KB - I kind of feel like I hijacked your thread here. Apologies for that... feel free to take it back whenever.

I'm hoping posting of others' experiences will be helpful to someone, though, so I made it detailed on purpose.
Here's a rundown of the more prominent parts of the actual what may have been stream-entry experience that I still remember. While I was sitting, there was a carnival going on at the church that's just across from my apartment building. Instead of being distracted by it, it was included in my entire field of experience, without effort really. Instead of the carnival being located somewhere out there its sounds (music, people happily screaming on rides, etc) were right there with me, not even in front of me, but actually directly part of me, since the sounds and other residual sensations were being heard/processed/experienced seamlessly. A bit deeper in, feeling pretty floaty and curious, I had a sensation of being some sort of force field of light, like a glowing mass of whitish light.. or maybe this other light pattern came first and I'm reversing.. hard to remember now.. but there were also separate horizontal planes of red light moving from the bottom of my body up to the top, like an elevator smoothly & briefly stopping on multiple floors. Onwards still, thoughts were popping into my head like.. "suffering is the anticipation of the next moment" so I tried to find the moments between moments (which are obviously still moments), which led to "suffering is the assumption that there will even be a next moment".
I was feeling really dreamy at this point... the totality would probably resemble something like the gravity defying feel and stark visual qualities of black outer space. At this point I wasn't even noting anymore.. perhaps too abstract? Things were happening slowly and thoughts were unintelligible happenings.. just sensations that were coming and going.. I can't explain how exactly, but without intervention of comprehension it was just known that it was all an integrated process going on. In my visual field, in the area of space that would be in front of me if existing in reality, I then saw separate neutral colored cubes lined up in an L formation floating in space. I don't know how, but it was somehow understood that these blocks represented my body. The cubes that were the appendage part of the L would move up and down, side to side as an arm or other body part would.. however, my actual body wasn't moving. The blocks then started rotating, in the visual field in front of me. As descriptively as I'm trying to write about the cube stuff now, then it was actually a fairly brief visualization and even somewhat faint/vague in appearance.
Following this visualization, there was a lapse of experience.. cessation? The only reason I'm aware of this lapse is because of being aware of a moment before and a moment after.. there was no awareness of anything between the before and after.. if that makes sense. The immediate after was a huge calm and giant smile on my face and thinking that was cessation. I felt a ton of pressure in my neck and back of my head, and front of my head/between my eyes (all stuff I've felt before occasionally). Slowly some doubt and a little fear started creeping in. And as slowly as doubt came, it crept away and brought in deep calm and gratitude. I started thinking about loved ones a bit and my heart was welling up. This was very pleasant and lasted a while, and then subsided to back to "normal".
The next day there were strong bliss waves and general feeling of being on cloud 9. There was also, at times, a creepy sensation of something following directly behind me. I'd even turn to look behind me, and of course nothing was there. I was also trying to get a repeat fruition, without any luck, at times being annoyed at this and other times not caring at all. My first prominent A&P cycle afterwards was more intense than before. Super-charged energy, reveling in joy & pleasure, and vivid, wildly colorful visualizations and intricate patterns. By the logic that A&P was so intense, Dark Night should have been too, right? Not really. I was pretty much able to laugh it off. Equanimity wasn't so intense either (not that it ever was) and the calmness, spaciousness etc was pretty similar to before. Other stuff about the following weeks in responses to questions below.
Pavel:
From what I have heard/been told, repeat fruitions do not happen to everybody (or at least, are not perceived by everybody). The ones that I have had were so quick that for about a year I doubted that I ever experienced any.
Here's the quote from MCTB (in the Was That Emptiness? chapter) that relates: "If you don’t have the necessary level of clarity and mastery to repeat the experience of interest again and again, either do enough clear and diligent practice to attain the required mastery or don’t ask the question." I took this to mean that getting repeat fruitions
at will was one of the most non-negotiable markers of stream-entry (thus the pressure/stress I felt to make it happen in the following weeks). Maybe I have been experiencing fruitions without realizing it, in the same way you did. Maybe I haven't.
Pavel:
Also, your understanding of the three characteristics and the Dharma in general should somehow be firmer and more solid (and noticeable during practice, ie. you know that all sensations are impermanent, or that they are not being experienced by a self, or that they do not have the ability to satisfy).
Lastly, there should be something missing that was there before, even if it is quite hard to put your finger on what that something precisely is. You may notice that there are some things that no longer bother you, some obsessions that no longer occur, or simply that your mind does not seem to be quite as chaotic as before, even if your ability to notice the chaos has been heavily augmented. This may translate as a permanent decrease in suffering, even if the decrease is not very big or tangible.
Yes, about the 3 characteristics (as I mentioned in the "been there, done that" part of my previous post. It's just known, without effort). There's also a little shift of what's missing. Like you say, certain shit just doesn't phase me like it used to, or doesn't even enter in the first place. Yes, there's also general feeling of my head space being more open and less crowded. Getting back to my baseline of calm is easier when annoyances occur. To add to that, there's a subtly better knowing of the seamlessness of what's actually happening.. i.e. more intuitive that the world/"my" place in it/experiences are way less separate than I used to think. That being said, I also know the monkey mind is still at work, and there's a ways to go. And to that end... now what?
Thanks for the input so far,
Steph