I had a journal on KFD and Awake Network, same username. Journals thru SE and 2nd were on the old KFD site.

I had a question about Nirodha. The experience I have is rare for me, and is basically a slow cessation. So it's like a cessation, but the event horizons are slow, more like turning a volume knob down and then back up, maybe about one second on each side. Fading away ... coming back. I'm assuming this is Nirodha, as it is not like the instantaneous blips that are the norm. Not sure what else to call them, other than slow cessations.

It was interesting to read Daniel's description in the AF article of going to bed and working up thru the jhanas to a cessation or nirodha and realizing that that was basically what I do, although I don't generally bother with becoming absorbed in jhanas, I just go to the most relaxed, let go place I can access and continue to let go from there. Most nights I get one or more cessations, and on extremely rare occasions, one of these slow cessations.

I'll have to admit the concept of some kind of clearly delineated moments for 3rd and 4th path seems slightly foreign to me, although in a way I could kind of see it for some kind of 4th path thing where you really get that the character wile e. coyote is not real and you can't ever believe it again. Perhaps that could come suddenly, it just strikes me as more gradual.

For me there seems to be an ongoing process where the understandings from the cushion etc. begin to get applied more in the real world, which I see as 3rd, and then something more along the lines of actually getting that done is what I'm seeing as 4th, kind of locking it in or that becoming more of a normal way of seeing things.

The nondual thing for me began with a high dose of mushrooms, and it seems to be something that, like that experience, fades and comes back, and yet seems to come back more and more over time in a progressive way. So there is an element of this happening more frequently, and more out in the world. When I look inside I never see anything there anymore, but it seems sometimes that understanding is forgotten although I'm not sure it would be correct to say it's not there.

Saw the movie Gravity. Doing some noting there was a lot of seeing tension seeing anxiety seeing sadness seeing joy. I think it may have been the first time I had a fruition out in public, I guess I've been a bit shy It is amazing to me how fast the progress of insight cycle goes by these days.

Last summer I had a couple of months where I was basically aware and present all the time, felt "done". From that point I had a bit of a "fall from grace" and felt a bit more normal, or like I used to. Cycles were appearing and disappearing very rapidly for some time, now it seems more stable, but with dark night undertones. I continue to be fairly unmotivated.

But rather than a typical progress of insight dark night, the feel is of an extremely slow cycle playing itself out, a deeper, much longer, underlying cycle that I'd never really been aware of.

Meditation continues to be very pleasant, tranquil, 8th jhana or thereabouts, I think occasionally purelands but those are not so clear to me, and I'm not tremendously absorbed. Basically, I just get gone. Thinking about jhanic factors seems like extra work. I just stay present and open to whatever arises and let it be.

At this point the work seems to be about practicing in everyday life, to just be aware and let everything be grokked from original mind. I'm not sure a lot of time on the cushion is the most important thing for me right now, but for a beginner I would say it is the most important thing.

5th jhana experiences:

I seem to have a predilection for 5th jhana, the experiences seem very (duh) big. I often continue to notice the spacious quality even when I have moved beyond 5th proper.

The first time I had a good sense of it, it had a quality of ratcheting or pulsing outwards, so that it was not just infinite, but expanding in a regular pulsing rhythm. I'm not sure I have noticed it quite like that since. I sometimes now get the sense that there is a slow expansion over time, so that (eyes closed) if there is an internal image it will become slowly smaller over time, and for me the image will also move down in the visual field.

[EDIT] I've had a couple of experiences since where the image drifted to the left, and up. So what I thought was a thing, is maybe not.

Usually for me the infinite quality is 3 dimensional, although occasionally it becomes more 2-D, having the feel of a horizontal band or line. This happened the other day, prompting me to write this, I've only had 2 experiences of it like this.

Probably meditating slightly more these days, although I was suffering more, which prompts it. Perhaps somewhat useless to talk about the cycle aspects at this points, but FWIW the recent dark night, which went on a bit longer than the last few, finally morphed into equanimity, although it still seems there is a deeper underlying mega-cycle that remains undone. Although I have a lot of light discontinuities, I have not had a rock solid cessation in maybe a week, which is very unusual based on the past 6 months.

