| Since I had periodically access to Equanimity for at least 8 years before I got Fruition, I find it pretty easy to solidify that into 4th Jhana, and after stream-entry, my mind started to get even more still, so that from the whole-body attention stillness of 4th jhana, the spacious quality of that experience began to stand out much more, so I could make spaciousness into my main focus, after some time, if my mind is inclined to even more stillness, it seems that I'm holding back my potential for even greater rest if I don't spread out as much consciousness throughout this space as I can, and when even that activity, as it is an activity, starts to annoy me, it is better to just let that go and enjoy nothingness - a quality of not trying to create anything at all, just letting it all go, it feels like it has a quality of going behind, perhaps going behind activity, and when my mind is even ready to leave that behind, it gets to a place where it doesn't need to have any focal point at all, what I think of as 8th jhana. My body usually seems to get more and more erect, and my breath gets very soft and still as I climb higher and higher trough these states. It's not that I don't feel my body, or hear sounds, or think thoughts, because I do, but I experience these states as formless, because the mind is now able to make formless qualities into its main-focus, and the world of form and all that goes far into the background. When this pressure in my head was building up, it was enough to pull me out of making formless qualities into my number one priority, though there is usually a momentum going so I can easily switch back to them, but then my attention will switch back and forth between states of stillness and engaging with some kind of other activity, and that will make it challenging or less natural to absorb into these potentials that are still there but not as potent as if my mind was inclined to just totally dive into them. For me, since I don't have fluency with the jhanas, it seems I can only go into them when my mind has a natural momentum and inclination towards them. If I try to force them, I quickly squeeze the juice out of them and my body-mind system will rebel and give me a mild sort of burn-out.
This feeling of being totally done has happened 3 times now after what I believe was attaining 2nd Path. It doesn't feel like that right now as now there is clearly more work to do, even when I have a nice clean, clear state going. I think of this practice as a kind of exposure therapy, and I could always feel the self-contraction very clearly. When I was working towards stream-entry, it felt when the momentum was getting strong that the distance between the observer and the observed was getting smaller and smaller, and there was like a push to see if I could get them to touch, how intimate was it possible to be with experience, because of the tension in the distance was frustrating, and that would make me like try to grasp the totality of my experience, and when that was grasped, fruition happened and the momentum of that push for release was dissolved. So I'm pretty used to chasing this dualistic tension, much of the time when my mind is not pre-occupied with anything else, I start searching for it and go into it like some exposure therapy where I just have to go into it as much as possible. It is there pretty much all the time, and now it is clearly back again, but during these 3 times that I have felt done, I haven't felt any trace of it, and that is why I have felt done. This inherent problem with the present moment was gone. So the difference between that and other nice, clean, clear states, is that that is my only experience of not feeling afflicted with this inherent tension in the present moment. When I think about it, and remembers back to how it was to feel that it was gone, I almost want to metaphorically scream and shout at existence for putting this strain on me, even if it is pretty mild and subtle compared to most other things. However, at the same time, paradoxically, I'm glad that it is back, because it is motivating to have something to work on. |