teacher who can call me on my crap. It feels very cool to be given a legitimate warning about the allure of the psychic powers.

Ever since I accepted that there's no need to will myself out of bed, waking up has been much more peaceful. The day no longer starts with an immediate power struggle. The entrance into the waking mind feels very mindful, very meditative, almost like transitioning from a high-concentration state into vipassana. I usually get the sense that I was continuously aware while asleep, even in the absence of dreams. It's a minimal kind of awareness; no thoughts or noticing, but simply awareness.

Sits continue to be much the same as they were, just without intentional investigation. Thought-tangents come and go in the ordinary way, but there is a sense of knowing them as they occur. I'm currently three days into a dark night that has been quite sad. It kicked off with a particularly sharp disgust ñana. Months-old frustrations re-emerged without reason, I was instantly pissed off by the faces of people on the street, and I had these angry forcing-grabbing sensations around my arms.

I marvel at people who claim that stream entry or similar vanquished almost all of their suffering. All this meditation has cut out vast amounts of struggle from my life, but it's been replaced by a peaceful sense of dissatisfaction and restlessness. Hahaha. I love it, don't get me wrong. 

That's not a realistic outcome, and I don't know any advanced yogis who have claimed that ending almost all their suffering resulted from obtaining stream-entry. Getting to that point usually feels great, and there is often a short honeymoon period after SE, during which everything may feel different. But even if that happens, things return to a more normal appearance and feel. 

Feel free to chime in here, all you advanced yogis.

Three days into a dark night? How do the Nana's evolve in your sits? How are they through out the day when you're not sitting?

I have heard that on one occasion the Blessed One was staying near Savatthi at Jeta's Grove, Anathapindika's monastery. Then the Blessed One, picking up a little bit of dust with the tip of his fingernail, said to the monks, "What do you think, monks? Which is greater: the little bit of dust I have picked up with the tip of my fingernail, or the great earth?"
"The great earth is far greater, lord. The little bit of dust the Blessed One has picked up with the tip of his fingernail is next to nothing. It's not a hundredth, a thousandth, a one hundred-thousandth — this little bit of dust the Blessed One has picked up with the tip of his fingernail — when compared with the great earth.""In the same way, monks, for a disciple of the noble ones who is consummate in view, an individual who has broken through [to stream-entry], the suffering & stress that is totally ended & extinguished is far greater. That which remains in the state of having at most seven remaining lifetimes is next to nothing: it's not a hundredth, a thousandth, a one hundred-thousandth, when compared with the previous mass of suffering. That's how great the benefit is of breaking through to the Dhamma, monks. That's how great the benefit is of obtaining the Dhamma eye."

I've been getting this sensation of a flat upright geometric plane of vibrations sweeping the whole field front to back. Pretty cool. 


​​​​​​​These days, the ñanas aren't emphasized in experience, and I'm often unsure of the exact ñana I'm in. But I'm trying to become more discerning. Here's a low-effort log of ñanas that I've noticed:

• 21st — Dark night
• 22-25th — Not logged
• 26th — Equanimity
• 27th — Cessation
• 28th — A&P
• 29th — Dark night, cessation
• 30th — Normal
• 31st — Normal
• 1st — Dark night, cessation(?)
• 2nd — Dark night
• 3rd — Normal, A&P 
• 4th — Normal 
• 5th — A&P 
• 6th — Disgust, A&P, misery
• 7th — Misery
• 8th — Misery

(I'll start logging the specific dark night stage from here on. I usually felt "normal" in addition to whatever I logged.) 

I haven't picked up on fractal ñanas within a single sit. If I sit for an hour, I don't notice any radical differences in mood. Some subtler A&P energy routinely moves in and out during sits. I've never quite related with Daniel's note about starting all sits "at the A&P," except for immediately after stream entry (and, if memory serves, maybe after the completion of an insight cycle). I do, however, have immediate access to the sensate clarity (i.e. vibrations) that I previously only got in the A&P.

I suspect that I've been relying on mood changes to recognize ñanas, and that I'll become more discerning if I attune to the subtle phenomenological differences described in MCTB (center vs periphery, choppy vs smooth, emphasis on endings or beginnings, things falling apart in re-observation, etc.). Might have to reread a few sections. Currently, my main cues are mania and kundalini and buzziness in the A&P, peripheral spooky-scary-adrenaline freak-out hum feeling in Fear, anger and frustration and restlessness in Disgust, sadness and heartbreak and exhaustion in Misery, impatience in Desire for Deliverance, intensified general dark night symptoms in Re-observation, and unitive chill vibes and smoothness and flowing spaceyness in Equanimity.

While I am interested in gaining better facility with the ñanas and logging them, I have an intuition that precise phenomenological categorizing won't help insight-wise. 

Very hype!

Ok cool... this helps give me some insight into your practice and your experience of the phenomenology that underlies these words. 


As a meditative practice it may not as an aid to communication when speaking with dharma friends it absolutely will. Especially those who might be of assistance when navigating the complexities of later paths. Saying some specific dharma term is worth very little compared to detailed communication of your lived experience. 

For example... "I was in Disgust" means less than "frustration and restlessness", "frustration and restlessness" means less than "I experienced a rapid barrage of disconcerting thought patterns, I noticed how these thoughts seemed to be connected to rapid pulsations of discomfort in my chest and forehead, I watched as narratives unfolded before me, I knew I didn't need to invest in them yet everytime they seemed to wrap me up, I could actually feel myself get wrapped up, contracting into the mess of language..." etc...  

Now, typically for me in a review cycle Nanas change quite quickly, there may be changes over the course of seconds or minutes, at the slowest maybe hours. Also they are very very obvious, very well defined, they flow onward toward cessation without any real practice being done. Though people are different. 

I'm not trying to break your balls over whether you got SE I just don't know a lot about your practice. It's also something most of us have been wrong about at least once. So... as the days go by repeatedly test your assertions. Overall, repeat cessations are typically a good sign, dramatic shifts in perspective are often a good sign too. You can also be wrong about whether you're experiencing these things though I am not accusing you of that. In the future if you can get a little more rich, a little more detailed, a little more lived in with your logs that would be useful to those reading it. 