I was noticing that the 5th jhana aspect is now about as big in my occasional practice as when I do a microdose of fungi, which is impressive to me. My dharma name should be something like Akasa

Have had various feelings of increasing doneness over the past months, but the whole thing still seems to be cooking.

Practice continues to be bringing it into everyday life, particularly when I am talking to people as that uses up a lot of bandwidth and sometimes I lose it a bit.

hi Eric
Sorry to jump in on your thread, not sure if this is welcome so please and thank you and anything else which might be appropriate up front. I can really relate well with much of what you are describing. Chuck has helped me out with a lot of similar stuff in email for a long time now and he is great to help get some bearings on some of this if you get a chance. We have touched on this;

"But rather than a typical progress of insight dark night, the feel is of an extremely slow cycle playing itself out, a deeper, much longer, underlying cycle that I'd never really been aware of."
- Eric G

more than a few times, so there is very likely something going on very long term. There is a cycle, I suspect it can be almost 15 - 20 years in length, kind of expanding and contracting with some very profound influences on one's experience. There may be multiple cycles of multiple variable durations nested within other cycles.

I have had some very hard jhana to check out and all Four Immaterial Realms and the Nirodha from there; all very unified with no bleed through and everything points to your experiences that incline that way being very accurately described. Good to get more of this better documented, thanks.

On the dimensionality of Immaterial Realm One - Infinite Space or Jhana 5, (lets go with Jhana 5 Hard and Locked) it is definitely as if one is lost in a bright but empty field with no boarders or sense of direction that is infinite in all directions, so that is the completely hard immaterial form of it. Could be any dimensionality is a softening of the Jhana by bleed through or crosstalk with Jhana 4 proper, which is possibly also a little soft and taking on more factors, or possibly not.

I have had more Jhana 4 completely soft fully facilitated and functional walking around experiences that have lost dimensions and these get very very weird. The whole surface of the planet went absolutely flat on me one time. I could see all four corners and features of that configuration that were amazing to me. No one will ever believe that one, no doubt, but wow, unreal or other-real in the extreme, so what you describe sounds very mild but totally makes sense in the context of my experience.

Thanks again for sharing all of this.

nathan

Description of 5 as "bright" doesn't really jibe with me, I'm trying to think of something other way to relate to that. For me, transition to formless is associated with darkness or some dimness, as well as a sense of being delicate or refined which is a similar general fading away.

I did experience some "flattening" on a high fungi dose once. Hearing was completely cutting out as well.

Not sure I know who Chuck is.

Got a bit of dream yoga practice in last night, it seems to happen rarely from time to time. Meditating within the dream at least seems to be powerful, after I became aware and free I was looking at clouds and it all became very psychedelic

The work continues to be just staying aware and in many ways seems more psychological, or at least that's where the insights are more obvious. Everything is seen as happening some times, and other times I get temporarily sidetracked by old programming. Not sure that tons of meditation would be helpful at this point although certainly others have done it that way.

I will add that the cycling continues, of course. The surface level dark night resolved and I'm back to tons of fruitions, still feels the longer underlying thing is still going. Translating to pragmatic dharma-ese, Adyashanti said something along the lines that 4th path is maybe several years after SE if you're fast, 20 years if you're slow.

Chuck is another explorer, like you, like me, and around here from time to time. He recently posted in the tripleops thread so if he has it working you may be able to PM him from there. Not sure what he would say about Jhana, but about the big empty, he knows this very well and about various dimensions of this and that.

Well my Jhana stories are all sans any medications of any sort, I assure you. On anything, I can't do shit about any of this. I have a somewhat less flexible position on Jhana, to be completely open and honest about this (as I have attempted to be all along).

