Shaktipat is designed to expand your cutting edge within your current cycle. So, what will happen during shaktipat depends on what nana you are in in the given minute amount of time it occurs. For instance, you might meditate alone in the morning, cycle up to your cutting edge of dissolution, and then cycle back down in daily life. Later in the same day, you might go to an evening kundalini yoga/shaktipat class in which you start again at the first nana but then rapidly cycle back up to fifth in the presence of the energy. The goal, or significant factor, is whether or not you then get deeper into dissolution and early fear than you would have without the external shakti.
Nana cycling and jhana cycling are the same train on the same train track. It all depends on what side of the car you are looking out of to determine what you see. It is unlikely that you will experience permanent baseline shifts without passing through the post-8th junction point at least once (see
Daniel's mind map ).
If you wish to avoid the dark night, but still want 'enlightenment', then figure how to get from 3rd jhana to 4th jhana in a stable, continuous manner. Then figure how to disembed from within fourth jhana without cycling back down into DN territory (unstable sections between 3rd and 4th). My teacher doesn't seem to think this is easy or even possible. I tend to agree. But at the same time, there are tons of people in other traditions who don't talk about a section of the path that is distinctly shitty. I would guess that they are moving right from 3rd to 4th in these cases.
I think many people who are post-4th path would say that the cycles don't really bother them. That might be a motivating point for you.
Nana progress leads to path attainments. Path attainments (the 1st 3) have helped me cut off the beginning fetters, namely [1] belief in a self (the best self-definition I have now is that 'I' am my entire sense field at a given time, which includes my inner mind and outer reality as one big chamber... 'I' am also connected to whatever is generating this sentience), [2] doubt about the teachings (I am certain that this stuff works), and [3] attachment to rituals (in a spiritual-practice-sense, I am not as into dogma, books, symbols, 2-dimensional/oversimplistic definitons, spiritual champions, etc. ... in a conventional-life-sense, I am much more likely to calmly doubt my usual way of doing things- its easier to take a step back).
After 3rd path, I am not even closing to cutting off fetters [4] sensual desire, and [5] ill will off (much less 6 through 10). I am still crippled by bipolar disorder and general phobic thought and emotional patterns. My plan is to get 4th path and then practice AF after that and see if any of this will be enough.