I recently hurt somebodies feelings because I challenged their assertions about map stuff. I felt they hadn't really shown their work and were potentially using map lingo incorrectly. I don't challenge people on these matters because it benefits me. It's not important that one proves themselves to any of us. It is critically important that as a community (such that we are) we help each other in not deluding ourselves (any further than we may already be). Having high standards for the dharma and for attainments is not a superiority trip on our part. It's a means of ensuring people actually get what it is they're putting in the work to get. 

Rigorous stress testing, radical honesty about practice and acceptance of the humble, non-heroic day-to-day nature of keeping a meditation practice is key. 


 

this is really well said.

​​​​​​​

I'd be far more interested in getting first-person reports, and I'd find them more believable. This is the kind of thing that frustrates practitioners to no end. The suttas say this, then that, and then another thing. And they get quoted on message boards like this one, and then no one wants to contradict them and speak to their own experience for fear of being ridiculed, ostracised, or told they're wrong. Speaking from my heart, it's BS. The best way to get to the bottom of stages and states is for everyone to speak truthfully about their practice and then have other dedicated and experienced practitioners confirm or refute.

Please feel free to report *your* experience.

​​​​​​​(Edited for clarity)

Well, here's what I'll say as a data point...  SE is icing on top of a really nice cake that you learn to bake for yourself.

Most humans can't sit down and be with their own mind. Heck, people lose their cool just having waiting in line for Chipotle and it's even scarier at Hardee's. So just being able to sit and directly experience the mind-body is already a big deal. And if you stick with it long enough and learn to see and drop all of the stupid stuff we do... well you've already made a decent cake. And if you can continue to sit with yourself for hours or days and soak in the similicity of equanimity --- dang! That's 99% of the work right there. 

When SE happens it's like "bonus!" but the hard work had already been done.

But it definitely doesn't eliminate 99% of suffering. What it does do is etch into your mind that NOTHING STAYS. Up could be followed by down, good could be followed by bad, you know you don't know and can't know... so you don't worry about it as much. The best way I would describe it is life feels sort of playing a video game with unlimited respawns. You can't really take things as personally as you did before because you know what ever exists right now is going to change in some way and it's probably beyond your control. 

The idea of SE as a "fix" is a nice motivation, but it's actual process of understanding and learning from everything-but-SE where the actual change occurs.

It's funny after SE, it's sort of like beginning all over again with new sensitivity. As Bill Hamilton said "suffering less, noticing it more"

I agree with everything you said, Bahiya, and I am glad that you push myself and others towards greater clarity, even if it ruffles some feathers. Your example is helpful. I think you allude to this, but I would like to add that "magnitude of perceived control" is a very informative diagnostic signal. And I've seemingly derived great benefit from optimizing for this signal. Of course, there is a misreporting risk here. Any perceived lack of control (or, if you prefer, authorship) should first be established as stable over the long term. A yogi's magnitude of perceived control is not determinative of a diagnosis; the ñanas are also important.

The general pattern I've observed is (1) I feel like I create the phenomenon, (2) I stop trying to create the phenomenon, (3) the phenomenon sometimes arises by itself, but there is still a sense that I could create it, (4) that phenomenon always arises by itself, but there is still a sense that I could create it, and lastly (5) that phenomenon always arises by itself, and there is no sense that I could create it. This has played out in increasingly subtle layers of mind. If a yogi can describe this to me with respect to a particular phenomenon, it would tell me a lot about where they're at.

When I started this log, I was at #5 with emotions, #4 with work and bodily movements, and #1 with focused attention. Now I am at #5 with work and bodily movements and at #3 with focused attention.


I'm a little confused, so here are some questions for my own edification. By review cycle, are you referring to the Review stage or a post-anagami insight cycle? These quickly-changing ñanas that you mention—are they first-level ñanas (i.e. a regular-ole ñana) or second-level ñanas (i.e. a ñana within a ñana)? In other words, is there a macrocycle above these quickly-changing ñanas you point out?

If these quickly-changing ñanas are first-level ñanas, how long does it take you to complete an insight cycle?

If these quickly-changing ñanas are second-level ñanas, do they feel like a blend of the first-level ñana and the second-level ñana, or entirely like the second-level ñana, or the first-level ñana but somehow experienced in a second-level ñana way?

That is a really simple and accurate way to describe it -- well said!

All true and well said, shargrol. But my point stands. I can find a master, a teacher, a sutra or some other article that will contradict  pretty much anything anyone posts here.

too true!

Ok great questions, i hope this answers them. 

So, before stream entry the Nana's were for me very well defined but also relatively stiff. I would be in them usually for a number of days. The first time they really showed up I had an extremely intense journey through them over a month or so, got to equanimity, thought I was a stream enterer and gave up practice for a year. I eventually realized I was not and that I was really just suffering way too bloody much and a year later I committed to getting SE and did. It also took about a month, practicing several hours a day. (Maybe less than a month)

After SE I was in a review cycle. I would pass through Nana's from A&p to EQ, all day, whether I practiced or not. I would have cessations occur just walking around. In meditation I could pass through Nana's extremely quickly, I could call up much more high powered jhanas and to some extent I could manually move the Nana's back and forth but I didn't really do this much because it was more enjoyable to let them glide by. 

A little while after stream entry something like first path showed up but was extremely wispy, I sat in meditation and worked through a whole path cycle from 1st nana to eq in a couple of hours had a cessation and was back in review. 

Another while later I had something identical to first path show up, it took a few weeks to work through and upon completing that I was back in review. 

When second path showed up it was obviously fractal. Each nana had a path cycle inside of it. Second path was a little longer, weirder and required more subtlety than 1st but overall not much more difficult. At this point I was practicing a lot, I can't remember how long it took to get second but I do remember I was often practicing for entire days. I don't think it took much longer than first but it was definitely more subtle, more difficult. 

(Note for clarity: It takes an amount of time for the next path to really show up and I don't know if you can quantify that but it seems to be usually a few months for me. The easiest way I found to tell was that the openness of a review cycle started collapsing down into the sort of more limited attention of the early nanas. Additionally paths can reoccur, for example, after SE you may have to redo first path as I describe above. If you expand this out in your mind what it might be like say three paths in, when you're already dealing with a fractalling path, one might get a good feel for the shift I outline below, in how we relate to the paths, post 2nd.) 

