Hi all,

In MCTB Daniel talks about the many and varied experiences which can cause people to cross the A&P by means other than meditation.

(I almost certainly crossed it in 2013, on an obscure psychadelic called 4-AcO-DMT. I possibly crossed it as early as 2008, after a very long blistered hike. I might even have crossed it in adolescence as I remember having a natural tendency to put myself in weird mental/emotional states and an obsession with religion and mysticism (despite also being at that time a Dawkins-reading atheist)).

My main question is how it effects the cycles of insight. My personal diagnosis is that I'm probably floating between DN and EQ, and have been for a while. However, I also wonder if I might need to go back and complete the first cycle "properly", i.e. meditatively.

Eg I might be really hovering between 3rd and 4th nanas, I need to cultivate an A&P on the cushion, and then go through the "real" dark night. (My emotions right now are much closer to EQ than A&P, but when things are shitty they feel more like 3rd nana (jerky, exhausted and nauseous) than re-observation). 

Somehow I feel as though I've already learned most of the dark night lessons from this round of insight, so it would probably be a relatively quick DN, but maybe it still has to be done "the right way".

Other people who crossed the A&P outside of meditation, what was your experience? I imagine a lot of people would be in DN territory when they stumble across MCTB or spirituality in general. Once you had an actual path to follow, did you have to "drop back" to make sure you were on the right track, or did you simply "press on"?

(I'm pretty sure) I crossed the A&P when I tried nn-DMT in 2001. Actually, my experience was so intense that, looking back, I wonder if it's possible to have a cessation experience on dmt.

> Once you had an actual path to follow, did you have to "drop back" to make sure you were on the right track, or did you simply "press on"?

My experience did nothing for my real meditation practice, other than providing motivation, knowing what is out there and what can be achieved.  On my first retreat, I had to spend a few days really making the effort to get into Mind and Body territory, and go from there.

I guess everyone is different, I'm surprised to hear that your experience 'off the cushion' gave you lasting insight that you're able to return to while on the cushion.

To be clear, I've done one 5-day retreat, and I've gone through several periods ranging from a few weeks-few months where I was meditating daily.

Not a huge amount, but enough for me to have had some weird/interesting experiences - for a long time I'd tend to explore my own mix of techniques, inducing perceptual changes (body, space or time get distorted) or energy flows. (Not the most effectice way to practice, which is why I'm trying to cultivate discipline now). I also hit 1st and 2nd jhana more than a few times but never reliably.

For further context, most of this was after the 2013 psychadelic experience. At that point I was already somewhat into MCTB, during the height of the trip I intentionally tried to perceive the three characteristics, which led to a powerful experience, the most powerful of my life. The next day I felt uneasy about reality in general and vipasanna practice seemed to be the only thing that helped. So before the trip I knew about MCTB but saw it as one path amongst many. After the trip it felt like quite possibly vipasanna was the only answer for me. (I still went for a long time with the undisciplined practice I describe above, more recently I've been trying to cultivate discipline and focus).

Going back to the maps, I'm thinking of what Daniel says here http://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/1509672
The implication seems to be that such people will usually find themselves in DN territory at some later point, and then possibly seek spirituality as an answer. Are you so confident that such people always begin at point 0?

I had some ego death experiences on both ketamine and the 4-AcO-DMT. Actually if ketamine was ego death, the 4-AcO-DMT was ego death++ - I was just a shard of the universal consciousness, what the hell was this bodymind? Led to quite an anxious comedown...

I don't think I had a real cessation experience but it made my mind feel a bit bolder about going far out via meditation. (A metaphor I use personally is that drugs are like blasting up the mountain in a helicopter, whereas meditation is like walking up. Drugs can show you some of the terrain quickly (if you don't crash) but then you go back to the bottom. If you want to stay up, you still have to walk up).


It definitely provided motivation more than anything. I don't know about lasting insight - I basically feel as though I have a lot of "undisciplined insight" which makes it easy to put myself in weird states of mind but I still have to do the work to integrate it into actual insight. This might also be a natural tendency than a product of the drugs.