I don't want to claim anything yet, but let me keep this as a working hypothesis. I'll use this topic to sort my mind out and if you want to step in, please do.

Several things have changed:

I can distinguish the jhanas very well, now. I haven't been practicing sitting meditation regularly for quite some time, now. These last 30 days I sat in meditation for about 2 hours total. Yet, after doing half an hour the day before yesterday and 5 minutes yesterday, today I sat and I wasn't even in the formal sitting pose. I was laid back in a park bench. And I went from 1st to 3rd jhana in about 7 min and I could see them changing clearly, something I wasn't able to do before last night's event.

I am not capable of fully separating myself from the objects I observe anymore. If I am paying attention to my thoughts, then the outside really seems to be outside and separated. But if I look at something and ask if it's outside of me, I can't answer yes. When I look at the world in a panoramic view, what I see is the world rising and falling as if it was the movement of the ocean, except I am looking at it from one point, and not another. But I am part of the ocean like everyone else. All there is, is matter moving around propelled by mind(s).

This happens to change my perspective on morality and compassion. There is something wrong with hurting other beings. We share something fundamental in common. I can't put my finger on it, but it's like I see everyone as being my near family because of this. Plus, I feel compelled to have metta for others and to help others spontaneously.

On the topic of metta, I should say that I cannot practice metta just for my self. It's as if metta is all around me, even though it's being emanated by me, and I cannot restrict it to these material boundaries of my body. I can only intensify the metta in the places I want it to be intensified.

The phala samapatti is not yet clear, but it does seem different from the previous phala samapatti.

And finally, on defilements. This is actually the strangest part. It's not that I don't feel anger, or lust. It's that it doesn't enter my mind. I don't get involved with it. My mind feels like it's protected by an energy shield. The shield is mindfulness. As soon as something is aproaching the mind, mindfulness notices it and it's as if the defilements get destroyed before entering the mind. It's fascinating! But I'm still not entirely convinced. My mind can still get agitated. I hope I am not fooling myself into believing that defilements are just agitation.

So far this is what I got. I feel inclined to think it's 3rd path again, but I am not convinced yet, so I refuse to claim anything about it.

Hi, Jenny.

Sorry for the long post, but here it goes.

I don't have a meditation journal.

My hair has in fact been on fire. Plus I have other pressing reasons to have a lot of spiritual urgency. I have practiced almost everyday, actually, but not sitting meditation. The regular practice has been walking meditation.
There are two things I see as being major causes for my innaction. One is my inclination for self sabotaging behaviour. The other I am just confirming now. Given my self sabotaging behaviour I was prescribed Ritalin to be productive. There was a period when it worked well. But it hasn't worked in a while. I stopped taking it about 20 days ago. I went back to doing the things I have to do. And I don't get angry and agitated when I'm not on Ritalin. But I took 3 Ritalin pills in these last 3 days.  I bought more medication yesterday, after going to the doctor, and took a pill about 3 hours ago. And I can tell a big difference in thoughts and behaviour. There's persisting anger and frustration, coupled with innaction. This is more tollerable now, but it is happening. I think this Ritalin business intensified the DNs far more than what would be normal. I won't take it anymore. I'll wait a few days without ritalin and see if I can figure this out better.

The practice has not been regular since christmass. Almost everyday I've been taking long walks and I do meditation in several ways, but I would say an average of 1h15m of unstructured practice a day.
- I would focus the mind steadily and continuously on the sensations on the feet while walking, which was more samatha than vipassana.
- I would also do vipassana like this: I started focusing on the sensations on the feet. After being fairly focused I would focus on changing sensations. Then I would ask myself "Is there any permanent sensation in the feet?" and I would perceive impermanence clearly. And finally I would focus on watching sensations rise and fall due to contact with the ground and due to mindful attention.
- I would also try to do walking meditation focusing on developing mental states of equanimity. So I would walk around relaxin the feet, then abandoning the feet, then releasing control of the feet. Thing like these.
- I did some sitting meditation during all these months. But it wasn't regular. I would do a bit of sitting meditation, get to a place of emotional equanimity and I would be happy with that and become lazy again. This was how my cycling worked in this period. I would do enough meditation to reach emotional equanimity and drop the practice. And then I would start again. This happened probably 30+ times, without exageration. Of course, the problem was that this equanimity was emotional, and not wise equanimity.
- The two things that changed everything was to contemplate every experince as having a cause. This allowed me to see clearly what were the things I had to be equanimous of. It's hard to pigeonhole them into a single word. But it's essentially clinging and controlling things in every way these can manifest themselves.
- The other thing that allowed me to see clearly was realising that every instance of clinging and control is characterised by a movement of the mind either to push the sensations away, or to grab them. The mind moves around trying to force things to be different. So I tried o become aware of sensations without forceful mental movement. The culmination of this is, I think, the undirected mind. Meaning the door of nibbana related to the absence of suffering. I tried to mature this mental attitude of an undirected mind, because it brought (and brings) me peace and detatchment.
- In the last 10 days, or so, I started applying this technique of watching sensations with an undirected mind, to the three things that Dream Walker and Daniel Ingram had advised to focus on: to vipassanise the "personal bubble", the boundaries of the body, and the center of "me". I continued perceiving these three things with an undirected mind, thus releasing attatchment and aversion to them.
- I eventually started perceiving everything as unsatisfactory and took more and more time abiding with in an undirected mind. After that came the event I am trying to figure out.

I went to two retreats this year, both one day long Goenka retreats. I can't describe persistent changes in perception yet, because I need to be out of Ritalin and have a few days off to better understand what's going on.

I see the ten fetter model, and the MCTB model of the paths as being the same. I think the differences are better explained when you take into account the radical difference between a lay life and a monastic life.

I don't feel agencylessness. I said yesterday that aversion was in the head and craving is in the heart. I feel I am liberated from aversion, but not from craving. I was doing my long meditation  walk yesterday trying to vipassanise the heart area with the undirected mind. There comes a point when even trying to do anything is seen as stressful. So, in the second half of the walk, when I droped most of trying I saw how things can become without an agent. When you drop all desire for anything, you stop trying anything. When that happens, you feel as though things are happening without any involvement from you. But this change in perception wasn't permanent, because I am not done with craving yet. It feels weakened, but not gone.

The experiences of luminosity, or that metta is all around me arise in dependence of jhana, as far as I can tell. Regarding separation, I don't have reliable insights to say anything about this yet.

Thanks!

Could you link us to some text where Bhante Gunaratana talks about this model? I'd like to learn more abuot it. Thanks