Ok...

Beyond second path everything is a mess and nothing makes sense. Nor can it be made sense of. Paths become fractals in a non obvious way, for me it was/is often never fully clear where in a path cycle I was. Sometimes some surface level path was going by quickly whilst some deeper path was slowly morphing underneath the surface of my experience. 

I probably did 100+ full path cycles after second path. I suspect I could have done 1000's. But what's important to understand is these numbers don't really mean anything anymore. It was for me impossible to actually quantify what was happening. I don't believe getting third has anything to do with completing path cycles. I had to discover emptiness, I had to bring emptiness through my experience and then I had to have an insight into the nature of experience that allowed third path to be known. 

From third path on it seems to be a lot about having these kinds of insights. It's a lot about understanding dependent origination on an intimate level. paths and stages are of little consequences save that sometimes important insights can be teased by A&p experiences and things we are still very averse to can show up in the dark night. So in that sense stages are useful to reflect on and investigate but it's not about stages, or paths, or how many cycles or anything like that. It's not really even about how long anything takes. It takes what it takes. 

When I got stream entry I thought "well guess I just have to do that three more times"

But that's really not how it is. The complexity curve is steep. The first couple paths are I think just preparing the mind for deeper investigation. 

I was having experiences that seemed like enlightenment from second path on. There's lots of very intense, very pleasurable, very transcendental things that can occur. 

​​​​​​​I wrote above about stress testing our own assertions. I am at a place with my practice where I no longer make assertions about where I'm at and if some far wiser sage than I comes along and says "oh you seem to be here" I genuinely don't formulate any attachment to that either. Not because I think they're wrong but because beyond a certain point knowing where you are isn't functionally very useful, other thann friendly encouragement and perhaps some practice suggestions, and anyway you're rarely in a situation where anybody can say where you're at with 100% certainty.

It's like you're in an rpg and the first quest you manage to defeat a goblin and then you move on and manage to take out the leader and all his minions and then the next thing that shows up and terrorizes the realm is the spawn of some impossible Eldritch monstrosity. It's utterly unclear how you're supposed to square up to such a beast, it's not even clear what direction you ought to travel in to deal with it, but nonetheless you continue adventuring and tendril by tendril more of the cosmic knot monster is known and thus more of its connection to this plain of existence is severed. 

annnnd.... that's the plot for Baldurs Gate 3.

Such a great description of your path, Bahiya. I always enjoy reading people's journeys; high-level, detailed retrospectives are rare. And it helped me a lot to analyze my own stuff. Thank you. 

9/?/24
I began to notice many more ñanas once I adjusted my criteria to include states that were less compelling (in terms of dominating the whole) and less enduring. A skeptic would call that fitting my results to my expectations. 

Sept 9 normal
Sept 10 a&p, re-observation? (shreddy sensations, slight sadness/fear, normal thoughts), fuzziness in head, eq (spacey, very easy to meditate), mini disgust, a&p, cessation (saw some kind of image, then "that" side collapsed into "this" side, followed by an afterglow)
Sept 11 a&p, fear (spooky visualizations & peripheral fear hum), a&p, mini dfd (impatience, grabby/controlly), mini a&p, mini disgust, mini fear, mini eq (unitive), mini reobs (shred), mini misery (heartbreak), eq?, fear, misery, reobs, a&p, reobs, misery, a&p
Sept 12 mini misery? (slight sadness), a&p (energy, buzzy, seeing stars), mini fear, mini a&p, mini reobs (background shreddy vibratoins), a&p.misery, a&p.fear, mini disgust, a&p.misery, a&p.fear, a&p.reobs (shredding, periphery shaking), a&p.eq?, a&p.dfd, a&p.reobs, a&p.eq (unitive w kundalini), a&p, fear, fear.anp, fear, misery.anp, fear, misery
Sept 12 normal, anp, fear, anp, misery, eq, misery , misery, a&p, a&p, a&p.misery, fear, anp, fear, disgust
Sept 13 misery, fear, misery.anp, misery.reobs? (sadness + fuzz in head), misery, misery.disgust (sad, restless, averse), anp, fear, dfd, eq, misery
Sept 14 eq misery disgust, fear
Sept 15 reobs, disgust, fear, misery, anp, eq, misery, dfd, 
Sept 17 eq, mini anp

It feels hard to distinguish Equanimity when it arises. Similarly, I don't ever really notice the first three ñanas distinguish themselves in either the macrocycle or the microcycle.

9/?/24
Small little knots and snags and hang-ups are smoothing out. On their own, of course. It's none of my business, really. The subtle, unintentional sense of "leading myself" into the next moment, the next decision, is softening, I think.

9/?/24
My howling disenchantment with this life has settled into a matter-of-fact disenchantment

9/?/24
I am very skeptical of people who loudly lust over life. Are they feeling some special sensation that I am not? I doubt it. Any happiness they proclaim is right here before us.

9/23/24
Still able to just abide without doing anything. But I've been busy, and I've been procrastinating. Some bodily tension will come up connected to "taking action," and the mind will manually relax it. This all happens naturally and without me feeling like I'm doing much, although there's probably a little identification mixed in there. This is a new occurrence within the last few days.

9/25/24
Another kind of attachment is coming into view: the need to be an impactful person. It feels really difficult to consider that I won't significantly help people or alleviate suffering or clarify ignorance. I feel a great need to justify all the pain that I've endured; I want to be able to point to some fruit that it bore. I desperately want to be able point to something that's causing this nightmare world to be less of a nightmare. Humble, simple improvements almost won't do in the face of the cosmic suffering. It is very uncomfortable to consider that all my suffering may be basically meaningless. It is hard to accept that my pain may be without justification. 

You could call this greed: the desire for things to be other than what they are. So I guess I'm having a hard time accepting things as they are. The misery of the world. I'm still looking for something transcendent.

I'm grieving the humbleness of this little life. I'm seeing how wanting to make something of my life is preventing me from letting go of it.

This attachment to impactfulness feeds my attachment to productivity.

9/26/24
At the moment, practice is just karma unwinding itself.