I don't think it matters much what we label any of what we note, as, we note what we note, right? Labels simply pass the signs of what we see along to another. So if we present it in sincerity, this is all we can do as well. As I see this. For me, if I begin with the breath in the body and fill it up to full with attention it is like a soft bright white cloud of bright white light and on up it goes, getting more clear as I go. For me the brightness becomes more transparent, like clear, still, deep water, as Jhana 4 looses all sense of that boundary of any form. And then it is all simply like light, with nowhere to land, radiating everywhere, illuminating no edge or surface or texture or anything but endless limitless space.

So this is what is in there, apart from any form but this kind of 'light on space', it is, precisely, as the old words say, infinite space. It is the light of a percipience which directly knows only space and not of a sun that knows any distance and then lands anywhere. So for my part, it comes across in the same way now, as any old book, in a very olden timesy way. No wiggle room on it or in it as I perceive it.

Others see what they see. They call this or that what they wish. I cannot argue otherwise. I don't see what they see, or seek to see 'in into them' in these senses. So it goes. Keep looking in... to it... let me/us know. It's all great. I remember a long time in my life when there was no one from whom and no where I knew to go to know about any of what anyone else knows.

I can add further how this light vanishes entirely, this perception of this quality of limitless empty space and becomes even more subtle when the quality of any spacial sense also falls away. It is much the same but attention has shifted very subtly to the limitless perception that knows that emptiness, whatever the limits or extent of such an immeasurable conscious condition.

So again, all by the book(s) very old book(s) that are not news at all around here. All I can say more is, should I care too, I can see this in that way and directly no less so today than any ever said back when.

However at the falling away of that infinite sense of conscious perception there is then the greatest darkness, and as impenetrable as might be imagined. Where only nothingness is known and it is even more empty but blacker than any other black I can know. From there, the subtlety of that darkness and oblivion only becomes more like the most weightless and empty kind of perception. In a very real sense it is impossible to imagine being any blinder, deafer or dumber. Then the perception which cannot be its own mirror, the slightest and stupidest of all. Then the absolute void, which not even no one and nothing sees.

So there is little I can say except this about those immaterial qualities in any sense absolutely. I only address it, in these ways, again today, because for whatever reasons, this most archaic and commonly known of perceptions that has been passed along and apparently outlived almost all of it usefulness for most, is otherwise not typically mentioned at all.

So that is the novelty of noting it now, if any, and the only reason I note it again. It serves as a point of reference, for me, so I can only suppose it could for anyone else as well. That it does not more commonly do so is at least as much of a wonder to me as it could be to anyone else.

So again my apologies and I will leave you to consider any of this not at all, or in any ways you like.

I for one will always welcome hearing more about this that is otherwise much more various from everyone who sees more or in other ways. I am simply too simple minded to the relative merits of what all of you say, but I remain willing to learn and I very much hope to do so. So, please, do continue, not only you but everyone to also explain what you note, and if at all possible about how you note it, so that I too may learn and also do so as well.

makes me laugh, that I am such a simpleton, I hope it does you too

Looking back up your Journal here I haven't spotted yet where I mention Chuck in it, and sorry again if this is all OT in here, I can erase it all, easily, if you would prefer. Ah, now I see it, second line, can't see anything in this world anymore either! So yeah, just that he helped me out a bit. Like I say can wipe all this so it doesn't break up your flow no problem. Let me know.
nathan

Paying attention to the flow would be good.

I seem to be noticing some Pureland jhanas, although these are still fairly vague to me. I believe I was getting a very stable 3rd PL (Kenneth and Nick's descriptions) the other day, very stable, strong 3rd eye focus, very embodied, probably one of the more stronger stable experiences I've had in this area.

Have not really noticed crown chakra stuff, although I get a bit of a headband effect and kind of a whole top of the head thing sometimes. There are a number of stable spaces I go into, still seeing how that matches up with descriptions by others.

There is one where it feels very stable and yet behind the eyes a bit.

Day to day a bit more seeing things as just happening.

Just for the sake of completeness I wanted to mention, um, some kind of special shift or cessation the other day.

It was not as much a blip as a POP, a brief event of some kind, metaphorically like a bubble rising up in my head and popping kind of thing, and a shift after, although the shift could have easily been something like an adrenaline response, i.e. "WTF was that?"

