Post Stream Entry/Attainment Emotions and Cycling?

Jacob Smith, modified 28 Days ago at 3/24/25 12:07 PM
Created 28 Days ago at 3/24/25 12:07 PM

Post Stream Entry/Attainment Emotions and Cycling?

Posts: 5 Join Date: 6/2/21 Recent Posts
Hey y'all. I was just wondering if anyone here has experienced something after stream entry or other attainments. For a little context, I know Pre-SE after the A&P you're on the ride whether you want to be or not. What about after stream entry and onwards? Are you permanently cycling anyways? Meaning, say, the Dark Night and all of that going on, whether you are aware of it or not, sort of like, an inevitability.

To be more direct, as I am more interested in daily life matters than the specifics of the POI (though they are interesting and I'm welcome to hearing about it)
Can any emotions or feelings that maybe were not so prominent previously in your path or life become more prominent in your life or awareness or something? I mentioned cycling because, I am wondering if someone were to get an attainment, but then no longer practice, if their emotional psychological what have you - 'stuff' - is going to be coming up in their daily lives even if they did not expect it, possibly even more intensely than before, though other things might have been 'tamed/settled'.

I have heard from a few different accounts that some people after stream entry seem to just have a completely peachy life and can move on. I have heard several who have said that after stream entry they had to double down on practice beucase lots of negativity and things like that was showing up, that was maybe there before but to speak figuratively maybe the 'flood gates' have now opened and only more practice will get those things to simmer down.

Just wondering if anyone has any experience with anything like this, or any opinions on this matter/topic. I hope this made some sense at all.
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Bahiya Baby, modified 27 Days ago at 3/24/25 6:18 PM
Created 27 Days ago at 3/24/25 6:18 PM

RE: Post Stream Entry/Attainment Emotions and Cycling?

Posts: 1174 Join Date: 5/26/23 Recent Posts
 One typically cycles after stream entry until the beginning of second path where you're sort of back to being "locked" into early nanas, simpler perceptual modes, similar to say before starting meditation though perhaps a little more naturally fractal after SE. 

Review cycles being so profoundly pleasant I found the return to these early nanas really frustrating and thus I felt I needed to go deeper once second path arose. But, I do suspect, it's good for some people.

Lots of crazy emotions can come up after stream entry, even right after it, there's all sorts of traumas and weirdness packed into the mind at different layers of experience and moving through the paths sort of unveils those like a fractalling cerebral labyrinth. 

I suspect if one can find a place to get off the ride the universe never intended for them to become awakened. Some of us have to go all the way, there isn't really any other option.
 
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pixelcloud *, modified 27 Days ago at 3/25/25 7:22 AM
Created 27 Days ago at 3/25/25 7:02 AM

RE: Post Stream Entry/Attainment Emotions and Cycling?

Posts: 103 Join Date: 10/25/24 Recent Posts
  Jacob, 

I think it's called waking up for a reason, meaning tings will get noticed sooner or later, and it's also said for good reason that "best not to start, but once started, better to finish."

As Kenneth Folk quotes Bill Hamilton, "after all, there are four paths, so how good can the first one be? Stream Entry is only a quarter of the way there." Likely, you'll continue pulling at the thread that Stream Entry has now made very obvious and put in your hand. When SE happens, you're obviously changed in some way, but it'll become quite obvious that you've merely got into secondary school, a lowly fifth grader  emoticon , and are still very far from getting your diploma. But then again, some seem to be ok with what SE does and it doesn't progress much after that, or doesn't for a long time, because it didn't light a fire under their assses as it did to most of the people who get SE. Individual temperament and proclivities matter much in this.


"While I view stream entry as a permanent shift in how the field of perception is processed, the principles of causality still apply, and a minor step in integration does not even come close to dealing with the root of the dualistic split." 

(I wrote down the above quote from the DhO around the time SE happened for me, but I did unfortunately not note down who wrote it.)  


Although these practices can be said, from a certain perspective, to do roughly the same thing to human brains, human brains are highly variable. Variation is really the norm once evolution comes up with highly complex bodymind systems like these fur reduced monkey creatures we seem to be. 

So you seem to be asking an equivalent to what the outcome will be in a general way concerning mental health development when people drop a tab of acid. Weird question, huh? Because suddenly it's obviously about all kinds of personal (trauma) history, personality traits, and ultimately, you'll just be sort of shrugging your shoulders, because "how the hell would I know what happens to person XYZ on acid?" There seem to be some greater avenues this TENDS to go down, but again, variation is the norm.