9/30/24
In one second, the mind can be a bunch of shredding and banging and ripping and sadness. In the next, I can be loose and funny and freespirited in a serendipitous chat. Such fluidity, all with little commentary.

9/30/24
I am a lurching pile of habits and nonsense.

10/1/24
Before you understand the moment, what is it? Before you see the moment, what is it?

10/2/24
It's harder to let go when other people are on the line.

10/2/24
Sublimate the suicidal reflex into relentless letting go, caring nothing for life or death.

[I'm not truly suicidal, don't worry.]

10/2/24
There’s been a decrease in the amount of verbal thought. The verbal thoughts that still arise have recently been quite glitchy—cutting off, falling into loops, manifesting as weird voicings and energetic articulations, haltingly grinding themselves out, bouncing around. There's still a steady flow of non-verbal thoughts—wordless perspectives, ideas, simulations, etc.

10/3/24
Most of the time, things are just as they are. Other times, the mind will practice dropping the ball or lean into subtle contractions. But all this arises and passes without my involvement. The practices occur spontaneously within the container of non-practice, non-meditation, things simply being as they are.

10/6/24
I've been pondering how people typically assess their own happiness. I think it's largely a conceptual thing, rather than a phenomenal one, since normally people are pretty disassociated from their phenomenal experience. People mostly just check their life against their concept of an ideal life.

Here's another factor that I think people use to assess their happiness: how frequently a person has experienced pangs of "this moment is special." In my experience, something really nice will happen, like a really sweet moment with my girlfriend, and I'll get that pang. It's the sense of, "This is it. This is the good stuff. Try to savor it. Try to hold onto it. Try to remember it. Try to reproduce it." If someone gets these moments frequently, they'll conclude that they live a very special, blessed, happy life.

But when I'm in those moments, it's not like there's some kind of special enjoyment to be found there. It's just like any other moment, just with this conceptual label of sacredness and specialness. Indeed, the aforementioned pang can be subtly painful. There is no happiness to be found in these moments that cannot be found in any other moment. Yes, such moments check conceptual boxes that most moments cannot. But concepts have nothing to do with actual hedonic enjoyment.

So I'm led to the typical Buddhist conclusion — people are misled about what makes them happy, and the so-called happiness they seek is really just a low-pain state.

10/6/24
One framing: reality isn't the problem, taking a stance on reality is the problem. The mind isn't the problem, taking a stance on the mind is the problem.

10/7/24
Imagine if your lamp became conscious and started thinking, "Oh fuck, today I've got to be a lamp all day long. I really can't afford to fuck up and not be a lamp today." That's how absurd our predicament is.

10/8/24
Sometimes it feels like a chunk of my head is missing.

10/8/24
It’s difficult to believe what I write.

10/10/24
It feels impossible to understand the present experience.

10/13/24
The old frame of "good behavior is within reach, but it'd be very painful, and you're just not willing to endure that pain" is remarkably enduring.

10/13/24
Seizing control is often emotional avoidance—an attempt to avoid the shame and guilt of failure.

10/14/24
I want the pain to stop. It never truly leaves me.

10/14/24
Another frame: feeling like you have a problem is the problem.

10/16/24
I haven't had any practices arise in the past week-plus; no appearance of investigation or dropping-the-ball. Just things resting as they are.

There's still subtle craving and authorship, of course. I have swells and flashes and tugs of "Oh I need to choose to take control" or "Oh I need to choose to stabilize the field" or "Oh I need to choose to stop clinging/craving/identifying." In procrastination, I can have a more prolonged sense of unease and a sense that I'm being negligent. And there's also just the perpetual subtle restlessness that characterizes life. There's also a perpetual sense that things could be different than they are—an unspoken sense of optionality, even though I'm not exercising that optionality.

10/16/24
Do nothing practice is not something I can turn off.

10/17/24
I was hanging out with my girlfriend last night when I suddenly became unable to talk. I could still have non-verbal thought, but any kind of communication was off-limits, including hand gestures. I was able to eke out a quick "can't talk" but then went back to silence. This lasted for maybe seven minutes. I then asked her to start talking about something, so she told me about her day, and I was able to respond to that. But when she asked me to explain something else, I froze up again. I also experienced some involuntary facial convulsions, which are very typical for me. Speech came back within a few minutes, but it did so haltingly, and eventually sped up to normal.

Interestingly, I didn't try to force myself to talk. It was a gentle experience. It started with her asking me a question and me not responding. Funnily enough, for the first few seconds of my silence, part of me assumed that my silence was somehow deliberate. But then an intention arose to talk, and when that led to nothing, I realized that my silence wasn't deliberate. It's funny how we go into moments assuming that our behavior is deliberate and willful, even if our behavior is inexplicable. Perhaps this assumption is needed to construct a coherent and continuously updated identity out of a bunch of semirandom biological outputs.

The first time I found myself unable to talk (described above in my original post), it was following a day of massive over-efforting in meditation. This time around, my meditation has been gentler than ever. But I did feel quite rushed earlier in the day because of some deadlines, so maybe that factored in. (Interestingly, the sensations of hurrying/rushing can arise naturally in response to environmental triggers. They are not something that can only be created by the will.) Also, a couple days ago I read a section of meditationbook.page that talks about being unable to talk. So that must've been a big factor. (Sorry if my writing triggers this in you, hahaha.)

Anyone else experience this?

10/17/24
It feels much more safe to stop trying to create mundane behavior than neurotic behavior. As a result, I think yogis reach a point where the only control they're exerting in daily life is in response to fear. This can feed the delusion that mundane behavior happens naturally, but protective behavior does not, and so we must be willful to be protected.

You can replace "protective" with "productive" or "lovable" or "ethical" or "valuable" or "mindful" or whatever your big fixation is.

10/17/24
Feels much better to experience doubts and intentions as contained sectors of space rather than all-pervading problems that constrain perception and define the whole.

10/18/24
It's been a year and a day since stream entry. A very fun ride.