Lately (past couple of months, say) there seems to be more of a sense of dis-identifying from bigger chunks. So, where once individual thoughts were seen and disembedded from, now there seems to be recognition of entire groups of thoughts, desires, intentions that are bigger than a single thought. Like say the complex of "figuring this stuff out".

More nondual experiences.

Re-observation still kind of sucks, though. I don't pay as much attention to cycles, but it is funny how I get fooled and think I'm getting depressed again, then I meditate a bit and pop into equanimity and think, nope, just re-ob.

The sense of thinking that this was about it has morphed into more of a noticing that things keep changing, my current opinion would be that it's a kind of thing where it is seeming more like everything is just happening, perhaps less of a sense of agency. Certain situations that were previously difficult like sticky political discussions have been noticed to be much easier or effortless, but there are still sticky things here and there and to be honest I'm not sure I have been particularly challenged.

Fruitions seem milder and are happening a bit more frequently throughout the day, for me these use to be almost exclusively while going to bed or while meditating, lately if I just have a few moments to close my eyes they are not too surprising.

Back a while I had a few experiences of Nirodha lite I guess, the slow cessations. Along those lines I also rarely get something where it's like I suddenly become aware that I was gone, but not from spacing out, I'm kind of thinking those are some kind of cessation as well. I don't have any sense of how much time I was gone.

For probably a year and a half there's been a quality which I've thought of as an increased detachment or distance. It's kind of a paradoxical thing because at the same time emotions can be very heartfelt and close, i.e. seemingly no distance as it were. Anyway, I now think this quality of detachment or distance (or space/spaciousness maybe) seems to match more the sense of a centerless quality. The term centerless didn't really resonate so well before, but now that term is starting to seem somewhat more reasonable.

Almost a sense of two minds sometimes, one, the contented diffuse awareness, and the other, the thoughts, etc. "over there."

Inside/outside, that line can blur a little bit, maybe, but I think I still have a few beliefs about that. It does seem very conceptual, but it also seems like some work with pliers and a blowtorch might refresh my sense of the line between body/not body pretty darn well. I guess some parts of the field have nerve endings, and some don't.

I've tended to be overly skeptical in the past, but some questions would be whether I am scripting this to any degree, and I've also wondered to what extent this direction is positively batshit crazy.

Looking for help getting to 3rd path
third path please help
Interesting threads...they may help script you more
Good luck,
~D

Yeah, I actually have Daniel's list from there printed out, I have referred to that pretty often, very useful. For me, just being aware, taking a step back, seeing the space, seems to be enough - maybe.

I was re-reading this thread, there's been a bit more change than I would have guessed in 4-5 months, I'm perceiving it as slower.

I don't usually go hard into jhanas (I don't think I do enough formal practice lately), but the 2 pureland jhanas at the 3rd eye are somewhat clearer now. Reading thru my offline journal I did get the 2nd one (Kenneth's 3rd) real hard at the first of December, not sure that will ever be matched. 3rd eye focus was very strong, and connected all the way down the tree trunk (thanks, Nic) of the spine area.

I actually transcribed the pureland parts of a couple of jhana walk-throughs, I need to double check those and post them.

So, feeling relatively normal, but ... detached, tranquil. Mind is generally still, pretty quiet. That's been the case for a year or so to some degree.

Jhanas rarely show up too much, although admittedly I'm not practicing. I notice that my mind's HUGE attachment to 5th jhana (a personal thing I guess) seems to have subsided. For a while it seemed to kind of dominate and the spacious quality would be present in other jhanas. Now it's all kind of meh. If I sit formally, I may notice 8th or so at a vague level. Sometimes if I am concentrating on something on TV or on the computer I will notice that 1st jhana has made an appearance - I am generally alerted by the unusual amount of sustained attention which I find mildly unpleasant, as well as the "oh my goodness" feeling of pleasantness.

