early ñanas or A&P + Dark Night?

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Diogo Kelles Fonseca, modified 8 Years ago at 2/19/16 3:05 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 2/19/16 3:05 AM

early ñanas or A&P + Dark Night?

Posts: 17 Join Date: 6/25/15 Recent Posts
Hey Folks!

Just had my first long sit in two months. Report on my last, intense, 9 days of practice report is here:
http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/5805139

Relevant background: read MCTB a lot, a seven day retreat and two years of iconsistent practice. According to dharmaoverground feedback, crossed the A&P twice on two diferent ocasions, one on retreat and the other on the day before the report above.


So, I was wondering if anyone could help me tell if what I experienced today was just the pre-A&P ñanas or if it sound like progression into dark night territory. That's the practice log:

Practice: 40m (noting, bare noticing and choiceless awereness)First long sit since mid december.
Practice begun hard and bumpy, hard to get a grip on a object on noting. Slowly became more consistent up until attention was quite solid on noting (and later bare noticing) the noise inside the ear. Energy grew along with concentration and on the flickering bleeping inside the ear noise got faster and clearer. Then there as this weird blip, and a wave of energy and concentration arise and the object was really vibrating very fast after that.
That was about 25m in the sit.
After a while this tight focus on fast vibrating object faded and it got easy again to get caught in though. Rest of the sit was emotionally a bit unstable. By the end of the sit I had the distinct feeling that I was done, tired of that annoying sensations, but could rationally get a grip on myself and get back on trying to have some focus.

neko, modified 8 Years ago at 2/19/16 6:52 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 2/19/16 6:52 AM

RE: early ñanas or A&P + Dark Night?

Posts: 762 Join Date: 11/26/14 Recent Posts
My 0.02€ worth:


Diogo Kelles Fonseca:
Practice begun hard and bumpy, hard to get a grip on a object on noting. Slowly became more consistent up until attention was quite solid on noting (and later bare noticing) the noise inside the ear. Energy grew along with concentration and on the flickering bleeping inside the ear noise got faster and clearer.


nanas 1-3


Then there as this weird blip, and a wave of energy and concentration arise and the object was really vibrating very fast after that. That was about 25m in the sit.


A&P


After a while this tight focus on fast vibrating object faded and it got easy again to get caught in though.


Dissolution.


Rest of the sit was emotionally a bit unstable. By the end of the sit I had the distinct feeling that I was done, tired of that annoying sensations, but could rationally get a grip on myself and get back on trying to have some focus.


Possibly mid-DN stages.
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Diogo Kelles Fonseca, modified 8 Years ago at 2/22/16 4:34 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 2/22/16 4:34 AM

RE: early ñanas or A&P + Dark Night?

Posts: 17 Join Date: 6/25/15 Recent Posts
Thank you for your reply Neko.

Trying to keep a steady flow of practice. I feel I now really have what it takes to navigate trough the dark night skillfully if I manage to actually sit and practice.

Today sit: Bare noticing of inside the ear noise.

Bumpy start but I was in a good mood and it did not felt frustrating to keep going back to the object of meditation, so practice was more steady then the previous related. Consistency in staying with the object grew steadily, up until a point where aversion and weird body twistings were arrising quite frequently but it did not disrupted concentration. Then object acelerated, its flickering speed increased quite a lot and moderate to strong raptures flew trough the body. This time this aceleration lasted less then a minute then it was back to it's normal flickering speed and somewhat as slippery as before the aceleration.

Don't know if I'm confortable caling this a A&P or just raptures of a shift into/inside any of the early ñanas.
neko, modified 8 Years ago at 2/23/16 11:01 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 2/23/16 11:01 AM

RE: early ñanas or A&P + Dark Night?

Posts: 762 Join Date: 11/26/14 Recent Posts
The spontaneous body movements are a reliable sign of the pre-A&P territory.

The frequency of the noting is an indicator, but not the most reliable one in my experience. Try to see whether, for each flickering, you tend to see both its arising and its passing away, only the mid-part, or only the passing-away part (this last one feels like always arriving a little bit late for the party).

Not sure what it is that you call "raptures". In the parlance we use on this forum here, rapture (piti) is a factor of some of the jhanas and nanas, not a state in itself.
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Diogo Kelles Fonseca, modified 8 Years ago at 2/24/16 4:28 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 2/24/16 4:28 AM

RE: early ñanas or A&P + Dark Night?

Posts: 17 Join Date: 6/25/15 Recent Posts
Thanks again for the reply Neko.

Regarding raptures: I call them the sudden jolts of energy that flow trough the body for about 1-3 seconds

On which portion of sensations is dominant: hard for me to say what is predominant. But let me see if my description of today sit helps clear that out:

40m sit (longer then the 2 days before)

The first ~15 minutes were very similar to what I described before, but with a bit less intesity of energy all around.
Then, for at about ~20-30 I could relate to what I read on MTCB of flow of sensations disconected to reality and maybe what you're calling noticing more the final, passing away of sensations, and this feeling of "arriving late to the party". That was not so on the beggining of practice so something changed during the sit.
At about ~30m I was rationally enforcing that this weird patterns were a sign of progress and managing to keep focus on body objects. Eventually I reached some sort of plateau where the frequent doubt and need of reasure myself of where I was did not arrise so much. Practice got easier, clear perception of arrising and passing of objects were back, and I begun concentrating on been gently curious about all that.
By the end of the sit, ~35m in, the doubt and dificulty to focus on sensations begun arrising again and went back to remembering this was progress and pretty much repeating the struggle of the 20-30m portions of the sit.


by MTCB framework, I guess this could be a touch in EQ then back to Re-observation. However concentration today felt not so strong overall as the 2 days before, so it might just be pre-A&P territory?

I'll keep reporting practice log over the next few days.
neko, modified 8 Years ago at 2/24/16 6:22 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 2/24/16 6:22 AM

RE: early ñanas or A&P + Dark Night?

Posts: 762 Join Date: 11/26/14 Recent Posts
Keep up the good work.

Since you seem to be into maps, have a look at this one:

http://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/2714156

for pointers on what to look for.

Notice step #7: your experiences of sudden jerky movements, waves of piti through your body and so on need to be integrated in the noting practice. Do not keep them separate from the other sensations, they are just like any other sound or thought or physical sensation. Also integrate thoughts about practice and doubt about where you are on the maps. Keep asking yourself, "Did you note it?", do not let stuff slip through the net of noting.

Once you have this down, start looking for step #8: can you integrate any of the "core" processes in the noting?