10/18/24
The way I'm seeing it, the path is nothing but relaxation. It's the relaxation of clinging. Investigation has no use expect as a way to relax. By devoting yourself to your investigation in every moment, you stop clinging to other things, and so you relax more and more. You return again and again to the relaxated mind. But people misunderstand this. They lionize the investigation, the investigator, the doer. They think they're not yet awake because they need to investigate harder, or investigate smarter, or discover the one special mental movement that cracks it all open, or capture that one hidden little sensation that's been evading them. Drama and conceit. People of this mind will erroneously dismiss practices that directly target relaxation, like do-nothing and dropping the ball, as fruitless shamata. I've been there. Relaxation is the path and the fruit. It's about relaxing amid a mind that's shredding itself to pieces. It's about relaxing amid a mind that's greedy, hateful, and deluded. It's about relaxing amid weakness and dullness and dysfunction and peril and shame and the threat of permanent damnation. If you can do that, relief awaits you.

10/18/24
Forgive the didactic entries. They feel appropriate. Feel free to weigh in.

Good stuff!

Just some reactions to the happiness, productivity, relaxation... One way I think of it as "intimacy and participation"... and it's kind of mutually reinforcing.

The intimacy aspect is the emotional/body tone that is probably 90% relaxation, not bringing a lot of extra drama or complexity to the situation. There really are so many levels of emotional/psychological armoring that we have that separates us from the rawness of experience. Intimacy with experience creates a foundation for a full experience of this moment... The participation aspect is the activity that is the right balance between allowing and doing. It's mosly 90% allowing the experience to occur, but you can't just be passive. "Only action" as the zen folks say, only action itself is real, everything else is a conceptual overlay.  

And when participation occurs it reinforces the intimacy aspect and it is a kind of "active-participatory-intimacy" that is the sweet spot. It's different than conventional "happiness" because it doesn't need the situation to be pleasurable or complementing to the ego. Experience can be yucky and humbling, but if there is the intimate connection and active participation --- it satisfies in an interesting way. It's really real life. 

A big part of being able to be intimate and participate is being able to relax the egoic need to completely understand, be in control, and never be wrong. The amount of being tolerant of ambiguity/nebulosity/uncertainty really can't be underestimated -- there are so many subtle levels of egoic pretension and prejudice and denial.  "Not knowing is most intimate" as the zen folk say. It doesn't mean being stupid and passive, it just means constantly holding thoughts/predictions as hypotheses, fully participating/acting in the moment, and knowing that you are probably going to be wrong/inaccurate in some/most ways, and being able to completely change approaches in the very next moment based on the results-of-action that you experience.

And sitting practice is a great way to train all of this... It gets trained into the body itself, thoughts are waaaay too slow. And then it becomes a new baseline that you carry into the world.

Hi shargrol, I appreciate your thoughts. Intimacy is a great way to put it.

The way I've been framing it, all this stuff is not-self, so we're not "doing" any of it or "active" in any of it or "participating" in any of it, and the goal is to stop trying to create or sustain it. But yet we inevitably feel sensations of doing and acting and participating. There is doing, there is acting, there is participating—and your articulation emphasizes that we should allow that, not reject it; we should be intimate with it. Doing my best to honor that.

Thus, at the end of the day, ideally we feel like we're active and participating… but the "we" has shifted away from the singularly positioned epistemic agent who's in control and towards self-illuminating sensations of activity and participation.

Another reading of your post is that we often need to be quite active to foster intimacy with experience. In your words, this'd be "participation… reinforc[ing] the intimacy aspect." I totally agree, and I think this balance is a difficult thing to convey in writing. I'm a big fan of gently effortful practice.

I enjoyed your pointers about egotic pretension, not knowing, non-conventional happiness, and "only action" — good stuff to munch on.

10/20/24
The confidence to surrender comes from learning firsthand that there's no way to pick a different fate. It's about experimentation.

10/22/24
For a little while, the somatic vibe shifted from "I can't afford to surrender" to "I can't afford not to surrender." Surrender brings elegance and efficiency.

10/28/24
Being alive is strange. I feel judgments about others bubble up from nowhere. But do I really know? Of course not! And yet, the belief arises, and it changes me.

I guess it's just being human.

10/28/24
Being tethered to the thoughts and actions of this body often strikes me as incredibly undignified.

10/29/24
I'm behind in my classes. I hoped to catch up, but I'm just falling further back.

I have this recurring vision of being in one of my classrooms and my professor and classmates are rabidly tearing off my flesh with their teeth. Maybe it'll come true, who knows?

10/31/24
The procrastination binds that I've been putting myself in are bearing an increasing resemblance to actual torture. Sleep deprivation, restless work… 

11/1/24
Today, I had a really nice exchange with shargrol and Chris about when it's okay to let go of effort in meditation.

11/2/24
Moment to moment, the mind presents an illusory choice between action and inaction. It also presents an illusory choice between surrender and resistance. Drama and dilemma.

11/3/24
A recent Chris Marti quote that's been helping me: Focus on the difference between "should" and "is." We don't live in the world of "should."

11/3/24
The helplessness is so, so terrifying. Continuously terrifying.

11/3/24
I feel like all the mental activity of my life has been devoted to avoiding this helplessness. It's been with me for years and years and years.

I started meditation to avoid feeling helpless, but really it's a road straight into it.

11/3/24
Behind on work. The idea popped into my head to resolve, out loud, to "stop caring" about my productivity. This seems kind of forceful and avoidant, with the possibility of unforeseen consequences, since my goal isn't to stop caring, my goal is to let go.

During my 1st and 2nd path days I made pretty liberal usage of resolutions. In service of both letting go and worldly work. In the past half year, though, my mind hasn't even been able to contemplate them, let alone utter them, even though they may still be useful. 

​​​​​​​Perhaps it'd be nice to, once again, periodically resolve to let go.

I do have the sense that there needs to be some kind of decision to stop caring. A decision that I haven't yet been able to make. But maybe that's also conceit? Grasping at straws? Looking for a way out?

Hey John, 

What's a typical single practice session like? 

How are your jhanas? 

Warm regards,
​​​​​​​Bahiya

 Hi Bahiya. Formal practice has been spotty, but life has dutifully kept me face-to-face with my issues anyway. Sitting feels pretty ordinary, like I'm just sitting there, with various focuses and attentional shapes moving in and out. Things are reliably clear, insofar as I know what's happening as it happens. I keep my eyes open. No technique or effort. There's a sense of opening and simplifying that usually peaks in the first half of the sit; perhaps it's the workaday tensions dropping out. The second half of the sit has less of a wow-factor. I don't try to discern cycles, and none stand out to me. I am quite a wriggly meditator. Lots of scrunched faces and Exorcist-esque neck movements and dramatic shoulder contractions. Sometimes I'll have moments were lots of stuff really seems to cut out, and I reflexively flinch, often gasping some expletive. 