One thing to consider here: The "dark night" is something related to how perceptual development seems to take place for many practitioners. Psychological issues are NOT the same. Both can be, haha, psychological challenging, and these two aspects of life can show up at the same time and intertwine, but still. Strictly speaking, DN is a recurring phase in attention development, and daily life cycling is a result of having had certain changes to how the mind works as a result of such development. Your personality issues are their own plants in the garden of your life. 


Generally, what path attainments seem to bring is higher granularity of the generative model. Meaning, it will become more obvious in certain parts of experience that experience is made up of sensations. As a long term teacher within Shinzen Young's system said in an interview, often after Stream Entry there now is effortless perception of sensory flux in the somatic field, or the visual, or the auditory, etc. 
(In the latter part of this interview: Ep88: Saints and Psychopaths - Har Prakash Khalsa )

So generally, experience will get more HD over time in the four path model. At 2nd path there will be greater peceptual capability than at 1st, etc. This will inevitably mean that all your stuff will show up in HD at some point of the journey, depending on where or how deeply it is buried. How you are gonna deal with it is as highly variable as wether it is even problematic enough to have to be dealt with. 

Might well be that Stream Entry, while usually associated with feeling about 20% better all the time at baseline, will make your reactive patterns show up in greater contrast, the cognitive dissonance being far greater now. Wich, given your individual personality structure, might either be a reason to be happy because "oh, I never saw it that way, thanks for highlighting this", or make you worry more, because "holy shit, how infantile and destructive is this?" Etc. Maybe you got into practice because you where a complete basket case and Stream Entry eased something around that for the time being, only to become a bigger theme again later on. Maybe SE did resolve something, and that is that. Maybe you know you've got issues, but you have trouble getting at them, and they will show up much later on the path. Maybe you where a happy camper with cool and balanced parents who got into this out of sheer fascination, and you don't really have all that much stuff to come up other that the prolonged existential crisis that is the mediation development path itself. Development in terms of pushing perceptual threshold and what it does to the practitioner will of course look different in all those cases. 


As for cycling, the technical tradition view is that after Stream Entry, you cycle, and will keep on cycling. All through the day, every day.

"In that same vein, the cycles of insight from stage four to eleven (and then fifteen for those who can get further Fruitions in Review) always influence the life of those who are awakened. They are inescapable. They occur as soon as we sit down to meditate. Much more than this, they cycle endlessly in waking hours and even when dreaming. This subtle or overt cycling colors mood, energy level, and perception of phenomena. As soon as a Fruition is attained, the cycle starts again and proceeds, though the timing and obviousness of this fact varies depending on how much we are practicing, what is going on in our lives, and how skilled we are at noticing the qualities of these stages." - MCTB2

So there will be cycles in the big frame of the four path model, review phase, seeming reconsolidation when the 2nd path growth cycle comes about, etc, but you'll also cycle through nana 4 to 11 over the day, maybe in a matter of hours, sometimes more overtly noticeable, sometimes less so. So things get fractal with cycles within cycles after Stream Entry. Up to 2nd path and up to 3rd, there can be appreciation of sub stages and sub sub stages, where the growth cycle stages seem like they have their own mini nana cycles that they go through, etc. This will likely become less interesting the more the path becomes about resolving the dualistic split in the here and now. And as quoted above, all of that also depends on your skill in noticing these tings. 

Read up on that in MCTB2, where its stressed that while getting good at review practice and learning the vibratory signatures of the stages can be super, super helpful, ultimately, the path is about understanding something about the phenomena that make them and all other experiences up. It's always about understanding the three characteristics. 

Wrote Kenneth Folk in his work Contemplative Fitness:

"(...) the ñanas will continue to cycle throughout a yogi’s lifetime and it’s very empowering to be able to identify them as they arise. This ability to see sensations, thoughts, and mind states as process rather than identifying with them is part of the larger process of awakening. When we objectify (take as the object of attention) something that was previously seen as self, we move to more and more subtle forms of identification and ultimately come to the place where everything in experience can be seen as process, impersonal and ever-changing.

(...)