I can't remember if I've mentioned that I rarely go thru the jhanas one by one like a lot of people have practiced, I just kind of go to the most let go place I can get to from wherever I am. I get "gone", aware but relaxed, open and checked out. If I notice 1st, I almost immediately go to 4th. Similarly if I notice 5th, I don't seem to notice 6 or 7, I just go straight to 8. Rarely, I will be in 8 after just a second or two but I would say normally it might take a couple minutes to stumble into it (or not) if I am sitting formally.

Jhana development over time for me went in three phases, there was a material jhana phase, where that was the coolest thing and the mind was really into them and did them a lot, and then the formless ones, and then the pureland ones.

Occasionally the more non-dual type of "experiences" will be super clear, I liked Daniel's description of "locked in". Anyway whatever degree of that super clear experience I'm having, it does seem to be an experience in so far as it comes and goes. Completely obvious, seen thru and thru, like one big universal machine. Kind of. And then it's back to everyday life, where there is still an understanding, but it is as if I can "forget" in a way. Kind of.

Just sitting across the table from someone, looking at them talking and being aware of this nondual aspect is about as good a practice as it gets for me lately. Kind of re-learning or adapting as I go. Or really anytime I am aware, particularly of space or the spacious quality, that seems to help.

Awareness of some crappiness lately, some suffering, perhaps I am indeed "noticing it more." Seems to be when I want the world to be some other way than the way it is, often when I observe I am expecting some other human to behave in a certain way. It can definitely get me for a little bit, at my best I have to take a step back and see that it is all just happening, acknowledge that suffering, maybe in a really good moment I can shine a little metta to the other person. Might have been compounded by some reobservation. First time(s) in a while where I was really grokking the resolve for no-bleed-through.

Still a slight amount of agitation lately. Equanimous, but a little grumpy now and then. Haven't had a solid fruition in days, maybe this is some re-ob type stuff getting processed. I do notice some fluttering discontinuities when I get in the place where I would usually have a fruition, but these don't strike me as complete, and I wouldn't say I'm in review.

The sense that things are out of my control seems to be increasing slightly.

And, I got to play with baby goats the other day.

Sounds like you are making progress. What do you mean with solid fruition?

There seem to be some cessations that are somehow deep and complete enough to "do the damage" and some that are milder near misses that don't quite move you into review. Kind of like there's an electrical charge that has to be grounded, but you need solid contact to completely discharge it in a single moment, as opposed to some kind of slower partial leak of the charge.

I did have a relatively solid blip>flash>bliss wave last night. Also multiple appearances of 5th jhana in the background, something I used to get a lot but hadn't seen in a while. Perhaps because I had meditated consistently for a few days.

Maybe sorta kinda seeing the agitation and so forth as just happening, as part of the whole picture. Long way to go there. Baby steps.

I have had some more obvious cycling and fruitions since I've been meditating regularly again, up from basically nothing for a while.  It was interesting to re-read some of my journal from a few months ago and see that there has been a kind of sucky overlay for a few months.  I seem to be spending unusual amounts of time in the reobservation area.  I may be relatively okay with it, but it still sucks.  I'm speculating that it may be like the fractal model of the paths playing out like the progress of insight on a larger scale.  Although I've felt pretty well cooked for a while.

Seems to be an increasing amount of detachment.  Harder to generate false enthusiasm for things, I seem to just have to go with the flow, things either get done or they don't.

Also kind of random but I've been noticing as I come out of dreams there is a tremendous amount of pulsing, i.e. the heartrate seems to be way up in dreams.  Never really noticed that before.

Had a dream a couple of weeks ago where I was trying to repair some kind of old clothing, and it just kept falling apart.  It would seem the old clothes just aren't cutting it anymore.

The sucky overlay continues, although things seem to be looking up for the moment.

The other night I experienced I guess a rapid cycle.  It was unusual in that I was feeling okay, and then was kind of swept rather suddenly into some unpleasant stuff.  This was not psychological stuff, it felt very physical.  There was even a sourness, a literal taste of sourness in my mouth, and this kind of chemical unpleasantness kind of slowly moved thru my body, almost like body scanning or some sort of slow histamine release.  I experienced a little worry, as I often do in re-ob, that this suckness would persist.  But it passed and (big surprise) everything was okay.  But yeah, very physical, chemical.  That whole thing played out over a few minutes.