Recalling my most recent sit, emotions weren't really a prominent feature. But I went on a walk a little bit ago, and there was definitely lots of anger and fear about my perenntial productivity predicament. The emotions aren't big. They're usually in the face and neck area, to my recollection, but there feels like a significant amount of energetic depth in a small little point. The wriggly contractions I was talking about definitely coincide with emotions, often fear and anger, but again, the emotions are not prominent relative to the whole enchilada. 

To talk ñanas, I've been especially terrified tonight, so I'm probably in Fear or something. But due to whatever conditioning I have, each semester feels like the most gruesome, slow-motion car-crash ever, so I want to convey that there's a sense of helplessness and fear and anger that I think transcends that particular ñana. 

As far as I know, I've never been in a jhana.  

Edit: My moment-to-moment suffering has previously manifested as a continuosly-felt point of burning sensation in 3d space. But these days, it's more like a continuous sense of fear, of sliding into the cosmic woodchipper. This sense accompanies me during my sits. 

I once called Kenneth Folk in a panic - the fear of letting go, falling into the abyss and the imagined death of whatever I was certain was gonna die was almost unbearable. When I explained this to him, he laughed. Laughed! Then he got serious and gently told me that this was a normal reaction to the process of waking up. He said that I should relax and get used to falling. He said solid ground was the illusion, and falling was the deeper nature of things. "There is no landing, ever," he said. "You're waking up faster than your mind wants to go."

This waking-up stuff can really scare the hell out of us. And there's no going back to certainty, control, agency - no previously perceived safe place to hide. It's a white-knuckle ride at times, but what I'd call "contentment" eventually comes along to save us. Keep going.

Chris, I hungrily read your words as soon as you posted them, and it was a welcome shot in the arm. I let out a few grateful pouts, as my girlfriend can attest. It's morning now, and I'm feeling better; it kind of feels like the release that follows a rigorous workout. 

So... I paid it forward  

"Every day we wake up with the same invitation. To fight, to struggle, to understand, to overcome. Or to accept and surrender, [to] yield the rigid self into the vastness of the ocean of being. Each day anew; the same and different. What will we choose today?

What's your choice? Is it a choice? Or a choiceness choice that you arrive at?

​​​​​​​There's no destination, my friend. It's a constant, ongoing relationship we have with existence. And each day, we renew our vows to the self, or we renew our allegiance somehow to something deeper. To a deeper grace. And so it is, and so it is, and so it is." - Kavi Jezzie Hockaday

11/3/24
Perspective can help. Some people are tied to much worse behaviors.

11/5/24
My prediction for how this'll play out: I'll teeter on the brink of doom until, one day, my mind simply gets exhausted.

11/5/24
I'm remembering how Kenneth Folk's instruction to "take the subject as your object" caused me a lot of anxiety. I misheard it as a suggestion that the subject was something that could actually be held in perception, and that doing so was necessary to dissolve it. Not so.

Rather, Kenneth was talking about simple self-inquiry practice—i.e., asking yourself inquiry questions ("Who am I?") continuously. Self-inquiry practice is powerful, but not necessary for progress. It doesn't allow you to hold the subject squarely in perception... rather, it's a good way to loosen contractions and see firsthand that is no subject that could ever be objectified. 

11/5/24
I used to think that mindfulness was about straining so that you notice all the tiny little details. But in my experience, mindfulness is about letting go of your straining, so the little details can shine through unoccluded. They're already here.

11/6/24
I can't fix myself.

11/6/24
Intense doubt continues. Even surrender is not something I can hold on to. I can't put my faith in it. I can't believe in it. Truly believing doesn't seem possible.

11/6/24
Nothing worth trying. Nothing worth saying. Broken. Failing. No escape.

11/10/24
Lately, I’ve been getting the sensation of seeing through my own head. My own body, really.

11/11/24
Sensations can happen so quickly that it’s like they’re barely even happening in the first place.

11/11/24
Going, softly.

11/11/24
In today’s sit, the mind didn’t quite want to stay continuously open. So I’d meditate for a few minutes, and then read for a few minutes, alternating naturally.

11/11/24
There’s a pleasurable feeling of absorptive stillness that I associate with one-pointed concentration. When I’m in a groove, I feel that for whatever arises.

11/11/24
In the failing, just the failure.

(And, in a big way, the failure isn’t real. Just an abstraction. What’s actually here?)

11/11/24
I’m not exactly sure how the awakened state would be any different from how I’ve felt today. I know I’m not there, though.  

How did you feel?

Hmmm, good question. Not easy to answer in words. I fear I may retreat into cliché.

It was a day of rest. The flow of perception was held by stillness. Since maybe stream entry, any given moment of open awareness has typically had one of the following sensations, in subtle or gross form: (a) burning, like a candleflame on skin, (b) fear, (c) sadness, (d) restlessness, (e) desire, and (f) aversion. On my walk yesterday, none of these were obviously present. That's primarily why I wrote that. What was remarkable was what was missing. 

The anti-abiding ephemerality of sensations was emphasized. The way in which sensations are even known at all felt very mysterious, because it's so weirdly minimal and ungraspable. It felt like a lot of the old architecture that I used to feel sensations through was gone. I had a direct line. And it felt like "I" did not have a particular location in space.

If I concentrated, like on my phone, the world would collapse into that minimal realm. And when I disengaged, a spacious and simple world returned. Rather than being an affirmative spaciousness, it was a negative spaciousness; it was the simple, unnoticed, unconstructed absence of things. In varying degrees, I felt like I was looking through my head and body.

The mind and body did whatever they did. I'd have little flashes of hopes and plans, but in sum, there wasn't much backseat driving.

It just made me wonder, what's actually unfinished? What could change? I don't feel done, but I can't tell you exactly why. 

