Just an idle thought....

I think there was a post on here somewhere that said some people somewhere (far east?) regarded some western 4th path veterans/ arahats as being equivalent to thier '1st path', and further there are people who claim to be more advanced than '4th path' via different traditions.  Now, first path A&P is documented by some as some sort of completion, as is 1st path fruition, and 4th path completion is documented as 'really really finished with this journey', but what would happen if someone who has completed 4th path attempted to start a new cycle of insight?? Why is there silence in terms of exploration of this?

Silence? There is a whole movie about 5th path, the 13th apostle, and the enlightenment loophole!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20CRw3XdETA

Yeah, the models of varous modelers who don't know each other and take their best guesses about other's practice by internet posts and the like don't all line up, which is not surprising, really, given that this stuff can be hard to sort out.

Ideals collide. Dreams clash. Reality testing is scant. Theories are easy to come by. Experts clearly disagree. Scripting is rife. Shadow sides freely wander the realm.

As to cycling, cycling seems to continue, at least for me. I am not sure what it is doing. It is not doing what it was before.

Still, it seems to do something else, but I will be darned if I can map that, as, despite my hyper-mappy brain, all attempts have failed.

Whatever pattern there is to it, I am unable to discern it.

Whatever axis of development it furthers, I am unclear. Still, something is happening. I can toss out vague words like "maturation", and they satisfy to a small and unsatisfying degree.

Still, the feel of experience, free of the maddening space-warp that was there before, that habidual eddy in perception that created an illusion of a center, of a controller, of a doer, of Subject, of an observer, is so much better than before. I don't see how that gets deeper, as it is just gone and has stayed gone. Cycles don't change this, so far at least. It is meta to them, it appears.

Still, there is cycling, clearly, but that is not surprising, as everything else in this world cycles, so we shouldn't be surprised when our minds do likewise.

Daniel, is this the same as integration and/or the First Training?

For me, I've never really noticed much cycling, but the paths operated by dissolving layers or "chunks" of the center or feeling of self/free will that remained, and my practice consisted of noticing what remained.

So with nothing remaining, I can't start a new "cycle" as there is nothing there to focus on and unravel/dissolve.

As far as my post-arahat practice goes, Ron Crouch mentioned to me at one point that his model of enlightenment involves two separate but overlapping types of enlightenment, though I think he has a different version now.

I see the two separate types model as fitting my post-arahat experience. While  free will and the self are gone, something else is happening.

It could be described as a deepening or enriching of awareness, a broadening of no-self. It could be described as the development of that notoriously difficult term "rigpa", or by some of the Mahamudra writings, or by what Daniel wrote about the Wisdom Eye fully opening, or even by some of the AF stuff. Or maybe it's just that my concentration is increasing after a period of not meditating and smoking too much weed post-arahat.

But something new is developing along the "mind observing mind, lessened thought, awareness of perfection, seeing the screen upon which everything is perfected, purification of awareness" constellation of axes.

As I understand it, Daniel got all this along with 4th path, or maybe he already had it. But it can't be the same thing as 4th path for me, as I clearly have 4th path and just as clearly don't have this second type of enlightenment yet, though I see flashes of it.

Also, I got to 4th path really fast, so I suspect some of the accompanying stuff takes time to fully develop. To adapt Sid's best metaphor, if you've been shot with an arrow and pull the arrow out, the wound still takes time to fully heal even if the pain of the arrow is gone.

In this vein, I humbly submit my thoughts on the matter.
There are three speeds of the brain processes

• Thoughts
• Attention/Vipassana
• Awareness

The cycles of insight are related to #2 attention. As such even if you have MCTB 4th path nailed there seems to be cycling that can stop and start depending upon dropping down into the attention level and doing vipassana like practices and/or trying to modify the attentional system thru directed effort. Those few that I know who have stopped the cycling were working on awareness practices exclusively and when they started to do other things that was not aligning to keeping in awareness only, the cycles started up again. Going back to awareness practices seems to have the ability to stop them once again.
But as you pointed out -
There are too few pragmatic people at this level for good reality testing. The few groups who might have this information, as usual, are secretive.
Well, as I pointed out above, vipassana is not the process that will continue progress. Working with attention is the next thing on the menu. Unfortunately most of these practices are hush hush at this level. I have no doubt that people who hit 4th path play with finding something to vipassanize, and actually might find some small processes that are "untethered" from having a center that they depend on to operate, but these would be quite small "shifts".

This is all with a disclaimer that my theorizing is somewhat speculative in nature.
~D