EDIT:  also a lot of surface of the skin stuff, kinda 3rd jhana-ish

I do notice cessations every now and then but they seem a bit weak.  Not quite the !KA-CHUNG!s that I used to get after 2nd path, but more like fast little .blip.s that I've tended to downplay in the past.  We'll see.

Same here....The blips are very subtle/weak. I get next to no bliss wave at all. Just a nice calmness. Last Saturday I had three blips in one meditation all of them weak. Sometimes they seem much stronger like I'm completing a cycle vs a review, but totally not the Ka-chung of first path.
Good luck,
~D
Edit: The shifts between vip jhanas is much more smooth too...esp into 4th...used to feel like dropping 6 inches into stresslessness. Now it's hard to tell the transition points.

Nice thread....check it out ----> http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/5547481
I had to bump it

Came up into equanimity again yesterday, I feel like a shift of some kind happened.  Time will tell.  Basically, it's been a long time since equanimity felt fully, truly equanimous.  Something about months of underlying suck, kind of a long series of reobservation-heavy cycles, seems (for the moment) to have resolved a bit.  Feels much more stable than previous cycles, the underlying uncomfortable creepiness seems quite faded away and I feel more normal, more like my usual self.

Continuing to feel "better".  More equanimous with every cycle over the past couple of weeks.  Which is to say every few to maybe 48 hours as I see it.

I had been going with this model of cessations getting kind of "weaker" or faster, but last night I had a "strong" or deep or complete one last night.  Not nirodha, but a very clear blip - flash.  I suppose I do have a mild attachment to them happening that way (good luck with that, says to himself).

I assume I then went thru the cycle during the night as I had a fear dream.  Those dreams don't seem particularly scary any more (knock on wood), it's just that after the fact I recognize them as having scary or dangerous content.  I would say that is my most reliable pointer to the fear nana, the fear/danger dream.

It may be overfitting, but the model of something like the progress of insight/4 jhanas matching up with the paths seems increasingly reasonable to me.  1st path required (seemingly) a lot of effort, 2nd path had lots of joy and amazing experiences, then things quieted down and most recently it almost seemed like I was depressed.  Although I can't recall a tremendous amount of talk about late path depression, maybe Kenneth.  After the 2nd path dark night I was really unscathed by dukkha for a long time, and then in recent months it came back pretty consistently for a while.

Couple of observations.  I was thinking about my mom with Alzheimer's, a few years back when she was first starting to have memory problems I just getting into hardcore meditation and I described to her a little bit of being present and aware.  She seemed to be saying that indeed was her experience at the time, of just kind of being now.  Coming up to present I see her doing all these things which just seem to be based on feel.  The short term memory is gone so there is no immediate past and there's not a lot of cognition either.  I was seeing some similarities in terms of going with the underlying feeling and a certain amount of lack of discursive thought.

Another thing is that I seem to see conversations in a different light.  I tend to see them as games or meta-programs where people are just kind of running their programs, playing their recordings of their stories, and I see surprisingly little real awareness or interaction.  The most common game (not that I wasn't aware of this decades ago) is that one person seems to want to control or dominate the conversation, and just plays all their recordings while not really letting the other person talk.

Getting a lot out of the last section of Nirmala's book Nothing Personal.

A bit old, but I noticed your mention of what you thought was Nirodha Lite...

There are lots of unknown events or experiences, experiences where things blink or fade out, and the list of things they can be is moderately long, but the most common ones happen during the A&P, during Dissolution, and during the Formless Realms, and, if you have 5th, you very likely have chanced into 7th or 8th at points, as not everyone notices 6th for being what it is.

Real Nirodha is actually pretty rare, even on this forum. I can count the number of descriptions that I thought might actually be it on one hand. It is a relatively sudden and total power outage, like the cord has been pulled on the computer of your mind and the thing just shuts down totally, and I mean totally. Other things that can feel like that are really strong 8th and even some state shifts can feel like it happened briefly, and then Fruitions can do that also.