I suppose there are solidities in the mind and body that could go… some subtle continuity between moments… some fear and hope and desire… some tension… some subject-object duality that I can't quite point to… some thing-ness… some sense of things actually happening… some sneaky sense of control. But of course, that's really none of my business. 

Adyashanti, Emptiness Dancing:

“What if you let go of every bit of control and every urge that you have, right down to the most infinitesimal urge to control anything, anywhere, including anything that may be happening with you at this moment? Imagine that you were able to completely and absolutely give up control on every level. If you were able to give up control absolutely, totally, and completely, then you would be a spiritually free being. 

Many people have said that when you dig down to the deepest, deepest level of human emotional makeup, the primary emotion that keeps human beings separated is fear. I haven't found that to be true. I find that the core issue that keeps human beings experiencing themselves as separate is the desire and will to control. Fear arises when you think you have no control. Or you become afraid when you realize you have no control but haven't yet given up the desire for control…

In a very simplistic way, the difference between those people who have had deep and profound spiritual awakenings to their true nature and those who are actually liberated and free is this very simple matter: those who are liberated and free have totally and absolutely let go of control. This is true because, if you let go of control, then you cannot help but be liberated and free. It's like jumping off a building. You can't help but go down; gravity pulls you that way. If you totally let go of control, you end up in complete self-realization…

This desire to control is, ultimately, our unwillingness to be fully awake.

…You're awake, but you haven't totally agreed to be awake. You haven't given up your control. You want to stay in bed, but everything is calling you out. Life is calling you out, and the last bit of control you've got left is just to say, 'No. It's scary out there. I don't know if I want to go out that door. That's a whole new life out there. That's a whole different way of being. I've awakened, but I'm not sure I really want to be completely awake. I thought I was just going to be able to awaken and then still stay in this bed…'

This is a very profound and very deep movement. It's really a mutation at the very core of your inner self. It's not necessarily a revelation, a spiritual attainment, or a realization. It is a fundamental mutation in the way that we exist—to live free of the will to control. When you come to the core of control, most likely you will feel like you're going to die. Most people do, because in a certain sense, you are going to die.

To have life become suddenly and totally not about control, even at the most fundamental level, is a death. For most of us, our whole life became about control by the time we were about a year old. You can see children even at two years old trying to control their mother, ordering and manipulating mommy and daddy. It starts so young, this urge to control, this sort of biological sense that I'm going to survive if I can control. 

This is really a fundamental transformation. That's why I say that we can have a very deep and profound realization of the truth and, in the end, the final real freedom doesn't necessarily come about through a realization. It comes about through a deep surrender at the deepest seat of our being…

The mind is afraid to let go of its demand because the mind thinks that if it lets go, it is not going to get what it wants—as if demanding works. This is not the way things work. Stop chasing peace and stop chasing love, and your heart becomes full. Stop trying to be a better person, and you are a better person. Stop trying to forgive, and forgiveness happens. Stop and be still.”

Yeah, a lot of practice for me is here. Noticing the subtle attempts at control, experiencing what it's like when all sense of control dissolves and recognizing as those two things play back and forth that there's nothing anywhere here that is in charge of any of that or that can leverage that experience towards some greater end. 

​​​​​​​Thank you for sharing that.

This is good! Thanks for giving me the chance to read it. 

It's cool to note that, since control is an illusion (there is no actual control), what we label 'control' is really the felt experience of clinging to what we crave, and this whole bit of text could be easily rewritten using "clinging," "nothing to cling to" etc. Basically the second noble truth :-)

Great note, Martin.

I passed a church. It had a quote on display.

"I will lie down in peace and sleep; for you alone, o Lord, will keep me safe." Psalm 4:8

There's great medicine in the Psalms.

11/14/24
And now it feels like I've got a long way to go, hahaha. Craving and fear.

11/14/24
Dying seems to be the most astute metaphor for this. It’s barely even a metaphor.

Yeah. Letting yourself die. Losing it all. Falling apart. Laying down your burden. Neglecting your duties. Dancing off the edge.

11/15/24
I desperately wish I could have faith in the dharma, but that's not possible. 

11/16/24
In today’s sit, the body started speaking. The body said that I was handing over this life. Handing it over to the part that I've rebelled so hard against. The part that’s calling the shots. The body said I would stop doubting myself. The body said I would stop being so conflicted. The body said that I don’t know what the mystery will do with me, but that it would probably be beautiful.

11/16/24
This just clicked: the feeling of the body moving on its own, not pursuant to your wishes, like a headless chicken—that’s what it feels like to have action without clinging.

11/16/24
Adyashanti, The End of Your World:

“The only way out of it was to let go of the person I wanted to be.

…It wasn’t a dissolving like when you sit in meditation and your sense of self dissolves into a wonderful state of presence. It was more like someone was ripping layers off of me, one by one. It was very unceremonious. It wasn’t nice, it wasn’t kind, and it wasn’t easy. It was existence shoving a mirror in front of my face and literally holding me there so I could not look away for even a second.

This was undoubtedly the most difficult period of my whole life. Through this process, though, I finally found the willingness to let go of everything I thought I was. I was able to let go of every sense of self that could ever arise—whether it was a wonderful sense of self or a terrible sense of self, a helpful sense of self or an unhelpful sense of self. By finally allowing the experience to wake me up, to sober me up, I was able to let go… It felt like I had been squeezed like a rag—all sense of self had been squeezed out of me…

If we are willing to look, we will see that life is always in the process of waking us up. If we are not in harmony with life, if we are working in opposition to it, then it is a rough ride indeed, as my own life can attest. When we are not willing to see what life is trying to show us, it will keep ramping up the intensity until we are willing to see what we need to see. In this way, life itself is our greatest ally.”

Oh, how nice it'd be to believe all this stuff.

11/16/24
More scary procrastination. So much, lately. That's my "existential problem." It's a tough one.

I missed a job-related deadline last week—something I haven't ever really done before. And now I'm pseudo-late on an upcoming one. 

When speaking abstractly, I've explained my attachment to productivity as being fueled by a desire to help people. But on the most visceral level, it's really just ego-protective. I don't want to be a failure or a disappointment. The intellect doesn't care about appearances per se, but the bodymind really does. I'm seeing that now.