The cycles continue to occur whether or not the meditator pays attention to them. They become a natural part of life, like the breath, or the sleep cycle, or the seasons and the year. Just as one doesn’t get tired of breathing or sleeping, but surrenders to the natural rhythms of life, someone who has continued to practice beyond stream entry has integrated the cycles into his or her daily rhythms. And although we may get tired of the seasons, as we do when it is very hot in the summer or very cold in the winter, we are deeply confident that they will soon change."


​​​​​​​In closing, I think it's notewhorty that most of the traditions and modern teachers seem to converge on yes, awakening is a huge upgrade, but personality/therapy/psychology work will always be a super important part of human existence and awakening itself will likely only make it more obvious that one needs to continue working on becoming a more functional human being. Even in classical Theravada, with their weird ten fetter emotional perfection model of awakening, the training in ethical behaviour is considered to be the "first and last training."   
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Papa Che Dusko, modified 27 Days ago at 3/25/25 7:48 AM
Created 27 Days ago at 3/25/25 7:48 AM

RE: Post Stream Entry/Attainment Emotions and Cycling?

Posts: 3522 Join Date: 3/1/20 Recent Posts
Post SE for me felt like a relief. As if me being lost has completed in at last being at home and all was just good emoticon 

Im not talking post cessation moments but rather weeks and months after SE. 

Already the next few days I could not recognise my usual meditation. Initial Nanas were there and it felt new. I decided to resolve and remain in Review and stopped meditating for a year or two I think. Then later began meditation I experienced many a jhanic a Nana cycles within cycles on and on. I even believed I cracked the cycling code. emoticon Just to end up cycling again emoticon Oh shit! 

Best wishes! 
Jacob Smith, modified 21 Days ago at 3/30/25 9:34 PM
Created 21 Days ago at 3/30/25 9:34 PM

RE: Post Stream Entry/Attainment Emotions and Cycling?

Posts: 5 Join Date: 6/2/21 Recent Posts
Hello everyone, and thank you.

I appreciate not having to write a doctoral dissertation just to discuss anything related to after Stream Entry, some places can be like that.
It's been close to a year and a day since I believe I have gotten stream entry, my perception is permanently different, clearer, sharper colors are brighter, etc, (more "HD") and nothing shakes or changes that no matter how I feel or what I'm doing or anything else.
I do indeed feel that while I'm 'enrolled' I've only just begun school, whether I want to be or not.

I had a honey moon period where everything was heavenly, and I felt a very bright sense of joy about life and my future. This lasted maybe a week or two.
It started slowly, but my previous psychological and emotional issues or "stuff" began to creep into my life.

I wonder if some of this is dark night phenomena, as when I read MCTB I am seeing a lot of "signs/symptoms" that I can relate to, I have told some people in online communities who are not really advanced meditators or anything and they think I'm just making it up that it might be the dark night. It could all just be regular life issues and I could just take action on everything in my life and have a happy life. But I suspect at least some of this is related to the path or something, and nothing material or success wise is going to fix it. Maybe some esteem, or psychologically, type things would fix it but even then, I'm not sure. I just get the hint or the feeling that while yes I need to take care of regular life affairs there is a meditative/insight aspect to this matter.

Now, it seems certain "stuff" is not much of a problem, but other things that I didn't pay much mind to now surface and stay predominant in the mind often.
Certain emotional issues are much stronger and more prominent in my mind and are really bothering me now, in sometimes disturbing ways.
I do in fact see when reading the POI section of MCTB it mentioned suicidal thoughts several times in a few nanas, which I felt was way too far and extreme to discuss, as it felt like trauma dumping or something, but since it's a symptom, this specific kind of thought/feeling has been coming up way more than it ever did pre SE, granted pre SE I drank almost daily, and post SE feel no need to do that, but this issue is a really glaring/clear one that I figure I should maybe be forward about, and yes I have sought counseling and such. But this was seriously not a problem pre SE, maybe when I was like, 12? Just thoughts then though, now very strong, is this unsurfaced trauma or something? I don't have the greatest life in the entire world, but it's not that bad either!