Just my two cents.

Thanks, so maybe not NS.  I'm admittedly not the most technical of yogis, leaning towards "getting gone" and feeling/allowing everything, not cultivating jhanas but noticing them.  Relying on my notes the "strongest" experience of the mystery cessation came shortly after I had reached equanimity on 2nd path, and I was also starting to recognize 8th jhana around that time, and I was practicing a lot, relatively speaking.  One night I had 7 or 8 of these mystery cessations almost back to back.  The pulling the power cord analogy resonates, and then plug right back in.  I'm very familiar with "regular" cessations, maybe I was just experiencing those in a slightly slower form.  On rare occasions I have experienced some slowing of the visual field in particular, for example.  But yeah, it was like going unconscious and coming right back.  Muh muh muh my nirodha

There is another experience I referred to very briefly, it may be nothing, but it's kind of like I seem "gone" for a while.  There is mainly the sense of coming back from a very deep cessation with no memory of having been anywhere.  The Alzheimer's cessation.  No real perception of an entrance or duration, just the exit only.  It's also vaguely analogous to maybe when someone is lost in thought and then comes back, except in this case there is no lost in thought, just gone.  And again the sense of booting up from a complete cessation.

Both of these things I have only experienced while reclining and both of them are extremely rare for me.  No more than a dozen of each, while I would claim >1000 regular cessations.

Still going thru a long, equanimous, but blah phase that doesn't seem quite as intensely depressing as it did a while back.

I suppose there is the possibility that I have been legitimately depressed, but I kind of doubt it.  I feel like I already worked that out of my system on multiple fronts, i.e. having gone thru tons of therapy back in the day and getting to a point, somewhere around 2nd path for instance, where I felt absolutely bulletproof wrt depression.  There is also the koan of who exactly would be depressed.

My sense is that there has indeed been a loss, the loss of self, the loss in that sense of my former life, all the little beliefs and egoic chasings of status and whatnot, attachment to self identity.  And the giving up of control.  So if depression is approximately some kind of loss, there is that.  Kind of a general apathy.  Things get done, but not as much of the planning ahead and getting ahead kind of thing, just what needs to be done, which is a change for me.

This article vaguely resonates 10 Reasons Why I Don’t Care Anymore and Neither Should You

Seemed to have gotten thru that depressive phase into a more familiar equanimous phase.  I never really experienced such a long phase like that since well before I got into meditation.  If I map it as a dark night, I'm not sure it really fits, as it was way too long and there were way too many cycles permeated by this funk.  I tend to think of it as the after effects of really severely pulling the rug out from under oneself.

I'm not exactly where to place it, but for my own purposes if nothing else I wanted to just use the word fourth or 4th so it would be searchable.

It's a weird thing to talk about.  I certainly don't see an individual homunculus or anything, kind of hard to believe anyone would, but at the same time somewhere around 5 years ago I was definitely very attached to an idea or set of ideas about myself.  Looking back, it's kind of like the way you might see that an arrogant person's view of themselves is out of line with reality, except on multiple dimensions.  The cartoon me.

I don't have a super strong non-dual kind of experience on a day in and day out basis, but on rare occasions there is an extremely strong, decisive experience of everything just happening in a field of awareness.  And that strong version kind of leaks out weakly in everyday life.  I'm generally pretty aware, and I'm aware that other "normal" people clearly often aren't.  And even if I'm not what I would call aware in the sense of an open, full awareness I don't seem to be overly attached to the thoughtstreams that I may be temporarily focused on.

I have been doing some formal meditation lately, it usually ends up in the 30-60 minute range.  I may require a few minutes to get to an 8th jhana range, but sometimes if I am well practiced I may jump straight to 8th.  I don't consider these hard jhanas at all.  Other times I may notice 4th nana but more typically I may start out around equanimity or so.  Lately some cessations have been showing up very quickly, as soon as I close my eyes to meditate or lie down to sleep.