Yes, indeed. And there is no point telling the bodymind what to do or working out a policy of some sort for the bodymind. It's just a natural phenomenon, running on causes and conditions, like a waterfall or a tree.   

​​​​​​​nice

Ah, to be free of policies.

​​​​​​​I'm feeling very grateful for the dharma. And for all of you, the living dharma. 

11/17/24
Had a prolonged vision of Vipassana demons ravenously ripping cables out of my brain.

11/17/24
The character in crisis.

11/18/24
Quite active, today. The body schema feels like it’s getting thrown around, absolutely manhandled, exploding and imploding in a loop, being ragdolled by the Hulk, flashing and piercing and interpenetrating and sizzling and ripping and fizzling desperately apart, torn asunder, clawed and eviscerated, intestinally unspooled, blended up, atomized and thrown across every corner of the universe and then screamed back into place. And I’m just sitting here on the bus.

11/20/24
I like Adyashanti’s description of the path as “becoming less conflicted.” Being carried by your whims.

11/21/24
As I was getting into this stuff, the notion that things would do themselves, and I'd transcend my dilemmas… that was really attractive, because I imagined that I could just look at the mind in a certain way, and that switch would flip, and I would be free from all these fears. But it turns out, if you want to be awake, you've gotta act like it. You've gotta look the scary dreamworld monsters in the face and say "I know you're not real. I know I don't need to run from you. I know I'm dreaming."

11/22/24
Isn’t it funny, this game we play with ourselves? Setting intentions, making actionable goals, twisting to manipulate ourselves…

How do so few see the fakeness?

When they can’t control themselves, do they just grow a rotten self-regard? That’s what happened to me.

11/23/24
It's funny how deeply _mature_ this path is. In the end, it feels like a further development of conventional maturity. It's about being humble, being patient, knowing yourself and your limits, being utterly pliable, being gracious, truly being there. It's not about self-empowerment or transcendence or superiority… It's about knowing just how inferior you are. It feels like the ultimate manifestation of a maxim I was taught in elementary school, as I was waiting in line for ice-cream: "You get what you get, and you don't get upset."

Hm. You could also say… This thing of ours is a total rejection of a dominant conventional idea about what it means to develop. To many, development is about tenacity; it's about straining yourself into greatness, white-knuckling your way to virtue, prying out evermore bounties from the hands of God. Never giving up, never letting go.

Tiresome.

11/25/24
For the past week, the doubt wave has subsided. I’m feeling assured, even though I’m still really behind.

Good insight! I have never thought of that angle, but yes, indeed, that's where much of the self-hate we see must come from. It can be really confusing. As an alcoholic who used to wake up and ask how it was possible to try so hard and fail so miserably, I had a front-row seat to the limits of control. I often notice the other side of the agency problem too, in which, when things don't go as planned, we see ourselves as being thwarted by somebody else's agency. We are so used to relying on the agency model (which, I must admit has great practical applications) that it is hard to believe that there are no agents, either within or without, other than as stories spun by our minds to explain things. 

11/26/24
I have a trillion lives to live, why tense so much around this one?

“I am the murderer, I am the saint, I am the so-called evil on this earth, I am the so-called goodness of this earth.” – Robert Adams

11/27/24
I've been getting a pleasant unitive awareness of the body walking—how the torso sways from side to side, how the arms sway perpendicularly, how my clothes slide on my skin, and how my legs walk but nothing really moves, as if I was walking without ground or gravity.

11/27/24
Classes have stopped meeting, so now I have a couple weeks to catch up and study for finals. The body is resting. Let's see if my pride survives this round on the carousel.

I woke up today with a craving to sit, a little bit of hope in that direction. I left it alone. Sitting didn't end up happening until around 9pm, at which point I sat for a few minutes, and then spontaneously, in a frustrated voice, said "Ah, who gives a shit?" and went back to playing Minecraft. Kind of curious.

The current Minecraft task is digging a pointless 16x16 hole to the bottom of the world.

Life is hard. 

11/28/24
Over the past month, there's been a bottom-up shift from worrying about whether my goals would survive surrender to (mostly) just surrendering the goals themselves. The body leads the way.

11/30/24
Some observations: 

Giving up your goals, both worldly and spiritual, allows you to see how the mind attaches itself to these goals all on its own. 

If you're facing a choice between two goals, and you give both goals up, then you can see how the mind toggles between preferring one or the other, like a flag flapping in the wind.

12/2/24
In moments throughout the day, I've been observing, "Hey, you gave up all goals, remember? But look at how the mind orients itself to all these desires, all by itself."

It's quite persistent about this; a strong majority of my day is spent orienting towards work goals. (Even though I work far less than that.)

12/2/24
https://www.theguardian.com/society/gallery/2008/mar/31/lifebeforedeath

12/2/24
I avoid imposing the “let go of all goals” intention onto myself. But when it’s here, it makes for interesting practice. Or maybe it's just busywork, who knows. 

12/3/24
It's really crunch time, but the mind is not hurried. A part of me says — eek! 

12/3/24
Recently, I’ve been getting the sensation of being just on the edge of non-existence, like I’m sliding down into it, and also these wiggling sensations in my head, like the wiggling is going to take me out of existence. I’ve also been getting feelings of flashing, like reality collapses into another part of itself in a flash, as well as reality stuttering and stopping-starting. This intuitively reminds me of cessation, but I’m not confident in that. There is maybe a wisp of the feeling of skipped time, but it’s not clearly true. I don’t get the feeling of consciousness booting back up; it’s more of a flash and an immediate return to how it was. It’s also been happening quite a bit, which also makes me think it’s not cessation—multiple times a day, with these kinds of days happening every once in a while. No huge afterglow. No real imagery except my visualizations of the movements I've described.

John, these sound like cessation events to me coming from my own experience. Path cessations are the big ones, and feature the "rebooting" process you mention afterward. There are also what I'd call run-of-the-mill cessations that can happen  at any time, or can be invoked intentionally by some people.

Here's an old post from November 2009 that I wrote to Kenneth Folk, then my  teacher, that covers the territory:

Here's the comment from Kenneth that resulted in my response posted above:



These things may or may not be what's happening for you but it seems pretty congruent to me. I hope this information  helps you in some way, never-the-less.