The acid analogy makes sense, I have taken LSD, I think it propelled this journey in the first place at around 19. I know I am comfortable taking LSD even at large doses, but I know many people who would go 'apeshit' or insane or something like that, as in, not handle it very well. The cycling thing makes sense.
The reactivity example is perfect, things are more HD, in general I am less reactive than I used to be, but certain patterns are coming up that are alarming and vivid. I come from a background where we just ignore or deny feelings and all of that stuff, which is definitely not the healthiest model to be coming from if a bunch of repressed or suppressed thoughts or feelings are coming up, but I can see what was mentioned about how this could be related to daily life and morality as well and not cycling. Not sure how to tell, as I have not been actively sitting/practicing on a daily basis, more like once or twice a week for an hour or two (not the best I am aware).
I was a basket case hoping that SE would fix everything, which I am now aware I was sorely mistaken. I have to 'unbasket case' myself in a mundane sense but hoping meditation or enlightenment or whatever can help, if I have no choice about this ride thing or not. Maybe life would be better if I got to second path, got stuck in the first few nanas, and could just live a regular life for a while, that would be really great. Though I do see in the dark night sections of MCTB it mentions learning to 'keep your shit together' and function in spite of whatever mental emotional or spiritual dysfunction is going on, emphasizing morality.

I appreciate the responses,  I wish things could have just ended at SE and I could have the 'perfect dream life' (exaggerating as I know nobody has that) but if it's going to continue best to be pro-active and try to 'figure something out' about this matter at hand. Perhaps whenever 2nd path happens things will calm down, but also if necessary should probably steele myself to prepare for if things continue in this direction or even stronger than before, though fingers crossed.
Any opinions or experience or insight on this or anything I have said would be greatly appreciated, and my apologies if any of it is jumbled, or a bit extreme.
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pixelcloud *, modified 21 Days ago at 3/30/25 11:21 PM
Created 21 Days ago at 3/30/25 11:21 PM

RE: Post Stream Entry/Attainment Emotions and Cycling?

Posts: 103 Join Date: 10/25/24 Recent Posts
Watch the Guru Viking interview I linked above. In the latter part (1.26 hours in: Surprises and Disapointments after Awakening) Har Prakash Khalsa talks about his experiences with SE and psychological work and the importance of continuing to work on personality/psychology issues. 

As for the next path attainments, early progress is helped a lot by actually doing review practice, trying to nail going through the nanas up to EQ during a sit, trying to get repeat fruitions, etc. So if you are going to step on the gas again, should 2nd path happen, take that sucker for a spin and really learn to ride those new wiring upgrades well when the new path is still fresh. Practice.
Check the first Daniel Ingram Guru Viking interview, the quick fire Q&A at the end. Watch it again and again.  

Maybe some of what is going on is just the path pulling you along and asking you for mastery. When the next layer of mind shows itself it feels like regress, like it is drawing its own red circles around what is not clearly perceived, and that is calling for insight work. And that is not very likely to go away while you're on the path. Stream entry is a point of no return. If you find you can't sleep on it because things seem unresolved and it bugs you, work onward and get it done. 2nd path is cool, another upgrade, but that review phase will end with another layer of mind showing up and it feeling like regressing again, reconsolidating, like something still only half baked that needs further work. You're in the stream. If you want out, maybe crossing the stream is what needs to happen. I have read more than one diary where people felt like they could finally return to lead a normal life after they finished the insight work and landed 4th path. 

"Advanced practitioners want to awaken because they are tired of being on the path, tired of being stuck in the twilight between awake and asleep. If you aren’t prepared to work your way through that twilight, don’t begin the path, and do not take up a meditation practice."
 
Ron Crouch
Aloha Dharma: a compilation of texts from alohadharma.com
Eudoxos , modified 20 Days ago at 4/1/25 4:09 AM
Created 20 Days ago at 4/1/25 4:09 AM

RE: Post Stream Entry/Attainment Emotions and Cycling?

Posts: 155 Join Date: 4/6/14 Recent Posts
What you write makes sense. If you had addiction issues, which really are manifestation of a deeper pain (not the booze itself) then those will be more visible afterwards — you entered the stream: lot of the compartmentalization vanishes and you are more exposed. It can be a huge relief, but the relief tends to wear out and the vulnerability might be more pronounced.

It is better not to go into "regular life issues" vs. "insight aspect": the practice is to bring the insight aspect into regular life issues. Suicidal thoughts and the anguish one might ascribe to muncitukamayata-ñana (ñ9, "Get me outta here!!!") are no different from suicidal thoughts a non-meditator would be experiencing. The difference is in the ñ, ñana: light of insight one is painfully learning to bring in there.

If you have a chance to have continuous counseling/therapy support, use it. I found in my case that especially in relational/social area, insight practices had much lesser impact than I had hoped. I wish now I had been less one-dimensional, but that's how the stubborn ones have to learn emoticon

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